Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Market Observations

A couple of observations of what this market likes:

1. It likes stimulus and feared that the Europeans - the weakest part of the globe, if you ask me - were about to withdraw it.

2. The market loves a weaker dollar, if only because a tremendous number of very-high-profile stocks are linked to it: GE, CSCO, etc.

3. The market needs oil to create a higher low, which it seems like it is doing, and then break out to the $80s, not because it is good for the economy - it is terrible, especially for the consumer - but because it is a sign of no double-dip, which is what this decline was about anyway.

4. The market needs Washington closed and the president not talking in any way, shape or form about the economy, because he is now perceived as the enemy of capital (except in the media, where he is viewed as a friend of the common man).

5. The market loves copper going higher and believes that every tick down in copper means a Chinese bubble burst and worldwide recession.

Reality is the dollar doesn't matter that much to earnings, and we have had some big rallies with the dollar getting stronger. A breakout to the upside in oil would lead to $3 gasoline, which would put a severe crimp on the American consumer, two-thirds of the GDP. Greece was never going to go down. Neither is Spain or Portugal. (If Iceland, which was totally bankrupt didn't go down, then these other places weren't. They can't file chapter 11, you know. We learned a lot about what to do during the 1980s crisis in Latin America, and one of the things you don't do is let these countries default.) Copper's all about hedge-fund buying and has nothing to do with China, which is growing at 8% and still needs a lot of copper. There is a cyclical bust involving commercial property and a secular boom involving 400 million people joining the middle class. Finally, Obama's still busy trying to kill the market by paying lip service to jobs while actually stabbing the economy in the back with the endless chatter for a health plan that he still doesn't realize no one wants except his best pal Nancy Pelosi. You don't know this, because who in the guilt-ridden media's going to say it?

Everything else is oversold. So that's the tinder for this ridiculous set of what looks to be spontaneous combustions.

long INTC

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