Take a look at this chart on gold: Apparently gold is at an important point. If it breaks below the green line, it is expected to drop substantially. But, what if it doesn’t? Is this uptrend sustainable? The chart covers only the last eleven years, omitting its $800 high some twenty years ago. Gold could break its uptrend at any time, but I doubt it…
The third quarter ends today . . . Good! It was awful, with the S&P losing about 12.5%. That’s the good news. The bad news is that October is usually the worst month of the year! At 5AM, futures indicate the Dow will open about 90 to the downside, a fitting end to an awful month and beginning of a possibly worst one. Back in April, I…
Realizing that the linkage between the economy and the stock market can sometimes be tenuous, it was good to see the latest economic releases this morning. I’ve been saying the underlying economy was weak but not as weak as most people think. Today, the final GDP growth rate for the second quarter was released. It was increased from 1.1% to 1.3%. This is up substantially…
The market is often described as panic-depressive, because it over-reacts to most everything. Maybe, it is just a matter of degree, but I have never seen it so headline-dependent. (Of course, everthing is different in the face of a financial crisis, which is entirely different and much worse than a standard recession.) Fortunately, the German parliament approved the July plan for the EFSF or stabililty…
The market “prices in” various risks. For example, as the market worried increasingly about the European crisis, it continued to discount the value of stocks lower and lower. It would stay low until worry about that risk subsided. Yesterday, there was a surprise CNBC report, that seemed to come out of left field, saying there was a serious effort to put together a European version…
History is more interesting than instructive, unfortunately! If you re-read Friday’s blog, you’ll recall the observation by the revered Art Cashin of the Thursday/Monday syndrome, whereby Thursday is very bad, Friday is choppy and Monday is terrible (reflecting “capitulation”). Then, a long bull market begins on Tuesday. On Friday, I predicted this is unlikely without some hope of fixing the European crisis. Over the weekend, I…
My frustration with the Tea Party has been their simplistic focus on spending, without making the critical distinction between entitlements (which consume the vast majority of government spending) and discretionary spending (which is a far smaller problem). I’ve discussed in this space before that a 100% elimination of discretionary spending would not eliminate our deficit problem. There is no mathematical way to solve the deficit…
This was a miserable week for Wall Street, with the Dow down 6.4%. That was the worst week in almost three years. It was like investors collectively but suddenly realized the whole world has a leadership vacuum. In addition, a lot of other things were happening beneath the headlines. World markets got hammered worse than the U.S. stock market. With funds from selling their stocks abroad,…
One of my favorite commentators is Art Cashin of UBS, who has been on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for over fifty years . . . literally . . . 50 years! This morning he spoke about the “Thursday/Monday” syndrome, which sets the stage for a strong bull rally. On Thursday, the bears run wild on heavy volume, but the market recovers…
Yesterday was ugly, with the Dow dropping almost 400 points. Earlier this morning, the futures market indicated the Dow would open up over 100 points but has been drifting down since then. It looks like it will open slightly down right now. Traders, especially high-frequency traders, are driving the market now. (Investors try to pick good companies in good sectors of good countries. Traders don’t care…
As a lifelong student of the investment markets, I usually take comfort in understanding both it’s cyclical behavior and its tendency to over-react to news. When I don’t understand, I get worried. I’m worried! The Dow lost over 100 points at closing yesterday, for no ascertainable reason. It was certainly not the usual over-reaction to yesterday’s meaningless Fed announcement. Overnight, China released the PMI report, which showed…
I was raised as an Eisenhower Republican, i.e., distrustful of both big government AND big business, as well as deeply suspicious of foreign entanglements. (Undoubtedly, the latter has fueled my lifelong interest in globalization.) On Monday, I gladly attended a fundraiser for George Allen, whom I have supported in the past. However, it was not about him. It was not about his opponent. It was all…
Last week, the markets rallied nicely, up 4-6%. They were expecting something constructive from the G-7 finance ministers meeting this weekend in Poland, with the announcement last night. That didn’t happen, and the markets are peeved this morning. Europe is down 2-3% already. Our futures indicate the Dow will lose about 130 points at the 9:30 open. I expect all week to be rough, as…
This week, the Fed will meet for a special two-day meeting. Normally only a one-day event, Bernanke wanted to make sure any disagreements were fully explored. So, what should we expect? The market believes the Fed will announce Operation Twist, which means they will sell some of the shorter-term Treasury bonds (at a profit) and buy some longer-term Treasuries. In other words, the average maturity…
There are some people who watch every movement in the market and hope to glean some minute parcel of meaning from it. Today will be a bad day for them! First, Fridays are traditionally more volatile than other days, as traders decide whether to remain in cash over the weekend. If dramatic news should break over the weekend (think Greece), they are more likely to…
In a remarkable piece of world-wide cooperation, many of the world’s central banks have agreed to provide liquidity funding for European banks, mostly dollar swaps. Not surprisingly, the European and U.S. markets are up nicely, and gold is down about $40/oz. The markets feels good now, because they got a shot of morphine. Unfortunately, this solved the problem du jour, nothing more. The European problem is…
A few years ago, the Governor appointed me to the Virginia Public Building Authority. Technically, the job is to issue all bonds authorized by the legislature to construct public buildings. Practically, the job is to make sure the investment community doesn’t take advantage of the state bureaucracy. Today, I was in Richmond attending the meeting to approve $398.5 million in new bonds, including $100 million…
As predicted, the G-7 meeting of Finance Ministers and Central Bankers this weekend in France produced another “mealy-mouth” statement, and the world markets are dropping in response. Asia and Europe both dropped sharply overnight, and the futures market indicate the Dow will drop about 140 points at the open, on top of the 303 points lost on Friday. The stock markets of the world alternate…
At the time, I was running SunTrust’s wealth management office in Olde Town Alexandria, a surprisingly deep pocket of wealth. I was at work early that day to prepare paperwork for a loan to a long-time friend and client that afternoon in Newport News. About 9:30, an employee walked in my office, asking me if I had heard about a plane crashing into the World…
I sagely predicted the market would drop on Friday. My thinking was that Friday is the most volatile day of the week anyway, and everybody would be disappointed with the Presidential address on Thursday night. However, in addition to that, there were a number of rumors coming out of Greece and Brussels, which deeply unsettled the market. The Dow dropped 303 points. The first rumor,…
We know gold has become expensive and that houses have become relatively inexpensive. If you measure the average cost of a house divided by the price of gold per ounce, you get the cost of the house in ounces of gold, instead of dollars. Now, take a look at this chart. Does this suggest houses are under-priced, or that gold is over-priced? If you tried to…
One characteristic of existential observers is the tendency to see absurdity in many things and to find some wry humor in that. I felt that way watching the Presidential Jobs Speech last night. First, he walks into a room where at least a hundred people truly hate him but nonetheless stand there applauding anyway. Then, he asks them to do something he already knows they will NOT do, i.e.,…
Imagine standing on the roof over your garage and tossing the dead carcass of a cat onto the driveway. It will hit the driveway and bounce up somewhat before falling back on the driveway. That disturbing imagery is what Wall Street calls a “dead cat bounce” . . . or what I call . . . yesterday, when the Dow gained 275 points. The underlying…
When our terrible Jobs Report came out on Friday, the Asian markets were closed. They opened today and starting dropping . . . and dropping. Overall, it dropped about 3%, with Korea leading the way down at 4.4%. Over the weekend, Angela Merkel lost an important election in her home state, ramping up speculation that she would not be able to deliver Germany’s essential support for any…
Given my belief that Congress is inhabited by useless children who would rather fight than win, I often need to be reminded that it has actually passed two important bills to deal with the economic crisis. First, during the waning days of the Bush Administration, it did pass TARP, albeit on the second try. Although the money was never used as authorized to purchase mortgage-backed securities,…
Take a look at this graph. The job problem is different than most investors think. First, you will notice the graph covers only normal recessions, not any of the financial panics. Second, job growth after recessions did not return to the “average” after 2001. We have been growing jobs below trend for ten years already. Third, the variance below trend is greater now than any time…
The world deserves a long holiday weekend! After a horrific August, the worst since 2001, we head into September, which is historically a very bad month for the stock market. The first day was a down day for the market, as the European tail wagged the U.S. dog again. Decision-making in Europe actually makes Washington look downright decisive. They must deal with more than the…
To understand the Fed, one has to understand their “dual mandate.” They are charged with minimizing both inflation AND unemployment. What could be wrong with that? This dual mandate came about when Keynesian economics was the dominant school of thought. One Keynesian principle is something called the “Phillips Curve,” which looks like this: You can see that the inflation rate falls as the unemployment rate goes…
Yesterday, the Dow rose 254 points. It was a perfect storm of sorts. The early morning economic report on consumer spending was surprisingly strong. There was breaking news that three Greek banks were merging, thinking that they would have better access to the market. (Today, they will look more like three drunks trying to hold each other up.) By the afternoon, there was a totally…
Years ago, when I was thinking about retiring from banking and starting my own investment advisory business, a good friend and client suggested I spend some time at her cabin high in the mountains of Wintergreen. Unfortunately, the weather was not great. There was a low ceiling, and we found ourselves inside the cloud, literally. I could not see the other side of the 8 foot deck! I thought that…
Today, Wall Street waited and prayed that Bernanke would save us from another recession by announcing another round of quantitative easing or QE3. He disappointed us, and the Dow promptly dropped over 200 points. But, then somebody wondered why he refused to do anything else to help us and noticed it was because we don’t need anymore help. He believes the economy is better than…
For the first three days of this week, the stock market coasted serenely past earnings surprises, merger announcements, and economic reports. We were secure in the knowledge that “Uncle Ben” Bernanke would once again preserve our economy, as he has done since the Global Financial Crisis in 2007. Yesterday, the realization began to sink in that even Uncle Ben has only a finite list of…
When a deal falls apart after the handshakes, you can usually blame the lawyers. You may have thought the Greek bailout was behind you, and Europe was now focused on the bigger problem of Eurobonds to bailout the whole of Europe. You would be wrong, unfortunately. The bailout of Greece will NOT happen, and the fault goes to the Tea Party of Finland. Enraged that the…