Making It Up to My Readers

Well, I'm going to make up for the lack of a decent post yesterday (although it certainly didn't seem to diminish the activity of the comments section). This is going to be a big 'un.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the disparity of wealth distribution in both the U.S. and the world in general. An interesting study came out about this in the past few days which illustrates that the top 1% of wealth holders control 40% of the world's wealth, and the top 2% control 50%. How about the bottom half? They have about 1%. That's right......50% of the world has 1% of the wealth, and 1% of the world has 40% of the wealth. Pretty skewed, eh? Here's the link.

Another interesting item I read in yesterday's New York Times was how bullish newsletter writers have become. The graph in the article shows, on the left side, the U.S. stock markets, and on the right side, the bullishness of the writers. They seem like virtually identical graphs. Make you wonder how much value these guys add. Anyway, again, here's the link.

Today was a nice (although modest) down day. Take a look at the Russell 2000, shown below (and, as always, clickable to be larger), which I've embellished a bit with some studies for those folks finding my graphs too plain. Examine the "waves" of the past, and notice how far the moving averages were at the peaks of those waves. Looking at the most recent data, the averages have never been farther apart.


The same can be said of the S&P 500. Just look how rapidly the index has ascended and how much distance is spread out among the averages. At the same time, look at the continuous softening of the RSI. Quite a divergence, wouldn't you agree?


The $VIX has finally gotten some legs. It seems to be pushing way higher, as the market seems to be not-quite-so-sure about the certainty of indexes rising every day of the year. And this is all in the context of the Dow 30 hitting a lifetime intraday high today!


Now, some specific stocks - most bearish, a few bullish. I've been terribly impressed with Akamai's (AKAM) strength. It seems to be defying any weakness right now. This is one of those stocks which, in 2002, you might have felt was doomed to bankruptcy. But it's been a barnstormer.


I must again offer Capital One Financial (COF) as a short suggestion. My puts on this are doing well, and I just really like the look of this chart.


My small bearish position on GOOG is doing OK as well. I do not normally watch CNBC, but at the airport yesterday I saw they were doing a featured story called something like "Can Anyone Stop Google?" That's my feeling exactly. People seem to think Google is perfect and unstoppable. A good time to fade the market's disposition. Can you imagine the collapse when they make their first earnings stumble? Whether it happens next quarter or in 2025, it will happen. And great will be the fall of it.


Being short investment banks has been tough lately, but maybe we've finally turned the corner. These banks got great news yesterday in the form of a very favorable court ruling, which stated that class action lawsuits against these banks were not permitted. I'm sure the 50 Goldman Sachs personnel getting at least $25 million each for their Christmas bonus (you read that right...) are having the time of their lives. But take a look at the graph below. How's that for a monstrous bearish engulfing pattern?


HYDL looks ripe for a short as well, with a nice, tight stop.


I've had puts on LEH for a few days (someone commented how I got whacked on it; I have no idea what they are talking about; I did not get stopped out). The way it's playing inside these Fib Fans is cool, and it seems to be losing its grip at this level.


Here's a longer view on LEH to bring more clarity to my explanation.


NVR has had a good run-up of late, and a look at the Fibonacci retracement levels gives good reason to short here, with a very tight stop.


I suggested Redback (RBAK) back on October 4 when it was about $14. It pushed to about $17.50 today on strong volume. This stock looks more bullish than ever.


I put puts on RIMM a few days ago for the worst of reasons - "it just seems really high." Luck has smiled on me so far and it seems to be tumbling more than a skosh.


I remain long puts on SHLD.


Apparently all eyes are on tomorrow morning's employment report, released an hour before the opening bell. It's one of those funny ones where if employment is strong, the market supposedly will take that badly, whereas if employment is weak, the market will respond well since rates are more likely to drop. Ya know, folks, interest rates are not the entirety of the economy! Take a look at Japan during most of the 1990's which was completely buried in recession and had negative interest rates. There's only so much good they can do.