Wednesday Outlook: One Ugly Market

That wasn’t the type of greeting Obama was expecting from markets, I suppose. (I think markets behaved similarly the day after the election.) Maybe it’s just that most investors were hanging out at the Mall in DC or watching TV.

This is one ugly market featuring disappointments atop disappointments. It seems simple enough: earnings and outlooks suck, write-downs continue, plant closings continue apace, a new administration isn’t up to speed yet and so forth.

Then we have dramatic recent headlines like “biggest rally since WWII” and today “worst yearly start since 1928” and so forth. Nothing is being done moderately.

Selling today was broadbased early with materials (Alcoa), energy (Conoco), drugs (Pfizer), financials (State Street trashed and so were others) and tech (IBM) leading the decline.

Volume was moderate to heavy and breadth both sucked and blowed. (We’ll grab Yahoo/Finance’s data before it falls apart.) Nevetheless, without all the data yet, I’d say we probably had a negative 90/10 day.

































Then we get really scary headlines and stories of an impending debt disaster (I thought we already had one!) from the Economic Times.




































Bonds were down sharply early, then the flight to safety trade reemerged and a bid appeared.

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Comments

[Jason Rines...:]

Almost time to buy. I like pharma for 5 year buy and hold. Novartis just got approval of a new pattent. Pfizer is getting cheap but transforming part of there business to go heavy in generics (M&A's) will take time. I own a company in this space to clearly state my position. I still maintain we aren't missing much by waiting until Q1 earnings are released and seeing some finer details of the fiscal stimilus.

Jan 21 10:22 AM

[proseadvocate:]

I had to laugh when he said the market sucks and blows.

Jan 21 12:47 PM

[dw57:]

i doubt this had to do with any thing other than investors finally figured out that banks are broke. and should be nationalized so they sold out to as many other investors (AKA suckers) to trim the coming loses from them

Jan 21 04:05 PM