Friday, May 3, 2013

The Morning Call---Postponing the inevitable


The Morning Call

5/3/13

The Market
           
    Technical

            The bulls still rule.  Yesterday, the indices (14831, S&P 1597) gained back almost everything it lost on Wednesday, closing within all major uptrends: short term (14243-14924, 1564-1641), intermediate term (13850-18850, 1469-2059) and long term (4783-17500, 688-1750).

            Volume was anemic though breadth recovered.  The VIX continues to meander within its short and intermediate term downtrends.

            GLD advanced, remaining within its intermediate term downtrend and its long term uptrend.

Bottom line: with such a powerful bid under the Market, any discussion about counter indicators always appears like sour grapes.  The trend is up and will be until it is not.   Nevertheless, tops are generally processes rather than events; so there are almost always warning signs.  The key is being able to tell at what point the camel’s back has been broken so to speak.  I have never figured that out, so I rely on our Valuation Model in cooperation with our Price Disciplines. 

Unfortunately, that always makes me wrong for a period of time around Market turns.  If you  are cursed with the same timing handicap as I am, I think that you should have a decent cash position.  If you are one of the skilled traders, I don’t need to tell you to have your finger on the trigger.

If any of our stocks trade into their Sell Half Ranges, our Portfolios will continue to Sell.

            Update on sentiment (short):

    Fundamental
    
     Headlines

            More mixed data yesterday: weekly jobless claims and the April trade deficit  were better expected while first quarter productivity and unit labor costs fell short of estimates.  The highly watched positive jobless claims number was a pleasant surprise; so that made investors happy. 

            ***over night, Chinese services PMI came in below expectations

But what seemed to really goose the Market was the ECB’s rate reduction coupled with Draghi’s statement that monetary policy will remain accommodative.  What surprised me was that the Market would react so positively to an already well telegraphed
event.  One could argue I supposed that it wasn’t discounted sufficiently; but I find that hard to believe.  In the end I think that it says much about the underlying unwillingness of investors to fight the Fed---and at this point I disconnect.  Not because I don’t believe or understand it, but because (1) I don’t have a scenario where this blind faith in the power of liquidity gets resolved in a way that doesn’t come back and bite those investors on the ass and (2) I am not smart enough to know how to play the interim period between ‘blind faith’ and a ‘bite on the ass’.

            I could go into another rant (1) about how disconnected from reality I believe that stock prices have become because of this cliché, (2) about how if the economy weakens, earnings are going to disappoint and/or the student loan, auto loan and new mortgage loan bubbles are at risk of bursting and/or the current friendly game of competitive devaluation could turn nasty (3) about how if the economy doesn’t weaken, the day of reckoning for the Fed/central banks massive liquidity injection draws ever closer, (4) and about how, in any case, the risks are high that this money printing episode will not end well.   But you have already heard it all.

Bottom line:  the upbeat jobs data was welcome after some rough numbers earlier in the week.  Plus Draghi’s statement regarding the ECB willingness to continue to exercise monetary accommodation helps our EU ‘muddle through’ scenario.  While both are a mild ointment on my concerns expressed yesterday regarding the continuing deterioration in economic data globally, the amber light is still flashing and the likelihood of a more rapid transition into the red zone remains. 

If our forecast holds, we must face the risks related to the unwinding of the current egregious and accelerating expansion of globally liquidity sooner rather than later.  If a slowdown occurs, then while we may not have to worry about a reversal of Fed policy anytime soon, we will then have to worry about declining corporate profitability, the soundness of bank balance sheets (cough, derivatives, cough), the bursting of several credit bubbles and an intensification of the battle of competitive devaluations.

            And (medium)::

                And (medium):




Steve Cook received his education in investments from Harvard, where he earned an MBA, New York University, where he did post graduate work in economics and financial analysis and the CFA Institute, where he earned the Chartered Financial Analysts designation in 1973. His 40 years of investment experience includes institutional portfolio management at Scudder, Stevens and Clark and Bear Stearns. Steve's goal at

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