Friday, February 12, 2016

2/12/16 Miles Smiles

Miles Smiles.

Image result for miles smiles

Even Lee cracks a grin.


Image result for lee majors

80 comments:

  1. The market knows how to dislodge traders before takeoff!

    (a) The January 20 low for the S&P500 (1812) was retested yesterday. Note how it undercut the previous low by 2 points (to 1810), thus successfully running a majority of the sell-stops investors likely had in place. It then reversed on a dime to close 19 points higher. Were those who sold at 1810 likely to buy back in +1% higher? Not a chance, especially with the SPX showing weakness in the final minutes.
    (b) Today? The SPX gapped higher, and hasn’t looked back! Currently up another 35 points, or about +2%.
    (c) The DJIA is up +305 points (also about +2%). VT (world stock index) +1.75%. EEM (emerging markets) +1.41%.
    (d) Oil. Up an incredible +11.2% (not a typo)!
    (e) Bonds. The long bond (TLT) was up a phenomenal +1.6% between Tuesday and Thursday? Hey, it’s off an equally phenomenal -1.78% today.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Which oil is up 11.2%? Olive oil? :) USO closed up 4.33% on Friday...

      Delete
  2. By this logic, gold should be bought. The short worked, BTW

    ReplyDelete
  3. Could be a very fast bounce when it comes

    "When it comes to sentiment polls, any one week can be volatile. To get a truer feel, we like to take a slightly longer-term look at things. Using an eight-week moving average, the AAII bulls are now lower than in March 2009 and March 2003. Those two times, of course, were near the end of major bear markets. Think about that—there are fewer bulls currently than there were at the depths of the last two major bear market lows."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I hope so I'm getting sick of doing nothing!

      Delete
    2. Actually, the crowd has been correctly bullish for many years, since about 2013. Could it be correctly bearish for at least a year?

      Delete
  4. OSTK - I'm guessing the $20M award is priced in now?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wonder what natty's likely to do next week?

    ReplyDelete
  6. So many stocks are pummeled, sure would be helpful to know which ones shoot back up.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I really think we see cheap value stocks outperforming going forward - thinks like financials, energy, emerging markets, etc. which have gotten very cheap. I think the whole growth outperforming thing is over for the next few years and it is value's turn. Maybe energy doesn't because of the huge overinvestment last decade so you have to be carefule, but I think you want to buy cheap stocks across a few industries/countries

      Delete
  7. PGR - Kinda defied general market direction, hun?

    ReplyDelete
  8. This is really fascinating technology, IMO.
    http://www.progressivesurface.com/newsArticle.php?id=23

    ReplyDelete
  9. My guess: 1717 is the low over the next month. We bounce for 2-4 months and peak at the 200 DMA then roll over again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm not looking to buy anything, especially when the worlds largest container shipping company (Maersk) say things are deteriorating worse than in 2008 and when the world’s largest company (apple) is projecting a 14% drop in earnings.

      Delete
    2. I'm thinking that there are many buyable stocks at current levels that you will be happy to have in a couple years, probably later this year. What the path looks like to get there, I can see it going either way, but in the end, higher.

      I'm happy to see money coming out of AAPL, IBB, etc., even though I think this selling is dragging the market down and I also think there is a lot of forced selling coming out of the Middle East. Once the fear and forced selling subsides, people will be looking for places to put their money and I think they will be staying away from the AAPL, IBB stocks which hurt them recently and see things like ING at an 8 p/e or UNP at 13 p/e and move into those types of stocks instead.

      Another thing to think about - saw where when global stocks enter a 20% bear market, like they just did, they are on average 20% higher 1 year later, and only really bad time was 2008 where is was 17% lower. 2001 was 4% lower, but the bulk of the rest were far above 20% higher. So taking a longer view, things should be better.

      Delete
    3. I like taking a cautious approach when we're below the 200dma and the 200dma is downward sloping just because I really have no idea how low it can go. I know it's simple minded but it helps you avoid the big one. I could easily build an argument why the central banks around the world have lost control of markets and have little ability to help things should the economy turn down (which seems inevitable within the next few years)...so who is to say we won't go into a 2008 style meltdown? I do know that I haven't heard a single person other than schiff or faber mention this possibility. Not saying it will happen but you never know

      Delete
  10. Another interesting thing - investment grade corporates bonds as represented by LQD are at 4 year lows, so the yields are at 4 year highs and they have continued downward since October when Treasuries turned up.

    I guess there is 2 ways to read this - bearish is that people are fearful for the economy and only want government bonds. Bullish is it is just fear driving people to treasuries. If I look at individual bonds issues, even AAA Exxon Mobile Bonds (higher rated than the US government) look pretty stable and don't show the same signs fo fear.

    ReplyDelete
  11. http://fmdcapital.com/its-never-a-perfect-time-to-invest-in-stocks

    Indeed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'll never again trust something named FMD after the 2013 debacle!

      Delete
  12. Cheapness of value stocks vs. growth getting up to 1998 levels. Growth outperformance did continue for a couple more years, but then value stocks outperformed for 7 years by 8.5% a year:

    http://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-02-11/investors-ponder-the-value-versus-growth-debate

    ReplyDelete
  13. "Actually, the crowd has been correctly bullish for many years, since about 2013. Could it be correctly bearish for at least a year?"

    David - I agree with this comment. I mentioned this to a friend asking me about the market. He said he's a contrarian and is very bullish because everyone is bearish. I told him it's actually been better to not be contrarian for several years

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's probably because the market in the last few years has been driven by the Fed, and so those who followed the Fed won. Now Fed is tightening, and so it is easy for all market participants to see that nothing good lies ahead until previous monetary excesses have disappeared. The economy does not matter now. The market grew MUCH faster than economy in the past five years, and so it would be natural for it to return to where it would have been if it were growing at 3% since 2010...

      Delete
    2. I would call the crowd weakly bullish the last few years. People have been bullish, but every time the market weakens, it seems sentiment drops very quickly.

      Also, typically, at real market tops, you see the crowd staying bullish even as the market starts to roll over with people calling it "buying opportunities". This time again, we have many sentiment surveys should extreme fear, often at levels like we saw at the end of the 2002 and 2009 bear markets after a relatively minor pullback so far. Implies people are not all-in to the market yet, so will be buyers higher as the market turns up.

      Delete
    3. I think it's really tricky to look at these sentiment reports and get much out of them. The public has been skeptical from day one of any real recovery and you get that from reading comments to every bullish article. But is that more because we now have more access to people's thoughts than in the past because of the internet? And is that indicative of just public thought while the majority of the market's moves have been driven by larger money which stayed the course throughout? Every dip was bought while the public remained skeptical. Were larger investors conditioned to buy dips and ended up staying long for too long? And have they been voting bearishly but acting bullishly?

      I know from my own point of view I stayed long for too long despite my own cautiousness and I'm still a good deal below my all time highs hit last year, albeit way ahead of where I would have been had I acted bearishly.

      What about big money guys like Icahn that were warning of doom for the past 2-3 years? Look at some of his largest holdings: FCX, CHK, LNG. All of these have gotten decimated. Based on his public comments it looks like he was super bearish and if he had to submit to these sentiment surveys he would have probably said he was bearish, yet his own actions were contrary to that...maybe because he was conditioned to the idea that pullbacks would be shallow?

      Delete
  14. POTUS repeated, oil prices will remain low for a lengthy period. Great for pickup and SUV sales, bread and butter for auto manufacturer profits?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wouldn't be taking my commodity advice from Obama - haha!

      Delete
  15. Oceans of debt on a Biblical scale?

    NMM - Hyundai Group is the owner of major Korean shipping infrastructure, port facilities, etc. sporting a 7x debt to market cap ratio, and major charterer of NMM. Thus the issue for NMM is Hyundai is forced to cancel their contracts.

    My general view of South America is they were encouraged to load up on $US denominated debt and purchase US made goods at low rates and this came to a screeching halt when the $US took off for it's moon shot. Salt in the wounds is China's slowdown, market for iron ore and raw materials dropped off a cliff.

    Meanwhile Ukraine has come to the agricultural forefront as rapid farmland expansion has taken place, pressuring grain prices, Australia has opened up mining, as well as Mongolia.

    Good luck to us....

    ReplyDelete
  16. AAII - Is this a fear index? I thought VIX was a gauge of fear?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Both are and many others. Most technicians use a broad range of fear indicators to gauge the overall market.

      Delete
    2. I was pointing out that VIX isn't in panic mode.

      Delete

    3. VIX hit 27 last week, highest it's been since 2011 other than the August sell-off.

      Delete
  17. To me this is one of the more fundamentally negative things hurting the market:
    http://wsj-us.econoday.com/showimage.asp?imageid=30025

    This could be your typical inventory type recession (ie business recession).

    Inventory to sales of around 1.40 is the highest it has been over the past 20 years:
    http://i0.wp.com/bawerk.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Wholesale-Sales-with-dollar-diff.png?resize=730%2C376

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Declining US$ should help with these.

      Not sure how the market will react - if these start to turn down, would that be a positive signal for the market or do we need to see progress in getting these actually fown first?

      Delete
    2. Dollar decline will most likely be short lived IMO due to the long term stability the us provides over others. I'm willing to bet the recent decline had a lot to do with China selling dollars

      Delete
  18. CP - Not sure if you've been following ORBC but the stock has held up really well and I saw that LMT just signed on with them.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Gold being kicked to the curb, probably positive indicator for stocks. Life can change in an instant, on this highway.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Gold has had a good start to the year the last few years, like this year, and then drifted back down through the year. Will be interesting to see if it can hold up this year.

      Delete
    2. I almost bought dgld on Friday. Too bad

      Delete
  20. Reasons for this futures rally are kind of suspect. Bad trade data out of China and worse than expected GDP out of Japan ignored by fact China pegged yuan higher which seems to be having a bigger impact on markets than anything else the past 6 months.

    Will be interesting to see how high the rally can go

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think it also the fear coming out of European banking somewhat and OPEC talking about cutting production to support the oil price.

      And chartwise, we are around the AUg, 2015 and Oct 2014 lows, so a logical place to bounce, assuming no recession.

      Delete
    2. Yeah. I know the ECB is going to basically do whatever it can to backstop their banking system. Gotta wonder how long this goes on before people get sick of the CB backstops.

      Delete
    3. One sign of a market bottom? When prices move up on bad news.

      Delete
    4. 2nd - you could have said that during much of 2014/5 and yet the market erased all of the gains.

      I will say that oil has been acting strong of late, really since the January lows. The time from the top in 2014 to the bottom last week is almost identical to the 2007-9 top/bottom in stocks.

      Delete
    5. I can't find a ton of good balance sheets in the energy space, though, to get me interested. HLX is the only name I can come up with that has a decent balance sheet. The rest I'm assuming will be zombie stocks.

      Delete
    6. I also think the Saudi effect is way overstated. I could be wrong but I highly doubt we get back into the 50's again. I think this had everything to do with the strong dollar and weak China. The downturn started snowballing downward well before Saudi refused to cut production in November 2014. Obviously, things probably got overdone on the downside and they're due for a bounce. A coordinated cut would help. I don't know enough about oil prices to say for sure, but if I just look at it from an outsider's perspective in terms of when prices started moving down it was pretty obvious there was another cause for the downturn.

      Delete
    7. There is news of some talks between the OPEC countries and Russia to cut production. If OPEC and Russia produce around 50 million barrels per day and the market is over supplied by 1.5 million barrels, works out to s 3% cut. Let's say a 6% cut to also offset Iran starting to grow again.

      Pretty easy to build a business case for a 6% production cut if it produced a 33% increase in price back to say $0 per barrel.

      But if the low cost producers like Saudi, Iran, Iraq, which are almost 40% of this, don't buy in, hard for the rest of the guys with higher costs and more pressing financial needs to make the bigger cuts to get price up.

      Delete
    8. Tepper bought some SWN, wonder if he regrets that already or still owns it in 6 mos.

      Delete
  21. Mike,

    Most metrics show the US$ overvalued against most currencies like the Euro - fair value is around $1.25 per Euro and it is at $1.12.

    There are reasons for that like the US raising rates first and the US economy outperforming, but valuations will be a headwind against it getting much higher as companies and consumers will change their behaviour and naturally put pressure to bring this back more to fair value.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think that makes sense but I think the worlds economy is much worse than we realize and relatively speaking the dollar should be much higher

      Delete
    2. I know this sounds ridiculous but I think there's a growing chance we reverse all of the QE3 gains and bottom out at 1,460 or so.

      Delete
  22. Despite what seems like an steady slide in the stock market since 2016, S&P is actually down only 1% over the past month. Even more interestingly, EEM is actually up 3% over the past month. So maybe the bottom of the 2016 correction has indeed been reached...

    I recall that in 2006, once Bernanke mentioned that he will start raising rates, there was a steep slide in S&P and commodities for about a month. And then a return to new highs...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The fed started tightening in December 2013 via tapering

      Delete
  23. SUNE- What happened to this one Friday?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Same old "hedge funds piled in" that results in spiraling prices? As if hedge funds represent death, maybe they're actually short.

      Delete
    2. Thus, the obligatory response "Your f-d by us again, sell" as opposed to proactive assessment:
      BACML: "Sun Edison Inc: Downgrading to Neutral as legal and financing concerns mount
      February 16, 2016 06:00 AM ET"

      Delete
  24. TOF, thanks for talking up HLX yesterday! I bought some last Thursday and would like to see it run to $4...

    ReplyDelete
  25. TOF, thanks for talking up HLX yesterday! I bought some last Thursday and would like to see it run to $4...

    ReplyDelete
  26. I was gradually selling my PM calls last week, the last being Jan 2017 calls on gdxj, which I sold at gdxj = 24. Will probably start reloading them gradually once gld hits 110...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're probably one of the few who's made money this year.

      Delete
    2. The rest of us are waiting for the turnaround that isn't coming.

      Delete
    3. I have no desire to be in this market. Been waiting patiently until what I think are much better opportunities come the fall/next year.

      Delete
    4. I'm sill pretty fully invested. Been tough, but I still think I will be happy I toughed it out through this period by the end of the year and probably earlier.

      But you are a much faster trader than me, so easier for you to move in and out quickly.

      Delete
  27. Today I'm hearing about how ISIS is experiencing financial difficulty. A couple months ago I was hearing about how lost oil sales (due to the ISIS money train Putin was attacking) weren't going to hurt ISIS

    ReplyDelete
  28. 63.3% of all the days in 2016 have closed (up or down) 1% for the SPX. Only 1931, 1932, and 1933 were higher.

    I told you guys this chit wasn't normal.

    ReplyDelete
  29. I hate chipotle but for some unknown reason I ate it last night. I've been bed ridden with a stomach flu for the past 20 hours

    ReplyDelete
  30. My question is when do central banks come to the aid of their countries, (as opposed to the current "plan") what needs to happen to make this occur?

    ReplyDelete
  31. Incy - where does one get 200m at the drop of a hat like that?

    ReplyDelete
  32. Looks like we have found at least a short term bottom in the market. Is the final one of this downturn? No-one knows, but I think it should be good for a while more at least. But always a good sign when people are bringing out the 1932 compares like Mark found.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Starting to think we don't need oil to bounce for the markets to go up, just to stabilize - even here in the $30 region, might be enough for people to feel better about the economy and bid stocks up.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Good read from Howard Marks:

    https://www.oaktreecapital.com/docs/default-source/memos/what-does-the-market-know.pdf

    ReplyDelete