Good morning. Happy Friday. Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving.
The big news out while the market was closed here in the States came out of Dubai where an investment company has asked creditors if it can postpone its forthcoming payments until May. This caused massive selling in Europe and Asia which is now spilling over to the US. S&P futures are down almost 30 (they accomplished a new closing high on Wednesday).
The trend has been up…volume has been falling off…we’ve felt for a while the trend made no sense given what’s going on in the world and lack of evidence things are getting better, but we weren’t going to fight it. Is the news out of Dubai where some knowledgeable sources believe real estate could fall 70% an event that can be easily ignored, or will it be a wakeup call that the smoke and mirrors being used on Wall St. has created a big divergence between itself and Main St.?
I’m not one for guessing for obvious reasons. Everything that’s wrong the world, every reason the market should not have rallied to the extent it has rallied existed last month and the month before that and last summer. Anyone who shorted or didn’t play the long side either lost their shirt or missed some great trades. The only difference between now and then is the passage of time which does play a role (people bought over the summer in anticipation of things getting better but since they’re not getting better, the buying of stocks can no longer be justified).
I’m sure the media will be out in full force spinning the news out of Dubai – that it’s an isolated and compartmentalized situation and it shouldn’t spill over to the rest of the world. We’ll see. For now play good defense with the positions you have, and rest up for what’s likely to be a very active market ahead.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings Reports
this week’s Economic Numbers