Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Missed it by that much

For those of you old enough to remember or pop culture savvy enough to have ordered the DVD series, you can almost hear Maxwell Smart reciting this blog post's title. The stock market just missed breaking down today and the way things have been going, it will just be another good ole- fakeout before the real deal.

As I was going over the edit of today's column, which was based on the idea that the market was still in a stalemate, the Dow started to head for a triple digit loss after the first time in more than a week it was not spending the day flatlining. In other words, the short-term breakdown was upon us and once again conditions were going to change between the writing of my column and its publication on the Barron's site just after the close.

Fortunately for the journalist, the Dow recovered into the close for just a modest loss and no breakdown. If there is one thing anyone on a deadline hates is the need for a total rewrite with no time left on the clock.

But now that the bulls feel vindicated, I have a feeling the bears were just playing around. Oil is at a new record. Gold is bouncing back in a hurry. Bonds are starting to suck wind. And even the Fed is talking about inflation. All things I have talked about in the column in recent weeks.

Forget stagflation. Let's coin a new term - recessflation. I don't think we'll get near depressflation. Where is Jerry Ford when we need him? WIN!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok, we had our "fake out" today in this absurd market. Despite the worst credit crisis since the Great Depression, a tapped out consumer ensuring poor future earnings, and obvious inflation, the market is down only about 750 points since January 1st. How can this Harami pattern continue given the poor future outlook? If there is any rationality to the market we must have a break to the downside.

Michael Kahn said...

Sorry, anonymous, if that is your real name, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. If only I made up that saying myself.