Media Day
I am heading to New York to first visit my friends at Yahoo Finance and their Breakout show with Jeff Macke. By week’s end, they should have 2-3 segments created on their website from our discussion. After that, it’s on to Fox Business to spend 30 minutes with Maria Bartiromo on her new show Opening Bell. I am scheduled to be on between 10am and 10:30am discussing a wide variety of topics. Although I hate the pre-dawn wake up call, […]
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Date: April 16, 2014
Stocks Remain in Pullback Mode
With the major indices down 4-8% I am once again getting questions whether the bull market has ended and a multi-year decline is unfolding. I don’t think so.The New York Stock Exchange Cumulative Advance/Decline line recently scored an all time high. When bull markets end, we typically see this indicator peak months, quarters or even years before the Dow and S&P 500. The same can be said of the high yield bond sector. Bear markets are usually associated with restrictive […]
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Date: April 14, 2014
Market stems sell-off but volatility is here to stay
Thanks for the quote Jeff Benjamin! Click here for article Market stems sell-off but volatility is here to stay Advisers agree investors need to stay calm and avoid knee-jerk selling By Jeff Benjamin Apr 8, 2014 @ 11:39 am (Updated 5:39 pm) EST Print E-mail Reprints 13Shares Bloomberg News The short and sudden streak of market volatility took a breather on Tuesday as traders took advantage of pullbacks by some of the higher-beta stocks. But financial advisers and market […]
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Date: April 14, 2014
U-G-L-Y Day on Thursday
The stock market had a very rough day on Thursday with all of the major indices breaking down below all short-term support levels for the chartists out there. There is no other way to characterize than UGLY. Keep in mind, however, that so far, all we have seen are 3-6% declines. It feels much worse because we saw two large down days over the past week, the likes of which we haven’t seen all year, including the January pullback. On […]
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Date: April 11, 2014
Bull market intact after “good flat” first quarter, but changes afoot
Thanks for the quote Jeff Benjamin. http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20140331/FREE/140339990# In a three-month stretch of extreme winter weather, unexpected geopolitical unrest, a Federal Reserve chairmanship transition, and a continuing sluggish economy, investors should be happy with a 1% first-quarter gain by the S&P 500. In essence, even without a lot of good news during the quarter, the financial markets proved resilient enough to keep general volatility low and fend off anything that looked like a threat to the bull market. “The first quarter […]
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Date: April 8, 2014
It’s All Negative
It was an interesting reading weekend. Everything I read was negative about the stock market, which is very unusual. Bulls became bears and bears were beating their chests. Not a single piece was positive. After last Friday’s market drubbing, the bears would normally come out, but so would the “buy the dip” bulls. And yesterday, it only got worse. When I saw newsletter writer Dennis Gartman say he got “scared” out of stocks, I began to believe a low was […]
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Date: April 8, 2014
CNBC’s Squawk Box Monday at 6:30 AM
I am excited to be with Joe, Becky and Andrew on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Monday the 31st at 6:30 AM. We will be discussing the markets, the wrong way Fed and the latest comments from Putin regarding the Ukraine. There should be a new issue of Street$marts out later on Monday. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. I am heading to my 6 year old’s very loud and chaotic birthday party. Too bad they don’t serve adult beverages with […]
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Date: March 30, 2014
The Story that Never Ends
Almost two weeks ago, I published this piece about PIMCO and Bill Gross. Since then, many news outlets continued reporting about the major problems inside PIMCO and the challenges Bill Gross faces. Thanks for the various quotes. PIMCO’s Got Bigger Problems than the Tabloid Drama We’ve Been Reading about Lately Some Still Wary on Gross’ Shakeup at PIMCO More Troubles for PIMCO in Wake of El-Erian Exit Advisers Ratchet up Scrutiny of PIMCO
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Date: March 28, 2014
Routine & Healthy Consolidation in Play
Last Friday, we saw the S&P 500 tick at all time highs for a few seconds. That’s anything but unexpected and certainly not newsworthy. What was “different this time” was that it was the only major index to score new highs before they all reversed sharply to the downside. That made calling for an overall market pullback fairly easy. Over the past few days, the high flying, momentum driven tech stocks, like Google Netflix and Amazon have come under strong […]
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Date: March 26, 2014
Dr. Copper May Be Terminally Ill, But…
What should be big news isn’t getting that much play and that’s the total collapse in copper prices, mostly due to China’s weakening economy. Copper has long been called Dr. Copper or the commodity with a PhD in economics because it was a good forecasting tool. Since late 2010, that all changed and it’s likely because of China’s influence on that market. Copper has completely collapsed on a short-term basis, semi-collapsed on an intermediate-term basis and is on the verge […]
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Date: March 23, 2014
Ben Bernanke Cringing
New Fed chair, Janet Yellen, presided over her first FOMC meeting this week with her first press conference yesterday afternoon. In short, as much as I supported her for the position, it’s crystal clear that she is no Ben Bernanke and has much to learn. On the positive side, she was very calm and took time to give thoughtful and detailed answers. I especially liked when she stated that the glide path to tighter monetary policy was going to be […]
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Date: March 20, 2014
Janet Yellen’s First Fed Statement Day
My how time flies! We just said goodbye to Ben Bernanke and hello to Janet Yellen and now it’s time for Fed day again. It is widely expected that the FOMC will taper another $10 billion to $55 billion per month in quantitative easing as it continues down the path to wrapping up QE by the end of the year. There is also an expectation that the Fed changes their interest rate scenario from quantitative to qualitative with Yellen giving […]
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Date: March 19, 2014
The Fall of the House of PIMCO… The Bill Gross Saga
Overview of PIMCO Over the years, Pacific Investment Management Company or PIMCO has been the global leader in fixed income or bond management. Their Total Return Bond Fund was the largest mutual fund in the world with roughly a quarter of a trillion dollars until ceding to Vanguard late last year. It was the standard by which competitors were judged and dominated the 401K market. Although now owned by giant insurer Allianz, PIMCO has essentially been an autonomous unit since […]
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Date: March 16, 2014
Bears Growl as Line in the Sand Breached
As I look back at the titles of the posts this week, I see “Stocks Looking to Rest”, “Bulls Hanging in During Tug O’ War” and “Bears Creeping In”. It was hard not to at least lean to bearish side. Until Thursday although prices were lower, the bulls fought hard. But on Thursday, the flood gates opened with some major league selling in the indices. On the sector front, all were sharply lower with the exception of utilities and precious […]
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Date: March 13, 2014
Bears Creeping In
In yesterday’s update, I drew two short-term lines in the sand, looking for the major indices to close below Monday’s low or above last week’s high to signify the next move. Yesterday, we saw the Dow and S&P 500 stay above Monday’s low, but the S&P 400 and Russell 2000 closed below Monday’s low. That leaves us leaning in the bearish direction awaiting full confirmation. Leadership from biotech, REITs and utilities has started to wane, but the financials are trying […]
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Date: March 12, 2014
Bulls Hanging In During Tug o’ War
All of the ingredients were in place for one of those quick, sharp down days on Monday with a plethora of geopolitical news. From poor economic news out of China to continuing saga in Crimea and the Ukraine to the still missing aircraft, all the excuses were there. And while stocks sold off early in the day, a similar story over the past few years played out; the bulls slowly and steadily stepped up to trim the losses. After four […]
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Date: March 11, 2014
Stocks Looking to Rest
Stocks begin the week needing to breathe after an overwhelming 7 days of news all over the landscape. Last week at this time the globe was worried about World War III but ended the week with a better than expected employment report. The bull market remains old and wrinkly, but very much alive. At this point there are no serious warning signs that the bear wants to come out of hibernation. Furthermore, there aren’t even any warning signs that a […]
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Date: March 9, 2014
Here We Go Again… Jobs Friday
Wasn’t it just yesterday that we were talking about the monthly employment report? Well, we’re here again! With back to back weak reports blamed on “weather”, stocks are set up to rally on a good report that gets past weather and a bad but not atrocious report that blames “weather”. It must be nice to have the “weather” fall back on. I may have to try that with clients. Credit a good quarterly report on our skills, but blame a […]
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Date: March 7, 2014
No More Shush… Emerging Markets are Waking Up
After an horrific 2013 relative to the developed world, emerging markets fell even harder in January. Slowing China. Contagion in the Pacific Basin. Instability in South America. They were left for dead, especially in the media. But a funny thing happened on the way to the embalming parlor. Sellers became scarce even with the powder keg in the Ukraine. Buyers began to step up and the MSCI Emerging Markets Index has rallied 8% over the past month. In my 2014 […]
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Date: March 6, 2014
Modern Day Cold War?
Geopolitical news now dominates the news cycle with nothing more front and center than the sudden and disturbing turn of events in Ukraine. It’s hard to believe that after spending $51 billion to showcase Sochi and build goodwill throughout the world, Russia has effectively hit the delete button on the whole winter Olympics with aggression in the Crimea. Is an invasion of the Ukraine next? The odds are probably 60-40 in favor. It’s something that really makes you scratch your […]
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Date: March 3, 2014
