Tuesday, February 07, 2012

The Pump at the Dump


If sometime over weeks ahead a blow-off top develops, NASDAQ-listed issues joining along likely will be from among a shrinking list of candidates...


$BPCOMPQ

Bear in mind NASDAQ's Bullish Percent Index of 61.82% compares to NYSE's 75.65%, and yet NASDAQ's Composite outpaces the NYSE's, having reached new high ground, post-March '09 bottom. Considered separately and together a mark of undue hope gains physical evidence in increasing restraint exercised toward the growing pack of dogs lagging the leaders.

You really get a feel for the smokescreen put up these past couple years, both in comparisons across exchanges, as well as via technical divergences coinciding with successive NASDAQ peaks...


$COMPQ

The period following collapse of Adam Smith's Leveraged Ponzi Scheme has been all about buying time whose clock is set to expire the minute a weak link in a game of extortion breaks. Could be Greece following a forever long weekend. Could be mortgage-backed securities investors following another backdoor bank bailout masquerading as fraud settlement. Could be a geo-political head fake venturing hysteria for war.

Bottom line all is not well, no matter how good folks are at faking it.

Per prospect of any upcoming blow-off top carrying the NASDAQ Composite still higher, its probability will be thought increased should overhead resistance be breached...


NASDAQ Composite monthly

Just like the Dow Jones Industrials Average, the NASDAQ Composite's long-term relative strength remains positive, and this despite weakening (apparently proceeding to turning over). So, things could go either way at this point.

Yet seeing relative strength depths reached 2008-2009 being immediately followed by strength absent any indication of trepidation (such as would pin RSI below 50) is but another revelation of weak hands in command. Strong hands would not so decidedly tip their hand following such weakness as has developed over the past 10+ years: weakness recently only the more confirmed (2008). It is unclear, though, whether weak hands in command have shot their wad, and so, incapable of mounting a blow-off top.


Fast Money
* * * * *

© The Risk Averse Alert — Advocating a patient, disciplined approach to stock market investing. Overriding objective is limiting financial risk. Minimizing investment capital loss is a priority.

Analysis centers on the stock market's path of least resistance. Long-term, this drives a simple strategy for safely investing a 401(k) for maximum profit. Intermediate-term, investing with stock index tracking-ETFs (both their long and short varieties) is advanced. Short-term, stock index options occasionally offer extraordinary profit opportunities when the stock market is moving along its projected path.

Nothing is set in stone. Nor is the stock market's path of least resistance always known. More often than not, there are no stock index option positions recommended.


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Monday, February 06, 2012

A Greek Default Blow-Off


As I was saying Friday, when the garbage stinks, it's time to take it out...


$NYHL

The only thing "natural" in today's sinking of the NYSE new 52-week high-low differential is its harmony with a strictly technical trade underlying the market's advance. In other words, if stocks were being accumulated, the leaders would not be so widely brought to heal on a day like today, particularly given the market's recovery into the close.

Confirmation of a strictly technical trade being a well-beaten horse, the risk of a "blow off" top nevertheless remains undiminished in spite of it. Weak hands might be weak hands, yet even these apparently possess enough control to manage their course on a journey to doom. Included among weak hands, of course, are lenders of last resort. Plainly, these are embarked on a multi-decade trend toward becoming ever-weaker. I would argue, too, there's ill-intent behind this, largely foreign-directed, exploiting homegrown dupes whose credentials provide cover of "respectability" masking actions otherwise demonstrating a criminal insanity, judging by growing dissent anyway.

That said, if there's anything worth waging war over, whatever it will take to reverse this trend qualifies. Glass-Steagall presents a mighty weapon, no doubt. Likewise, the more this trend toward weakening lenders of last resort exerts itself, the more I am convinced the May 6, 2010 "flash crash" was precipitated for the very reason I initially thought: introduction in the U.S. Senate of a Glass-Steagall amendment to the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill, a Ponzi finance killer.

Yet sticking with the script of crisis begets hyperinflationary fix, let's consider how a "blow off" top might develop here at the precipice of (shhhhh!) a banking system convulsion following a hard Greek default...


$INDU

A [modestly] new, prospective Elliott wave count from March '09 bottom for your consideration. This has five waves up (whose "channeling" is well-defined on an arithmetically-scaled graph; above is logarithmically-scaled) forming wave (a) of B. A pair of "c" waves are slated to follow. First, wave c of (b) of B taking the market down and wave (c) of B back up.

It is this latter "c" wave that might transpire in a "blow off" top. How this might look in the grand scheme of a corrective wave targeting index levels last seen in the 1987-1994 period follows...


$INDU monthly

Probably the most significant matter on display here is fading relative strength indicating increasing, underlying long-term weakness coinciding with the market's levitation over the past decade, plus. Confirmation of this increasing weakness at March '09 bottom likewise found no positive divergence technically justifying the market's subsequent advance, unlike March 2003. So, suspect, then, is this advance.

Yet the market's present position maintaining positive, long-term relative strength also might be setting up a blow off top, this forming wave (c) of B upcoming. A reasonable speculation per the impetus underlying this prospective, "last gasp" in a technical trade centers on the likely massive hyperinflationary response lenders of last resort deliver in reaction to Greek sovereign default sometime following conclusion of the loooooooong weekend they and the troika are presently enjoying. (Have I just solved the Greek crisis? Shorten the "weekends" and more hours will be worked! Brilliant!)

Of course, it's uncertain whether this prospective "blow off" is, in fact, likely. Yet it appears the declining long-term relative strength trend in all likelihood would remain intact notwithstanding a new all-time record Dow Jones Industrials high. Lord knows weak hands continue having their way, and this notwithstanding those many revelations of their increasing prominence in the face of the market's persistent levitation. So, contemporary demonstration of this persistence at least demands some regard for the possibility a blow off top might precede the market's collapse.

Fitting, though, is a market at the doorstep of calamity producing a sense of possibility for further upside in its mixed signals. Back in early-September 2008 there were mixed signals just the same. Then, too, it seemed most socially acceptable to suggest a final bout of strength might win the day. Of course, though, that's not how things worked out and the market's subsequent collapse was worse than even those bearish expected (like myself). With Greek default looming, then, forewarned is forearmed.


Fast Money
* * * * *

© The Risk Averse Alert — Advocating a patient, disciplined approach to stock market investing. Overriding objective is limiting financial risk. Minimizing investment capital loss is a priority.

Analysis centers on the stock market's path of least resistance. Long-term, this drives a simple strategy for safely investing a 401(k) for maximum profit. Intermediate-term, investing with stock index tracking-ETFs (both their long and short varieties) is advanced. Short-term, stock index options occasionally offer extraordinary profit opportunities when the stock market is moving along its projected path.

Nothing is set in stone. Nor is the stock market's path of least resistance always known. More often than not, there are no stock index option positions recommended.


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Friday, February 03, 2012

When Garbage Stinks, Take It Out


These are days made to recall the sordid details of Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland. A banking system collapse of historic proportions looms, and the only way to forestall this is stuffing the insolvent corpses of Ponzi finance with sovereign debt, tying this ever more tightly to its respective tax base, even coercing submission if need be. Thus, a dirty trick sowing seeds to be grown into a great sovereign harvest could be cultivated in pursuit of a vile, violent cause whose details are a work-in-progress in official circles where a tone deaf, uncritical media brings a free pass when a free press might prove too disruptive to seditious intrigues its ownership condones.

Deleveraging? That would be sane and the ECB, the Fed and the U.S. Treasury will have none of it. This much is plain. Still, burden placed on lenders of last resort, today and tomorrow, one day must be swept away. Yet, too, only along with the republic it seems. Sovereign destruction, not deleveraging, rather appears the larger objective every element of Team Fraud's apparatus faithfully serves (while each of these, themselves, likewise are no less expendable).

In all of American history there probably never has been a time when the imperative to resist the drive toward war has been more critical to the nation's survival, with insistence instead directed toward investment in an economic platform worthy of the 21st century (nuclear power) rather than the 12th (windmills). Let's face facts. A money system whose failure would create such a dire moment of consequence as this, indeed, is hopelessly bankrupt. For good reason, then, does the technical trade of the past three years not transform into something portending long-lasting advance in the stock market.

Yet could an extended lift — a "blow off" — rapidly develop before at last giving way to collapse? Doug Noland raised this idea tonight and there's enough reason not to discount the possibility. Yet although seeming defiance of weak technical underpinnings does not more greatly insure the same continuing, today's climate — one clearly dominated by weak hands — still might make a momentary "blow off" event possible.


$COMPQ

To my astonishment the NASDAQ Composite has become the first major index to push into nominal new high ground, post-March '09 bottom. Yet judging from the vacillations of both its relative strength (top panel) and momentum (bottom) over the past three years, how much higher might any prospective "blow off" carry the NASDAQ Composite over days ahead? A more convincing case rather might claim NASDAQ's immediate upside appears fairly limited.

The bigger question now is whether a well-contained, underlying technical weakness might develop over weeks ahead as the market advances higher, this in keeping with circumstance demonstrated over the past few years (I have noted this via green lines drawn on the bottom panel showing prior iterations of fading momentum in the face of a persistently rising NASDAQ Composite index).

How is one anything but dubious about such prospect, though? We are going on a couple years now where each new drive higher sustaining the market's levitation is accompanied with a scream shouting, "Show me the money!" This, of course, is evidenced via persistently diminishing volume. Again, but the face of a technical trade that, more or less alone has been holding up the market these past few years. Obviously this anomaly will persist until a crush for capital again brings the garbage to fall of its own weight.


$NAAD cumulative

And lord knows, there is no shortage of trash needing to be taken out.

Now, it is true that, the Elliott wave count applied to the NASDAQ Composite is different than that applied to other major indexes. It has been this way since Y2k. Yet what clue NASDAQ's move into new high ground, post-March '09 bottom, delivers to clarify Elliott wave counts across-the-board is uncertain at the moment. At the very minimum a case for claiming that, still forming is wave B of an a-b-c down from 2007 peak is raised by NASDAQ today.

Suffice it for now that, presently unfolding across other major indexes could be an a-b-c wave down from least year's peak. This follows on an a-b-c wave up from March '09 bottom, which, itself, formed wave (a) of B. Thus, wave (b) of B presently could be unfolding — specifically, wave b of (b) of B.

Of course, wave B is the middle wave of an a-b-c wave down from the market's late-2007 peak — a point of reference worth noting here in the midst of a herculean effort being made to disguise significant downside yet to develop in completion of wave B, itself preceding wave C portending a vicious decline to follow, carrying major indexes to levels last seen in the 1987-1994 period.

Likewise, as mentioned in passing a couple weeks back, there are other wave count alternatives that potentially could be assigned to the market's counter-trend rally off March '09 bottom. Specifically, an a-b-c-x-a-b-c, "double zig-zag" variety of Elliott corrective wave might form across the board. I still think this prospect the least likely, though, as the big board's lag remains notable.


Fast Money
* * * * *

© The Risk Averse Alert — Advocating a patient, disciplined approach to stock market investing. Overriding objective is limiting financial risk. Minimizing investment capital loss is a priority.

Analysis centers on the stock market's path of least resistance. Long-term, this drives a simple strategy for safely investing a 401(k) for maximum profit. Intermediate-term, investing with stock index tracking-ETFs (both their long and short varieties) is advanced. Short-term, stock index options occasionally offer extraordinary profit opportunities when the stock market is moving along its projected path.

Nothing is set in stone. Nor is the stock market's path of least resistance always known. More often than not, there are no stock index option positions recommended.


There's an easy way to boost your investment discipline...

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Thursday, February 02, 2012

Nasty Lives Just Around the Corner


For the first time in over a year an index price peak has been reached while both its relative strength and momentum coincidentally diverged...


$NYA

Very subtle. Yet a sign of weakness nevertheless. Add this to the wealth of bearish underlying technical conditions detailed here of late, and the long weekend in Greece might cease with the financial hurricane long looming off the coast finally reaching shore.

Who knows, maybe the HMS Dauntless will "disappear," say, in the Bermuda Triangle. Not a long shot, really, as the City of London essentially announced today the illusion of its solvency cannot be sustained much past Spring, and the drive for expanding war is not unrelated, so this might be a good time, as well, to expect the unexpected.


$CPC

For what it's worth there is a case to be made that, strong hands have been fairly aggressively hedging short equities positions over the past few months, meaning the plug could be pulled any minute now.

Aside from March '09 bottom (a time when the team really came together knowing what everyone had to do, including raise capital, and so the initial squeeze higher possibly was made sweeter via call options, an act which in light of things preceding and since cannot be perceived out of character, notwithstanding its illegitimacy in the spirit of free and fair markets), instances when the CBOE put/call ratio's momentum fell to a deep extreme, this coinciding with increase in call option activity hedging short equities stakes, the market soon afterward became vulnerable and succumbed. Red dots in the bottom, MACD panel are my points of reference.

All the more did the market fall once the put/call ratio's momentum turned positive. Itself now being in a position similar to late-April 2010, one rightly wonders, then, whether something nasty is just around the corner.


Fast Money
* * * * *

© The Risk Averse Alert — Advocating a patient, disciplined approach to stock market investing. Overriding objective is limiting financial risk. Minimizing investment capital loss is a priority.

Analysis centers on the stock market's path of least resistance. Long-term, this drives a simple strategy for safely investing a 401(k) for maximum profit. Intermediate-term, investing with stock index tracking-ETFs (both their long and short varieties) is advanced. Short-term, stock index options occasionally offer extraordinary profit opportunities when the stock market is moving along its projected path.

Nothing is set in stone. Nor is the stock market's path of least resistance always known. More often than not, there are no stock index option positions recommended.


There's an easy way to boost your investment discipline...

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Wednesday, February 01, 2012

Swaying to the Beating to Come


Here at the doorstep of expanding war and/or debt default we find in the face of continuing systemic stress a general acceptance of hyperinflationary policy, and this apparently in belief catastrophic collapse is forestalled by it. Despite this persisting policy acceptance, though, we should also remind ourselves that, hyperinflationary fuel has been added to the fire only in moments of extreme duress. Then, too, that as more fuel has poured forth over the past three years, the banking system's troubles only have multiplied.

Indeed, last I heard, the ECB's December LTRO was not having the desired effect of restoring intra-bank lending in Europe. So, now, by non-solution, too, do the banking system's woes compound. Yet still in our midst is the face of generally accepted hyperinflationary happiness.




Now, the dance steps here in focus help shed light on what's to come, as the stock market has been swaying along in a well-rehearsed rhythm.

Most recently, early adopters of the Geithner Minimum no doubt had some insight into what such pressure as the Treasury Secretary delivered Europe could bring. These "rescued" the market early-October. However, now they're cashing in.

Truth is an LTRO that, net, was 1/10th the Geithner Minimum is doomed to prove as ineffective as the full $2 trillion, and the early adopters know this. That's why the market is crawling higher on markedly diminished volume compared to the same period last year. Furthermore, as post-August throttling recovery well-demonstrated, the cost of hedging leveraged, early adopter long positions remained dear for some time. Little wonder, then, that as long as the loooooong weekend in Greece continues on (after which a "deal" with the troika will be reached), exposed debt farmers and their derivative counter-parties would use time available to squeeze every last drop of capital the likes will be needing at some point in the foreseeable [likely calamitous] future (as such capital-critical reality threatening starvation a la MF Global also is testified to by huge amounts of cash on corporate balance sheets, as well as parked at central banks — both confirming confidence is shot and there's trouble ahead).

The point is duress precedes hyperinflationary reaction, which itself precipitates further duress. This is the beat to which the stock market is swaying. As such, what's to come gains clarity.

Namely, prospect that wave B still is forming — this of an a-b-c corrective wave down from October 2007 — might find wave c of (b) of B [down] upcoming, prospectively challenging March '09 low — this in duress, of course — while wave (c) of B [up] would follow — this in anticipation of the next round of hyperinflationary happiness, which, itself, can only further the banking system's duress, and so would set up for wave C down, targeting index levels last seen in the 1987-1994 period.

Likewise, the speed at which this might unfold, too, just might be one for the record books. We are no doubt at a moment of vulnerability unlike anything anyone presently living has ever seen.




Fast Money
* * * * *

© The Risk Averse Alert — Advocating a patient, disciplined approach to stock market investing. Overriding objective is limiting financial risk. Minimizing investment capital loss is a priority.

Analysis centers on the stock market's path of least resistance. Long-term, this drives a simple strategy for safely investing a 401(k) for maximum profit. Intermediate-term, investing with stock index tracking-ETFs (both their long and short varieties) is advanced. Short-term, stock index options occasionally offer extraordinary profit opportunities when the stock market is moving along its projected path.

Nothing is set in stone. Nor is the stock market's path of least resistance always known. More often than not, there are no stock index option positions recommended.


There's an easy way to boost your investment discipline...

Get Real-Time Trade Notification!