And the Tea Leaves Were Right
Earlier this week, after weeks and almost months of continuous concerns about the bulls’ ability to step up, I wrote about the short-term tea leaves indicating a rally beginning by Tuesday or Wednesday. The bulls definitely did their part so far this week with the small and mid cap indices scoring all-time highs and the NASDAQ 100 close to fresh highs. The Dow and the S&P 500 have rallied, but are still being dragged up by their counterparts. Software, consumer […]
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Date: June 19, 2015
Fed Statement Day Trend
Once again, the markets have come to the day when the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) releases their statement regarding interest rates and their economic forecast. Today, we also get to hear from Janet Yellen during the post meeting press conference. What to expect? Absolutely nothing on the interest rate front. As I have said before every meeting since rates went to essentially 0%, the Fed is not going to raise rates today. That day will wrongly come sooner […]
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Date: June 17, 2015
Short-Term Tea Leaves Say Bulls About to Step Up
The stock market remains on the defensive as I have written about for some time, not that this is a repeat of 2008 or even 2011. It’s not even your garden variety 10%+ correction. Stocks remain in the range they have been in for most of 2015. From a bullish perspective, it’s a good intermediate-term sign that after the huge run up we have seen, the bears can’t even muster a 10% correction. From the bearish perspective, stocks have stalled […]
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Date: June 16, 2015
Selling the Bounce
Let’s start with my conclusion and then work backwards. Nothing has changed over the past few days, weeks and even months. I still view stocks positively the farther out you go. The short-term remains murky, uncertain, questionable and any other adjective that is less than flat out bullish. One of my chief concerns, sentiment, has begun to reset itself at least to neutral from the overly enthusiastic category. Sentiment surveys have improved as have the put/call ratios in the options […]
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Date: June 10, 2015
Don’t Believe the Negative GDP Print
Short and sweet as I am traveling today. Last Friday, the government reported that Q1 economic output contracted by 0.70%. To the casual observer, that smells awfully close to the accepted definition of recession, two straight quarters of negative GDP growth. Stocks barely reacted on Friday and I attribute the weakness to geopolitical news in Europe. The first quarter has been the worst GDP as far back as the eye can see. The government’s seasonally adjusted data needs to be […]
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Date: June 1, 2015
Bulls Not Ready to Surge Just Yet
In what seems to be the trend for most of 2015, price breakouts above previous high points have largely been rejected. While that’s not to say that the bears have come in and taken control over the intermediate-term, we have seen small pullbacks until the bulls get ready to step up again. Eventually, as I have written about all along, this three or six month trading range will resolve itself to the upside; it just doesn’t look like it’s right […]
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Date: May 21, 2015
American Pharaoh Begins the Week at the Highs
The bulls begin the new week a little higher than this time last week and within striking distance of all-time highs in the Dow, S&P 500 and S&P 400. Not a single thing has changed in my bullish intermediate and long-term outlook. The stock market should continue higher on its way to Dow 20,000 with periodic bouts of weakness to keep everyone honest. As I have been writing about since early 2012, any and all pullbacks should be viewed as […]
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Date: May 18, 2015
Portfolio Impact from Jobs Report
The question now for portfolio managers like myself is, “does one good employment report turn the tide?” Since I already mentioned that I all but dismissed the poor Q1 GDP number and I am not giving much weight to the weak March employment, I do believe that Friday’s report is the start of the next upward swing in our frustrating but positive post financial crisis recovery. With that, the intermediate-term outlook for stocks has brightened for many although unchanged from […]
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Date: May 13, 2015
April Employment Report Turns the Tide
One of my long held beliefs is that it really doesn’t matter what the news is, only how the markets react. In almost 27 years of trading, investing and watching, I have seen it too many where the news is so powerful in one direction, yet the market reaction is the exact opposite. Hence, the terms “buy the rumor, sell the news” or “sell the rumor, buy the news”. And sometimes, the news is as expected, yet markets see a […]
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Date: May 12, 2015
Tug O’ War Continues
Like a seesaw or maybe a pinball machine, the major stock market indices continue to bounce from the low end of the trading range to the upper end and back. Remember, that for the past month or so, I have written about the short-term looking somewhat murky, but the intermediate and long-term remain solid. Market pullbacks come in two forms. The first is that price declines somewhat sharply and quickly, which shakes out some of the weak handed holders. The […]
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Date: May 6, 2015
