Dave Fry at ETF Digest, April 22, 2009
I got a lot of emails wondering where we’ve been and the simple explanation is we had a family health crisis to deal with. Resolving this is proceeding. I was very much aware of the tough market on Monday and the resulting rally Tuesday.
The negative earnings and economic news means little it seems. Sure, there is some good news here and there and bulls’ cherry-pick it while dismissing the negative as just old news. According to Art Hogan, chief market analyst at Jerfferies & Co.: “The important thing with these earnings reports is that no one has been so atrociously bearish with their guidance to slow the market down. We’re clearly in a situation where the path of least resistance is higher.” That’s comical.
Volume still remains on the light side which means markets are dominated by Da Boyz who are just picking each other’s pockets. You’ll note that earnings reports from what are now loosely called banks have either been rigged (GS) or have been bolstered by proprietary trading activity. That’s your tax dollars at work.
Simon Johnson wrote an interesting piece in the Atlantic discussing the American Oligarchs of finance. It’s a very good read and quite correct. But, we’ve been discussing this for several years now since the root cause of this problem was the demise of Glass-Steagall in 1999. This allowed banks and brokers to merge. The villains in the deal are bipartisan but you might start with Sandy Weill, the Oligarch in Chief.
Earnings aren’t good and neither are outlooks whether they beat atrocious or not. Ya gotta love the spin, eh?
Again, thanks everyone for your kind thoughts during our family difficulties. It’s much appreciated.
Let’s see what happens.
Disclaimer: Among other issues the ETF Digest maintains positions in:
The charts and comments are only the author’s view of market activity and aren’t recommendations to buy or sell any security. Market sectors and related ETFs are selected based on his opinion as to their importance in providing the viewer a comprehensive summary of market conditions for the featured period. Chart annotations aren’t predictive of any future market action rather they only demonstrate the author’s opinion as to a range of possibilities going forward.
