ConocoPhillips: A Cautionary Tale from the Oil Patch

ConocoPhillips (COP) announced Q4 and full year 2015 financial results on the morning of February 4, 2016. The news included a capitulation to the on-going deterioration of business conditions in the oil patch: COP slashed its dividend by two-thirds: “ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) today announced it is taking actions to maintain its strong balance sheet in … Read more

T2108 Update (February 3, 2016) – The Waterfall and the Whale: An Oversold Near Miss

(T2108 measures the percentage of stocks trading above their respective 40-day moving averages [DMAs]. It helps to identify extremes in market sentiment that are likely to reverse. To learn more about it, see my T2108 Resource Page. You can follow real-time T2108 commentary on twitter using the #T2108 hashtag. T2108-related trades and other trades are … Read more

One Chart That Rings An Alarm For Future Chinese Consumption

“…emerging markets experienced a more recent run-up in indebtedness, which started around the time of the crisis, and is still continuing. In other words, their deleveraging has not even begun. This has the potential to create persistent spending disappointments, if monetary policy is unable to stimulate other spending sufficiently.” – “Debt, Demographics and the Distribution … Read more

Far-Reaching Ripples From Japan’s Newly Negative Rates

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on February 1, 2016. Click here to read the entire piece.) On Wednesday, January 27th, the U.S. Federal Reserve stared down volatile conditions in financial markets and decided to avoid addressing them directly. {snip} When the Bank of Japan (BoJ) came up … Read more

The S&P 500’s Latest Breakdown Echoes the Warning Signal From the August Angst

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on January 19, 2016. Click here to read the entire piece.) For a brief moment on January 15, 2016, the S&P 500 (SPY) looked ready to extend the sell-off that ended with the August Angst of 2015. At 1858, the index was … Read more