Stocks & Equities
By: Eric Parnell
The stock market has made one thing abundantly clear in the early days of the second quarter: It still cannot stand on its own at current levels without the continued support of additional stimulus from the U.S. Federal Reserve. And with the latest Fed stimulus program set to end in June, it may be shaping up to be another cruel summer for stocks.
It all began on April 3 with the release of the latest Fed minutes from the March Open Market Committee meeting. Although nothing was included or discussed that we haven’t already heard from the Fed many times before over the last several years, the market decided that the key take away from the latest minutes was that no further quantitative easing would be coming from the Fed any time soon. Stocks (SPY) immediately recoiled on the news, sliding lower for the remainder of the holiday shortened trading week. Then came the disappointing employment numbers on Friday and the uneasy response by investors once the stock market reopened early this past week. All of the sudden, the additional Fed stimulus that so many had concluded was off the table merely one week earlier was all of the sudden back on once again.
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By: Guy Lerner
For weeks now, I have been using phrases in these weekly articles on sentiment like “the best, most accelerated gains are behind us” and “we are closer to the end then the beginning”. When we look at the charts, the SP500 has been essentially flat for the past 8 weeks, so every now and then, I guess I can get it right. If you have been a buyer over this time period, you most likely will find your investment underwater. In other words, there are a lot of investors who have bought high with the expectation of selling higher and who have bought the Wall Street nonsense that this is an investing opportunity of a lifetime. NOT! The “dumb money” indicator has dropped below the upper trading band (see figure 1, green arrow), and the best time to sell is usually 1 week after this signal. There are other scenarios that could develop, such as the emergence of the dip buyers leading to excessive speculation, but the most likely scenario and until further notice, I would be a seller at higher prices. The gas appears to be coming out of this market.
As the current market environment has been compared to 2011, it is noteworthy that last year’s sell signal occurred on March 11. 7 weeks later the market made a marginal new high in another flurry of speculation. It took the market another quarter before it actually cratered sustaining a 20% loss over 4 weeks. In general, the next best buy signal will occur when investor sentiment turns bearish.
The “Dumb Money” indicator (see figure 1) looks for extremes in the data from 4 different groups of investors who historically have been wrong on the market: 1) Investors Intelligence; 2) MarketVane; 3) American Association of Individual Investors; and 4) the put call ratio. This indicator is now neutral. The data shows that the optimal sign to sell is 1 week after the indicator crosses below the upper trading band. But these are optimal scenarios, and I should caution that optimal and stock market are rarely spoken of in the same sentence. The market is just too unpredictable. Who saw the May, 2010 “flash crash” or the 20% drop over 3 weeks in 2011 coming? If you hang around too long, you could be one of those casualties. Alas, there are no right answers or guarantees. These are just signposts that help us better understand the price action.
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Figure 1. “Dumb Money”/ weekly
One of the fascinating aspects of all the controversy about paper money v hard money, has been the
lack of knowledge of just how did it come about? Oh we can go back to paper money being a receipt
from bullion dealers offering money storage, and we can go the American Colonial Period and point to
the drastic shortage of coin that necessitated paper money issues. But those stories are fairly common
knowledge. What isn’t talked about even in school is the manipulation of the Supreme Court AFTER it
declared that PAPER MONEY WAS UNCONSTITUTIONAL!
In my book Endgame, co-author Jonathan Tepper and I wrote a chapter detailing the problems that Spain was facing. It was obvious to us as we wrote in late 2010 that there really was no easy exit for Spain. The end would come in a torrent of misery and tears. Tepper actually grew up in a drug rehab center in Madrid – as a kid, his best friends were recovering junkies. (For the record, he has written a fascinating story of his early life and is looking for a publisher.) His Spanish is thus impeccable, and he used to get asked to be on Spanish programs all the time. Until the day came when the government created a list of five people, including our Jonathan, who were basically named “Enemies of Spain,” and pointedly suggested they not be quoted or invited onto any more programs.
As it turns out, the real enemy was the past government. We knew (and wrote) that the situation was worse than the public data revealed, but until the new government came to power and started to disclose the true condition of the country, we had no real idea. The prior government had cooked the books. So far, it seems it even managed to do so without the help of Goldman Sachs (!)
In about ten days I will be sending you a detailed analysis of all this, courtesy of some friends, but let’s tease out some of the highlights. True Spanish debt-to-GDP is not 60% but closer to 90%, and perhaps more when you count the various and sundry local-government debts guaranteed by the federal government, most of which will simply not be paid. Spanish banks are miserably underwater, and that is with write-offs and mark to market on debts that totals not even half of what it should be. If Spanish housing drops as much relative to its own bubble as US housing has so far (and it will, if not more), then valuations will drop 50%. The level of overbuilding was stupendous, with one home built for every new every person as the population grew. We know that unemployment is 23%, with youth unemployment over 50%. Etc, etc. We could spend 50 pages (which is what I will get you access to) detailing the dire distress that is Spain.
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Written by Sumit Roy |
April 12, 2012
The natural gas market is facing an unprecedented glut. We examine the latest outlook.
Natural gas prices were little changed today after the Energy Information Administration reported that storage operators injected 8 bcf into storage last week. That was below market expectations that were calling for an injection close to 18 bcf, but excluding a one-time accounting adjustment of 10 bcf, the figure was in line with estimates.
Earlier this week, natural gas plunged below $2/mmbtu for the first time in 10 years, as the unprecedented glut of inventories in the U.S. and Canada weighed on already-depressed prices.
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