Before the Open (Feb 28)

Posted on by Jason Leavitt

Good morning. Happy Tuesday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. Hong Kong, India and Indonesia rallied more than 1%. Europe is currently mostly up, but there are no 1% movers. Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap up open for the cash market.
The dollar is down. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are up.
The bulls got a little scare yesterday, but like every other gap down and every other intraday sell-off, buyers stepped in and drove prices back up. The closing numbers were flat, and the bears were again left frustrated.
The trend will end when it ends, and there’s no sense guessing when that will be. Traditional techical indicators which help us identify overbought and oversold levels have broken down – they flat out don’t work. It’s not a bad thing. It happens when the market has a 1-track mind. It’s as if the market has blinders on and can’t help itself but to move forward.
This also makes my job as a commentator more difficult because there isn’t much to talk about. The same old same old plays out day after day, week after week, and unless I want to start talking in detail about earnings, economic numbers, fundamentals or stories, I’m left providing the same guidance. That is to be long and to not let your cynacism prevent you from making money.
I remain cautiously bullish in the near term. More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
headlines at MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers

0 thoughts on “Before the Open (Feb 28)”

  1. LEI down 4% and Housing prices depressed again. In a news driven market the EU has too much
    competition today.
    The Dow/Gold ratio is still too high. Will the dow fall or will the gold rise? Some of both may be the answer. In any case it will not be housing that moves the market up.
    Is the payroll number important? Who knows it has been washed and hung out to dry so often
    that it no longer fits as a measure and is by no means a log normal distribution. My bet is that the rally will continue just because it is an election year and they will throw everything at the market to make you believe six impossible things before breakfast.

  2. durable goods down 4% in one month. what used to be the market is still a little above flat… just where the fed put it. I say used to be because it’s not anymore. it’s a fat bloated bernake pig.

  5. Also stop listening to the charlatans and the nonsense economists in the media. Carefully review history and facts.
    ie – inflation and higher commodity prices can be an expression of economic strength
    Read Ken Fisher’s works, he is one of the few that has it right most of the time.
    Keep going with the trend until it really bends. Find the next mover, jump on board, make money, keep it, jump on the next mover, repeat and compound your gains.
    Best of luck

    1. Are trading stocks or futures only?
      Its called a running bull, bit of rotation / fake outs, but great way to make money. No one said making money by speculation is easy.
      If you trade index futures not so great, all the indices are pretty useless.
      That said, there has been a bit of stalling under the hood.

      2. I bet on the phm turd to move to the left this morning. I wanted to bet on the AA turd to bounce at the neckline at $10, but it won’t go down. I suspect the fed saw the numbers this morning and loaded ben and his wheelbarrow into the chopper

  8. MOS is dead money – for now.
    Every stock goes through a life cycle. Once done, dump em, jump on the next perky babe – remember super stocks like Cisco Nortel & Rim?
    The alpha stock of the agri bznss has been TNH. Trading is hard, rewards hard work and intelligent decisive speculation.
    There is always a trade – remember SLW I noted a few weeks ago? + 25%
    Traders need to contribute.
    Anyways, I believe my theory on program / basket trading by the big money (but with quicker cycles / fake outs) using the ex-prop trading computers may have some meat. We shall see.

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