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Category: Paul’s Insights

Bears Pulling a Pete Carroll?

The bears began Monday’s trading with the ball, seemingly just needing to breach the lows to force a wave of technical selling. It shouldn’t have been that difficult. After multiple intra-day reversals by the bulls stocks ended sharply higher on decent internals. While that all looks very nice and neat on a chart, I would have still preferred to see a clear breach of all recent key lows by at least the majority of the major indices. All we saw […]   Read More
Date: February 3, 2015

Bears Trying to Run It In

Congratulations to the New England Patriots! I didn’t root for you, but a win is a win, even in the face of the single worst offensive play called in the history of  big game sports. Stocks begin the week with the bears in mild control even following Thursday’s reversal. Early this week should be very key to see which way the short-term winds blow. On the S&P 500 and its weaker cousin, the Dow, price has declined to the same […]   Read More
Date: February 2, 2015

Heading into the Weekend

Some of the pop in volatility this week is starting to be wrung out as the markets close the week. On Thursday we saw a nice reversal across the board, however the internal numbers were nothing to write home about. Additionally, I would have much preferred to see the lows from at 2015, if not December 2014 breached before the reversal took hold. That would have given a good flush to weak handed holders. For now, the major indices remain […]   Read More
Date: January 30, 2015

Fed Day Model and Trend

The FOMC concludes their two day meeting today, surviving the “epic” and “historic” blizzard. The model for the trading day is to see stocks in a plus or minus range of 0.50%, but generally we see mildly rising prices until 2pm and then increased volatility with an upward bias to the close. The Fed trend is to be long the stock market from yesterday’s close to today’s close based on a variety of historical factors. That trend has an accuracy […]   Read More
Date: January 28, 2015

Bears to Pounce at the Open

Stocks look to open sharply lower this morning on a variety of news events, although none that are singularly that bad. Greece is in the headlines yet again and frankly, if they are going to exit, let’s just get it over with. Their economy and market is not even a rounding error in the grand scheme of things, but a Grexit will open the door to the southern European countries saber rattling about an exit if they are not bailed […]   Read More
Date: January 27, 2015

Lots of News This Week

While last week was certainly news filled, this week will be even busier as the northeast plans for another snowmageddon. At the bus stop this morning, our new neighbors who are from Dublin talked about the more than 10 cases of water they bought. When I stopped laughing, I asked them what they planned to do with all that water. And while they were at it, I asked them if they also bought canned goods and ammo! That conversation gave […]   Read More
Date: January 27, 2015

Draghi & ECB Deliver

It’s a very busy week for the markets and economy coming off the ECB’s long anticipated announcement of Euro QE last week. On the one hand I thought it was smart to leak the $50B euros per month plan so that markets could digest it ahead of the official statement. It was also a great move to then exceed the number that was leaked by $10B euros. On the other hand, I am not in favor of this piecemeal approach […]   Read More
Date: January 26, 2015

7 Years Ago

As I drove home from Vermont today on Martin Luther King Day, I thought about past MLK Days, which is something I would normally do to pass the time away. My two boys were in the back seat napping and listening to music and I had Sirius on in the background. I vividly recall MLK Day 1994 as it was the single coldest day I have ever skied at Mount Snow, -25F with 20 mph winds that made it feel […]   Read More
Date: January 20, 2015

Early Warning System & January Barometer

With the first five days of January officially in the books, the Early Warning System (EWS) pioneered by Yale Hirsch is flashing a positive sign for the rest of January as well as 2015. The theory says that as go the first five trading days of the new year, so goes January. And as goes January, so goes the year. With help from my friend Carter Worth of Stern Agee (Carter did the heavy lifting and I peppered him with […]   Read More
Date: January 12, 2015

Another “V” for the Bulls… Must Run from Here

As I have written before, since mid 2012 the stock market has seen more “V” bottoms than in all previous years combined. “V” bottoms went from being very rare to becoming the norm. With each successive low, investors are changing their buying behavior to accept the “new” behavior as the norm. In my view, this is setting up the masses for yet another 2000-2002 or 2008 style wealth decimation. So now that we have yet another confirmed “V” bottom, which […]   Read More
Date: January 9, 2015