ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
Time To Buy Solar Stocks? | Alternative Energy Stocks The sharp down move in recent weeks made me wonder if this might be a sign of capitulation. I don't follow the solar sector closely, but given its historic volatility, I think there is a lot of potential for astute traders to make money in the … Read more
Three weeks ago, I generated a list of stocks that demonstrated strong buying volume over the previous five days. During those five days, the S&P 500 finally broke out above the June highs but volume remained anemic and unimpressive. I figured focusing in on the stocks that did exhibit good buying volume during that important … Read more
Adobe Systems, Inc. (ADBE) surged as high as 17% today after news leaked about a private meeting between ADBE and Microsoft (MSFT) company executives. The most salient rumor surrounding this meeting is that MSFT is considering acquiring ADBE in addition to other strategic options for going after Apple’s (AAPL) dominance in the mobile device market. … Read more
Adobe Systems, Inc. (ADBE) was punished on Wednesday for an earnings report that produced guidance slightly below analyst expectations. The stock dropped as much as 26% after ADBE guided Q4 earnings to $0.48-0.54 EPS vs. $0.53 analyst consensus and Q4 revenues $950M to $1.0B vs. $1.03B analyst consensus (from briefing.com). The severity of the sell-off … Read more
Looks like the days of buying EWZ after a 20% correction and waiting out the recovery may be coming to an end for now. Last week, the Brazil Index Fund ETF, EWZ, broke out above a nine-month long downtrend. *Chart created using TeleChart: This is a very bullish development and opens up the prospect of … Read more
I tried to make the case on Monday that the shrill commentary about the struggling American economy and its tepid stock market were getting overwrought with the kind of fever only a contrarian could love. It turns out there were other sentiment indicators flashing important extremes: “Bullish Sentiment Plummets to Credit Crisis Low“ (CNBC, August … 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
With tongue reaching for the cheek last week, I declared the market both extremely undervalued and very overvalued, guessing that “as earnings season grinds on, I suspect the near-predictable pattern of post-earnings fades will finally wear thin, giving way to more bullish behavior.” I did not expect the turn to happen so clearly and dramatically … Read more
Day-to-day, Mr. Market’s mood seems to swing dramatically up and down with little consistent rhyme or reason. The neat rationalizations of the bulls one day give way to the equally neat rationalizations of the bears the next day. For example, the market is very undervalued because of record low Treasury bill rates, highly stimulative monetary … Read more