Those consumer sentiment numbers were dreadful, yet here we are unch. There is something to be said about a market that refuses to go down. Now, we can complain all we want about manipulation and how “stupid” the market is. But, in reality, markets are not stupid, people are. I’ve been 100% wrong with my recent sales. I’ve been 100% wrong with my VXX “hedge.” It’s too early to say if I am wrong on TZA, since it is hovering near my cost basis. The big lesson in all of this is: there is no lesson.
Previous market pullbacks were very sharp, which would have allowed my current strategy to pay off very handsomely. Unfortunately, the market has not cooperated with my incessant demands. So the fuck what? I still have big gains and lots of skin in the game. It’s not like the market is ending soon and I will not have a chance to recapture my former glory.
Go with what you know and don’t be stupid about allocations. If there is one thing that has saved me, over and over again, it’s allocations. Leg into positions slowly and never overweight one sector or stock more than 20%.
Breadth is somewhat mixed today, with weakness in commodity names and strength in tech. The market could go either way. If I was to bet against anything, it would be a big move in any direction.
More of the same, ho hum, ho hum.
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fuckin FIG
I too believe the market could go in any direction.
ha.
but if it could go down….way fucking down would be fine with me
FIG DOW 36K
we close higher and at the highs. flat or up on monday.
Genius!
You are hereby promoted to Rear Admiral!!
Well, my bearish short-term call from several days ago was certainly wrong (so far, anyway), but the macro data has still been awful (specifically, sentiment today and FedEx and Philly Fed yesterday), and I think that this only enhances the probability that I’m right, and that ORCL’s numbers last night were only indicative of corporate IT departments getting sucked into thinking the economy was going to be better than it is. By the way, for a bit of perspective on ORCL’s numbers, you might want to read this little thing I put together last night: http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/195387-logical-thought/94203-oracle-s-blowout-quarter-a-lagging-indicator
now you are back to you normal self…. I just hope these are not just thoughts..
but you will do something about your positions.
good luck
This is a fucking outrage.
Please tell me again how there’s “no difference” between even the corrupt lobbyist loving GOP RINO’s and the evil, grasping statist sons of bitches who think they are in charge of what you can do with your money.
This freaking Waxman, and this Wiener — there’s no way else to say it — they are just evil sons of bitches, sorry.
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Paradoxical Thought for Today
“Fathom the odd hypocrisy that Obama wants every citizen to prove they are insured, . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . but people don’t have to prove they are citizens”.
~ Ben Stein
jake, me thinks we needz a politcal bashing thread. and we can out these sons a bitches from now, till eternity. we can do one better than fox news, and the rest of the news “cyborgs. just by the shear nature of telling the general public how these political morons effect EVERYONES POCKET BOOK,and not”the other guys”,as always seems to be the general mindset. just sayin.
Lets all hope TEVA is working on a drug to cure Libertarian Tourrete’s syndrome
Let’s hope you are working on your first useful comment here in the history of this blog.
But let’s not hold our breath.
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was i just “refudiated”?
http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/07/19/sarah-palin-refudiate/
You were just housed, jagass.
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So regulating gold resellers isn’t a good thing? Don’t these people rip consumers off in a major way? I’ve heard nothing but bad things about them.
it’s called caveat emptor.
I dont need/want the govt regulating stupidity.
If one can legally “rip” someone off, it’s their right to do so, and it’s anothers right to not buy the product, forcing the other person out of business.
simple
good article jakey — though mightily egregious
and stop shorting AEM lmao
I have been long this stock from level you charts cannot show (unless you use your time machine)
and PPT cannot read lmao…
PS. you are still the most fun guy to read in my book, dear sir.
I am excited to announce the 2010 V.King Award nominees….
1. Ray Lewis. LB Baltimore Ravens
2. Sylvester Stallone. Expendables
3. The Fly. iBankCoin/PPT
4. Vladimir Putin. Kremlin Russia
5. Gen. David Petraeus. Iraq/Afghanistan
Please summit your votes …The winner will be announced 9.22.10
How about Steve The Neighbor?
I hear he has arm wrestled Fly several times and made him beg for mercy
Yeah but he uses Tefillin to gain an advantage…
Howabout Ray still bringing the wood after all these years vs. the Jets last Monday night?
That dude must be made of molybdenum or something.
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indued…not to mention the new Old Spice ad campaign….
Ray Ray is on something for sure. Not sure which ‘roid, but he’s a friggen cracked up maniac. Ravens are going all the way unfortunately. Unless the Tennessee Vipers can stop them.
Love the Tennessee QB, but they haven’t much else.
Just talking to a Ravens fan about Ray. He is up there with my main man Lawrence Tee as “BadAss Mofo Supremo of the NFL.”
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Jake Chris Johnson is the best Player on Tenn…Maybe the whole NFL
LT was and still is the best…Cocaine and Roids mixed with god given talent…dangerous
That’s right, my bad. Forgot about the Phreak, Johnson — from ECU, no? Was just over in that territory.
Still love Vince Young… ever since that National Championship Game vs. Cheetah Bush.
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I saw LT play golf at Grand Cypress about 12 years ago. He was in the group in front of me and he was a wild man off the tee. I talked to him for a few minutes while we waited on the par threes. I believe he was arrested shortly thereafter for something
Don’t forget the other Ray – aka Rice – if Ravens are going anywhere, he’s got to be the man.
The way I see it, the Ravens were darn good last year without a single decent WR. Now they’ve added two. I see Tenn, NE, B-More as the top 3. Going to Vegas next week, looking for some value futures.
Flacco is an excellent QB as well. Nice escapability for a big man, and a great head for the action.
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Steve is a fraud. Everyone knows he really lives in the Orlando area.
That’s why he wasn’t nominated….Now vote or die…
I wish this was true. The taxes here in New York are a killer, although the unemployment check I get keeps me from having to move into the shed with Fly’s illegal Mexican Gardeners. The Fly family and Steve family almost bought a time share in Orlando several years ago but Fly has been banned from all of the amusement and theme parks in the area. Fly swam in the nude at Wet and Wild, kicked Mickey Mouse in the sweet spot, and then he decided to fish for whales with a harpoon in the Shamu pool at Sea World. Throwing giant smoked turkey legs at the tourists at Universal is a whole different story.
The V.King said Yeah but he uses a Tefillin to gain an advantage……C’mon Steve give it up to The V.King
Leave my Dad alone. Otherwise I will have to go after you. We can have a physics and calculus challenge to the end match.
V,whaaaaaaazzzzzzzz up with vlad in that line up?
He hunts , Judo, and wrestles croc’s shirtless…Need I say more?
i knew he was into the marshal arts,but cant picture him fighting a croc.
He’s more of a bad ass then even Chuck Norris…He’s planning a Russian Moon mission where he will go shirtless and knock down our American Flag…
Fly,
So WTF, do you expect any market action to make sense on a quadwitch- bitch day?
100% TZA in your personal accounts now?
Fucking unreal
Fellas, fellas FELLAS….
http://www.icis.com/Articles/2010/09/14/9392989/china-petchems-trade-to-slow-during-long-holidays-to-mid-oct.html
CHINA’S going on HOLIDAYS NEXT WEEK AND FIRST WEEK OF October
Japan, SUNDAY and Wednesday
huh huh huh….who’s going to prop things up next week??
No China driver…hmmmmm…..*bloof* it was gone
You think the Chinese gummint takes a day off… ever?
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We shall see…good time as any for World Investors to look at what they did, try to find a reason…hearing next to nothing from China….panic…and start selling off.
So simple and fact-free
makes perfect sense
Im moving nearly into all cash today, with the exception of TLT and another individual stock I am required to hold. I am partway through that transition…
I plan to weight for an oversold condition to get long, or look for another overbought condition to get short (presuming it will be after we skyrocket through overhead resistance). I just don’t like being short here when there are too many invested interests in getting us above 1130 in the near term.
I agree with you HuggieBear. 1,131 seems to be the line in the sand. We settled at 1,131.15 today and the high on 6/21 was 1,131.23. The high on 8/9 was 1,129.24. I am sure there are many stop losses slightly above 1,131.23, and they were not hit today yet which is maybe why you are not seeing any real rally today so far. This 1,131 level should tell you the short term direction of the market if we break above it. But everyone is watching this level. I think the upside is still limited. But I agree with you that maybe an overweight cash position is probably the best course of action for right now.
Good post. I like it how you do not “dissapear” when a position is going against you and you admit you may possibly be wrong. You cannot win them all the time, but you do most of the time. In the end that is what matters. And like you said you do not position yourself in such a way that your trades can blow up your account. I wished I had half the balls that you do. I am up like 1% for the year (and 100% cash since July literally – no trades), and you are up like 30%. Fuck all those people that wish for your downfall. I enjoy reading your blog and find it informative even though I do not have the cojones that you do. I think you will do alright with TZA, even pull a few % points … worst case scenario you breakeven. This market is on fumes now.
The thing about correlations is that they change.
oil can do what it wants
bitches. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwkJYv_TATY
hey noodle,there gear is worth more than they are.
Said we’d be down at least 100 points in the Dow, sometime on friday. We dropped 130 points from 2am high, early friday morning. Im claiming victory. I consulted my lawyer, and he says this claim will hold up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2EirLJqghA
This is more of a sell here than a buy.
My FAZooka is fully loaded.
Your honesty as well as your repsect for your wife is refreshing.
Those with half a pleb of a brain know that ol Fly’s got some softy in him.
Please dont ban me 😉
Treu, le Monsieur respects the wimmens, but if you knew the lovely Mrs. Fly, you would know why he lives in thrall, despite his hirsute grumblings.
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Market is going to close green today…you can see it in the cards. Ima guess 1128, followed by a gap up Monday to 1140.
…and that’s why your moving all into cash today, huh!
Yes
Fear not, stocks dive Monday. I’ve been there, I know.
Can’t happen. I didn’t go long today 🙂
I am the absolute WORST Halo player ever. I sneak up behind some French nerd and shoot him 45 times in the back. He turns around and shoots me once– and I’M dead! Then they respawn me right in the middle of a friggen hornet’s nest with seven more French nerds and six Japanese nerds just sitting there waiting for me with plasma rifles.
I’m better with the story mode games like Bioshock.
He ‘only’ makes 500 grand. My God, what numbnut negotiated that contract ?
http://bit.ly/cdIWBN
He used to be a journalist so I’m sure that was a massive pay increase.
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They shoulda got $500k FROM him to put him on camera!
His agent must be Scott Boras.
Many investors believe there is some sort of cause-and-effect between the stock market and the economy. They think that if they can predict the general direction of the economy, it will help them predict the direction of the stock market and therefore their investments. However, the general direction of the economy is almost useless in predicting the stock market.
Studies (e.g. Dalbar study) consistently show that most investors buy and sell investments at the wrong times. One of the main reasons for this is because they base their decision on a mainly irrelevant factor – their outlook for the economy.
The media and professional investors very often make this same mistake. Articles about the stock market and presentations by investment companies and fund managers often include their outlook on the economy as a key part of their investment recommendations.
For example, recent articles claim now is a good time to invest because the economy is recovering from the recession, or that investors should be cautious now because of the risk of a “double dip recession”. Which one of these will happen and should this affect our investment decisions?
The usefulness of information about the economy for investing is vastly overrated. This is what we call “conventional wisdom” – something most people believe and that seems to make sense – but is false.
There are 2 main reasons why the economy is not really relevant to investing:
1. The stock market forecasts the economy, not the other way around. The stock market is the head & the economy is the tail.
2. Expectations of how the economy will perform are already built into the prices of stocks. (We will discuss this in the next article.)
The stock market is the head & the economy is the tail.
Let’s look at the facts. The best indicator of the economy is probably GDP (Gross Domestic Product), which is the total value of goods and services produced in a country. We calculated the correlation of GDP to the TSX60 from 1987-2010 and it is only 12%. This means that GDP and the stock market only move similarly 12% of the time.
Generally, correlations under 20% are considered “no correlation”. (Correlation of 100% means they move the same, -100% is negative correlation which means they move opposite to each other, and 0% means no correlation – that they move opposite as much as they move the same.)
For example, in 2008, the economy was fine, but the stock market crashed. In 2009, the economy was in a recession, but the stock market boomed (like it usually does during recessions).
Last year, I was asked quite a few times whether now is a good time to invest, given that it looks like it will be a bad year. My response normally was to ask: “Which one do you think will have a bad year – the economy or the stock market?” It is actually very rare for both to have a bad year at the same time.
There is, however, some correlation if you compare the stock market this year to GDP next year. This correlation is 33%, which is considered “low correlation”.
The reason that the stock market somewhat predicts the economy is that the prices of stocks include the future expectations of all investors in those stocks. This is confirmed by the Bank of Canada which uses the stock market as one of the key components of the “leading indicator”. This is a statistic published regularly by the Bank of Canada and used as a forecaster of the economy.
When investors buy an investment, the price they are willing to pay takes into account their expectation of how that investment will do. So, if investors are optimistic or pessimistic about the economy for the next year, that might affect the price they are willing to pay for an investment today. That is why the stock market somewhat predicts the economy.
A low correlation of 33% makes sense, though. The value of a company that is part of the stock market is normally a multiple of the profit of that company. If you talk to any business owner and ask them what affects the profit of their business, they will quickly rattle off a list of items – competition, taxes, available labour, new products, technology, cost cutting, the economy, etc. The general state of the economy is only one item in a long list of factors affecting profits.
In short, if we could accurately predict what the economy will do this year, then we have an indicator (only a 33% indicator) of what the stock market did last year. This is not really useful, since we already know what the stock market did last year! 🙂
Can some one explain the big difference on the intraday charts of SP/y vs. $SPX?
SPY breaking down
$SPX consolidating?
Just realized I made the 1-in-7 on poverty last year…thanks to gov’t meaningless statistics…just came back from playing golf at my club for $450 per round…not many other on poverty doing that.
God Bless America.
Yeah, but the manager just called and was complaining about you jumping on at the tenth hole from the street access again.
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Actually it was because I jammed my putter into the green – missed the damn 5 ft birdie!
I think you may need a bigger (belly?) putter!
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They should be outlawed!
Can I add my two cents worth with what’s going on?
During the previous downdraft the market was doing two things. It was discounting the stuff that was going in Europe and it was also acting on what looked like a slowdown in the US.
Both those things have been discounted.
Conversely the market has seen Europe act to quell the hemorrhage from its southern flanks pretty effectively for the short term and least. The ECB has eased further and so has the Fed with both doing different forms of QE. The BOJ has also acted in both easing policy and intervening in the Yen to stem its appreciation.
So what now? There is nothing at this stage that needs to be accounted for in changing the price of stocks downward.
What we’re left with is a monetary system with oceans of liquidity. This, all things being equal, means higher stocks. If there is no further out of the ordinary news to the negative side the broad indices are going higher, I think.
Gold is also suggesting the fear of inflation will come back soon enough, perhaps not as early as the next few months but sooner than what people think.
Yeah, if only life was that easy. Ever hear of risk aversion?
Currently, there is about 80% correlation between all stocks and the stock indexes. That means stockpickers really have only 20% of stocks to choose from to outperform or underperform the market. About 1/2 of the trillion in ETFs is the individual investor who has been abandoning stock mutual funds in favor of bond funds and ETFs. After the next 5 or 6 weeks, the season favors a stock rally of some sort.
Next 5-6 weeks is what we care about.