Two Enemies Of The Stock Market
It has been a heavy week in the stock market, especially in the NASDAQ 100. Every early rally has been met with selling and I have found very few things that are appealing enough to buy. On the flip side, because there hasn’t been any intervening rallies, not many things have looked appealing enough to sell.
Below is a culprit, long-term interest rates. I will say this and be crystal clear. The bulls absolutely do not want to see the 10-Year yield back to 5%. That would be bad for stocks as well as the economy, not to mention the rate sensitive sectors.
The other culprit is the U.S. dollar seen below. Stock market bulls absolutely do not want to see the greenback index above the 107 level. Stocks behave much better with a currency that goes sideways to milder lower.
I would have thought at least one intervening rally would have been seen this week. So far, the pullback has been 5-8% in the major indices and the decline does not look complete. There should be a bounce coming before the final low is in, likely in May.
On Thursday I visited the New York Stock Exchange. In my 35 year career I have been to the floor of the NYSE dozens of times. I still get that feeling of awe when I think about how systemically important the exchange has been to our economy, global capitalism and democracy. While the floor is basically ceremonial now as most trading is conducted electronically, it is still a cool place to be. It epitomizes America.
On Wednesday we bought EPU and levered S&P 500. We sold EPI.
