First, I want to say a big Thank You to Slopers for supporting the blog's advertisers. I appreciate it.
I've never had the misfortune of enduring Chinese water torture, but I'm vaguely acquainted with the concept: a person is immobilized underneath a source of water which drips at random intervals. The uncertainty of knowing when the next drop is going to fall is supposed to be maddening.
Well, I think I can vouche for the mental effect. The "headline risk" from the Euro-clowns has been persisting for months now. I believe I read this is the seventeenth – SEVENTEENTH! – meeting of the big-wigs to "cure" the Euro-mess. Rest assured, there will be an eighteenth.
As I mentioned in comments, I entered fifteen new long positions today, and the fact that all fifteen finished in the green made an impression on me. I hate to use this phrase, but it does seem the market "wants" to go higher. Yes, we had our brief "sell the news" event early in Wednesday's trading, but the Euro recaptured most of it by day's end. Even more impressive, the ES rallied hard, even without the full cooperation of the Euro.
But as I mentioned recently, even long positions are risky these days. Look no further than FSLR and AMZN and NFLX. Sure, they all have their reasons……."the Kindle cost a lot to develop…….." "…confusion over Qwikstex damaged our momentum……" – and even from Apple – "…….people were waiting for the iPhone 5, which hurt our current iPhone sales." But I still see them as cracks in the facade.
Let's take a look at the Euro's recent activity:
The red arrow shows where the Euro cracked its support, and of course that led to the wonderful equity sell-off that terminated at the green arrow. The blue arrow, which happened today, was the post-German-vote "breakout" which was literally just one or two pips above that red resistance line and lasted, without exageration, two minutes.
However, until such time as the Euro cuts beneath the magenta arrow at 1.365, the risk of a true breakout above that horizontal line remains. And so, drip, drip, drip, we continue to wait.
The longs that I do have are, with few exceptions, BBP's (Barfy Bounce Plays). These aren't quality charts; they are simply prone to a hearty bounce if the equity markets rally. Some examples:
One closing comment about "blog drama". Your participation on my blog is a privilege, not a right. 95% of my readers are silent lurkers, 4.99% are good-natured commenters, and 0.01% are jerks. I'm done with jerks. I don't work as hard as I do on this blog, 365 days a year, in exchange for anyone making me unhappy.
If you aren't nice – – or if I know you're bad-mouthing me elsewhere – – I will ban you without apology. I have enough challenges in my real life. I don't need to tolerate jerks. So if you don't like me, or my ideas, or what I have to say, stay off my blog. We'll both be better off for it. And that's all I've got to say about that.
