So, is today an inflection point?

[blazespinnaker]

Gold back under 900 plus financials and GE taking off like a rocket.

Short term bounce, medium term bounce, or is this the bottom of the recessionary market?

Any predictions?

I think at a minimum, we'll see a short to medium term bottom ( ~3 months).

[goadam1]

Re: So, is today an inflection point?

Did someone say bottom! Bottom! Hmmm, did you think it would just keep going down in a straight line? Who knows?

[halcyon]

Re: So, is today an inflection point?

Maybe, maybe not.

Hower the fact that SEC is about to reinstate the uptick rule within a month does not hurt.

PowerShares Financial Preferred (PGF) is up 23.5% as I write this, it'll be interesting to see how long this helds.

Sucker rally, that's for sure, but how long? I'm betting for more than a day, based on dumb/smart money indicators, but it could also turn sour very quickly.

[Glenn Black]

Re: So, is today an inflection point?

There is no doubt that the current & pending government stimulus money has raised hopes. As astronomically big as the stimulus is, it isn't as big as the consumers (who are ~70% of the market).

Have we invented some magical condition that governments can continue these type of stimulus programs on a sustainable, now and forever basis? If yes, then lets double the graft. No, let's quadruple the payouts. No, let's go hog wild.

I don't think that's reality. Somebody will have to pay for all this sooner or later. People realize that. The consumers, more and more, realize that the way we lived for the last 29 years is over (or will soon be over). We have to do it differently.

Unfortunately, that "something new" has not yet been defined clearly, or at least not clearly communicated & accepted by all.

No matter how bad the old system is, nobody will jump from the old into a vacuum. The new system must be fully defined. Preferably, the path to get from there to here should be defined as well.

Now, who do you think should be the one responsible to define the new system, and how we are going to get there? Any nominations?

Until that occurs, we will continue to de-leverage, and have loss of momentum. That's all we're running on now. Momentum, survival consumption, and the completion of projects that were already in the pipeline.

Unfortunately, we will continue to drop on an exponential decay curve towards subsistence consumption (that which we need to survive by drinking, eating, sleeping, & staying warm) until the new system is defined & started up.

Along that exponential decay curve, there will be hustlers, hedge funds, speculators, and die-hard FIRE economy people who will try to milk the cow one more time. In the FIRE economy, they made money when the market went up, and made money when it went down. If the market was going sideways, they'd do something (rumour, press release, acquisition, announcement, naked short, etc.) to get it moving up or down again. They will do the same here as well.

However, consider these as minor fluctuations along the exponential decay curve, which is far more powerful than even these FIRE economy manipulators.

So the short answer is: Jump on the short term fluctuations (if you so choose) by day trading, but be sure to stay as the ant on the lifestyle log that is floating down the economic stream (ie. how much control does the ant have? Just stay on the log going for a ride, or decide to jump into the stream and swim for it). Otherwise, wait for the bottom, the stable subsistence economy to which we are exponentially decaying towards every day (or till the start of the new economic system), then re-invest.

At some point, when the change is made from the old to the new system, it will be an almost instantaneous, dis-continuous inflection point between the old & new. Nobody will time that inflection point perfectly. Some may be close, jumping from the old way to the new just before, or just after this instantaneous inflection point. Market timing is everything.

If government induced inflation starts before the above occurs, invest into "holding assets" that will inflate with everything else. People in Zimbabwe, Argentina, etc. often used scrap metal as it was in small quantities and too widely distributed everywhere to have any group manipulate it.

[ASH]

Re: So, is today an inflection point?

but wait for the bottom to which we are exponentially decays towards every day.

If I remember how exponential functions work, then I guess we'll be waiting quite awhile to hit the bottom... ;)

[ASH]

Re: So, is today an inflection point?

Gold back under 900 plus financials and GE taking off like a rocket.

Short term bounce, medium term bounce, or is this the bottom of the recessionary market?

Any predictions?

I think at a minimum, we'll see a short to medium term bottom ( ~3 months).

The MSM is ascribing this to Vikram Pandit's memo to Citi employees which claimed revenues excluding externally disclosed marks were $19 billion in January and February .

On the other hand, the MSM is also running stories like Pandit's Profit Pipedream.

I could easily believe that the bounce in market indexes -- and the slump in gold -- relate to the abatement of fear about the banking system. But if so, are the banks really out of the woods?

Put me down for short term bounce... lets say under a month (although my gut says under a week). (I have no nose for these things, and consequently I make no short-term trades. Putting a stake in the ground here -- and being extravagently wrong -- is recreation at this point.)

[blazespinnaker]

Re: So, is today an inflection point?

Short term trading can always be hard, for sure.

[goadam1]

Re: So, is today an inflection point?

As far as the economy and subsistence living goes, I HAVE to buy equipment (mac, software) to do WORK.

[Scot]

Re: So, is today an inflection point?

If I remember how exponential functions work, then I guess we'll be waiting quite awhile to hit the bottom... ;)

There is an argument, complex, against this sort of reasoning.

[ASH]

Re: So, is today an inflection point?

There is an argument, complex, against this sort of reasoning.

An argument against being a mathematical literalist?

The smiley face is because I assume Glenn Black didn't literally mean that a decaying exponential function reaches a minimum (bottom) in finite time.

Or an argument against modeling the market's decline with anything so regular as a decaying exponential function?

[serge_oc]

Re: So, is today an inflection point?

I try to be spike-blind as much as I can. It just causes lots of stress (by stress I mean gee-I-lost-money stress as much as gee-I-made-a-ton joy overexertion).

Kind of like psycho-history (for fans of Asimov and Harry Seldon): things are moved by general trends on one side and unexpected events (black-swans) on the other.

I would say still short stocks and long gold for the foreseeable future.

Funny, I read today about canceled rally in Washington DC, where hundreds of thousands of people were to show support for global warming policies. It was canceled because of foot of snow and only a few hundred hippies showed up. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/c...-disorder.html)

Kind of reminds me of people ignoring reality and piling their money into this or that. If we could visualize what is really going on, things would be much more stable and eventually more prosperous. This is where smart charts here on itulip come in, but banish the thought MSM ever truly thought of that.

You may or may not believe what TV hot-head says, but if it's snowing outside, you know it's not warm (this all unrelated to what any particular individual thinks or believes about global warming - my point is that having more 30,000 feet point-of-view information does help when making decisions).

[Scot]

Re: So, is today an inflection point?

An argument against being a mathematical literalist?

The smiley face is because I assume Glenn Black didn't literally mean that a decaying exponential function reaches a minimum (bottom) in finite time.

Or an argument against modeling the market's decline with anything so regular as a decaying exponential function?

Dang it. I thought for sure of everyone here you'd get it. But I am undeterred (underdamped?).

Complex argument? Get it? Har har.

Okay. I admit that was weak.

[ASH]

Re: So, is today an inflection point?

Dang it. I thought for sure of everyone here you'd get it. But I am undeterred (underdamped?).

Complex argument? Get it? Har har.

Okay. I admit that was weak.

Ok. Har har. I did not do you justice, sir!

(Actually, when I saw "complex" go by, I did prick up my ears... but then I thought -- complex exponential would be oscillatory, and the decay is a real exponential, so surely....)

[Raz]

Re: So, is today an inflection point?

I've been trading futures since 1978 (when I managed a farm for my parents) and learned the hard way that ignoring price charts and the technical signals they send is a road to disaster - at least for traders.

I've been reading this gentleman for over four years.
The calls he has made on the S&P have been excellent - he hasn't been dead-wrong yet.
Perhaps his price targets have been off by as much as 3 or 4 percent, and his timing by one to five weeks, but he protects clients with Stop-Loss points. (One must not expect to be correct more than 55-60% of the time, and must apply good money management in order to "live to fight another day".) The calls he has made on Crude Oil are absolutely astounding in their accuracy, and he's been almost that good with the Gold market.

This was published over ten days ago.

[Starving Steve]

Re: So, is today an inflection point?

Just looking at one of my possible stox to buy to-day, Duke Energy Co. (DUK), it barely caught a dead cat bounce as of 3PM EST. And that tells me plenty about this market.

If DUK would have rallied sharply, it would have meant that America had an energy plan worth mentioning. But potential buyers of DUK are just as frightened of the greenies as I am, so why would they buy a company like Duke Energy that produces electricity from coal, from nuclear, from wind, among other methods, when the Obama Administration wants solar power--- a joke.

So, DUK did not bounce, and if Duke can't rally, then how can this DOW rally have legs? Aside from scams, bail-outs, and Hummers, what does America produce? Or another way to say it: if America can't produce cheap energy in any meaningful amount, then how can the country produce anything and sell it competitively in the world economy?

No, I don't own any DUK, so I have nothing to disclose. But I do own shares in oil companies including shares in producers of heavy oil from the oil sands in Alberta.... And even heavy oil is out of favour by the current Obama Administration.