We have a serious streak going!
An up day today would mark 5 consecutive up days, a feat we haven’t accomplished since the week of September 11th where we posted 7 consecutive up days through the 18th.
That run led to a minor pullback followed by a 500 point run (as of yesterday). Prior to that, we have to go all the way back to May to find the last 5 day streak, from May 4th to May 10th, when the Dow flew up 300 points, to 11,709, up from 10,215 – where the rally started way back in late October ’05.
Here is an excellent article written at the time, on a 50 point up day, just 30 hours before the market crashed!
What caused it? A Fed meeting! What happened? The Dow dropped down to 11,200 just 5 days later, a 500-point drop. Less than 1 month later, we were back at 10,200, erasing 6 months of progress.
Not to pick on Helene Meisler, who is a very good writer, but her article on May 18th is a great example of what the media tells you after a 500 point drop, just before the next 500 point drop – it’s stay the course!
In fact, if you look over the articles leading up to and after the spike of May 10th, you’ll see very little warning signs either before or after the Fed, even as the market dropped 100 points per day!
As a student of history I started down this track as I noticed the Nikkei is about to test 17,000 again, where is hasn’t been since May 10th when… Oops!
So I apologize for not being a market cheerleader and believe me, I never expected to be that grumpy old guy sitting in the corner at the party wagging my finger at you while you try to have fun – but someone’s got to do it!
So I’ll try to be like the sensible Uncle who gives you the car keys and tells you too keep it down to a 6-pack while driving…
Those crazy Asian drivers held the Nikkei flat today as Sony apologized but they only bowed while sitting which is causing quite the controversy in Japan! The main reason Asia keeps going up is because US and European markets keep going up and we know the European markets only go up if we go up and we are going up because Asia is going up…
Come on everyone! It’s global hot potato – come on down and buy some stocks at their all-time highs – what could go wrong?
Europe is as uncertain as the US futures this morning but there is a dangerous trade war brewing with China over the EU’s trade deficit.
I saw a cool statistic on CNBC – Americans hold $14T worth of stocks and $20T worth of real estate. That goes back to my premise that money is flowing out of homes and into the markets but people don’t realize (have forgotten) how fast you can lose 5% in equities compared to the year or so it takes you to lose 5% in your home.
But that’s crazy talk as these markets are never going down! The Dow is less than 3,000 points away from 15,000 and an average p/e of 26, still lower than the 2000 p/e of 29. Let’s see if we can hold 12,100 today but 12,000 is, of course, our critical level.
Mr. Jones has jumped 1-2% ahead of the other majors this week and we’ll see if he can bring the laggards up in the next few days. The Dow is officially banging up against the 10% rule since January (and since July for that matter), well ahead of the pack for the year.
The S&P is right on the 10% line at 1,375 so let’s watch that very closely for a sense of direction. The NYSE is neck and neck with the Dow and past the 10% line already so we just need to see which side of 8,750 it gets comfortable on. The Nasdaq is really bringing up the rear, still 100 points away from a 10% gain (2,467).
The SOX and the Transports would be a huge concern to lesser rallies but nothing matters in this amazing Meatballs/Energizer mania and I’m not even sure TXN’s alarming outlook will bother anyone other than TXN shareholders.
Still, just for fun, let’s see if the SOX can make it back over the 50 dma at 450 and make sure the transports don’t fall below their 200 dma at 2,562. Both these indices are well off their May highs which was 2,378 for the SOX and 2,852 for the Transports. It would be a very strange rally indeed if we continue to leave these guys behind!
The Wall Street Journal disagrees with Barons and says Big Oil’s run may be over. BP had a bit of a disappointment today but that is being written off as just “production difficulties” due to a little incident in Alaska. It’s nothing I haven’t been saying for 3 months but it is nice to finally get some official support!
We’ll see if oil retests $58 today, XOM had a rough day yesterday on light volume (17M) as that “No Exit” sign is starting to come into focus. The $70 mark is proving quite a hurdle for XOM but if it breaks out of that, it may lead the charge for another record run in the sector.
Over the past 3 months both XOM and the OIH have deftly ignored the fact that oil has dropped 25%. Our “spare capacity increase” phrase is catching on in the media! Check out this article! My thanks to the anonymous poster who first coined that phrase…
Already OPEC is backpedaling on cuts and most foreign analysts (ie. not US pumpalysts) feel this is nothing other than more of the same old, same old from the cartel.
Gold and the dollar will watch and wait for the winds blowing out of the Fed today and tomorrow ahead of tomorrows official announcement.
I will spend the day watching and waiting as well to see how the markets perform on day 5 of the streak but I have no picks today and meetings that will keep me busy until the afternoon.
Just be careful out there!
