Was That It?
At their worst levels on Thursday, the major stock indices were bludgeoned and downright ugly. The Dow was down to 16,000 and could have been cracked open like a coconut today had the bulls not mounted a very strong late day charge. The rally was somewhat impressive and leaves open the question of whether we just saw the revisiting of the August lows I have spoken about on CNBC’s Fast Money and written about here. With stocks looking up more […]
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Date: September 25, 2015
Market Behaving as Expected. Bottom Shortly.
In my last update, I opined that the Fed should not raise rates and that whatever they did, the market would end whatever move it was having and reverse in the other direction. First, I am glad that Yellen & Co. did not raise rates. That time will come, but it wasn’t last week. Second, stocks rallied nicely into the Fed meeting and in the moments after the announcement. However, it was the perfect “buy the rumor, sell the news” […]
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Date: September 22, 2015
Don the Crash Helmets! It’s Bloody and Ugly Out There!!
By now, everyone knows that the Dow Jones Industrials fell by 1000 points last week, including a 531 point down day to close the week. More selling lies ahead in the short-term. It’s getting ugly. There’s blood in the streets. Sell what you can not what you want. Margin calls are coming. Maximum pain thresholds are being hit for the individual investor. Panic is here! Before I opine on what it means, let’s put it all in perspective. 531 points […]
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Date: August 24, 2015
My Oh My… The Music Has Stopped
If you listen to the media or have an active Twitter feed about the markets, you would think stocks have literally collapsed into the depths of a bear market. We MUST be down at least 10-15%! Yet as I type this, the S&P 500 has pulled back all of 6%. It’s a little more than half way to the 10% correction level.The Dow hit my initial downside target of sub 17,000 and the S&P 500 is on its way to […]
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Date: August 21, 2015
Rolling Out the Red Carpet for the Bears
It’s been a rough week for the bulls with Apple taking it on the chin and the Dow Industrials down every day in addition to the last two days of the previous week. Early indications have the bears heading into the weekend with another victory. I want to go back to what now seems like a very prescient post on July 20 titled Trouble Brewing Beneath the Surface. On that day, all of the major indices were at rally highs […]
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Date: August 7, 2015
China Again
A few weeks ago, I published a piece about the Shanghai having further to fall. Chinese Market Collapse Not Over Last night, Chinese stocks saw their largest decline since February 27, 2007, a day I vividly remember as I was running money for a hedge fund in Boston and about to leave for a week’s ski vacation in Utah to celebrate a belated 40th birthday with a bunch of friends. At that time, the prevailing sentiment was that the Asian […]
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Date: July 27, 2015
Bears Having Their Day
Not even half a day of weakness and talk of the big C is out. The dreaded correction! It’s amazing that after a 73 month secular bull market, it’s still the most hated and disavowed bull ever. Yes, it’s now been 42 months since the last 10% correction, but markets don’t fall just because of age. Corrections occur to repair breaks and right now, there aren’t enough things broken to warrant a full fledged correction. The most glaring concern is […]
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Date: April 17, 2015
Is it Crash Helmet Time???
For the past three weeks, my message has been one of a little short-term concern against the backdrop of much higher prices to follow. That remains unchanged. Market sentiment had become frothy, meaning that too many people had become too confident in the stock market. We saw that in both the individual investor and newsletter writer sentiment surveys. Options traders were betting overwhelmingly on higher prices over the short-term. Corporate insiders were selling much more than they were buying. Traders […]
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Date: March 11, 2015
Two Market Scenarios for the Quarter
In the last issue of Street$marts, I wrote about stocks being in a “murky” period for the next few weeks. I am going to pat myself on the back and say it has certainly looked “murky” since early October although I wish I had been more aggressive in taking action. The dark clouds have recently dissipated and the sun is starting to pop out. Once the decline began, it looked like the second half of October would see a low and that’s […]
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Date: October 21, 2014
So Far So Good!
Just two ago, I wrote about the stock market “groping” for a bottom and laid out a scenario for that to begin on Wednesday. The beaten down Russell 2000 was the key as it very quietly had been outperforming the market for three days. That behavior is not what you typically see if a crash was unfolding. Our indicators and systems backed up my own thoughts and our equity strategies went to maximum exposure at the close on Wednesday. When […]
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Date: October 17, 2014
