Market Montage
Stock Market, Economics, Equity Analysis
May14
I went to circle back today to look at what has been among the weakest areas of the market, and chart after chart came up in the commodity space. Here is a chart of the performance of the futures in various markets (mostly commodities) over the past month (via Finviz) and it's a mess. Ironically, natural gas – the most hated commodity of most of the first quarter, was the standout. Reversion to mean trade. Coal is not listed, but that group looks as bad as solar stocks… ironic since the latter was supposed to supplant the former at some point. …
May14
Other than 1 session last week, this has been a very methodical melt down. There is no panic in the tape, and at each (very obvious) support level the buyers step in to attempt to rally the market. Perhaps we are all jaded by the action of 2008/2009 (or for some of us 2000-2002) but this sort of 1%ish drop intraday is not much to shake a stick act. Today the S&P went to an obvious support level of 1340 and then right below so the algos could trigger stops in the 1-3 point range below, and then right back up to it. This also parallels the key 2900 level on the NASDAQ. But the tape is very methodical, and there is not much emotion to it despite the not quite constant selling.
Tech is outperforming a bit today as the 'social media' stocks are catching a bid ahead of the IPO of the decade coming this Friday.
May14
Stop me if you have heard this one before: After a seasonal uptick during winter months, economic activity slows, while European issues led by Greece flare up, and markets swoon. It has been the playbook the past three years and despite increasingly larger and larger rescues and liquidity infusions, not much has been fixed other than cans being kicked in every direction. With a common currency member states of the euro cannot let the market make the necessary adjustments to individual country currencies; and with no fiscal authority that hangs over the region to 'print' and 'disburse' as we have in the United States at the federal level we continue in this indefinite loops of crisis. …
May10
The action was poor this afternoon but it was highlighted by a huge volume spike in the last 20 minutes of the day, with big downward movement. Very suspicious. Now after the bell we have a news of a surprise JPM conference call to announce bad news – obviously it wasn't a surprise to "someone(s)" of a large nature. Futures are getting punked to the tune of 0.7% 0.9% as I type. Seriously it is pathetic what happened between 3:40 and 3:55 PM, massive selling in the SPY ETF with volume 2-4x as high as any normal 5 minute period! That is the stuff that should make every "main street" person mad … incenses me.
On another front, once it it shows our "too big to fail" banks are still there, as glorified hedge funds with a banking arm – protected as 'bank holding companies' by the Fed. Glad we learned our lessons from 2008-2009. Not.
May10
ECRI's Lakshman Achuthan was making the rounds yesterday, with yet another defense of his firm's recession call – the first claim which came early last fall. I do think (from memory) he has pushed out the time frame a bit from when the initial call came, but since early this year has claimed we will see it by mid year. Perhaps the very warm winter hurt the call as well – who knows with these black boxes. Below we have a video with CNBC and there is one nugget in there I did not know. Conventional wisdom is a recession is back to back quarters of negative GDP… but according to the NBER (and Achuthan) that is but one of a group of potential signals. …
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