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Just moments ago, long-time Sloper (who almost co-runs this place with me) Iggy wrote to me to tell me Steve Jobs died. This is heartbreaking news for me.
I imagine a huge number of tributes will be written, but allow me to re-run an anecdote I did about the one time I met the man. Hopefully it'll get across a little about how much he meant to me. The world is a darker place with Steve gone. Best wishes to the beautiful family he leaves behind.
The most recent 8 trading hours have been very good to the bulls. With the market so completely battered and bashed, finding stocks that climbed double-digit-percentages is almost too easy. The tricky thing is that at any time over the past six weeks or so, the same kind of "fire sale" was happening with stocks, and it was impossible to say whether or not there were more drops to come.
Whether you're a bull or a bear, or somewhere in between, I think you would be hard-pressed to make a convincing argument that a well-defined, sustainable bottom has been established in equities. A single sharp spike down does not constitute a bottom, and I still think it's possible that the S&P might get as low as 960 before putting together a multiple-hundred-point mega-rally.
I recently saw the movie, "Moneyball", which starred Brad Pitt playing the roll of Billy Beane (General Manager of the Oakland A's). I must say it was one of the best movies I have seen in years. And there wasn't even anything that belew up during the two-hour movie. Nonetheless, that movie was riviting, and as a baseball fan, I remember reading and following the Oakland A's back in 2002-2003 when they were defying the odds.
But what Beane did with the Oakland A's is transform baseball in a major way. You see, we are all enamored with the home-run hitters. We associate the best players in the game with those who crush the most number of balls over the outfield fence.
Well, I'm somewhat conflicted about the market, which is why I'm holding back for the most part.
On the one hand (which would be a bullish one), the vast, vast majority of stocks I follow would have to climb 10% to even 50% to be attractive short candidates with good risk/reward ratios. Also, the SPY/TLT I showed in an earlier post suggests the potential for a sustained moved upward. I feel like being short in this market is akin to playing "chicken", since Bernanke and Europe keep threatening to "help" the markets out in a big way.
It's been a while since I've monkeyed around with anything to do with precious metals, but I shorted a slug of GDX this morning at 53.86 with a stop at 54.42.
