Analysis Topic: Stock & Financial Markets
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Saturday, July 02, 2011
Stock Market Climbing Against The Herd....... / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2011
Markets have a way of making everyone look bad or foolish. Just when you think one trend is firmly established, and there's no hope for the other side of the game, things turn. Euphoria can turn to despair and despair can turn to euphoria in the blink of an eye. Literally! When the market was pulling down hard, seemingly every day, the negativity could be felt everywhere by everyone. You could see it in people's faces and you could hear in their voices when confronting them on how things were going. The first thing they'd bring up is things look bad for me as my 401k, etc., is getting annihilated. They had a long look on their faces as if they just lost a dear one. People take the market seriously, and when it goes against them, they feel the pain. In the last two weeks the looks have changed as has the sense of well being. No longer in desperate straits they are now feeling a bit more euphoric, although cautious for sure.
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Saturday, July 02, 2011
Stock Market Summer Rally Arrived On Schedule! / Stock-Markets / Seasonal Trends
It’s remarkable how consistently the market moves in seasonal patterns.
For example, it tends to make most of its gains in the winter months and experience most of its corrections in the summer months, as expressed in the old adage ‘Sell in May and Go Away’.
Friday, July 01, 2011
How A Credit Market Prices In Economic Recession / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2011
In a prior post I compared the 2007 SPX topping pattern to the current May 2011 high. The assumption being the US economy is on the verge of an economic recession now as it was in December 07 when the recession officially began. The similarities were unquestionable (chart below). The unknown is are we building point E. Those believing recession is at hand will say yes, those saying it is a soft patch will say no.
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Friday, July 01, 2011
Derivatives: A Capital Markets Gong Show For Whom The Bell Tolls / Stock-Markets / Derivatives
Back in early March, 2011 – PIMCO’s Bill Gross were calling for much higher rates and telling the world that they were selling U.S. Government Bonds.
PIMCO's Bill Gross Says to Sell U.S. Treasuries Now
03/03/2011
……To wit, he predicts that when the Fed’s QE2 bond-buying binge ends at the end of June, there will be nobody to take the Fed’s place as last-resort buyer of U.S. Treasuries at artificially low rates. Treasury yields will need to ramp up sharply by 1.5 percentage points to attract private buyers. Given that the ten-year U.S. Treasury is currently yielding only 3.5%, a 1.5 percentage point jump would equal a 43% increase in interest rates (1.5/3.5). That’s a big move in interest-rate land and would have a significantly negative effect on bond prices.
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Friday, July 01, 2011
U.S. Dollar Speaks While Gold, Silver, Oil and S&P500 Listen / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2011
Investors and traders alike were watching the action unfold across the pond earlier this week. It was seemingly a foregone conclusion that Greece would get the bailout they desired in order to prevent a potentially catastrophic default. The Greek default situation increased volatility in financial markets around the world. In addition to the Greek dilemma, the end of the 2nd quarter and the customary window dressing by institutional money managers only heightened the volatile situation.
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Thursday, June 30, 2011
Dumb Monkeys And The Stock Market / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2011
Rally, as forecast by the indicators. Two market sayings perplex me: Only monkeys pick bottoms; No-one rings a bell at the bottom.
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Thursday, June 30, 2011
I am Not a Ninja Assassin Who Brings Down Stocks / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2011
Carson Block of Muddy Waters spoke to Bloomberg Television's Erik Schatzker about Sino-Forest earlier today. Block said he is still short Sino-Forest and that he isn't a "ninja assassin" who brings down stocks. He thinks of himself as someone who is "protecting investors."
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Thursday, June 30, 2011
The Personality of Stock Market Waves / Stock-Markets / Elliott Wave Theory
Elliott waves don't merely reflect prices plotted over time. Each wave has its own "personality." Listen to this video by EWI's Wayne Gorman to learn more about the psychology behind the waves and how it affects your investment decisions.
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Thursday, June 30, 2011
Three Ways to Slash Your Risk ... And Still Make a Killing / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2011
Keith Fitz-Gerald writes: With everything from the Greek debt crisis to worries about China's growth roiling the markets these days, the investing outlook seems to get shakier by the minute. And that means the same old tricks won't work any longer.
It's not going to be enough, for example, to simply pick stocks or spread your risk among large-cap, small-cap and a blend of domestic and international stocks and bonds thrown in for good measure.
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Thursday, June 30, 2011
Possible Stock Market Bottom as Key Sectors Breaking Out / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2011
The past month we have seen stocks pick up momentum to the down side after an already very weak month prior (May - Sell in May and go away). This second wave of high volume selling in June was enough to spook the masses out of the market shifting the sentiment from bullish to bearish. But just recently we are starting to see big money accumulate stocks down at these oversold prices, which has me thinking we just may be headed higher sooner than later.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, June 30, 2011
How the Stock Market Prices In Recession / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2011
I'm not going to even begin to try and make sense out of today's market. Watching fires burn and teargas fired in Greece, 100 pip moves in the EUR/USD in minutes and computer algos tripping over each other was surreal beyond words. This market right now is a lottery. Calling equities forward looking or a pricing mechanism is beyond ridiculous.
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Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Investors Around The World Monitoring Expiration Of QE2 / Stock-Markets / Quantitative Easing
We are witnessing an important watershed in world history with the unwinding of QE2. Every citizen no matter where, has a ready camera eye on the world, carried in his smart phone case. Even more so does the internet provide the anvil for major nations to forge economic strategies. "Swords are being hammered into cybershares."
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Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Goldman Sucks, Risk Trade Returns / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2011
The "risk on" trade seems to have returned. It may last 2 weeks or it may last 8, potentially even a few more. It may even be good for a new high in "advanced" Western markets like the United States. Everyone knows Greece is going to blow up, along with lots of other countries.
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Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Stock Market Volatility Skew Still Shows Complacency / Stock-Markets / Volatility
I continue to "obsess" about the volatility skew. For those new to the skew and what is means please read here first. After the May 2010 correction the skew and vix both converged and continued to correlate for the most part through August 2010. Since that time they have diverged as some investors began buying further out of the money options versus the masses who continue to sell volatility whether as a form of speculation (selling puts) or simply ignoring the need for portfolio insurance.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Near-term Bottom for S&P500? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2011
Heading into the final hour of trading, the e-mini S&P 500 is pushing up against critical, final key resistance at 1293.75. If this level is hurdled and sustained, concurrent with a climb in the cash SPX above 1298.61, that would argue strongly that a significant near-term bottom has been established that also coincides with the bottom of my 70-75-day and 20-25 trading day cycles.
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Tuesday, June 28, 2011
What Will Happen to the Stock Market When QE2 Ends? / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2011
The second round of the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing program, better known as QE2, will expire this week.
The QE2 policy was officially announced on November 4, 2010, and has been widely credited with subsequent stock market gains. And now, according to rumors, the end of this "experimental" program will kill the stock rally -- with potential impact across all markets.
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Tuesday, June 28, 2011
The Stock Market Rise Begins / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2011
Following the June 21 Market Minute titled "The low has arrived", equity indexes continue to show a bullish stance. Models have been indicating since late April that the corrective low in the S&P 500 would occur in the second half of June. As that trough has now developed (June 16-20), upward pressure can be anticipated into July and early August.
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Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Stock Market MACD Rally Off The Lows.... / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2011
The market staged a very nice rally today as those MACD's started crossing up positive over negative today. No news over the weekend, along with those crosses, gave the market a lift few expected as things looked very dire after the close on Friday. The one positive has been those oscillators on the daily charts, especially those MACD's. It's really funny how things have reversed for this market. Two months ago we were dealing with market highs on the belief that the economy was recovering thanks to QE1 and QE2. The negatives at that time were the two-headed monsters known as sentiment and those nasty looking weekly divergences. Now we have the opposite situation at hand. We have a falling economy, but we now have a two-headed monster that's positive for this market.
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Monday, June 27, 2011
Greek Stock Market, the Moments Before Drowning / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2011
I sit. I watch. I contemplate. I observe. The stock market appears to have lost all sense of reality and logic. Maybe it never had any. Maybe it is just drowning and the current behavior is the moment before the drowning.
The Dow Jones Greek Index is a good barometer of investor behavior. When a person is perilously close to drowning, they will grab on to anything. There are a few seconds of desperate panic. The same holds true for investors. They will grab on to any story no matter how ridiculous it may be. The former nation of Greece is in the news almost every hour. They have debt obligations that they cannot repay and the ECB is going to throw them another $100 billion in bailout money to keep their debt off the default report. To be accurate, the ECB is going to give the $100 billion to the German, French, and American banks that hold the credit default swaps tied to the Greek debt in question. They just needed to figure out how to steal it from the Greeks.
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Monday, June 27, 2011
Commodities and Market Internals Concerning For Stocks / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2011
Our global economy still faces significant balance sheet problems (assets vs. liabilities) at numerous points in the economic food chain. Consumers are still hurting from the reverse wealth effect created by falling asset prices. Numerous countries, including Greece, Spain, Portugal, and the U.S., are burdened by mismatches between government spending and revenue. Falling asset prices make problems with balance sheets worse and are not good for revenues from ad valorem taxes.
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