Here We Go Again. A Fresh Tantrum
As you know I have been waiting for a better set up for the stock market to find a low. Specifically, as I mentioned the other day, I wanted to see more downside early in the day which led to a close that wasn’t in the bottom of the range. That would serve as a revisiting of the May 13 low. We saw that did happen on Wednesday and it should have at least stemmed the tide. However, as has […]
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Date: May 30, 2019
Back in the Saddle. Bottom Getting Closer
Let me start by apologizing for going dark last week. I had a little accident with a tree and the tree won. I ended up in the hospital and just focused my work efforts on running our strategies and not doing any writing. And after not publishing last week, not much has changed from where I left off in the markets. I was in the short-term pullback camp after the May 1 peak, but it looked like much of the […]
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Date: May 28, 2019
Tweet Watch Again
Although our models were flashing numerous green lights at the close on Monday, I wasn’t convinced that the final low was in. And nothing this week has made me feel any more comfortable. I am definitely not concerned about meaningful decline in the stock market, just that the 5% pullback doesn’t seem complete. Of course, you could push back and say that I am being too cute with such a relatively small decline and you would be right. What bothers […]
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Date: May 17, 2019
THE Bottom or A Bottom? Banks Looking Good
After Monday’s mauling by the bears the losses mounted to roughly 5% and was pretty much in straight line fashion since the May 1 FOMC meeting. In other words, for all the fire and brimstone by the bears, all we have see, so far, has been a normal, routine and what I will call “healthy” single digit, bull market pullback. Very little internal damage has been done. The Dow Industrials said hello to its long-term trend, the average price of […]
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Date: May 15, 2019
Tariff Tantrum Continues
The markets’ tariff tiff/tantrum is now a full blown tantrum. “I don’t want tariffs! I don’t want tariffs! I don’t want tariffs!” The truth is, as I wrote about before, the markets were setting up to pause, digest or even pullback modestly after the Fed meeting on May 1. They were just looking for that excuse which came in a big way over the past week or so. After another big down opening, stocks are continuing to slide lower, the […]
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Date: May 13, 2019
Pullback Continues? All Eyes on Twitter. REALLY???
Lots of intra-day movement this week after stocks peaked on May 1 when the Fed concluded their two-day meeting. After 30 years in the business, I keep saying that few things surprise me anymore, but I have to say that watching traders and market participants glued to Twitter for any sign of tariff walk back by the president is certainly a first for me. I can’t imagine what the great investors of yesteryear are thinking as they down on us […]
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Date: May 9, 2019
Renewed Tariff Tiff/Tantrum from Tweet
We woke up today to one of those infamous tweets from the President. Surprisingly, without notice, he began targeting China and a renewal of the tariff tiff or tariff tantrum. As you know, I am so firmly against tariffs as an economic weapon because no one ever wins. It’s just about losing less. In a perfect world, there shouldn’t be any tariffs at all and each country’s goods and services should stand on their own merit. As I have said […]
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Date: May 6, 2019
Powell Pours Cold Water
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) concluded their two-day meeting on Wednesday with no change in interest rates, as expected. While markets initially reacted positively as the prospect for a rate cut later this year remained very real, Fed Chair Jay Powell, quickly and curiously doused cold water on those hopes, citing “transitory” low inflation. I call it “curious” because after countless years of historically low rates and multiple rounds of quantitative easing that created roughly $4 trillion of new […]
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Date: May 2, 2019
GDP Blows Out. Stocks Don’t React.
It seems like after a few frustrating weeks with the server migration, the blog is back online with all content restored. If you see anything that is broken or clearly missing, please let me know. Thanks for your patience! On Friday, the government released the first look at Q1 GDP and it blew away expectations, surging more than 3% when some “experts” were forecasting 0% growth and many were below 2%. Given the magnitude of the Q4 stock market decline […]
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Date: April 29, 2019
Sectors Strengthening. Buy the Pullback
First, I want to apologize for my inconsistent posting lately. We have been trying to migrate to a new and upgraded WordPress server at Godaddy and that has taken a lot longer than I thought. At first I didn’t realize that I couldn’t post new content until everything was migrated over and then I had to have Godaddy migrate everything over all over again. So, I am in limbo. Sorry about that. Thankfully, the markets have been very quiet lately […]
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Date: April 22, 2019
