Archive for May, 2010
Small Cap Insurance Brokers Got It Goin’ On
They may not be the outright leaders for any timeframe, but they’re finishing in the top 20 for all timeframes. Like NASCAR, that sort of consistent strength is how you win the series, even without winning the race. Yeah, well, that’s precisely what I see the small cap insurance brokers doing right now…. doling out [...]
Q1’s Mismatched Earnings Results: Opportunity in Disparity
Think the market makes sense? In some ways it does; in a lot of ways it doesn’t. That’s not a complaint - just a reality we as investors have to acknowledge if we’re to have any hope at beating the market.
This idea surfaced again as the Q1 earnings data and numbers were being crunched on [...]
Consumer Staples Wave a Red Flag - SYY, WMT, TSN, HRL Up
Tuesday was brutal for stocks, again, with the S&P 500 closing 1.4% lower to end the session at 1120.80. It was the tenth losing day of the last sixteen, and of those ten losing days, each has been made on higher volume than the previous day; none of the winners were technical ‘accumulation’.
While that clue [...]
Earnings Calendar, Scoreboard (No Wonder Stocks are Struggling)
The pace of earnings announcements is still slowing down, though enough have yet to post numbers that we still want to keep tabs on what’s on tap for the coming week. Here are the biggies.
By the way, this earnings season actually turned out to be a disappointment. About 58.8% of companies actually beat (under the [...]
Economic Calendar for Week of 5/16 - Capacity & Productivity Firm
It was a fairly modest week on the economic front, not in terms of the number of economic announcements, but in terms of impact. Unemployment claims - new as well as ongoing - continues to sink (444K and 4627K, respectively), and are now in their fourth week of a downtrend….. modest reason for hope, even [...]
Sector Performance Means Little, Industry Results More Telling - 05/14
Don’t read too much into last week’s sector result - it was more about a dead-cat bounce, where the harder a sector fell, the firmer the short-term bounce was. The coming week’s results along with the four-week results at the end of the coming week will really be a more telling description of any bigger-picture [...]
Add the NASDAQ’s Up & Down Volume, VXN to the List
Pick any index you want…. the Dow, S&P 500, or the NASDAQ - the story isn’t too different any way you go. While Monday’s bounce was encouraging, Thursday’s pullback and Friday’s harsh downside follow-through suggests the bulls are not ready to muster a permanent rebound yet.
The composite gained 3.58% for the week - the bulk [...]
The Rest of the ‘Sell in May’ Story
It’s that time of year again - time to “Sell in May and go away”, since the market’s average monthly returns suggest the beginning of May through the end of September is not only a weak patch, but usually so weak that this five month period is a net loser.
Are you actually going to take [...]
Sector Rotation Waving a Small Red Flag… So Far
Nothing was all that dramatic last week on the sector front in terms of total gains or losses. Yet, it was a huge week in terms of the paradigm shift we saw unfold. How so? It’s just that the market’s biggest habitual losers suddenly because the biggest winner (relatively), and the market’s strongest sectors of [...]
