Thursday, July 11, 2013

The Morning Call---Bernanke walks back 'tapering'. Now what?


The Morning Call

7/11/13

The Market
           
    Technical

            The indices (DJIA 15291, S&P 1652) marched in place yesterday (Dow down slightly, S&P barely up).  They remain within their short term trading ranges (14190-15550, 1576-1687) and their intermediate term (14311-19311, 1520-2108) and long term uptrends (4783-17500, 688-1750).

            Volume was flat; breadth down.  The VIX inched down again, finishing above the very short term uptrend and within its intermediate term downtrend.

            GLD was up again but remains outside the boundaries of all major trends.

Bottom line:  the Averages hit weak resistance levels (15343, 1653) yesterday and backed off a bit.  Given the recent Market strength, I can’t imagine how this resistance will be anything but temporary; but for the moment, it remains an obstacle.  The bigger issue is how stocks behave when they reach the May 22 highs (15550, 1687).  Given the over night futures trading, we will likely know soon enough.  In the meantime, any stock trading into its Sell Half Range will be acted on.

            The monthly performance of the Dow over varying time frames (short):

    Fundamental
    
      Headlines

            Two US economic releases yesterday: weekly mortgage and purchase applications, which were disappointing; and May wholesale inventories fell unexpectedly though sales were strong.  Not great news but neither is of overwhelming importance.  There was also poor news overseas with the Chinese trade data coming in quite negative and S&P lowering Italy’s credit rating.  Cumulatively, that got the Market off to a weak start.

            Mid afternoon the minutes from that latest FOMC meeting were released.  Investors initially took heart from their dovish tone (see below), the Market popped, then sold off as they decided that not much had changed. The Market closed flat.  Then the Bern-ank in a Q&A session after speech seemed to walk back his May/June statements on ‘tapering’ and in after hours trading, stocks exploded to the upside.

            Bottom line: I bring you this Huntley/Brinkley report not because the chronology of events is so important but rather to illustrate how confused investors are regarding Fed policy.  Or perhaps better said, how confused the Fed is regarding Fed policy. 

As you know, my current thesis is that as a result of Bernanke having introduced the possibility to Fed tightening, whether or not it actually happens in September or December is less important than the fact that the blind euphoria of QEInfinity is now dissipating. 

The over night pin action is now challenging that thesis in a major way.  If stocks break above their May highs, then I will have misjudged investors’ willingness to be lemmings to a Fed policy that has done little to meet its stated goals of economic growth and lower unemployment but primarily has enriched the speculative class. 

If not and investors have indeed become more risk averse, then the fall after this latest bit of Fed schizophrenia could be a hard one.

            For the bulls (short):

            Here is the best explanation that I have seen for why ‘tapering’ won’t be a problem---economically.  There are a couple of ‘ifs’ at the end that are crucial for the Market to stay sanguine; and note that he says nothing about investor psychology (medium):
           
            And the counterpoint (medium):

      Investing for Survival

            This is a good illustration of why I am doing the research on ETFs:



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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