Wednesday, May 7, 2008

So Close, Bears

Maybe now that Barack has likely sealed the deal, so, too have the bears. Nah.

Actually, I wrote the text for today's column before noon today, as even with Barron's Online's lightening fast publishing turnaround it's still not real time. When I finished the piece the Dow was down about 70 - not much more than yet another wiggle in May.

When the editor got through with it and sent it off to production, the Dow was down 180 and sinking. I really hate it when the market starts to drop before I get a chance to tell everyone I am more bearish. Usually, it is thanks to the Fed but today it was just a heavy market sinking on oil.

But don't get too excited yet bears. The May market is still the same old head-fakey place it was yesterday. Oil is soaring today but I've seen reports that Gann analysis pegs now as a top. Can't argue that since I just don't know. But it does seem that oil is getting a little carried away.

So if the stock market is reversing here or if it has a few percent left in it, I think we remain in a bear market. I can't wait to see the AAII poll numbers this week to see if the ranks of the bulls are still increasing as they have been for weeks.

Does anybody care that 52-week lows are still beating new 52-week highs? Oh, the humanity!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great column and blog (as always), and good summary of the confusion and early "drift" of this bear market rally. I assure you the bears have not lost sight of the long time-line technicals which make this rally all the more frustrating as financial and economic facts were ignored daily. Given what has felt like a higher than usual number of head fakes, your comments are reassuring.

I must be getting paranoid. I keep envisioning that CNBC cheerleaders and large institutions are conspiring to create the head fakes and fleece Joe Sixpack of his meager investments.

Anonymous said...

Great column and blog (as always), and good summary of the confusion and early "drift" of this bear market rally. I assure you the bears have not lost sight of the long time-line technicals which make this rally all the more frustrating as financial and economic facts were ignored daily. Given what has felt like a higher than usual number of head fakes, your comments are reassuring.

I must be getting paranoid. I keep envisioning that CNBC cheerleaders and large institutions are conspiring to create the head fakes and fleece Joe Sixpack of his meager investments.

Anonymous said...

Long term trend is down, intermediate trend is up and todays action did not change that.

Should intermediate trend reverse, then perhaps a retest of lows, but I prefer to react to the market than forecasting.

Anonymous said...

Long term trend is down, intermediate trend is up and todays action did not change that.

Should intermediate trend reverse, then perhaps a retest of lows, but I prefer to react to the market than forecasting.

Michael Kahn said...

Having been there, I can tell you that financial television does not strive to be right on the markets. They want to be entertaining and informative. Being right is only worth it if it helps keep viewers.

With that said, I do not believe anyone in the media is trying to manipulate the markets. I firmly believe everyone involved wants to do a good job. But let's get back to the first graf, er, paragraph (that was editor-speak) and say that a positive spin is always better than a negative spin because the latter scares viewers away. No eyeball, no paycheck.