Tag Archives: stocks

Take this week’s equity drop seriously.

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Longs are playing with fire here. This market is at least as dangerous as 2007 or 2000. What happens when this multi-decadal asset mania fizzles out, like they all do? The last 12 months show that it won’t give up the ghost without a fight, but it is very long in the tooth, as is this huge rally. Also, the short-term action of smooth rallies followed by sudden drops is uncannily similar to 2007.

Stocks left the atmosphere in 1995, but since 2000 gravity has been re-asserting itself. After extreme overvaluation comes extreme undervaluation. On today’s earnings and dividends, even average or “fair” multiples would put the Dow near 4000, right back to 1995.

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Charts from Stockcharts.com

A note on gold and the dollar:

I suspected a few weeks ago that gold had a rally coming, and now that we’ve seen it I’d be careful to use stops and not get too confident.

I still like gold for preservation of purchasing power through this secular bear market in real estate and stocks, but when financial markets turn down again in earnest it won’t be spared. Remember, it kept going to new highs in late 2007 and early 2008 after stocks had peaked, but then tanked with everything else when panic hit. Cash is still king, especially in US dollars and Treasury bonds. We may have only seen the start of this deflation.

Gold set up for another rally?

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I can hardly believe it, but gold has failed to follow through on the decline from December’s $1228 high, despite the extreme and persistent bullishness leading up to that parabolic top. It’s held tight to $1100 and formed a contracting triangle, while DSI bullishness has dropped to the mid-teens. This is very similar to the set-up in sugar last fall before it blasted off from 0.22 to 0.30 and put in its final high (it trades now around 0.17):

Futures.tradingcharts.com

Here’s gold, also in a weekly chart:

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What’s interesting about this juncture is that stocks are extremely overbought on the kinds of readings that typically mark at least an intermediate-term top (put:call, sentiment surveys, waning momentum, etc). Since the dollar broke higher last December while stocks were unphased, we’ve seen somewhat of a breakdown of the old correlations (dollar and yen vs. everything else).

If the PM complex does levitate as stocks decline, it would resemble the action in early 2008. After panic and the deflation trade gathered some steam, the metals eventually succumbed. Here is the GDX mining stock ETF in blue vs. the S&P 500 in red:

Yahoo! Finance

That should do it for today.

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Just put the hedges back on. Wouldn’t mind going long from these levels, even.

Source: prophet.net

But boy, hard selling across the board: stocks, metals, oil, currencies — nothing is excempt. But hurray for the grains, which have held steady. When risk appetite comes back, they should benefit.

You know what? We might be doing a megaphone pattern here — big ramp up tomorrow if that is the case. It would all be an interesting, wide-ranging correction before we continue down, and down we are going: I wouldn’t be surprised to see SPX 700 by summer, 800 by April.

Fear is on vacation

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A low and choppy equity put:call ratio on a high and choppy market remind me of the second quarter of 2007, the Goldilocks era. The 5-day average CPCE is my favorite short-term fear gauge, since it is so mean-reverting and highly predictive of stock action on a month-to-month basis.

Source: indexindicators.com

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And here’s a 5-year shot of the VIX (the most popular fear gauge). Sure looks due for a spike:

Source: Interactive Brokers

The 2000′s in one chart

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The Global Dow since 2001:

Source: wsj.com

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This chart makes it clear that the bubble still has a lot of air left.  The 2009 lows were well above those of 2002/3, and now stocks are back into boom-time 2006 valuations, as if the credit collapse and associated declines in earnings and dividends had never happened. This year demonstrates better than any other in modern times that stock market action has very little to do with economic reality.

Trading update: now long gold, long stocks, short dollar

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Well, that gold short worked out to the tune of 65 bucks per ounce. I reversed it when gold hit 1150 and the dollar stopped soaring, and went long both the yen (which has utterly crashed in the last week as the Nikkei has soared) and euro at around the same time.

Today’s trade is very interesting since stocks remained very strong in the face of a massive dollar rally and commodity sell-off. That strength says to me that if and when the dollar retraces part of its move, stocks could power to a new high.

I’ll look to reverse all of these trades again soon, since I suspect that this is a topping process and that the big money in the coming months will be made going long the dollar and yen against just about everything else.

Deflation trade returning?

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While Americans were on holiday, the last couple of days have seen some exciting market action. Stock indexes around the world declined roughly 3-8%, “safe” US and German government bonds rallied, and the dollar plunged to a new low then rebounded very strongly. Gold made a new all-time dollar high at $1196 as the dollar made its low, but when the buck turned yesterday gold plunged to $1130 as US stocks futures (which traded round-the-clock through the holiday) wiped out two weeks of gains in about 24 hours. Higher yield currencies such as the Aussie, Kiwi and South African Rand fell 3-4%, oil extended its decline to under $75, and copper got smacked $0.20 off its new high. One spot of green was natural gas, which extended its bounce to 14% off an area of strong technical support.

Gold showed us what can happen to a levered market after a parabolic move breaks its uptrend. In the wee hours today, it fell $55 in just two hours before rebounding right to resistance (the previous support at $1180, which when broken, precipitated the crash). Here’s a chart of the last two days:

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Commentators blame the Dubai default for this week’s gut-check, and the event may have acted as a catalyst, but the fact is that the risk/reflation trade had reached new heights over the last couple of weeks on a wave of complacency. Early this week the VIX nearly hit the teens and the daily put:call ratio put in a super-low print, while the Nikkei, Treasuries and yen offered warnings that all was not well. Browsing through the world index charts on Bloomberg, it is striking how few other markets have followed the Dow to new highs this month. The troops have been losing heart since summer as the generals kept charging ahead, a classic case of inter-market non-confirmation, which can also be seen in the weak action in small-caps and sector indexes like the transports, financials and utilities.

In last few trading hours of the week (this morning), many markets staged a very sharp recovery, as you can see here in this 1-month view of S&P futures:

Source: Interactive Brokers

Today’s pattern played out in nearly identical fashion in oil, gold, silver and other stock indexes. The stall point offered a clean spot for initiating or adding shorts, and those who did so were rewarded nicely in the last 30 minutes of trading as everything sold off quickly.

Next week should be very interesting. The risk trade plateaued for the last two weeks and went through the usual distributive action, so I have been expecting a down leg of some magnitude. Wouldn’t it be nice if this were the one to finally put a nail in the reflation coffin? I am sick of this market, as would be anyone who understands how far out of line these prices are with value or economic reality.

As Dubai’s default reminds us, this credit bust is far from over. There are still trillions and trillions in bad debt out there, and nearly every major bank in the world is still bankrupt and contracting lending (down another 3% in the US in Q3). We have all the hotels, condos and strip malls we’ll need for ages, and the consumer culture of the late 20th and early 21st century is just an unfortunate historical blip. Don’t tell that to Wall Street equity analysts, though — they still think the S&P will earn over $60 next year, just like in boom-time 2005.

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PS — check out Dave Rosenberg’s latest essay for a good commentary on the week’s action. You have to sign up, but it’s free.  Click here.

Distribution time

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Markets have rebounded feebly from their early November bottom, with speculative interest focused in fewer sectors than in earlier risk binges. The hot money is now concentrated in big-cap US stocks over small-caps, and in gold over silver, reflecting a shift in preference for quality over junk.

With upside momentum taking a breather, we’re in another distribution zone, where assets move from early buyers to late comers. The put:call ratio, my favorite indicator of complacency, has backed off its recent highs and could approach the extreme lows we’ve seen recently if stocks remain at these levels for a few more sessions. That would be another excellent short-entry signal.

Souce: indexindicators.com

Here’s the last month of trading in the December S&P 500 futures contract:

Source: Interactive Brokers

If precedent holds, we could chop around up here for another week or so and test the highs a couple more times before rolling over. What’s important is that we have made no net progress for three trading days, and that we have a clear stop for a short position.

The moonshot in the Dow has not been confirmed by any other indexes, though a few of them have made minor new highs. The Russell 2000 remains the laggard, remaining well under the October and September highs. The Nikkei is similarly weak, and crude oil has just been working its way down a channel:

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I also suspect that gold’s run is over or nearly so. I’ve never heard so much talk of gold on the financial news and in other contexts. 19 traders are bullish for every bear. This is about as lopsided as it gets, and we’ve had a huge parabolic rise. It is hard to nail down where these ramps will end, but like oil in 2008, when their momentum stalls, they can fall extremely fast.

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For another take on things, here’s the ratio of gold to the US dollar index:

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Clearly the above trajectory is unsustainable. This is the kind of market action that draws everyone in and forces most shorts to cover. When that process is over, an asset can fall under its own weight. Conversely, the most fear and despised currency appears due for another bull run in 2010, in large part because of all the new debt that has piled up this year in the corporate bond frenzy and renewed carry-trade (borrow dollars and buy anything).

That said, gold should continue to outperform most every other asset class for years, since as professor Roy Jastram showed, its purchasing power increases in deflation when there is a gold-standard and when there is not (it is money, after all).

Trading notes

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I thought I’d make a quick post here to update some of my thoughts on the markets. Here’s the S&P 500:

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Most major world markets and US indexes look more or less like the above. Every one has rolled over since mid-October, and some made their highs several weeks before that. Based on measures of breadth and volume, this has been a strong and broad decline over the last two weeks. Fear has returned in pretty good measure, as witnessed by a 50% jump in the VIX and a breakout from its downward trend. Oil and precious metals fell, and the dollar broke its own downtrend, though it still needs another boost to confirm the move.

I was positioned very short equities, oil, metals and long the dollar, but over the last couple of days I’ve been tightening stops, closing positions and hedging the remainder. I believe we’ve seen the start of a major trend change, but for the next few days I would not be surprised by a minor stock rally. If one develops, I’d expect weak breadth and plenty of divergences if the primary uptrend has indeed been broken. That could be an excellent entry for short positions.

Tops are generally rounded affairs, though occassionaly declines from peaks will morph into waterfalls just when you’d expect them to ease up. We definitely have that potential here, and I will be expecting some fireworks on the other side of any little rally. It is entirely possible that the March lows could be revisited early in the new year, if a decline matches the aftermath of the 1930 and 1937 rallies.

Long live the dollar!

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Dollar index here, with my annotations of readings in the Daily Sentiment Index (trade-futures.com) at extremes and turning points:

Dollar chart from Stockcharts.com

Clusters of low-mid single digit readings are very rare and very bullish. You all know what it means for stocks when the dollar makes a big break upwards.

For good measure, here’s the 3-year chart of the S&P versus the 20-day average equity put:call ratio:

Source: indexindicators.com

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Remember my mention the other day of a possible bullish breakout in grains? Corn, wheat and oats all had fantastic days. I was in wheat, for a 4% day. Here’s corn, with its 9% move:

Source: futures.tradingcharts.com