Time for some shorts?
The Market is continuing the dull no volume action. We are getting an increasing feeling of people almost abandoning having any opinion of where the market is heading. Low volumes, low volatility, and few see any risks. Biggest fear among investors at present, is not being long Apple. We should have gotten a break up with volume by now. With investors reaching apathy it is time to start buying some of those ultrashorts.
Charts below:
U.S. Economic Confidence Best in a Year
US Economic Confidence on the rise. Everybody long Apple? From Gallup;
U.S. economic confidence is at -20 for the week ending Feb. 12, improved from -25 the prior week and the best since the -18 reading in mid-February 2011.
The Gallup Economic Confidence Index is an average of two components: Americans’ ratings of current economic conditions and their outlook for the economy. Economic confidence has been improving steadily over the past five months and is now at its highest point in a year.
Americans have grown steadily more positive about current economic conditions since last August, when the budget battles, stock market declines, and fears of a double-dip recession sent economic confidence to a low for the year.
The pronounced increase in economic confidence so far in 2012 is largely driven by a sharp increase in consumers’ feelings about the U.S. economy’s future direction. The percentage of Americans saying the economy is “getting better” increased to 42% last week, while the percentage saying it is “getting worse” fell to 54%. Both of these measures are at their best levels since the 43% “getting better” and 52% “getting worse” of the week ending Feb. 13, 2011. In a separate question, consumers’ “poor” ratings of the economy, now at 41%, are at their lowest level in a year. (Full reading here).
(C)rude HFT
“Beautiful” charts on the HFT mania reaching all assets. Courtesy Nanex.
NYMEX Black Swan ~ The March 2012 Crude Oil Futures Quote Loop
On February 13, 2012, starting 13:59:57, quotes for crude oil began queuing. At 14:00:35, all of the queued quotes were sent at once. Again at 14:01:08 the same 38 second block of quotes sent earlier was sent again — old timestamps and all plus a few new quotes. Again at 14:01:18, all quotes since 13:59:57 were sent again. This repeated 12 times.
From a programmer’s perspective, it looks like a system problem caused a blast of quotes that corrupted a memory queue causing the software to believe the queue was full all the time.
Tick chart of bid prices (red) along with quote age (blue).
Note that as the cycle repeats, it includes a few more quotes (the new quotes + those since 13:59:57). There are 500 quotes between time axis labels.
Apple, (American) Jobs and Ethics
As the World cheers Apple breaking 500 USD, a lot of different views regarding Apple, the share price and American jobs, are hitting the tapes. Is Apple becoming too big to fail too? Must see video below.
LET’S PUT ALL THIS APPLE LOVE IN PERSPECTIVE.
Guest post by Macrotrader.
Steve Jobs, may he rest in peace, I am sure was a good person. But as traders, we should never have a mancrush on anyone, not even a Steve. Not Steve Jobs, Steve Ballmer, Steve Young, Steve Austin, or any derivative of Steve.
While I know AAPL is popular, many unpopular industries like airlines, banks, dry shippers and solar companies have provided much better returns recently, but they go unloved. Now I know, AAPL has had a huge multi-year run. But as great as that is, it pales in comparison to the astronomic runs of Dell and EMC in the 90s.
Dell was a 250 bagger, and EMC a 300 bagger, low to high, so the AAPL has had a 170 bagger, nice, but still room to run before it catches EMC’s run.
Italy, Spain, Portugal Among Six Cut by Moody’s
More insight on the European Downgrades by Moody’s. Bloomberg video below.
Why is the market rising (and why might it collapse)?
Insight on the latest “stubborn” rising of the markets. Courtesy Gordon Long.
This gigantic flood of extremely inexpensive high-powered money does have a major impact, not in the real economy, but in the liquid investment markets.
Free money sets a very low hurdle for a short-term investment and as long as the transaction has decent liquidity, why not do the trade. As a result, almost every equity, commodity, and credit market is moving higher.
High beta currencies are moving higher as well, as risk is clearly on the front foot. This positive mood began at the start of October, a bit more than a week after Bernanke announced the start of ‘Operation Twist,’ a subtle way to improve the profits of the banks and increase the risk of the Fed without expanding its balance sheet.
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