From "Barron's Asks: Bear Market Rally?":
In Barron's The Trader column, Kopin Tan asks: "Is the Stock Market's recent resurgence just an ephemeral, bear-market rally?"...
...And, the recent May highs appear to be a lower low to this old traders eyes. Any failure at this level means more trouble ahead.Last, a further failure at the March lows would be disastrous for the indices.
Your mileage may vary . . .
Go here for the charts.
Also from The Big Picture:
Excerpt:
"Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, said the increase in the price of crude oil has "years to go'' as known sources of petroleum are dwindling. "I know that unless someone discovers a lot of oil, it can go to $150, $200'' a barrel, Rogers said in a Bloomberg Television interview. "The facts are the world is running out of known oil reserves.''
He's got the link to the Bloomberg interview.
*After they've done this stuff for a decade or five, the survivors tend to internalize Occam's Razor,
simplify, simplify.
You use charts more for pattern recognition than for some mystical future telling combination of moving averages and/or other, even more esoteric, chicken entrails divination.
So you get similar descriptions and market enforced humility:
...Then as we hear a drumbeat of recession reports, Mr. Market gets despondent, the market heads south, takes out the March lows, Mr. Market gets suicidal, recession is officially announced and we go back up.-From our March post "I scream, triple dip".
This second run up would fail just about the time it's announced that we've left recession and six to nine months later the recession of 2009 is announced.
It might be time to switch to the weekly charts, if this picture pans out we would show a series of lower highs and lower lows.
My scenarios are usually wrong, but they give me a framework to hang the minute-to-minute reality on.
You get to the point where you don't really have to use a lot of words to communicate; which for some reason reminded me of this joke:
The new guy in prison is sitting in his cell his first night, contemplating his future. All of a sudden, someone yells out, "154", and everyone starts laughing. Then again, "67'', more laughing. Then, "598'', and the whole prison busts out laughing.
This goes on for about 2 weeks. Finally, he makes a friend, and decides to ask what's all the number shouting and laughing about. "Well," says the friend, "most of us old timers have been here so long, we don't even bother telling jokes anymore. We just assigned all jokes a number".
Ok, the newbie thought, it does make sense in a weird kind of way.
That night, the jokes began again. "674'', sheer hysteria. "987", too funny. "432'' , a classic. Anxious to get in on the action, the new guy yells out, "56". silence. not a word. you could hear a pin drop.
Disappointed, the fresh fish goes to sleep.
The next day he rushed around to find his friend. ''Hey," he said, "what's up with the jokes last night? I told my favorite and didn't get one laugh".
"Friend," he replied, "you know, some people can tell a joke and, well, some just can't.
