Thursday, October 24, 2013

The Morning Call-the Chinese and Draghi throw a curve ball

The Morning Call

10/24/13

The Market
           
    Technical

            The indices’ (DJIA 15413, S&P 1746) rally took a  rest yesterday.  The Dow closed within its short term trading range (14190-15550) while the S&P finished within a short term uptrend (1691-1845).  Hence, they remain out of sync on a short term basis.

Both of the Averages are within their intermediate term uptrends (15129-20129, 1609-2191) and long term uptrends (4918-17000, 715-1800).

Volume fell; breadth deteriorated.  The VIX rose, leaving it within a short term trading range and intermediate term downtrend.

The long Treasury was up but stayed within its short term trading range and intermediate term downtrend.

GLD declined but remained above the upper boundary of its very short term downtrend; it closed within a short term and intermediate term downtrend.

Bottom line:  while prices were down yesterday, there is no reason to believe that this is any different from prior respites.  Nevertheless, the Averages are out of sync on a short term basis---a condition that encourages remaining on the sidelines.  The positives are that we are entering the best six months of the year performance-wise and the Fed continues to pump ever more liquidity into the system.  The bad news is that we have round two of budget/debt ceiling negotiations coming in 70 days and the Market right now is very overbought.

If equities move up in price and any of our stocks trade into their Sell Half Range, our Portfolios will act accordingly.
   

    Fundamental
    
     Headlines

            Only one minor US datapoint yesterday: weekly mortgage applications fell although the more important purchase applications increased.

            The real news came from overseas:

(1)     the Chinese central bank made a tightening move [***which it repeated overnight].  Unfortunately, we don’t know if this is a technical move or the sign of a major change in policy.  If the latter, global markets could be in for a rough ride.  Back in September, we witnessed the impact that just talking about Fed tapering could have on markets.  If the Chinese central bankers are actually starting to do it, it could have investors everywhere reevaluating their bets on QEInfinity.  To be clear, I am in no way attempting to state the intent of Chinese.  I am saying that this something we have to watch; because the consequences, if true, will likely be quite painful.

(2)     Draghi spoke about the outcome of the ongoing stress tests of EU banks, suggesting that for the stress test to really be a stress test, some banks by definition have to fail.  Given the leverage in the EU financial system and the fact that we don’t have a clue about the real quality of their assets, this attitude, if truly reflective of ECB intents, could aggravate their solvency problem.  Again, this is new news; so we don’t know where it is going, though we do know that eurocrats are worse than our own at kicking problems down the road.  So this could all have a typical eurocratic story book ending in which [a] most banks are declared solvent, [b] as a show of ECB regulatory toughness, a few banks are declared capital short, and [c] new steps are taken to bail them out. Nonetheless, the announcement itself is a cautionary flag that the situation should not be ignored.

Bottom line: dreams of QEInfinity sugar plums continue to dance in investors’ heads.  I have no idea how long this Fed call will drive the Markets higher.  But I do have an idea about valuation and in my opinion, it is stretched. 

I am hearing bull arguments now that historically stocks go up when the economic outlook is cloudy, that the economic outlook now is cloudy, ergo the Market will continue up.  However, the corollary to this argument stipulates that what causes stocks roll over is when the economy is operating or is anticipated to operate at perfection (which I will define as roughly full capacity) because counter cyclical forces (high interest rates, rising labor and commodity costs, shortage of capacity) ultimately slow the economy down. The problem with that is, in my opinion, that the fiscal, monetary, regulatory headwinds about which I rant endlessly, are with us for as far as I can see---which means this economy is never going to operate at or near perfection (at least as defined above). 

So taking the above bull case to its logical extreme, then because the economy will not return to perfection for the foreseeable future, then by definition, stocks will continue to rise in the foreseeable future.  That makes no sense.  It especially makes no sense when you consider that stocks are currently hitting historically valuation highs on multiple metrics (forward P/E, trailing 12 month P/E, price to sales, price to book value). 

In short, for the bull argument cited above to be correct, it would mean that the fiscal, monetary, regulatory headwinds preventing it from returning to or near perfection must be reversed.  To be sure, they might.  But that would require a dramatic change in personnel in Washington; and at this point in time, I think that a non optimal bet.

Technically, the Market could be setting up for a trade to the upside (assuming the Dow can break out of its trading range); but that strategy works only for the strong of heart and fleet of foot.

The most important information on which I wait are the signs of how the last three weeks have impacted business and consumer confidence.

            The latest from Doug Kass (medium/long):

            Math is working against the bulls (medium):

            Distorted markets (short):
            http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-23/mark-spitznagel-warns-todays-distorted-market-set-major-crash


Steve Cook received his education in investments from Harvard, where he earned an MBA, New York University, where he did post graduate work in economics and financial analysis and the CFA Institute, where he earned the Chartered Financial Analysts designation in 1973. His 40 years of investment experience includes institutional portfolio management at Scudder, Stevens and Clark and Bear Stearns. Steve's goal at Investing For Survival is to help other investors build wealth and benefit from the investing lessons he learned the hard way.

No comments:

Post a Comment