Hello everybody,
I'm still working on the new batch of companies that I mentioned past week but unfortunately I haven't finished them yet.My idea is as you know try to pinpoint timing as knowing for example when to enter and when to get out.
It is important to keep in mind the influence that the stock market as a whole has over individual issues, so still in the making I'm planning to get some to the downside and other group to the upside paying special attention to the ones that contradict the general market and see if they perform as expected because isolating and determining direction of a stock regardless of the big trend will be kind of like heaven to me.Will see, lots of work and testing if that idea has serious chances of being pursued.
I'm thinking this approach only for a third case scenario.What will happen if the market don't go up, but don't go down either.(I meant no movement in a substantial way, not saying that the market can look "flatlined" for a long time).
We are already in April the market recovered the 7% correction in the S&P almost completely (but not fully yet).
So not sure now because the up move that I mentioned could start two weeks ago looks impulsive, yes but it's not impressive lately. So I'm debating now between my original idea that this keeps going up until the end of April or the other option; April just extends it's choppiness to give the impression that finally finally we reach what seems like the infamous "permanent high plateau in prices".With people hugging on the streets because we make it! we make it to the other side of the tunnel! Yes you all know what comes then.
But still not really convinced because you can tell that people are very traumatized and trigger happy to get out (I'm referring to institutional players and insiders not 401K investors) and withouth that silly overconfidence not too much could happen because the positions get reversed easily and what's overbought changes in a matter of days dramatically.
This is not Astrology just my personal observation, so maybe a 15-20% correction is not possible yet because we need more optimism.Will see.
Dan
Dan - Your analogy of making it to the other side of the tunnel is good, but it also makes you stop to think - Now what?
ReplyDeleteWhat is on the other side of the tunnel.
Where do we go from here.
It almost seems like TPTB, have a final destination, but no plan after that - "Come on folks lets go on a great adventure" - "We are going to avoid the next Great Depression" - "You will know when we get there" - "But you are on your own after that"
And maybe the market insiders have itchy trigger fingers, because they know at a certain point they are on their own.
Anyway, thank you for sharing your thoughts and input.
Mangy Mutt
Lower high forming here? Or not?
ReplyDeleteMorning folks, great post Dan, looking forward to your new list!
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine these cuts, if they are passed, will be a stimulus to the economy but what do I know?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/us/politics/06budget.html?hp
@Mannwich:
ReplyDeleteThe technicals look like a lower high.
However, the fundamentals, the structurals, and the psychologicals just don't add up.
Fundies: everything is up up and away. Profits never better.
structurals: the Fed's still buying. Bonds are in low-dom.
Psychologicals: we're shrugging off everything: Lybia and middle east, ivory coast, Portugal and Ireland.
So 3 of 4, up up and away. do you believe technicals? All by themsleves?
Suck it up, whiners! Bailouts for the rich, the giant middle finger to everyone else. The human race has clearly lost its collective "mind".
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/05/milwaukee-budget-cuts_n_844551.html
@Rock: I've previously been a fundamentals guy but that hasn't done me any favors, so I'm trying to use more of a combination approach and leaning more on technicals than I used to, but it's still a big learning curve for me.
ReplyDeleteManny - I've seen that, horrific. I also like what I'm hearing a lot of smarter politicians trying to ram home. That we cannot just cut cut cut, the US has the third LOWEST revenue stream in the world, right behind Turkey, Mexico, and South Korea. If we had a revenue stream (taxes, fees, etc) close to that of Canada or France our budget would balance, if we cut 15% out of defense on top of that, we'd be sitting pretty.
ReplyDeleteI think we'll see 1400 before 1300 on the S&P and it could happen before the end of may. After that can't say.
ReplyDeleteBetween QE2 and good earnings that will be coming out for the 1st qtr. Not much to keep it down.
Also started doing my flow of funds analysis, some interesting stuff on the consumer dept is starting to emerge.
What really gets me are the lies and half truths - that government, and government spending is uncontrolled, that if we just keep lowering taxes for the wealthy, and cut services for poor people, as well as government employees, we'd be fine. Never mind the fact that many of our largest companies are actively trying to work toward the demise of the country itself by both avoiding their tax obligations as well as firing most of their US workforce.
ReplyDeleteTodd - I'm with you on that call.
ReplyDeleteGood thoughts, Todd. Market rallies usually end on seemingly good news (correct?) so this would make sense.
ReplyDelete@Todd
ReplyDeleteI'm interested to hear your "intersting stuff on the consumer dept" that is starting to emerge.
I'm looking at consumer cash flow, and can't understand ANF up 10% today, especially after the push-up bra fiasco, and yesterday's post about the middle class earning crunch.
Any enlightenment would be appreciated.
Gov't shutdown looming?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/05/gop-leadership-says-white_n_844961.html
Japan's ocean radiation hits 7.5 million times legal limit
ReplyDeleteAll is well! All is well!
@emmy: What we DO know apparently can't hurt us either. A WIN-WIN all around!
ReplyDeleteGood think I don't eat fish. Although the milk here on the west coast is measuring in increase in radiation.
ReplyDeleteMeant consumer debt department.
ReplyDeleteConsumer credit debt growth is close to going positive on a Year - Year basis. Short term debt.
Household debt has been flat, too flat, at a steady 1% decline for over a year and a half.
Consumer balance sheet repair might be more done than thought. The legal system and banks may have not caught up.
Wolfie - me thinks this Google probe is going to get pretty serious, wouldn't be surprised if France and Germany lead the charge too ;-)
ReplyDeleteThought this was spot on. Quite sad.
ReplyDeletehttps://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/opinion/05iht-edcohen05.html?hp
@Mannwich:
ReplyDeleteSome of us may not have the Times subscription.
That's right. Sorry, forgot much of their online content is accessible via a paid subscription now!
ReplyDeleteLook at gold go! After BB said no or tamed inflation.
ReplyDelete"Dollar falls more after Fed minutes". marketwatch.com
"Fed March meeting showed officials debated whether the Central Bank should exit its loose monetary policy this year or stay put into next".
Cann't blam China hiking rates this morning.
ICan
Man look at gold, now that's one investment I made that turned out. I bought in at $850.
ReplyDeleteThat purchase was to diversify my investments FYI, wasn't trying to make a ton of money with it.
ReplyDeleteICAN - Jinx, sorry, I don't always hit return before I comment :-)
ReplyDeleteGold in Canadian $ way lower than all time high.
ReplyDelete@Rock, you can read Times' 10 or so articles free every month or google the headline if you want.
ICan
Wow, Obama laid down the gauntlet - no more CR's, finish a budget or the government shuts down.
ReplyDeleteCan we just do a hard reset on Congress and be done with it already?
I see that Moody's has also downgraded Portugal, I wonder if anyone has thought about doing some serious auditing work on the ratings companies. Who stands to benefit from a downgrade like that? The big banks who will not only get more interest, but could this also force yet another bailout with favorable terms to the banks?
ReplyDeleteAlso wonder if TBTB are in the fight of their life here - it's one thing to have a small country no one ever talks about (Iceland) tell them banks to f*** off, it's another thing to have an EU country like Ireland or Portugal do the same thing. Would that maybe cause a domino affect? More and more countries deciding to follow in their footsteps? That would definitely NOT be to the banks benefit.
ReplyDeleteJames Campbell, GE's CEO of consumer appliances, was on Bloomberg. They are bringing some manufacturing back to the US (see UUP for a reason why).
ReplyDeleteHe's in Tennessee. He said that he believes that they will be at a competitive advantage if they have competitive product at competitive prices, but the product is MUSA.
He said they opened up 60 jobs, and had 10,000 applications.
So there's good news here, and some bad news. We have a long long way to go with job creation. I guess if you can get in now, it's a good thing.
Rock, what's MUSA?
ReplyDelete@Emmanuel117:
ReplyDeleteRE your 11:34
We may see other fallout from the Japanese nuke problem (pun intended). Not only is Toyota in trouble with getting parts for cars, but a lot of the world depends on motors made in Japan. Specifically, the rare earth magnet motors (China's shipment of Somarium Cobalt was reinstated) to Japan, and Mabuchi cranked back up. But that production may be down now, so look out for other ramifications to this one.
It ain't just fish.
Also, there are companies relocating people out of Tokyo, and heading them south towards Osaka. That can't be good for productivity.
@Thor:
ReplyDeleteA long long time ago, there was a stigma attached to products made in Japan. So the rumor was that Japanese used a town, called Usa, so send products to the US.
So the stickers for products said Made in Usa.
MUSA. In this case, it's United States of America. I guess you had to be there.
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/usa.asp
Rock - AHA! Got it :-)
ReplyDelete@Thor
ReplyDeleteBefore I came here, I had to replace the brakes on my Mustang. Because of the heavy motor, (and before I knew I would be transferred) I decided to use vented rotors. The Mustang was I think the first year there were front disc brakes. Anyway, the brakes never lasted, so I decided on these really cool vented rotors and ceramic pads, all MUSA. When I was buying the parts, the parts guy said that the Made in USA brake parts were selling much higher percentage than the cheap Chinese brake parts.
So Campbell's probably right.
Quite a day for GDX. GLD and SLV keeping rolling along as well. Long live QE-4-eva.
ReplyDeleteThanks Dan. From your analysis : "determining direction of a stock regardless of the big trend will be kind of like heaven to me". Regardless of the methods one works with (TA, fundamentals, astrology etc...),I think I know too well this feeling:
ReplyDeletethere's this particular trade you've opened, in which you place high hopes of success since your trading system shows all lights greens.
Then comes a big move in the global markets, generally in the opposite direction from that trade, and your stock follows in their steps, and at some point you're out.
But hey, in the end, it simply means you were wrong to begin with, doesn't it ?:p
I admit I have no clear cut opinion as to the impact of the global markets on the results of my TA based trading. That being said, I share your thought that "It is important to keep in mind the influence that the stock market as a whole has over individual issues".
ReplyDeleteWhen trading individual stocks, I always include my predictions for the markets (mostly the SP500) as part of my trading system. I suspect many here do the same.
@Thor,11:55AM,re Google probe. From the quick digging I've done on the topic, I'm divided so far.
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, I think free markets need be inforced by authorities at times. The fact is that search engines and misc online price comparators claim that google has been tweaking his engine so that their links get a bad ranking in the results.
If it is proven that their bad ranking is indeed due to intentional action from google, than I think the info must be made public and the problem addressed.
Or these sites' bad rankings may just be the results that come out of the algorithms, based namely on users' past inputs. Nothing more.
ReplyDeleteWhich, put another way, means that they are not considered as first grade information for the users making the search.
I think investigating the inner mechanisms of google's search engine may be the only way to know whether there's something anticompetitive going on.
ReplyDeleteEven so, users, or "consumers", can only hope that this antitrust move, which main reason to exist I believe is to protect THEIR, OUR, interests, won't end up requiring google to make changes that would actually undermine the quality of the search results as a side effect.
Going to sleep. Have a good evening all, I'll check back tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteNight wolfie - sleep tight
ReplyDelete@Wolfstreet:
ReplyDeleteSleep well. May you not have a phonecall at 5:45 AM after sleeping only 2 hours.
RE: Google's searches:
First, a webpage is constructed with key words which are not displayed at the very beginning of the webpage which may or may not have anything to do with the content of the page. Have you ever searched for "specific words" then found neither the "specific" nor the "words" appears in the webpage? That can happen for only 2 reasons: 1 is the undisplayed keywords, and one is the search engine thinks you should view that page.
Now, when the "specific words" are found by the search engine in several pages, what does the engine use as its priority for displaying the results? Money. How much money did the webpage owner's company pay the engine provider to be put first.
Suppose a webpage owner refuses to pay the engine owner? Well, what legal requirement is there that the search engine find that page at all, and display it? None.
And, there is no reason you should and must use a search engine. You can download your own web crawler, and do it like we did in the 70's, However, there are a few more webpages today than there were back then, but you will get results which will likely be very very different from the googles and bings.
http://www.sharewareconnection.com/titles/web-crawler.htm
I often use google to look up lyrics of songs. Without fail, the first 2-3 pages of hits cause a pop-up to appear asking me to download a ring tone. I don't like popups. You have no idea where they came from, and whether the security of that site meets your security requirements. Even clicking on the "close" button of one of those popups is dangerous, because you're actually running software from the popup's site, and it may do bad things before it closes. So after Google finds my lyrics, I simply go to the 4th page, look for a site name I know or Symantec thinks is OK, and I go there to get my lyrics.
I don't see the ads that someone paid google to find first. Too bad, so sad.
Rock - I have put together a web page or two and knew about the meta tags and also had an idea of how search engines display pages, but over the course of time we sometimes forget these things.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reminder and I will play with the web crawler tonight.
See what happens when I put "White House Dot Com"
I put that in shortly after getting an internet connection and I thought it was a spoof on Bill Clinton at first.
Mutt
Mutt, you old dog, you stay away from those sites, you hear?
ReplyDeleteI still don't think there is a good rootkit, except of course, the one I wrote......
Anyone following that Mural in Maine story? Apparently the fed is demanding that the governor either return the money they sent the state for the mural, or puts it back on display. Someone else has taken an image of the removed mural and projected it onto the side of the capital building. The ENTIRE capital building.
ReplyDeleteJesus, like we don't have more important things to do right now? THIS was the mandate "the people" were talking about????
LOVE this
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuxSEvFkPiQ
more crazy weather -
ReplyDeleteSay goodbye to the summer-like weather. A wintry storm is expected to sweep through Southern California beginning Thursday and could bring thunderstorms.
The “primary impact of this system will be temperatures,” with the mercury falling into the 30s and 40s along the coast and in the valleys; temperatures could dip below freezing in the Antelope Valley, the National Weather Service said.
The Grapevine on Interstate 5 could see snow showers and gusty winds Thursday night into Friday morning, the weather service said.
Please don't tell me it's warm in Minnie and Canada.
@Thor, but this guy says it never rains in California.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zESYDjWrpbA
Greg - well we do have quite a few droughts :-P
ReplyDelete