SMH (shaking my head)
Stock market had every chance to break out. It hasn't. What I'm doing about it.
9,450 trading days. That’s my quick estimate of how many 9:30am-4:00pm Eastern time stock market sessions I’ve followed. Some more closely than others. And perhaps never as closely as I do now, mainly because modern investment markets are, to use a technical term, “squirrelly.”
So I am indeed shaking my head (SMH to sound cool, but ruining the moment by realizing that’s also the ticker symbol for a prominent semiconductor ETF). I struggled with how to find the best way for me to explain to you why this market just seems more “off” to me than usual, like it is waiting for something but doesn’t realize it is right around the corner. Then I realized, the answer was right in front of me…on my computer screen.
So here, as of early afternoon today, are a few snapshots of what I keep seeing that makes me pretty convinced that the TV headlines sound like a bunch of guys my age at a social event (“how’s everything? good, good everything’s good, how about with you? great, just fine, just living life…). Yet all I see are breakdowns in chart patterns, and more significantly, the continued failure for price breakouts to sustain themselves.
For all, below is a single snapshot from my desk from earlier today. For premium subscribers, I’ll continue this discussion below the “paywall” and point out where I think the root causes or symptoms are.
It all adds up to what I’ve seen for a long time now: opportunities abound to make money, but the time frame in which to make it gets tighter and tighter. I’d love to be a more “long-term investor” but the number of such opportunities to do so with modest risk of major loss keeps dwindling. That’s why I’m glad I play offense and defense at the same time…and that T-bill rates are STILL over 5%.
Here’s a screenshot showing 14 of the S&P 100 (largest 100 stocks) up around mid-day. Sure it is just one day, but this is typical of what we see. AAPL steals the headlines (or NVDA other days) and the rest just drag along and few notice, since they are not large weightings in the index.
