The Chief Strategist of a Wall Street firm must learn to eat shit. Lemme tell you why: when you are right, great. That’s your job. When you are wrong, you lose people money, and they don’t soon forget. Victories are dismissed with a “what ya got next” and defeats are resurrected on a regular basis.

The market has been doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing, namely frustrating all. Everything you’ve been told is wrong from one minute to the next. But if you step back, you can see that the market has been in an accumulation mode–NOT a distribution mode. That means stocks should be accumulated on weakness. Sound familiar?

The histrionics of the economy, the markets, the political situation and the coverage in the media has forced those with “smaller minds” into doing exactly the wrong thing. The running now into no-interest fixed income is a huge near-to-intermediate term mistake. There will be more “panics” and much more “malaise”, but after six months of consolidation and much hedging against disaster, the major indices are about to make their move. Maybe not today, but what may be a pretty big and forceful move is coming soon.

The mantra of “accumulate on weakness” is the key. I am neither a perma-bull or perma-bear, just a “market realist” and I will be consistant with that strategy until my work tells me to change.  Find the low expectations and buy them for the intermediate term.

Get a look at this. It is a thing of beauty, getting ready to come out of a downtrend. They don’t do exactly what OII does, but they are in the same offshore oil and gas service business.

Back in June the entire world firmly believed that oil stocks were going to experience a new pricing scheme because there would be no more drilling or some such garbage. Investors actually sold stocks because there would be a hit to next quarters numbers. Stocks lost 30% in a week and it was one of the greatest buying opportunities of the year so far.

Fast forward to today. Technology is dying. Nobody will ever buy a chip again. Most semi stocks are down 50% since April and some are testing their 2009 lows. Should they be worth their crash lows? Is the semiconductor business finished? Was the oil business finished?

There are still opportunities in oil stocks even now. But you should be focused like a laser beam on the “new death”, second tier technology and semiconductors. Low debt and cash? Trading in the single digits? There are a ton of them.

But you’ll need patience and discipline. Expectations have already plummeted, stocks have plummeted and there has been hardly a “bad” number. This will be a classic case of “sell the expectation, buy the fact”.

I’ve seen this a million times before. Just buy no more than a half position at a time and keep your stops wide. These are not trades, but rather intermediate term opportunities.

Third and final part of my series of interviews.

Bet this will get em talkin!

http://tinyurl.com/3xb9ndj

My second of three hits. The final will be posted later today…

http://tinyurl.com/273ajpc

I’m not surprised to see the “Return from Summer” being greeted with volatility. But there is no volume. It seems the “A Team” has already departed for the Jewish New Year.

Yesterday was a disaster but the NYSE did only 750m shares at the close. Today we are making it almost all back again on no volume. Tomorrow will be a throwaway day due to the Holiday.

Listen, the market is doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing from both a technical and fundamental perspective, so get used to it. Seek out low expectations only on weakness. That has been and remains the strategy.

BTW–I just did several Yahoo Tech Ticker hits. Today’s hit will be on the market. Tomorrow they will post two more on the state of the economy and how to fix the banks. We will post them here.

I’ll be out tomorrow taking care of business. Happy New Year to those who Observe!