OldLimey

The Search for a Bottom

I agree - excellent article. Tks.

A Recovery Could Begin Sooner than You Think

Mr. Partridge: When I did my four years in Houghton Street, statements had to be backed by fact or reasoned argument rather than by assertion alone. Of course, that was over 30 years ago and we now live in a world which increasingly implores us to conflate assertion and fact. Don't we, messrs. Brown and Obama?

Markets Continue to React Negatively to Uncertainty

No, it isn't the uncertainty that's killing this market - it's the certainty. If the known, certain facts weren't so horrendous we'd worry less about what is unknown or uncertain.

Attention Fund Managers: It's Time to Buy

Doug Kass also said that November was the bottom.


On Mar 06 02:15 PM User 371238 wrote:

> I knew that I was going to get a lot of criticism for this article,
> but I am agreeing with Doug Kass who on Monday said that the market
> would hit bottom this week. Mr. Kass even confirmed his call earlier
> today. The idea is that there shouldn't be any more surprises. We
> know that the automakers & financial institutions are hanging
> by a thread, we know that the job prospects are bleak right now and
> that the economy is in the dump The market has reflected that for
> over a year now. OK, so maybe we won't have a strong rally right
> away, but it is likely that we may crawl along the bottom without
> going significantly lower which would make for a great time to carefully
> select some valued companies that will emerge stronger.

Market Will Bottom When VIX Finds a New Top

Two thoughts:

1. A spike in the vix prompted by something that isn't yet priced-in (e.g., a major and unexpected corporate failure) could accompany a new and final bottom. On the other hand, as wpdragon explains very clearly, we might just grind our way south without any fear-induced spike.

2. Personally, I wouldn't base a fib study at zero. I'd run it up from a major low to a top and look for retracements on that basis.

Investors' Collective Fears Point to Continued Losses

A good article with which I fully agree. I also agree with the comments above. But let me play devil's advocate. Accepting that support, resistance, and trend lines can provide valuable insight into the market's collective psychology in the relatively short term - days, weeks, and months - is there not a question as to whether 12 year-old support actually means as much as the market thinks it does? Why should whatever was driving market psychology when a price level was 'toyed with' in 1997 affect how people feel today under very different circumstances? Of course, if the market today wants to believe that a level from the distant past is significant then I as a trader had better treat it as significant as well. However, whilst it's one thing looking on a trend line with greater respect as it grows older I do wonder whether we don't pay too much attention to far-distant support and resistance levels.

No Bottom in Sight

freddyv: "Most people in this country work very hard for a salary to feed themselves and keep a roof over their heads and speculators like the fool who wrote this article are hurting these people and they don't care. They have had it too easy and they have no idea how easy they have had it and now it's their turn to be taught that you need to earn what you have."

You make some pretty sensible comments on SA with which I agree a lot of the time, but you've lost the plot on this one. I started my working life with zero in the bank; I've inherited nothing and so can claim everything I have as the fruits of my own effort. I take nothing from the state. I have no debt. I'm retired; nobody pays me a salary or a pension. The government has declared war on people like me; in its effort to save the profligate and combat a recession that it either cannot or does not want to understand, it has gutted my savings income. I trade a lot in the FX market, and a little in equities and commodities largely to make a few extra bucks. Like the author I might indeed now fit the common definition of a speculator, but I don't consider that I have it "too easy" or that it's my turn to be taught that I need "to earn what I have". I imagine others in a similar position to me most probably feel the same.

Fighting the Wrong War

Falling demand is a symptom not the cause of this recession. What we have is a balance sheet recession. Easy access to mispriced credit allowed the world to inflate the liability side of its balance sheet and this fed through to various, sequential asset price bubbles. Asset prices are now reverting south, leaving liabilites sitting high like a mesa in a weather-eroded plain. The solution is clearly not to try to reflate asset prices with more cheap credit in an effort to restore the status quo ante. Regretably, by treating a leverage problem as a demand problem, our leaders are in all probability dooming us to a double-dip downturn. If this is correct, heaven alone knows what the second leg of the 'W' will be like. Great article - thank you.

Earnings Fears Appear Overdone - Citigroup

Is there not more than a little irony in the fact that anybody is still paying attention to what a strategist from Citigroup's Capital Markets operation has to say?

Look for Safe Havens as Freefall Continues

Might be wrong, but my reading is that gold's decline is due less to holders selling than 'others' shorting.


On Mar 03 09:27 AM kelm wrote:

> As my readers know I believe gold will go dramatically higher in
> the next few years as the credit crisis and the attendant massive
> new government debt weigh on the fiscal position of the US and other
> nations. That said, gold looks set to fall near term rather than
> rise as the ETF crowd seems to be selling it like a stock and not
> holding it as a long term hedge. I had been long, now I am neutral.
> Until we get some stabilization in world equity markets again gold
> and gold stocks look to remain weak. Use this as an opportunity to
> get in if so inclined.

Economic History Doesn't Always Repeat Itself, But Sometimes It Rhymes

Technical analysis is no more self-fulfilling voodoo than is fundamental analysis based on economists' models (faulty assumptions?), politicians' budgetary projections (spin?), or CFOs' earnings guidance (self-serving?). It is simply one basis on which to form an opinion about an unknowable future.

I assume that Ms. Yamada's warning of S&P in the 400s is based on one possible reading of the charts: 2000/2007 double top (but some technicians dispute its validity due to the time between tops); drop from the second neckline equivalent to 100% of the distance between the tops and the bottom of the intervening trough (but some technicians argue the follow-through drop should be 50% not 100%). Optimists might prefer to ignore this pattern and stick to major long-term trend lines; that would put an S & P bottom in the low 500s.

Why a U.S. Sovereign Wealth Fund Should Be Created

SWF's invest. What you are proposing, on the other hand, is that an already over-indebted nation divert money it doesn't earn to the ramping of asset prices - doubtless to the benefit of you and others in your business. Rather than 'thinking outside the box, I see this article as a manifestation of the financial sector greed that has contributed so much to the current debacle.

It's an Economic Reset, Not a Recession

So the excesses that accumulated over half a century and the institutional structures and practices that gave rise to them can be 'reset' in two years or less (dated from Bear Sterns), can they? I don't take issue with your notion of a lower growth trajectory, but particulary with governments worldwide desperately trying to resuscitate the past I cannot see it launching until we've gone through a lot more 'chop' than just a couple of years.

As for passing the graph to professors, I'm not personally enthused very much by the notion that another generation of students is being misled into thinking that life is lived in straight lines.

Will Canada's Housing Slump Play Out Like America's?

Even 'dynamism' has sensible limits. Maybe Canada identified them.


On Feb 27 02:16 PM CLH wrote:

> Because Canada is a less dynamic society then America it will take
> longer to have a true correction, but it will come.

A Once-In-A-Generation Budget

Truly outstanding quote. I hope it gets picked up and repeated across the web. It deserves - actually, it NEEDS - to go viral.


On Feb 27 02:16 AM zermux wrote:

> "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers
> that it can bribe the public with the public's money." —Alexis de
> Tocqueville