ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
I am always intrigued by the words of optimism and the steadfast bullish arguments in the midst of market sell-offs. I am not talking about technical assessments calling for a short-term bounce. I am talking about the “everything is just fine” variety. Monday’s Nightly Business Report provided a picture-perfect example of such talk from Bernarnd … Read more
While the euro catches all the headlines about its tremendous slide against the U.S. dollar, the British pound has followed closely behind. The pound has lost 12% against the U.S. dollar since its January peak while the euro has lost 18% in that same time. The pound has lost 15% since its post-recovery peak in … Read more
The 2004 Fed Transcripts: A Methodical, Diabolical Destruction of America's "Wealth" The Federal Reserve releases transcripts of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings with a five-year lag (as required by law, the Fed would like to burn them). Transcripts for 2004 meetings were released on April 30, 2010. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell … Read more
For many commodity-related stocks the bounce from the March, 2009 lows to the first peak in June encompasses the bulk of their respective gains in the past 15 months. The current, on-going correction has delivered such heavy losses to some of these stocks that they are now trading at those June, 2009 prices. About 1/3 … Read more
The on-going steep drop in steel stocks started in early April and preceded the S&P 500’s late April peak. With worries increasing about a global slowdown, I finally decided to look up worldsteel’s last update of its forecasts for 2010 (and 2011). I was quite surprised to find that in April, worldsteel expected “…demand in … Read more
As I feared might happen, the stock market has already fallen back into oversold territory as measured by the percentage of stocks trading above their 40-day moving averages (DMAs). This indicator, T2108, dipped under 20% and closed at 18.5%. This is the third oversold period in just a month, and this third time is not … Read more
Toyota (TM) filled the headlines of business news for several weeks as it struggled with seemingly unending revelations about its poor product quality. After about a month, sellers finally exhausted themselves, and TM began an impressive bounce. This bounce only lasted the same amount of time as the overall sell-off. TM peaked in late March, … Read more
I spent a lot of time over the past oversold period studying rules and guidelines for trading the (inevitable) bounce out of the selling pressure. The oversold period ended inconclusively, but my rule for buying the ETF for Brazil, iShares MSCI Brazil Index Fund ETF (EWZ), definitively worked for a second time. When EWZ started … Read more
T2108, the percentage of stocks trading above their 50-day moving averages (DMA), hit 21% on Wednesday. This milestone finishes nine days of technically oversold trading conditions as defined by T2108 dropping to 20% or below. I am reposting below a chart of the historical distribution of durations for oversold periods as a reminder that the … Read more
Sellers stepped out of the way today. Although volume was generally low on the major indices, stocks managed large gains that made up for yesterday’s ugly close and much more. In fact, today was the kind of day I was anticipating for yesterday’s trading. Stocks in my listing of potential buy candidates for this oversold … Read more