Most Popular
1. Banking Crisis is Stocks Bull Market Buying Opportunity - Nadeem_Walayat
2.The Crypto Signal for the Precious Metals Market - P_Radomski_CFA
3. One Possible Outcome to a New World Order - Raymond_Matison
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
5. Apple AAPL Stock Trend and Earnings Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
6.AI, Stocks, and Gold Stocks – Connected After All - P_Radomski_CFA
7.Stock Market CHEAT SHEET - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.US Debt Ceiling Crisis Smoke and Mirrors Circus - Nadeem_Walayat
9.Silver Price May Explode - Avi_Gilburt
10.More US Banks Could Collapse -- A Lot More- EWI
Last 7 days
Stock Market Volatility (VIX) - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Investor Sentiment - 25th Mar 24
The Federal Reserve Didn't Do Anything But It Had Plenty to Say - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Breadth - 24th Mar 24
Stock Market Margin Debt Indicator - 24th Mar 24
It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - 24th Mar 24
Stocks: What to Make of All This Insider Selling- 24th Mar 24
Money Supply Continues To Fall, Economy Worsens – Investors Don’t Care - 24th Mar 24
Get an Edge in the Crypto Market with Order Flow - 24th Mar 24
US Presidential Election Cycle and Recessions - 18th Mar 24
US Recession Already Happened in 2022! - 18th Mar 24
AI can now remember everything you say - 18th Mar 24
Bitcoin Crypto Mania 2024 - MicroStrategy MSTR Blow off Top! - 14th Mar 24
Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - 11th Mar 24
Gold and the Long-Term Inflation Cycle - 11th Mar 24
Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - 11th Mar 24
Two Reasons The Fed Manipulates Interest Rates - 11th Mar 24
US Dollar Trend 2024 - 9th Mar 2024
The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - 9th Mar 2024
Investors Don’t Believe the Gold Rally, Still Prefer General Stocks - 9th Mar 2024
Paper Gold Vs. Real Gold: It's Important to Know the Difference - 9th Mar 2024
Stocks: What This "Record Extreme" Indicator May Be Signaling - 9th Mar 2024
My 3 Favorite Trade Setups - Elliott Wave Course - 9th Mar 2024
Bitcoin Crypto Bubble Mania! - 4th Mar 2024
US Interest Rates - When WIll the Fed Pivot - 1st Mar 2024
S&P Stock Market Real Earnings Yield - 29th Feb 2024
US Unemployment is a Fake Statistic - 29th Feb 2024
U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - 29th Feb 2024
What a Breakdown in Silver Mining Stocks! What an Opportunity! - 29th Feb 2024
Why AI will Soon become SA - Synthetic Intelligence - The Machine Learning Megatrend - 29th Feb 2024
Keep Calm and Carry on Buying Quantum AI Tech Stocks - 19th Feb 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

Stock Market Trouble and Strife, Catch a falling knife? Not on your life

Stock-Markets / Stocks Bear Market Oct 09, 2008 - 08:38 AM GMT

By: WHC_Bassetti

Stock-Markets Best Financial Markets Analysis ArticleHundreds, if not thousands –perhaps even millions– of traders, investors and technicians are waiting eagerly on the sidelines like the boomer sooners of the Oklahoma land rush hoping to catch the bottom of the panic. This is known in the trade as catching the falling knife. It is not a recommended strategy (what is the difference between a tactic and a strategy? as John McCain would say).


Well, it's not a good tactic and it's not a good strategy, so that ought to cover all the possibilities. Just ask the University of Miami portfolio manager who tried to time the bottom in Enron. Got his hands pretty well cut up. Readers of Technical Analysis of STock Trends know that there are all kinds of bottom formations and that V bottoms are not the most common. And they are the most treacherous (see falling knife).

Falling knife market. Put out hand at own risk.

Here a little basic fundamental economic analysis is in order. Raise your hand if you think government measures enacted so far will resolve the fundamental problems with the US economy. Just as we suspected. No hands. (Not even with bloody fingers.) Why is that Professor Bassetti-Keynes? Because there is a destructive down spiral in employment. And, children, unemployed people have difficulties paying their mortgages (not to mention eating). That's ok — we'll make the mortgages cheaper. Zero income means that no matter how cheap the mortgage is it can't be paid. So there are three kinds of mortgages: hopeless and will never be paid, on the brink (hanging on but one paycheck from hopeless) and the John McCain mortgage, or no problemo because Cindy owns the only thing holding the country together at this point — beer. No economic analysis whatever is necessary to estimate how many mortgages of each type are in play at this point.  The most uninformed layman can imagine.

And unemployment? A mere bagatelle compared to the 24-25% of the Great Depression. 7%? I.F. Stone famously said, “The government lies. All governments lie.” How much are they lying about unemployment? What percentage unemployment represents the tipping point?

And, if the downward spiral in employment were not bad enough the vicious cycle of real estate foreclosures and failures is as bad, if not worse. Every new foreclosure adds fuel to the fire.

Here is a long term picture of the market:

Is this present collapsing market a surprise?  

Not really. Our systems took us out of the market and went short in January.  It is always instructive to look back and see what the picture looked like at the time the decision was made.  Hindsight is always better that foresight but seeing the picture at the time the decsion was made illustrates the central tenet of technical analysis — that we may not be able to foretell the future, but we can know what to do in the moment.

The contrast to the present is literally breathtaking.  

You could do the same thing with an Enron chart.  There is nothing magical about what happened here.  It is simply the exercise of the principle that when the trend changes you liquidate your position.  In the case of the Dow our studies have demonstrated that reversing from long to short is a profitable strategy.  A further technical study followed this analysis attempting to determine the possible  extent of a downtrend.

On March 28 2008 we looked at the formation and said: March 28 2008 Dow 16000? Flying-Vampire Pigs, Levitating pundits…. Random egg attacks.



Note “A low” and “B low”. If this yearlong formation is a massive top (perhaps a double headed head and shoulders) and A low is its lower boundary then a low of 9680 is predicted. If B low is the defining point the predicted low is 10836. Remember Nils Bohr and the difficulty of forecasting. Again, it is not necessary to believe this scenario to know how to bet. The Dow is in a six month downtrend, the last 2 1/2 months of which are sideways, with lower highs in the sidetrend. The low of 9680 is a probable minimum.

At this moment October 8, 2008 we don't know what will happen in the market. But it is clear that it is unwise to be long, and being short is very profitable.  

Is this the bottom?  No one knows, and you could get cut up fingers trying to catch the bottom.

By WHC Bassetti

http://www.edwards-magee.com

Noted technical analyst WHC Bassetti has over 40 years' experience in the financial markets and is Malcom S.M. Watts III Adjunct Professor of Finance and Economics at Golden Gate University. He is editor of the ninth edition of Technical Analysis of Stock Trends, widely considered to be one of the true classics of market analysis.
Since 1999, his website at http://www.edwards-magee.com/ has analyzed the markets with wit and accuracy. Readers have avoided the dot com bubble and subsequent bear market; invested in gold and silver before they ran away; bought oil before the blow off; been short the dollar. Now long the dollar, short the Dow since January ‘o8.

Copyright 2008 © WHC Bassetti and AC Media Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

Disclaimer - All information and data that is provided is solely for educational and research purposes only. Information provided does not constitute investment advice and the operators of this website, WHC Bassetti and AC Media Holdings, Inc., do not advocate the purchase, holding or sale of any security or investment. We do not provide advice regarding the suitability, profitability or potential value of any particular security or investment. Should such advice be sought, the services of a professional advisor should be obtained. All information is made available “ as is ” and “ as available ” for your personal use only and we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied. Specifically, WHC Bassetti and AC Media Holdings and the operators of this website expressly disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose or use.

David Haas Archive

© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in