ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
This piece is my second follow-up to my claims from a year ago in: “Renaissance IPO ETF A Less Volatile Way to Speculate Than ARKK“. Since that post, and especially this year, the performance gap between the Renaissance IPO ETF (IPO) and the ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) has widened so much that I am comfortable … Read more
NVIDIA Races Ahead Money manager Cathie Wood of ARK Invest is known for being unconventional by making concentrated bets on highly speculative companies, what Wood calls betting on innovation that solves problems. So of course Wood has AI-related bets in the various ARK funds. The ARK Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF (ARKQ) in particular holds … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: The latest jobs report came on the heels of another post-Fed downer. The U.S. added 261,000 jobs but the unemployment rate ticked up from 3.6% to 3.7%. At the open, the market seemed to celebrate the potential implications for looser monetary policy despite the microscopic change in the unemployment rate. China delivered … 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
Stock Market Commentary: Now I see why there was so little fanfare about the end of the bear market. Last week’s trading looks like a warm-up for a bear market comeback. The S&P 500 and the iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) printed bearish confirmations of resistance at their respective 200-day moving averages (DMAs) (the blue … 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
That sigh of disappointment was Wall Street looking for signs of a weakening labor market in the June jobs report. Instead, that report showed job creation remains robust in the economy. Not only did the unemployment rate remain steady at a low 3.6% with the economy adding 372,000 jobs (far more than “consensus” expectations), the … Read more
After presenting my conditions for bottoming across the collection of ARK funds, the funds suffered a serious setback in the bottoming process. Some funds hit new lows and others cracked critical support levels. The stock market’s rebound from oversold conditions helped turn the tide and sentiment on the ARK funds. Interestingly, performance relative to key … Read more
Stock Market Commentary The edginess of the stock market continued this week. After “turnaround Tuesday” delivered broad based gains for the market, Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s testimony in front of Congress produced a familiar fade in the shadow of a bear market. Surprisingly, the buying was enough to end oversold conditions. Yet, the major indices … Read more
Stock Market Commentary Central banks are scrambling in the face of what is becoming a summer of discontent. Last week was chock full of news from monetary policy. The Federal Reserve, the Bank of England (BoE), and even the Swiss National Bank all took action against inflation. The European Central Bank (ECB) held an (underwhelming) … Read more