Keeping On

So here’s our head and shoulders.




I’m thinking that today’s visit to 1300 was not the pullback from what looks like a H&S pattern, but was rather a bear trap. I saw a report on Bloomie where they talked about their interview with Tom DeMark, who called a top this week, but now he’s delaying the call. I think (not sure, didn’t write it down) was that the top would be around 1340 or so. Anyway, that same call was made for last Christmas: see

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-05/demark-s-p-500-at-1-330-by-christmas.html

Which was wrong.

So, in light of that, here’s this week’s sooth:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-20/demark-says-s-p-500-may-reach-1-342-by-next-week-before-falling.html

I know, I know, he gets paid a lot more than I do for his sooth saying.

There used to be a sage XYL that commented here but she’s gone now, who had wise advice about calling tops or bottoms. As I recall, she used to say that you don’t know a top’s in until after the top is made, and sometimes that takes months.

I personally don’t think we’re going to see a top for awhile. I am hoping for a pullback, because we need one to advance with strength. I was hoping the pullback would come when the earnings were down, but was not to be. I was hoping the pullback would come when Greece failed, but news coverage has beat that to death, and everybody is expecting that to happen. I was hoping the pullback would happen when the S&P announced they would downgrade everybody’s sovereign debt, but when that happened, that too went out with a whimper. I was hoping for the pullback when Iran said they were gonna block the canal, but they backed down from that, so once again, a mild breeze.

Maybe we need a black swan for a pullback. There’s so much support from lenders of last resorts and bank’s earnings faking success from the rubble of mark-to-non-market, that without a black swan, well, how can we get a pullback? I don’t want this trading in a range crap. It’s very hard and takes complete concentration to make money. At my age, I shouldn’t have to work so hard.

So for now, I’ll just keep on keeping on. Buy the dips, and sell the blips. It makes me kinda sad that I wasn’t involved in the market before this systemic manipulation came to be. It must have been an exciting place. Mannwich commented about the moving average intersection, but things are so cooked these days I’m in the camp of believing that nothing historical matters. What will be, will be.

I still can’t short SHLD. So what will be will be, as long as it’s what’s permitted.