Friday, February 24, 2012

Waiting For Godot.


First I would like to express my apologies for not being able to respond to some of the questions or comments from the readers. For some silly reason, Blogger is not allowing me to post response to the comments. I hope they sort it out soon.

Like the famous absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, we are all waiting for Godot, the market correction.  It just doesn’t want to listen to anyone. It simply refuses to show up and hiding behind the coat tails of the Fed.  In a liquidity induced rally, what will happen when all of a sudden a whole chunk of liquidity is removed from the market? As per Lee Adler of “The Wall St. Examiner” a total of $87 billion (yes, billion with a B) will be settling next Wednesday and Thursday. Won’t that be interesting! And cycles are calling for an end of this rally as well. We will see what next week brings.

Did SPX break its previous high? Yes and No.
It did a kind of peek-a-boo but there was no conviction. I suppose we will have to wait for another day to get a confirmation in either way.

While the trend is still not broken and SPX made a new high, not everything is well in the market place. Both Dow and DJ-Tran were in red. So was Russell 2000, gold, silver and copper. There are some funny disconnect in the market place and it is acting in the most irrational and suicidal manner. Euro is at a new high while Germany is saying that Greece bailout is not guaranteed. The Telegraph, UK has an interesting article on this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9104958/Greek-bond-swap-begins-as-Germany-voices-doubts-over-bailout.html

While Greece has opened the bond swap under PSI, the threshold level is 75%. I am not sure if the Greek FinMin is ignorant or just bluffing but he says that nobody cares about a CDS event.  What happens if 25.1% of the bond holders do not agree and the PSI does not go through? I am sure lots of European Countries will say “Halleluiah”. The following is a chart of Greek PSI from BNP Paribus. Just replace 67% with 76%. 

Germany and other Northern European countries are waiting for such an opportunity when they can blame the greedy hedge funds for kicking out Greece.

So the risks are high in the market place and never for a moment believe in the US growth story or fall in unemployment numbers. The following chart is from Streettalklive.com which is self explanatory.

As the Trend following table is saying, the trend is up but barely so. It is advisable not to front run unless you are sure of what you are doing. I lost on the gamble which I should not have taken in the 1st place. Trading should not be a gamble and I am guilty of breaching my own discipline.
We know that a trend change is about to take place but it has not happened yet. So trade safe.

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