Chris Lau - Seeking Alpha

Showing posts with label tradesystemsguru. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tradesystemsguru. Show all posts

Thursday, July 02, 2009

Neither Here Nor There

Below is a highlight posted by Matt Blackman on his blog. It is his opinion that there is no discernable trend or direction in the market right now.

We are currently in a technical trading territory – the fundamentals are weak and we are currently in a trading range. Stock prices have been so far driven by little more than hype and hope – hype by the government that the greatest series of bailouts in history will solve the crisis and hope by investors that earnings start improving soon to legitimize the recent rally.

Given that the S&P500 is back above both the 50 and 200-day moving averages means that the uptrend is technically still alive. However, it is probably not the time to be taking any sizable long or short trades until we get further confirmation one way or the other.

Source: http://tradesystemguru.com/content/blogcategory/34/68/

Monday, June 22, 2009

A Rally Without Earnings-less Recovery is...

On TradingSystemGuru this week, Matt and his team returned from a nice vacation in Europe (I believe). He expressed his doubt about the stock market rally in the following points below:
  • Average Price/Earnings ratio for the 8,011 US stocks of the VectorVest Composite Index (VVC) was 131.21

In the chart above, Matt notes that "the broad range of publicly trading companies is in uncharted territory and well above any previous rally or recovery high."

Source: http://tradesystemguru.com/content/blogcategory/34/68/

Canada may also be vulnerable to a sell-off:

Canadian stocks rallied 40% during a period in which earnings dropped more than 100%! When earnings get this bad, there is no point in looking at PEs – recently they went from +1000 to –1000 in the space of a week!

* So are US and Canadian stocks overprices now? You can judge for yourselves but either we have entered a new paradigm in which earnings don’t matter or the market is betting that earnings are about to take off like a thoroughbred on steroids.
About U.S. Debt:
Net foreign private flows were negative $58.4 billion [in April 2009], and net foreign official flows were $5.2 billion.

...

Foreign holdings of dollar-denominated short-term U.S. securities, including Treasury bills, and other custody liabilities decreased $39.4 billion and foreigners sold $44.5 billion of Treasury bills in April.

Why is this important? With a looming deficit north of $2 trillion, the US Treasury will have to sell approximately $200 billion in government bonds per month just to pay the bills, a level that is far higher than currently levels of investment in US capital assets. Unless the Treasury is able to attract new levels of foreign investment, there will be growing upward pressure on interest rates and rising rates are bad for housing and nearly every aspect of economic growth.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Notes from "Trade System Guru" Newsletter

Matt Blackman wrote about the market Yin and Yang in his weekly newsletter. Important sections in bold. Market participants keep asking two questions. "Is the market going to keep rallying" and "Is it time to take profits?" Some are even trying to predict where the market will be longer-term (say beyond this summer).

The market has rallied about 35% from the March bottom. The market is still about 43% from its high reached in 2007. With these figures, I turn to charts.

I am spending less time using technical charts to estimate short-term prices. However, if investors who bought at the peak want to break even (or reduce their losses), then 1000-1200 on the S&P 500 might be a good area for investors to sell. Those who bought at the bottom might want to sell at current levels. They might use charts to lock in profits with the S&P somewhere between approximately 850 - 930.

As discussed last week, this is a double-sided market. On one side there are corrective forces at work to bring valuations of numerous asset classes back down to earth after years of ‘bubblenomics’ driven by cheap money and highly stimulative monetary policy. On the other side, the tremendous amount of liquidity being that continues to be pumped into economies around the world in attempts to lessen the pain and reflate the bubbles.

One lesson the Presidential Cycle teaches us is the almost unbounded efforts in which governments employ to get re-elected and the subsequent impact those stimulative efforts have had on markets. Bears cannot afford to ignore this undeniable fact – at no time in history has the amount of cash currently being pumped into the economy been greater and the cost of money lower. This is bound to have a stimulative impact on stocks. And based on the latest news out of Washington, the generous programs being offered seem to continue without end (see the latest program outlined in the “Treasury Offers Incentives” article below.) But in spite of this generosity, foreclosures hit another new high last month and the number of U.S. homes with mortgages worth more a increased to 20.4 million or 22% of the total residential properties (houses, condos and co-ops) of 93 million homes.

Until earnings begin to recover in earnest and consumers begin to spend with confidence, any rally from here will be difficult at best. The question is, is the government prepared to continue to spend taxpayer dollars until then and if so, how big will the bill get in the meantime?


Source: http://tradesystemguru.com/content/blogcategory/34/68/