ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
A friend and I have actively discussed how best to position ourselves for the near-term, bearish risks in the market. As my favorite technical indicator, T2108 – the percentage of stocks trading above their 40-day moving average (DMA), hit oversold territory, he asked my opinion about adding to his SSO put spread. Puts on SSO … Read more
Time for a little fun with gold. As a child of the 1980s, I took particular interest in a fun October 13, 2010, Bloomberg interview with A-Team star Mr. T., the celebrity pitchman for Gold Promise. Gold Promise is a service run by Cash America International, Inc. (CSH) that allows people to sell their gold … Read more
Last week, the iShares Barclays TIPS Bond Fund (TIP) surged to a fresh 2-year closing high on the same day the Federal Reserve issued its latest monetary policy statement. (TIPS = Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities – I will refer to “TIPS” when discussing the actual bonds and use “TIP” to refer to the ETF that uses … Read more
Mohamed El-Erian recently quantified the odds of deflation at 1 in 4, or 25%. His analogy to describe the dangers ahead seemed to be a recipe for inaction (and fear): “…ask yourself the following question: would you accept a lift from a person who has a one-in-four chance of getting into a really bad car … Read more
For many of us, investing over the last 10 years has been much more difficult and a lot less fun than it was in the 90s. In the 90s, it was easy to accept the religion of “buy and hold”, keep the faith that assets are pre-ordained to increase in value, and drown oneself in … Read more