Friday Failure – 1,880 is a Bust!
by phil - April 25th, 2014 8:27 am
Did you see the frightened ones?
Did you hear the falling bombs?
Did you ever wonder
Why we had to run for shelter
When the promise of a brave new world
Unfurled beneath a clear blue sky? - Pink Floyd
What were we excited about?
With 204 of the S&P 500 now reporting 68% (139) have beat earnings estimates BUT only 44% (90) have beaten on revenues. It's yet another year of cost-cutting and share buy-backs to boost earnings per share with no actual growth in real earnings yet the market, overall, is up 35% from where it was last year on a 2.9% overall growth in EPS. - THAT'S FRIGGIN' CRAZY!
If we back out BAC, who had the crap fined out of them this Q, then the S&P earnigs are up a more respectable 4.9% but, on the other hand, that includes superstars like AAPL, who dropped $13Bn on the S&P by themselves, and it's very unlikely the rest of the S&P will bring up the curve. In fact, Zacks is now estimating that overall earnings will be DOWN 0.9% for the quarter compared to last year and DOWN 4.6% from last quarter.
No wonder we are seeing the continued exodus of "smart money," who sell in volume into every rally we have. What's getting scary (and keeping us bearish) is that now we aren't even making gains on weak volume. Yesterday's move up was 100% due to AAPL, which gained over 8% on the day.
Since AAPL is 15%+ of the Nasdaq, that 8% gain should have popped the Nasdaq 1.2% and the rally in AAPL suppliers should have lifted the index even more. But it didn't. The Nasdaq was only up 0.8%, so it would have been down 0.5% without AAPL's contribution and even further without the rally in suppliers and the sectors that support them.
As I said to our Members yesterday ahead of the bell, Apple's gains are Samsung and others' lossses, NOT an indication of strength in the…
THREE THINGS I THINK I THINK
by ilene - September 15th, 2010 7:54 pm
THREE THINGS I THINK I THINK
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
1) What have you done for me lately?
Should we blame the political system for the downfall of Wall Street? Wall Street has increasingly become a place of “what have you done for me lately”. The advent of the day trader and the hedge fund simply represent this incredible shift towards short-term thinking. Louis Rukeyser’s Wall Street has evolved into “Mad Money” and “Fast Money”. But where does this change in psychology come from? Is it the politicians who are running for re-election seemingly every day? Is it simply the information age and a case of wanting everything sooner rather than later? I don’t know. But politically, this is a disastrous change. How can we get back on track towards a sustainable recovery when every policy measure we implement appears to be an attempt to fix some short-term problem that just happens to coincide with an election? I can handle the advent of the short-term trader (in fact I prefer it), but no one in Congress thinks of the long-term anymore and that’s a scary fact.
2) The one thing that jumps out at me
“What’s the one thing that most jumps out at you over the last few years?” That’s what someone asked me a few days ago. The one thing that has really jumped out at me in recent years is the overnight futures markets. I like to trade illiquid markets. It’s why I stay up late and why I get up early. An illiquid
In recent years those spreads have closed (at least it feels like they have – perhaps it’s just more volatile and a bit more liquid). It is similar to the way it was back…