It's pretty evident that Slopers feel the same way about the market these days as I do, in spite of the reprieve in the last hour today.
In keeping with the Oprah motif, my "big beef" with the market is the lack of a theme. To me, a good theme is a general philosophy you can buy into and stick with for a period of weeks or months, such as……
- "Commodities overall are going to go up";
- "Technology stocks are going to fall";
- "Anything to do with precious metals is going to be in a major bull market";
- "Casual dining stocks are going to get killed";
- "Battered name-brands that are less than $3 are going to rebound strongly"
That last theme is the only one that has materialized, and I've stuck with it to good success. But even that one is running out of steam, since my IRA stocks are not rising effortlessly like they used to.
We have themes that last a few hours these days, but nothing truly lasting. The result is that it makes trading (1) a huge amount of work; for (2) at best, small profits (if not outsized losses for all your trouble).
If nothing else, I am opinionated, so I will offer this, which I truly do believe: if the highs from May 7/8 aren't taken out this week, I think the bulls are in for a meaningful correction; if we do get new highs this week, I think the bulls could carry the S&P back into the quadruple-digits with virtually no pause. If today's rally had held together, it would be extremely good for the bulls (which is why, God forgive me, I put up my TWM—>UWM post). But it didn't hold together.
So we remain in a state of uncertainty. Time to get my massage oil ready.