Wall St. is such a SCAM - See chart

[jyl]

Mkt rallied Fri, rather weakly.

Nasty open today, NDX -1.1% less than 1 hour in.

Yucky, unless you're short. :-)

[turbo6bar]

Awful negative breadth and plenty of new lows overshadowing the few new highs. Is there any truth to the rumor Jim Cramer of Mad Money said Bernanke will raise rates to 6.5?

[Wrecked944]

Originally posted by turbo6bar
Awful negative breadth and plenty of new lows overshadowing the few new highs. Is there any truth to the rumor Jim Cramer of Mad Money said Bernanke will raise rates to 6.5?

Yes and no. IIRC he said on Friday's show that Wall St was afraid Bernanke would raise to 6.5% - not that it was actually going to happen.

And don't forget there are two sides to every trade...so "bad" and "good" are relative...I made $2400 in realized gains this morning before 11am shorting Cramer's Friday Night picks...I hope the bear market stays forever!

[techweenie]

Originally posted by JanusCole
Yes and no. IIRC he said on Friday's show that Wall St was afraid Bernanke would raise to 6.5% - not that it was actually going to happen.

And don't forget there are two sides to every trade...so "bad" and "good" are relative...I made $2400 in realized gains this morning before 11am shorting Cramer's Friday Night picks...I hope the bear market stays forever!

Could I make you my money manager?

[tabs]

I can't be bothered by any of this stuff, I have Mother take care of it all for me....I just have her cut a check every month for my expenses... right now she says DON"T take anything extra until after July 1st...

Every once in awhile Mother rambles on about this stuff, especially afters shes had a Gin & Tonic or two. I always pretend to be interested in what she says, but in actuallity she bores me silly with all her talk of "Bulls having to climb a wall of worry" WTF......and the Market is in a state of transiton from the high flying oil, gold...metals and housing into Bonds for a short term placement and then back into the market....she mentioned a coupla names Coca Cola, Budweiser and Hersheys that she liked.....they are multinationals and have a currency play attached to them...what ever that means...in the end she said be patient Tabs be patient as always....as she nodded off to sleep...

[jyl]

I continue to hear that most of the selling is by hedge funds, and driven by the futures. The hedge funds pound down the futures in the morning, then the cash market follows on the open, the hedge funds were caught too long and are trying to get neutral. In the afternoon the long-onlys pick away at perceived bargains, so the market stabilizes instead of closing on its lows. That's been the pattern in the last few days.

Volume is not that high, though it has been rising. The put/call and volatility indicies have shot up to high levels, but have so far failed to produce a real rally. Until recently, the traditional defensive sectors weren't rising, makes sense if the selling is being done by guys who can park it in cash rather than having to stay fully invested. This all seems consistent with a hedge-fund led decline.

Is this good or bad (assuming you're long rather than short)? It's getting kind of muddled, for me at least. The market looks quite oversold. But without seeing real capitulation, I'm not confident in the oversold indicators. The broader indicies are still arguably in their channels, but the more volatile indicies (SOX, for instance) are clearly broken down.

I don't have a clear feeling any more about the market's ST direction, now that its come off so sharply. I do think the market will continue to try and rally, and my inclination is simply to take the market's lead for a while. If it can rally up through the 200 day, then might as well cover the short, don't be greedy. if it get up to the 200 day then breaks down, then might as well stay short and watch the hedge funds press shorts and the long-onlys start capitulating.

Its getting confusing.

[RoninLB]

It seems international markets are experiencing 2x our transition. Much volatility is being blamed on our Fed being unpredictable. Parking $ in commodities has/had in effect reduced a multiplier from the system.

that bs said I still feel our stock mkt is poised for a huge run up based on the strength of our economy.

[tabs]

Mother said two words..."Consumer Staples"

[jyl]

Here we go, a real try at turning mkt around, NDX +0.8% at open. 200 day is 1603.

[jyl]

Originally posted by RoninLB
It seems international markets are experiencing 2x our transition. Much volatility is being blamed on our Fed being unpredictable. Parking $ in commodities has/had in effect reduced a multiplier from the system.

that bs said I still feel our stock mkt is poised for a huge run up based on the strength of our economy.

Current strength of economy should be reflected in mkt already. Current expectations of future strength of economy should also be reflected in mkt. Question is will economy's future strength be great or lesser than mkt is currently expecting.

[jyl]

Impressive close :-/

[tabs]

The Stock market is going to Rally because I say it is...

[turbo6bar]

I didn't expect that to happen. Despite being in positive territory in the morning, there were far more new lows than highs.

[jyl]

That was interesting.

The sectors leading the decline of the past 2+ weeks (materials, energy) had up days, basically rallied up to resistance (100 day MVA), then sold off, closed on lows of the day but still up.

Tech seems to have taken over as the leader of the decline. Unfortunately, that's where I bought a couple stocks today to hedge of my NDX short. Not sure why I bothered to hedge since NDX closed down 1%.

I need to set up my screen to show the lows vs highs. Jurgen, do you have that charted or easily accessible? You use Bloomberg I think - can you tell me the code?

Consumer staples were flat to up (like tab's mom says), though not in small-cap land.

[RoninLB]

Originally posted by RoninLB
It seems international markets are experiencing 2x our transition. Much volatility is being blamed on our Fed being unpredictable. Parking $ in commodities has/had in effect reduced a multiplier from the system.

that bs said I still feel our stock mkt is poised for a huge run up based on the strength of our economy.

Originally posted by jyl
Current strength of economy should be reflected in mkt already. Current expectations of future strength of economy should also be reflected in mkt. Question is will economy's future strength be great or lesser than mkt is currently expecting.

-------- First .. your threads are great

to answer your remarks
"will economy's future strength be great or lesser than mkt is currently expecting"
-------- the future is a difference in opinion. This difference is what makes a market. I'm invested big time based on my beliefs that no matter what happens now the US economy will eventually dominate unless the anti free traders take root with their socialist policies.

Otherwise the stock mkt is schizophrenic. I crack up when Wall St proves pessimists wrong and extreme optimists delusional.

as far as I'm concerned the bottom line is GNP and job creation.

[jyl]

In the long run, I agree w/ your bottom line.

In my trading account, I'm pretty short-term focused. It's more fun, basically.

Professionally, most people are medium-term focused. That's the reality of most professional investing nowadays, unfortunately. More and more institutional investors live and die on quarterly results. Could be worse - most hedge funds are all about monthly, even weekly results.

In my retirement account, I'm pretty long-term focused and fully invested. Not blindly so, after the pain of the last bear market. I'm not sweating the recent sell-off. If I saw my fears about a significant economic slowdown/recession starting to come true, I'd change the portfolio. But I do think the main factor in your retirement wealth is going to be how much you invest each month, not how well you time the economic and market cycles.

Still, doesn't stop me from calling my friends who run some of my mutual funds and asking them why they lost me another 1% yesterday . . . that's fun too.

[jyl]

BTW, one thing that is whacking the tech names is the emerging scandal (?) of option grant timing and backdating.

Turns out some tech companies would retroactively change the effective date of options grants, to maximize the gain by employees/executives. Also appears some tech companies may have timed the grants of options for periods when the stocks were lowest. I imagine the former is illegal, not sure why the latter would be illegal but it could raise questions.

Two research shops recently went back and analyzed the dates of options grants, measured the excess returns of those options over the companies' stocks over multi-year periods, and ranked tech companies by the size of those excess returns. Now you're seeing federal investigations and subpeonas to a growing list of companies.

Market is taking down stocks that have disclosed receiving subpeonas, and now is taking down stocks that simply rank high on the excess returns lists. This has happened in non-tech companies too, but more in tech companies. The fear is that some managements will be forced out. Some of those are very fine managements and their leaving would be a serious loss. This is why KLAC got whacked by 10% Monday.

On top of rising semiconductor industry inventories and slowing PC demand, its a headwind to the tech names - which dominate the NDX.

[Wrecked944]

Just made another $204 shorting Cramer. You guys are trying way too hard.

[turbo6bar]

Lows and highs are from Yahoo! Finance section. I haven't found anything better.

http://finance.yahoo.com/advances

Once again, new lows are abundant.

[jyl]

Damn, I used to be able to chart new hi/new lo and advance/decline (on a system I no longer have). Easier to see things graphically.

Well, here's count for US exchanges, intraday, new highs 37 new lows 297.

Ugly turn this AM.