Capitalogix

How Far Is Too Far, When It Comes to a Market Rally?

Have you been waiting around to "buy the dip" on this latest stock market rally? If so, you have been waiting a long time.  And I'm not just talking about the recent 10-day winning streak.

The Dow surpassed its all-time high and the S&P 500 is not that far from the tops of 1553 on March 24, 2000 and 1576 on October 9, 2007.

How Strong is the Trend?

The chart below compares each of the equity markets. If a market is shown to be at 100%, then it's currently at a new three year equity high. If not, then the percentage number indicates how close it is to reaching a new equity high.

 

Also visit the Drawdowns Metric page to view historic equity high watermark charts.

 

Similar to 2000 and 2007, the economic, valuation and political background does not seem to support the budding euphoria.

But, as Citigroup's CEO said in 2007: “... as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.”  Remember how well that turned-out?

Related articles

Putting the Rally In Perspective

Here's The Ridiculous Way Bears Are Justifying Their Wrong Calls While The Stock Market Is At All-Time Highs

Will the Fed Kick Off an Equities Correction Next Week?

Markets Around The World Are Rallying Again...

Stats on the Rally

Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading

So there is a new Pope.  They probably didn't pick him this way.

 

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• 6 Key Things You Should Know About Pope Francis. (The Week)
• How the Conclave Picks a Pope: By the Numbers. (NYMag)
• 5 Things About Popes and Their Names; Like, Why Do They Change Them? (NPR)
• Boehner Turns Down Invitation to Visit Pope. President Obama invited John Boehner to travel with Vice President Joe Biden to Rome to watch the Roman Catholic Church install its first pope from the Americas in its 2,000-year history. (WSJ Video)
• How Rich Is the Catholic Church? Nobody really knows, because religious groups don’t need to follow regular accounting and disclosure rules. (Slate)

 

Trading Links:

• Lessons From Past Dow Milestones. (MarketWatch)
• Could the Dow really reach 36,000? Surge greeted by at least one outlandish prediction (TW)
• Secret and Lies of the Bailout. Taibbi warns the worst may be yet to come. (RollingStone)
• Move Over, Goldman. College grads are clamoring to work for a different firm this year. (TDB)
• Amazon Launches ‘Amazon Coins’ In Its First Move Into Virtual Currency. (TechCrunch)

A View From Above ... Making the Invisible Visible [Video from the Space Station]

It is easy to get lost in the admistrivia of day-to-day life.  Here is a quick antidote for that.

International Space Station astronaut Don Pettit lived on the station for about a year, and took many pictures while up there.  The results of his innovative photographic work and passion have changed the way we see earth from space.

Next, astrophotographer Christoph Malin took thousands of Pettit's individual photos and animated them, adding clips of Pettit giving a talk about his stay aboard the ISS and his photography there. He also set it to music, creating a simply stunning time-lapse video.

The result is certainly worth watching.  So, set aside 16 minutes of your busy day, sit back, and soak this in: “The ISS Image Frontier”.

 

"Making the invisible visible" - the ISS Image Frontier from Christoph Malin on Vimeo.

 

The video presents an interesting perspective of our planet.

Many astronauts, even from back in the Apollo days, talk about an incredible feeling they get after a few days in space. As they gaze on the Earth from above, they lose their feeling of borders and nationality. The Saudi astronaut Sultan bin Salman Al-Saud, who flew on the Space Shuttle in 1985, commented on this, saying , “The first day or so we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day, we were aware of only one Earth.”

On a different note, the technique where they create a composite view of a visual time series is facinating.  It makes the invisible visible ... and has many uses in the big data space as well.  Very cool!

Related articles

Space station to watch for Earth disasters

Erupting Volcano As Seen From The ISS

SpaceX Dragon successfully docks with ISS, following thruster scare

Another Incredible Timelapse from the ISS

A View From the Top - The Dow Makes New Highs

The Dow Made New Highs! 

Wait, you don't care ... neither do a lot people.

Why?  Pick your poison: 1. Distribution days are piling up. 2. Short-term volatility and correlation are picking up. 3. Dividend-paying, defensive stocks (consumer staples) are leading the market. 4. The deterioration among momentum stocks as a group has accelerated. 5. Momentum divergences are showing up in charts. 6. Or, perhaps, it is because Central Banks are propping things up.

Regardless, things have been moving higher ... and that is the market you have to trade.

Hold on; that isn't true.  While there have been lots of headlines about the Equity Markets, that hasn't been the whole story this year.  There are lots of other markets to trade.

The chart shows the top-ten performing markets, ranked by weekly performance, for the past few months. The data is color coded based on sector. The first column posts the current week's open performance followed by six columns of the most recent weekly market performance.

 

 
Click this link to view monthly, quarterly, and yearly views of this data.

Related articles

Dow All-Time High On The Top Of USA Today

Fresh Charts of the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq

As Dow hits record, should you pile in or run away?

The Dow Jones's new high is fake

Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading

 

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• Shared Wisdom: Thoughts From Some of the Industry’s Best VCs. (PandoDaily)
• How Slot Machines Raise Our Hopes, Even When We’re Losing. (NYTimes)
• Finding Value in Information Super-Abundance. (Economist)
• How Nate Silver Got It Right. It's not how much data you have, it's what you do with it. (NYBooks)
• Big Data Can Tell By Your Tweets If You’re a Psychopath. (GlobalMail)

 

Trading Links:

• Small Hedge Funds Outdo Elite Rivals. (FT)
• What If They Held a Bull Market and No One Came? Disinterest in the Dow's new high. (WS&T)
• Buffett Picks Douglas Kass as His 'Bear' for Berkshire’s Annual Meeting. (Dealbook)
• Could North Korea Really Nuke the United States? Threat of a "Preemptive Nuclear Attack" (TW)
• As Budget Cuts Loom, Austerity Kills Off Government Jobs. What effect will that have on the economy? (NYTimes)

Related articles

ART CASHIN: The Experts That Traders Go To For North Korea Intel Are Getting Worried

A Question for Warren Buffett

Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading

Perhaps you've seen the t-shirt before ...

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• Washington, DC, Is No. 1 — at Watching Porn. So they are doing something there. (Newser)
• 20 Tech Trends That Will Define 2013. Selected By Frog Design (Fastcodesign)
• Seeking Cheaper Insurance, Drivers Accept Monitoring Devices. (NYTimes)
• Toyota Unveils a Lexus that Drives Itself. But Says It’ll Keep Drivers in Control (MIT TechReview)
• Getting the Right Dose of Exercise. Why Four Workouts a Week May Be Better Than Six. (Well)

 

Trading Links:

• How Michael Jordan Still Earns $80 Million A Year. (Forbes)
• Kass Gets ‘Summer of 1987 Feeling’. Sentiment and valuations make a strong bear case (CNBC)
• Fed Action This Year More Powerful Than in 2012. (WSJ)
• A Tax That Could Change the Trading Game. It’s all about ‘Carrots’ and ‘Sticks’. (NYTimes)
• Perhaps You Are Not as Good an Investor as You Think You Are. Many investors have been behaving as if the bloodbath between October 2007 and March 2009 never happened. (Wall Street Journal)

Bill Gates Annual Letter - Why The 'Right' Measures Matter

Why does measurement matter?

Bill Gates explores this question in his 2013 Annual Letter, highlighting innovations in measurement that are helping to eradicate poverty and disease.

 

Download Bill Gates' 2013 Annual Letter in PDF format.

Also see his "My Hope for 2030" video.

 

Related articles

10 Key Takeaways From Bill Gates' Annual Letter

What Bill Gates Is Focusing On In 2013

Bill Gates says he has no use for money... He is doing 'God's work'

Bill Gates says Steve Jobs was "always cooler than me"

Your Weekend Linkfest

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• Marc Andreessen On The Future Of Enterprise. (TechCrunch)
• What We Should Fear? Top scientists and writers ponder this single question. (NewYorker)
• Deception Is Futile When Big Brother's Lie Detector Turns Its Eyes on You. (Wired)
• Pentagon on CyberSecurity Force: Quintuple It. (Newser)
• SIRI RISING. The Inside Story Of Siri's Origins – And Why She Could Overshadow the iPhone Itself. (HuffPost)

 

Trading Links:

• The Great Central Banking Experiment. Will Unlimited Cash Solve or Cause Problems? (Time)
• There's a New Worst-Rated State In the Nation, and It Isn't California. Can you guess? (BizInsider)
• In the Choice of ‘More Data’ or ‘Better Algorithms’ – Better Data Wins. (AllThingsD)
• Ranking the Yearly Performance of Global Markets. (Capitalogix)
• SAC Braces for Big Exodus. The hedge-fund group has been bracing for client withdrawals of at least $1 billion this year—nearly 17% of its AUM. (Wall Street Journal)

Inflation - The Hidden Tax

Saw this and smiled a little bit.

 

But the likely result isn't as funny.

Inflation is a tax on capital and it slowly eats away at your portfolio.  It also takes a chunk out of your wallet. 

With the printing presses running in Washington, how can you tell if things are getting more expensive?  It isn't a trick question, you simply compare prices with what they used to be.

 

 

While it is something to watch, I'm not hearing much concern.  What about you?

Related articles

Hidden Inflation Everywhere, From Watered-Down Bourbon To Horse-Meat Chili

Inflation Is a Tax on Capital

Inflation Update - Deflation, Inflation or Disinflation?

Key Measures show low inflation in January

Bernanke's Hammer: When You Have a Printing Press, Everything Looks Like a Monetary Transaction

What a Month - and we're only halfway through

Sometimes you've got to wonder.  February has brought lots of wild news so far. 

The Pope resigned, a massive meteor hits Russia with nuclear force, there was a Tsunami in the south pacific, and a storm dumped three feet of snow on parts of the northeast.  And I visited my inlaws.

Here is a photo from Chinese New Year with my wife's family in Jakarta, Indonesia. That is her dad in the center. 

  

 

What amazed me was how fast the city got back on its feet after massive flooding because of a Monsoon.  Click this link to see why even rich people have trouble in Indonesia (yes, that is a Rolls Royce).

Chances are the rest of the month will go smoother, right?