ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
After a disappointing Monday, bulls got a good scare on Tuesday’s open as the S&P 500 marginally cracked the February lows. However, buyers stepped up in force and bid the index higher for the rest of the day. Buyers have now stepped up in force for the last two up days. With this oversold period … Read more
Until the ugly close on the stock market, Day #4 of this oversold period was as lackluster as I expected. T2108, the percentage of stocks trading above their respective 40-day moving averages (DMAs), nudged up a bit to 11.7%. For a while there, it seemed as if the latest dire headlines from Europe – this … Read more
On Friday, CNBC’s Fast Money asked the question “Has Goldman Bottomed Out?” The answer to these kinds of questions is always a “maybe” or a more resolute “perhaps/perhaps not” but I was a bit amused at the reasoning provided for guessing that Goldman Sachs (GS) has reached a bottom: It acted well on Wednesday by … Read more
(This is a adapted repost from Inflation Watch) Bank of England (BoE) Monetary Policy Committee Member Adam Posen tells CNBC in an interview (see below or click here) that stubbornly high inflation is keeping the Bank of England members up at night. However, Posen prefers this situation to deflation (as all central bankers would). Slack … Read more
So far this year, EWZ has experienced two 20% corrections from previous highs. The last correction ended in February along with most major stock markets. In late January, I recommended buying EWZ for a trade once it tested its 200DMA. That point of support marked a 20% correction, and it also coincided with the August, … Read more
The most striking characteristic of May’s selling has been the precision of the S&P 500 as it has bounced around key technical levels of support and resistance. On these pages, I have chronicled almost each important step and juncture in this sell-off, and I continue to marvel at how well trades have fared that stay … Read more
Big-cap tech stocks have been some of the poorest performers during the recent sell-off in the stock market. Google (GOOG) stands out as one of the worst of the bunch. All technical indicators are pointing to even lower prices before some kind of bottom gets established. I am fond of trading GOOG between earnings reports. … Read more
I last wrote about Research In Motion (RIMM) in mid-April when I asked “Can RIM’s Stock Continue to Float As the Repurchase Program Ends“? The resounding answer is now “NO”. RIMM is down 17% since mid-April and has set new lows for the year. RIMM repurchased the bulk of its stock at an average price … Read more
The Australian dollar has been my single source of greatest pain during this market correction. I have long favored the Australian dollar as a play against the U.S. dollar. Even as the U.S. dollar index has rallied over 10% since hitting 16-month lows in November/December, the Australian dollar remained flat during most of that time … Read more
For 14 months the S&P 500 has trended upward from the March lows. However, with the S&P 500 now down 3.9% for the year, the last 8 of these 14 months have produced no net gain in the index. Another 3% drop will produce the first lower low on the index since July, 2009. The … Read more