Greece = Opportunity. Stock Market Scenarios for Q3
With Monday’s blog and Street$marts being on the long side, I decided to wait a day to offer commentary on how the markets’ reaction to the impending default by Greece, bank closure, referendum, etc. would impact the new month and quarter. To reiterate an important market tenet of mine which has been around for decades, it’s not what the news is, but how the markets react. We are constantly reminded of that with economic news. Is good news bad news […]
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Date: July 1, 2015
Birds, Salmon and Russell 2000
As the birds fly south for the winter and salmon spawn each fall, it’s time for the annual reconstitution and rebalancing for the Russell 2000 index of small cap companies. The Russell 2000 represents the smallest 2000 companies in the Russell 3000 index. The companies which no longer rank in the 2000 are jettisoned and the new ones are officially added on June 26th. This is all based on the rankings as of May 31st. As this happens only once […]
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Date: June 30, 2015
Grexhaustion… Leave the Euro Already
If you weren’t already exhausted by the constant stream of headlines regarding Greece’s inability to meet their financial obligations, you should be now! After more than five years of negotiations, deals, posturing and extensions, the situation in Greece seems to be coming to a head. I hesitate to use the word “crisis” because unless you’re living there and feeling the depressionary pain, this is really a fringe story. What I find interesting is that we are finally seeing all parties […]
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Date: June 29, 2015
More Nonsense with Greece
Just wondering aloud if a single week can go by without any talk about will Greece or won’t Greece exit from the Euro. They are already in default, and historically, they have been in default more than they have been current, yet they behave as though they are in full control. Maybe they are! You know the old adage that if you owe the bank $100,000 and can’t pay, you have a problem. If you owe the bank $100,000,000, the […]
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Date: June 22, 2015
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
