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Bumpy road ahead

February 2, 2020 / / No Comments

Markets fluctuate, they go up and they go down too. Our job is to make the most out of these fluctuations by going with, and not fighting, the tape.

Even though you could have pointed out many reasons why one should have been expecting a correction, or even a crash, we’ve been bullish for the most part of last year up until now. Looking back, that was the only right decision to be made.

However, we think now could be the time for becoming cautious going forward. We’re not becoming ‘the end of the world’ bearish yet, but the ride could become bumpier.

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How will the dollar affect stocks?

June 10, 2019 / / No Comments

I guess everyone knows the saying ‘fool me once…’. The market tries to fool us not once or twice, but much more often. If it was straight forward, risk management wouldn’t be as important as it is. In fact, it’s the most important aspect of trading in my opinion. I believe finding the best opportunities and making the most money out of them starts with great risk management and not other way around.

In a recent post Dollar about to rally? I was exploring the dollar bull thesis. Frequent readers know that I’ve been a dollar bear for a long time now, and exploring the opposite side of an investment thesis is a must if you want to manage risk effectively. While the dollar is still in a sideways trend, last week turned the table in favor of dollar bears once again, which is my preferred stance. But why is this important and how could this affect the stock market and economy?

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Shakeout before higher?

February 26, 2019 / / No Comments

We’ve just seen a magnificent 20% two month rally in the S&P 500 index and stock market in general. Yesterday it opened just a bit above 2800, a target area discussed in What to expect next?. But then slid lower for the day and finished just a bit below 2800. Snap back rallies are very typical for bear markets and while the current bounce would constitute as a very typical one, the strength surprised even some bulls. What is a bit untypical is that until this point we haven’t seen any form of a shakeout yet (see more in Typical bottom).

The US markets were in a bear market in Q4 ’19 and some other markets were in a bear market for the good bit of 2018. While we might be seeing the first signs of the new bull market emerging (see Is it over?) we must not get overly excited at this stage. Does this mean we must be going to cash or even get short? No, not at all.

But we must respect a possibility of a quick and nasty shakeout, meaning we must respect risk and manage our positions accordingly. Even if we think the worst might be over, we could be proven wrong later.

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What to expect next?

February 5, 2019 / / No Comments

I’ve been very quiet in the past month. The reason is that I was intensively working on a new product I will announce in the near future. Sometimes you just got to lock yourself in a room if you want to get things done. Focus is so underestimated thing nowadays. It’s just impossible to deliver a high quality product if your mind is all over the place.

Anyway, more about that when time is right. I want to discuss the market with you. Since my post Is it over? the stocks rallied a lot and most have already forgotten we’ve seen a mini crash in Q4. However, the problem is that, while I think there’s a good chance the bottom is in, the current action does not look like a Typical bottom. So, what to expect next?

The market is behaving very constructive as of late and it’s not far fetched to say the S&P 500 could continue going higher to above of its 200d or up to somewhere 2,800 level – the purple area.

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Stock market update

November 26, 2018 / / No Comments

Hi guys. I’ve been away for a month, not because of the markets, but because I was travelling and had a very limited internet access. And as I came back I see that not much has changed. Liquidity is getting sucked out of the markets, strength is being sold into so the markets are going down one by one.

Stocks have so far been hit quite hard, some more than others (see 1, 2 and 3), oil has been killed and don’t me even get started with cryptos (see Expecting a move in Bitcoin).

I would like to see a change though, but until we do we need to be defensive and err on the short side. Let me give you an update about the markets and what to look for going forward. 

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Sectors on the watch to short

October 19, 2018 / / No Comments

I’ve been bullish stocks for the past 2 odd years. But it looks to me a bigger correction in the US stocks could be upon us. Emerging markets have been under performing this whole year and there are no signs of a reversal yet (see Watch Alibaba for clues in emerging markets). Then the German DAX is just confirming the move down is very likely (see Winter coming?). And it looks gold could be starting to catch some bid (see Rotation to gold and miners?).

We saw a few failed breakouts higher in the US indices recently. I was writing about the Dow Jones Industrial Average, looking for a continuation higher. But it failed and that failed break higher, by the way a similar one happened in S&P 500, is causing concerns for bulls and all these developments are by no means constructive for stock bulls. 

So its up to everyone to decide what you want to do. You can either stubbornly hold to your longs, you can be defensive and go into cash or you can even short some indices, sectors and even individual stocks. But which ones and under what conditions?

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S&P 500: 3050?

July 18, 2018 / / No Comments

My target for the S&P 500 has been 3000 for the past year and a half at least. I’ve kept saying that and I still think we’re heading there. I also wouldn’t exclude a melt up rather than an imminent stock market crash as some are suggesting. Yes, it might be coming, but in my view we’re not there just yet.  Read More

Small and Micro Caps at all time highs

May 17, 2018 / / No Comments

…is not bearish to me! Why it would be? For so long we’ve been listening that only the FAANG stocks are pushing stock prices up. They’ve been performing very well, indeed. But they aren’t the only ones!  Read More

The shiny metal and its miners

January 17, 2018 / / No Comments

I guess it’s needless to say that I am a commodities bull. After all, even if you haven’t followed my blog regularly, you can tell this from my last post. This doesn’t mean that the price of commodities will only go up. There will be short-term cycles with corrections, even very quick ones, to shake the excessive excitement. Similar to what we see in cryptos today. This is just normal market behavior.

While gold didn’t get much of an appreciation lately, it had a very decent year. But I think it was only a beginning. I think gold could easily double or triple in the months to come. Read More

From tech to financials and energy?

December 3, 2017 / / No Comments

One of the characteristics of a trending stock market is sector rotation. In a bull market not all sectors are necessarily trending higher and sectors are taking leadership in turns. This means that some are bound to outperform while the others are under performing. Sector rotation is a very important fuel of a bull market. So identifying sector rotation is crucial to be successful in the stock market. The phrase past performance is not an indication of future results is something that applies here very well!

We’ve seen increased volatility in the stock market this past week. I think that the reason could have been due to a rotation and not because a major top is forming just yet.  Read More

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