Global Chart Reveiw Shows Key Inflection Point
by phil - January 25th, 2010 3:00 am
Chart Review by Michael Clark
“By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”
-- John Maynard Keynes
SO, IS THIS FINALLY THE 'REAL' CORRECTION?
What a week it was. The Bears gave the Bulls some payback. Obama got a wake-up call. And the banks got a well-deserved scare (and we hope they will get a well-deserved hair cut).
The markets reacted, as one might expect, with selling. Actually, the selling began before the Massachusetts election and before Obama sent a shot across the Goldman Sach's bow. Last week Intel announced surprisingly strong earnings; and the stock started up and then sank. For the past half-year investor behavior had been the reverse: a buying spree for any stock that did not lose as much as it might have — beating 'Street expectations' that had been dumbed down over and over again during a quarter so that the company could report 'surprising' strength. Suddenly, now, even good earnings are being greeted with selling. Then came Massachusetts — wasn't that a Bee Gees' song?
All the lights went out in Massachusetts
Anyway, readers want to know where the markets stand today, after the sell-off this week. My view of it — my 'view', not my gut-feeling — is that we are, so far, merely correcting from an over-extended rally. This rally has been bizarre, to say the least. This has been a 'fear rally' — usually the 'fear' side of the equation is when selling comes in, 'greed' driving the expansion. But fear of systemic failure has driven this rally; and Ben Bernannke has been the captain sailing the 'Boat of Fear', Ben's logic — that more debt will solve the insolvency crisis — has a shadow side, the logic that a collapse in stock prices will result in systemic failure, international chaos, revolution, repression…made him believe that preservation of the status quo was requiired, at any price. A 'make-believe' recovery could be jump-started, perhaps, if the Fed could just stimulate (and simulate) another asset-bubble. After all – that is how his mentor and predecessor, Alan Greenspan, had become the darling of the coctail party crowd, leading member of Time Magazine's 'Committee to Save the World';…
A Look At Some of the Asian Markets
by Chart School - August 25th, 2009 1:51 pm
A Look At Some of the Asian Markets
Courtesy of Binve at Market Thoughts and Analysis
…. And it ain’t pretty.
The Shanghai Stock Market (via the SSEC) has been speculation central. It is one of the biggest casinos out there right now. But like any streak in Blackjack where you leave your winnings on the table when the cards are finally going your way, the smart players know to take some of it off the action and back into your bankroll. … because the house always wins eventually.
And like with any speculative endeavor, you only make money if you find somebody to buy it off you at a higher price: baseball cards, Tiffany lamps, Mark Rothko’s (yeesh), Houses, or shares of Stock.
It looks to me like the smart money has already cashed out and is enjoying a nice meal at Carnevino. Everybody else is still at the table because all the economists are saying recession is over, the world is in recovery!
So while SSEC is the real casino (and potential canary in the coal mine), the HSI is a bit less erratic / correlates a bit closer to the rest of the world’s markets. But it is still very much tied to the Chinese and Hong Kong economies.
So a very interesting observation presents itself: ….. The HSI is not making new highs with the rest of the American and European indices. I just checked Bloomberg (delayed unfortunately) and the high so far is 20750 today, still below the peak around 21300 reached a couple of weeks ago. Maybe it is too early (and they will break it today).
But it is worth pondering, are the Asian markets, the leaders in receiving the speculative investment inflow, signaling the sea change of speculative investment outflow?
[click on charts for larger images]
South Korea is looking a bit healthier (maybe not "healthy" so much, but at least less manic than the SSEC and HSI), but there is a *huge* resistance layer to be negotiated at the 62% retrace. Lets see how this one plays out