Most Popular
1. Banking Crisis is Stocks Bull Market Buying Opportunity - Nadeem_Walayat
2.The Crypto Signal for the Precious Metals Market - P_Radomski_CFA
3. One Possible Outcome to a New World Order - Raymond_Matison
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
5. Apple AAPL Stock Trend and Earnings Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
6.AI, Stocks, and Gold Stocks – Connected After All - P_Radomski_CFA
7.Stock Market CHEAT SHEET - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.US Debt Ceiling Crisis Smoke and Mirrors Circus - Nadeem_Walayat
9.Silver Price May Explode - Avi_Gilburt
10.More US Banks Could Collapse -- A Lot More- EWI
Last 7 days
Stock Market Volatility (VIX) - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Investor Sentiment - 25th Mar 24
The Federal Reserve Didn't Do Anything But It Had Plenty to Say - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Breadth - 24th Mar 24
Stock Market Margin Debt Indicator - 24th Mar 24
It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - 24th Mar 24
Stocks: What to Make of All This Insider Selling- 24th Mar 24
Money Supply Continues To Fall, Economy Worsens – Investors Don’t Care - 24th Mar 24
Get an Edge in the Crypto Market with Order Flow - 24th Mar 24
US Presidential Election Cycle and Recessions - 18th Mar 24
US Recession Already Happened in 2022! - 18th Mar 24
AI can now remember everything you say - 18th Mar 24
Bitcoin Crypto Mania 2024 - MicroStrategy MSTR Blow off Top! - 14th Mar 24
Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - 11th Mar 24
Gold and the Long-Term Inflation Cycle - 11th Mar 24
Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - 11th Mar 24
Two Reasons The Fed Manipulates Interest Rates - 11th Mar 24
US Dollar Trend 2024 - 9th Mar 2024
The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - 9th Mar 2024
Investors Don’t Believe the Gold Rally, Still Prefer General Stocks - 9th Mar 2024
Paper Gold Vs. Real Gold: It's Important to Know the Difference - 9th Mar 2024
Stocks: What This "Record Extreme" Indicator May Be Signaling - 9th Mar 2024
My 3 Favorite Trade Setups - Elliott Wave Course - 9th Mar 2024
Bitcoin Crypto Bubble Mania! - 4th Mar 2024
US Interest Rates - When WIll the Fed Pivot - 1st Mar 2024
S&P Stock Market Real Earnings Yield - 29th Feb 2024
US Unemployment is a Fake Statistic - 29th Feb 2024
U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - 29th Feb 2024
What a Breakdown in Silver Mining Stocks! What an Opportunity! - 29th Feb 2024
Why AI will Soon become SA - Synthetic Intelligence - The Machine Learning Megatrend - 29th Feb 2024
Keep Calm and Carry on Buying Quantum AI Tech Stocks - 19th Feb 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

Stock Market Foolish Thursday, Through the Looking Glass

Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2010 May 06, 2010 - 04:32 PM GMT

By: PhilStockWorld

Stock-Markets

Best Financial Markets Analysis Article"If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there." - The Cheshire Cat




I like to sit with my daughters (8 & 10) on the couch and look at news pictures on my laptop - it’s a good way of getting them involved with the day’s events, teaching them about my job and teaching them about the world (albeit from my twisted perspective).  The USA Today is excellent for this as is Reuters and the NY Times.  As CSNY said:

Teach your children well and feed them on your dreams…

Can’t you see, you must be free to teach your children what you believe in, to make a world--that we can live in? 

Since they are kids, I often simplify what’s happening so we have a general classification of "protesters" to explain why the army or police are attacking people with no guns. Yesterday, my 8-year old had a "eureka" moment when she said to me "Why is everyone around the World protesting - it is because of the bad economy?"  Well, she pretty much nailed it, didn’t she?  As I’ve been warning for years, the poor (all of the bottom 90% at this point) have been pushed to the edge and they are now starting to push back - so much so that it’s obvious to an 8-year old that we are on the verge of a global revolution…

That led to a little photo project we did together, where I also got to teach my daughters one of my favorite songs: "We Won’t Get Fooled Again!"  As the great and powerful Bush the 2nd once said: "Fool me once, shame on, shame on you.  Fool me ya can’t get fooled again."  That pretty much sums up my attitude on the markets right now - we cashed out at the top and, until we see some pretty DEFINITIVE proof that it was not a top, we’ll be sticking to mainly cash, thank you very much!  While Alice’s Red Queen may have said "Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast," we’re having a little trouble swallowing what’s being dished out by our government and the MSM.  Richard Davis’s article on the lagging GDP is one example, as are many of the fine articles in our Phil’s Favorites section.

In "Through the Looking Glass" (you can tell I have kids!) Alice said "It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then" and the Red Queen observes "It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backward…    Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"  The Red Queen is very much like the MSM - they adjust their "facts" to fit what’s happening, no matter how ridiculous it sounds.  Don’t like the economic reports?  Just paint the white roses red!  Up is down and black is white, which is all well and good until, as Douglas Adams observes, "you get killed at the next zebra crossing."

While it’s tempting to try to bottom fish on the dips (and boy have the little maze rats been trained to buy on the dips this past year!) I keep having to point out to Members that we don’t actually KNOW where the bottom is.  I wrote up our major watch levels in our 5% Rule Post article (and there is more discussion in it in chat on that post).  To simplify a long discussion, our key watch levels on the S&P are going to be 1,176 to the upside and 1,155 to the downside.  If we can’t hold 1,155 then the markets are in for a World of hurt and we’ll be looking for a move all the way down to 1,100 at least.

Rather than rehash the reasons for this and blah, blah, blah the news, let’s contemplate what the major problem is at the moment - Europe!   And Japan and the US but, right now, it’s Europe.  I warned you last Thursday that "The Pain in Spain will Hardly be Contained" and you should know better than to bet against a clever title like that.  Of course I’ve been warning for a year that all this incestuous bailing out of each other by the G20 could only end in tears so Spain is simply the straw that breaks the camel’s back.  Greece could have been solved any time but Spain? 

You see how ugly this all gets as things start unraveling and look how totally screwed France is, with $912Bn on loan to JUST these 5 jokers.  France’s entire GDP is "just" $2.7Tn (5th in the World) and they are themselves $5Tn in debt (the same as Germany, who’s GDP is $3.3Tn) yet they have, as "assets," what could be almost $1Tn in bad loans.  Wait, scratch that, of course they lend money to other nations besides the PIIGS, so France has OVER $1Tn in VERY questionable loans outstanding and, if the downgrade police are knocking on the doors of the PIIGS - how far away is France from a ratings downgrade?

And, if we keep downgrading everybody’s ratings, then rates are likely to go up and, if rates go up, then (and I hope this is obvious) debt service costs go up and the likelihood of defaults rise which would cause an honest ratings agency (sorry, laughed so hard I fell off my chair) to further downgrade the nations in question, which would lead to rising debts and further downgrades etc., etc. 

As we expected, Japan came back from holiday and fell off a cliff, with the Nikkei diving 3.27% (361 points) all the way down to 10,695.  The Shanghai reversed what I told you yesterday was BS action and fell 4.1% (117 points) to finish way down at 2,739 and the Hang Seng finished down "only" 194 points thanks to a 250-point stick save into the close.  Oh yeah, like THIS is the kind of action you want to have your money on:

I would love to tell you there’s a great way to play this but there’s a reason we went to cash.  As the great tradebot, WHOPPER once said: "Sometimes the only winning move is not to play."  Hopefully we’ll get a little more clarity over the weekend but,until then, we will stay on the sidelines until things make more sense.  As Alice said: "It was much pleasanter at home, when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits."

[Web of Debt chart above - NY Times]

By Phil

www.philstockworld.com

Philip R. Davis is a founder of Phil's Stock World (www.philstockworld.com), a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders. Mr. Davis is a serial entrepreneur, having founded software company Accu-Title, a real estate title insurance software solution, and is also the President of the Delphi Consulting Corp., an M&A consulting firm that helps large and small companies obtain funding and close deals. He was also the founder of Accu-Search, a property data corporation that was sold to DataTrace in 2004 and Personality Plus, a precursor to eHarmony.com. Phil was a former editor of a UMass/Amherst humor magazine and it shows in his writing -- which is filled with colorful commentary along with very specific ideas on stock option purchases (Phil rarely holds actual stocks). Visit: Phil's Stock World (www.philstockworld.com)

© 2010 Copyright  PhilStockWorld - All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.


© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in