Nov122016

Weekend Update – November 13, 2016

Weekend Update

Following the past week, it should be pretty easy to know what to do when the experts chime in and compete for your attention.

You run as far and as fast as your feet can possibly take you.

It will be fascinating to walk into a physician’s waiting room about 6 months from now and pick up some seven and eight month old copies of the news magazines sprinkled around the various end tables.

I’ve always enjoyed reading those aged articles just to get a snicker over how wrong the futurists and the experts consistently demonstrate themselves to be.

Most of the time, I don’t even have an appointment or any need. I just go to do the reading and then leave when someone finally asks “Sir, have you been helped?”

From the 99% probability of a Clinton victory in the Presidential election, as put forward by the Princeton Election Consortium, or the less sanguine 60-70% probability put forward by competitor fivethirtyeight, no one of any credibility got it right.

My guess is that if these elections predictions were written by stock analysts, the probability of a Clinton victory would have been reduced to 30% the day after the election, just as price targets and ratings are so often changed after stock moving news has already done its work.

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Aug202016

Weekend Update – August 21, 2016

Weekend Update

We are pretty much done with the most systemically important earnings reports for this most current earnings season.

To say that it has been a confusing mix of results and projections would be an understatement.

By the end of the week, we had our fourth consecutive week of almost no net change. Yet the market remained within easy striking distance of its all time closing highs.

Why it’s at those all time closing highs is another question, but for the past 2 months the climb higher, while confounding, hasn’t disappointed too many people even as it’s given no reason to really be hopeful for more to come.

However, technicians might say that the lack of large moves at these levels is a healthy thing as markets may be creating a sustainable support level. 

That is an expression of hope.

Others may say that the clear lack of clarity gives no signal for committed movement in any direction.

That is an expression of avoidance, so as to preclude disappointment with whatever happens next. If you have no great hopes, you can’t really have great disappointment.

I buy into both of those outlooks, but have had an extraordinarily difficult time in believing that there is anything at immediate hand to use whatever support level is being created as a springboard to even more new highs.

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Jul92016

Weekend Update – July 10, 2016

Weekend Update

 I still have a fascination with license plates and the bumper stickers put on their cars.

The license plate thing these days is more geared toward trying to decipher the message contained on someone’s vanity plates.

That often takes a combination of having a very open mind as to the intended grouping of letters and numbers and to the message.

Of course, the exercise isn’t complete until then driving past the car driver and either giving them a thumbs up or a shoulder shrug.

The bumper sticker thing is more just a question of reading and then trying to imagine what the person in the car will look like once going past them.

For example, in my experience, those with the “Choose Civility” bumper sticker tend to be very rude drivers, but they don’t look rude.

What both fascinations have in common is that as I get older, the distance that I need to get within range to be able to read the plates and the bumper stickers is increasingly getting smaller and smaller.

That brings some danger, but sometimes it’s really hard to resist.

When I say “sometimes,” I mean that I can never resist and it is the reason that my wife won’t let me drive when we’re together.

I need to be within range.

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May212016

Weekend Update – May 22, 2016

Weekend Update

If you could really dodge a bullet, magicians from Harry Houdini to Penn and Teller would never have had to perfect the ability to catch them in their teeth.

Yet, we may have dodged a bullet this past week.

Forget about the fact that the stock market still seems to like the idea of higher oil prices. We’ve been dodging the impact of increasing oil prices through most of 2016. At some point, however, that will change. That bullet has been an incredibly slow moving one.

What we dodged was a second week of terrible retail earnings and continued over-reaction to the thought that a June 2016 interest rate hike was back on the table, as  Federal Reserve Governors are sounding increasingly hawkish.

Not that there wasn’t a reaction to the sense that such an increase was becoming more likely, but some decent earnings data coupled with increased inflation projections could have really fueled an exit for the doors.

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Apr92016

Weekend Update – April 10, 2016

Weekend Update

There probably aren’t too many people willing to admit they remember The Osmond’s song “(Just Like A) Yo-Yo.”

The really cool people would look at you with some disdain, as the only thing that could have possibly made the yo-yo tolerable to mention in any conversation was if it was somehow in connection to the song of that title by “The Kinks.” 

With her dovish words just the prior week, Janet Yellen set off another round of market ups and downs that have taken us nowhere, other than to wonder who or what we should believe and then how to behave in response.

That’s been the case all through 2016, as another week of ups and downs have left the S&P 500 just 0.2% higher year to date. Of course, that’s within a 17 month context in which the S&P 500 has had no net movement, but has certainly had lots of ups and lots of downs.

Reminds me of something.

For those that do recall happier times with a yo-yo in hand, you may recall “the sleeper.”

“The Sleeper” was deceiving.

There was lots of energy involved in the phenomenon, but not so obviously apparent, unlike the clear ups and downs of the standard yo-yo move.

Both, though, ended up going nowhere.

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