ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
Stock Market Commentary: The Federal Reserve was an anti-climactic headliner last week. The Fed proceeded with a 25 basis points rate hike couched in words that suggested that inflation remained the Fed’s biggest concern. In the Q&A portion of the press conference, Chair Jerome Powell essentially downgraded the Panic of 2023 to the Speed Bump … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: Yesterday’s surge in the Japanese yen (FXY) may have exhausted enough sellers to clear the path for some holiday cheer in the stock market. Suddenly, the market seemed to transition from the heavy burdens of a stubbornly hawkish Fed to the alluring hopes from a lack of (scheduled) negative catalysts for the … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: The latest cryptocurrency scandal and implosion distracted the market (and me) from the upside potential of the October CPI (Consumer Price Index) report. Likely contagion, real and psychological, from crashing crypto prices helped drive distraught trading that created technical breakdowns across the major indices. U.S. midterm elections on Tuesday also apparently failed … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: The Q3 2022 U.S. GDP report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis undermined this year’s strident claims that the economy overall is already in recession. Q3 GDP grew 2.6% largely thanks to a 2.8% growth in personal expenditures for services (one more validation of the relatively strong jobs market) and thanks to … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: What was resistance for over two months is slowly becoming support for the stock market. The bullish trading action of the last week created an important breakout that confirmed the bottoming action from the previous week’s bullish engulfing pattern. While the stock market may continue to chase its tail before fighting its … Read more
Over a month ago, I uncovered a sunny thesis about a bottom for the ARK funds. The timing of that post happened to be the exact top of the cycle for the ARK funds. Moreover, the S&P 500 (SPY) was trading just under its 200-day moving average (DMA) (the blue in the chart below). Once … Read more
The conditions for bottoming in the ARK funds started to diverge a bit in late June. While the bottoming patterns differed, the ARK bottom synchronized with the general market’s bottom. Those conditions were born from the deeply oversold conditions that arrived in June. At that time, I interpreted the turmoil as the early days of … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: The stock market is delivering fertile ground for bear market green shoots. Market breadth in the form of AT50 (MMFI), the percentage of stocks trading above their respective 50-day moving averages (DMAs), closed at a one month high. Under the hood are individual stocks achieving convincing 50DMA breakouts and closing out primary … Read more
A month ago I laid out the case and conditions for bottoming across the collection of ARK funds. The key pivot rested with the ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF). It still is the first and only of the pre-pandemic ARK funds to break its pandemic era closing low. Over the past month, ARKF struggled mightily … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: With the prospects of a bottom for this bear market, I am getting a little more interested in individual stock narratives. The bear market rubble is extensive. The gems are dispersed across a wide area. These stock charts provide one framework for sifting through the trash and the opportunity. {note: in this … Read more