Indices

• July 18, 2008 Mid-Day Stock Indexes Review-

  iraepsteinfutures Ira Epstein and Company Futures Trading, Online Trading, Technical Analysis, Stock Indexes Review, Sales: 800-284-3010

• IG Index Daily Market Update 18/07/08-

  IG Index Daily Market Update 18/07/08

• July 17, 2008 Mid-Day Stock Indexes Review-

  iraepsteinfutures Ira Epstein and Company Futures Trading, Online Trading, Technical Analysis, Stock Indexes Review, Sales: 800-284-3010

• IG Index Daily Market Update 17/07/08-

  IG Index Daily Market Update 17/07/08

• July 16, 2008 Mid-Day Stock Indexes Review-

  iraepsteinfutures Ira Epstein and Company Futures Trading, Online Trading, Technical Analysis, Stock Indexes Review, Sales: 800-284-3010

• The California SUV Fill Up Index at $4.50 per gallon- Given the 33 percent year-over-year increase in the price of gasoline as reported in this morning's inflation data, an update of the California SUV Fill Up Index seemed appropriate (if not long overdue).
  I hear you can get a Dodge Ram for half off the MSRP in Arizona. Though trucks do not appear on the list above, if they did, the Dodge Ram with the 34 or 35 gallon tank would place third with a fill-up price of about $155 in California or about $15 less in Arizona where gas is a little cheaper less expensive.
  
  
• Think the unthinkable- “The terrible, cold, cruel part is Wall Street. Rivers of gold flow there from all over the earth, and death comes with it. There, as nowhere else, you feel a total absence of the spirit: herds of men who cannot...
• IG Index Daily Market Update 16/07/08-

  IG Index Daily Market Update 16/07/08

• July 15, 2008 Mid-Day Stock Indexes Review-

  iraepsteinfutures Ira Epstein and Company Futures Trading, Online Trading, Technical Analysis, Stock Indexes Review, Sales: 800-284-3010

• CBOE Launches "Oil VIX" (OVX)- Today the CBOE launched an "Oil VIX" (OVX) based on options on the USO crude oil ETF.
  
  According to the CBOE press release, the exchange is in the process of expanding their volatility index product line into commodities and foreign currencies.
  
  I think this is an exciting development that just happens to fit nicely with several chapters in my upcoming book.
  
  I'll have a lot more to say about the OVX and other CBOE volatility products going forward.
• IG Index Daily Market Update 15/07/08-

  IG Index Daily Market Update 15/07/08

• DJIA, SP-500, NYSE, and Nasdaq Breakdown On Very Strong Volume; The SP-600 (SmallCap Index) Is Starting To Show Strong Relative- Well there is absolutely nothing else that can describe Friday other than pure utter disappointment. I am telling you right now that the odds of us starting another leg lower has increased by leaps and bounds after Friday’s breakdown. Why? Because something that happened this time last happened in 2000. After an initial breakdown, some stocks recovered and some created very bullish chart patterns. After initially working, they soon all reversed as around August 2000 the stock market then resumed its trend lower. There is nothing that says that we are going to have a bear market like we did in 2000. However, the 10 new shorts that I have for Monday have the EXACT SAME PATTERNS that I saw in August to September of 2000.
  
• Bullish Week Ends With Mixed Trading On The Major Market Indexes; Individual Stocks Are Starting To Look Real Good- It was another overall boring session to end the week but despite the overall boring tone to Friday's session it was still a bullish session underneath as many stocks had solid sessions and many stocks that I was long had a very positive session. Overall, profit taking was quite mild in the AM and the strong mid-day rally into the close shows the bears are still not in control.
  
  This kind of action on a do nothing day is just what I like to see in a market that refuses to do much. If there would have been a lot of blowups and negative action today, then I would have been a lot less enthusiastic about the non-event that Friday was.
  
  By the close, the NYSE was up .6%, the SP 500 was up .3%, and the DJIA was flat. The Nasdaq finished lower but the intraday support and positive action by the close is something that has to be considered positive overall. I mean obviously if this market was real weak they would have sold them into the close.
  
• BSC Blowup Proves A Chronic Emailer Wrong And, Once Again, Proves The Power Of CANSLIM; Stock Market Indexes Selloff On Mixed Vo- Please Note: Starting next week this free weekly commentary will only be available at BigWaveTrading.net so be sure to check out the new FREE site sponsored by BigWaveTrading.com where Joshua Hayes and Market Speculator will be regularly posting some additional commentary about the markets.
  
  Today was another day in the stock market that has just gone to prove that cash is in fact king. When you try to play a stock market with a heavy hand or even on margin in an environment like this you either have a serious illness or you just have never taken the time to study history and to have learned that the smartest thing to do is NOTHING. A stock market that is this volatile that has THIS MANY BLOWUP is definitely not a stock market you want to be messing with.
  
• Stocks Selloff On Higher Volume, Helping Send Some Indexes To New 52-Week Closing Lows- Stocks sold off yet again but this time it did so on higher volume which is helping make my point that selling can start off slowly and pickup as it sells off. If you look at the downtrend since last February, you can see that this is the case now as it has been in the past with other market selloffs.
  
  The good news, today, is that, like most sessions recently, the market staged a very volatile and powerful reversal. This time it was to the bull side and it was needed for the trapped longs as stocks looked like they were going to put in another very bearish day of trading.
  
• IG Index Daily Market Update 14/07/08-

  IG Index Daily Market Update 10/07/08

• Rational zestlessness-

  “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” – Dorothy Parker (attrib.)

   

  In addition to lending his name to market data tracking the downfall of US real estate, Yale economist Robert Shiller is justly famous for his biography of the stock market bubble, ‘Irrational Exuberance’(Princeton University Press, 2000). Subsequent price action would appear to vindicate Shiller and his thesis: that at the turn of the century, stock prices were grossly overvalued, and false thinking was in the driving seat.

   

  We seem to be at another key inflection point in the evolution of the markets. What factors did Shiller originally cite to account for a herd of investors gleefully stampeding towards the cliff edge ? They included:

   

• It’s all relative-

  “You won’t learn much about capitalism at university. How could you ? Capitalism is a matter of risks and rewards, and a tenured professor doesn’t have much to do with either.” – Pournelle.

  The first half of the Bloomberg headline looks shocking: “Hedge funds have worst first-half performance in 18 years..” But the second half is an absolute peach: “..dropping 0.75%”. Plenty of equity market investors would be glad to have tolerated anything like that level of negative returns. We once wrote a satirical piece entitled ‘Armageddon of horrifying carnage as hedge fund index falls 0.03%’ – life now seems to be replacing art. In the spirit of not having anything more positive to say about the markets, the original is reprinted below. There is a good chance it will be reposted every time financial reporters refer somewhat indiscriminately to the high risk attributes of hedge fund investments (compared, say, to stock markets).

• IG Index Daily Market Update 10/07/08-

  IG Index Daily Market Update 10/07/08

• July 9, 2008 Mid-Day Stock Indexes Review-

  iraepsteinfutures Ira Epstein and Company Futures Trading, Online Trading, Technical Analysis, Stock Indexes Review, Sales: 800-284-3010

• July 8, 2008 Mid-Day Stock Indexes Review-

  iraepsteinfutures Ira Epstein and Company Futures Trading, Online Trading, Technical Analysis, Stock Indexes Review, Sales: 800-284-3010

• How Have Global Indexes Held Up So Far?- It’s time to broaden our perspective and view the major market indexes from countries around the world.  How have they performed since the October 2007 US Stock Market Peak?  Let’s review the percentage comparison for insights. Since the October preak, only Brazil ($BVSP) has held its own, and has now turned negative from the peak after [...]
• IG Index Daily Market Update 08/07/08-

  IG Index Daily Market Update 08/07/08

• New Gulf States Index- As recently reported at IndexUniverse.com, Standard & Poor's launched the S&P GCC 40, covering 40 stocks from the Gulf Cooperation Council markets, a trade bloc formed by the Persian Gulf states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The narrow-based index will contain large and liquid stocks that are participating in the current growth in the Persian Gulf. Of note is how Saudi Arabia, a largest market of the six, is excluded since it is not considered investable, or accessible to foreign investors. Stocks included in the index must have a market caps of $400 million or more and average daily volume over three months of at least $1 million. Three countries have the lion's share of the weighting, with the UAE at nearly 35% weighting, Kuwait at around 30%, and Qatar will a little over 29%. Financial companies also hold over 60% of the index weighting.
• July 7, 2008 Mid-Day Stock Indexes Review-

  iraepsteinfutures Ira Epstein and Company Futures Trading, Online Trading, Technical Analysis, Stock Indexes Review, Sales: 800-284-3010

• DJIA, SP-500, NYSE, and Nasdaq Breakdown On Very Strong Volume; The SP-600 (SmallCap Index) Is Starting To Show Strong Relative- Well there is absolutely nothing else that can describe Friday other than pure utter disappointment. I am telling you right now that the odds of us starting another leg lower has increased by leaps and bounds after Friday’s breakdown. Why? Because something that happened this time last happened in 2000. After an initial breakdown, some stocks recovered and some created very bullish chart patterns. After initially working, they soon all reversed as around August 2000 the stock market then resumed its trend lower. There is nothing that says that we are going to have a bear market like we did in 2000. However, the 10 new shorts that I have for Monday have the EXACT SAME PATTERNS that I saw in August to September of 2000.
  
• Bullish Week Ends With Mixed Trading On The Major Market Indexes; Individual Stocks Are Starting To Look Real Good- It was another overall boring session to end the week but despite the overall boring tone to Friday's session it was still a bullish session underneath as many stocks had solid sessions and many stocks that I was long had a very positive session. Overall, profit taking was quite mild in the AM and the strong mid-day rally into the close shows the bears are still not in control.
  
  This kind of action on a do nothing day is just what I like to see in a market that refuses to do much. If there would have been a lot of blowups and negative action today, then I would have been a lot less enthusiastic about the non-event that Friday was.
  
  By the close, the NYSE was up .6%, the SP 500 was up .3%, and the DJIA was flat. The Nasdaq finished lower but the intraday support and positive action by the close is something that has to be considered positive overall. I mean obviously if this market was real weak they would have sold them into the close.
  
• BSC Blowup Proves A Chronic Emailer Wrong And, Once Again, Proves The Power Of CANSLIM; Stock Market Indexes Selloff On Mixed Vo- Please Note: Starting next week this free weekly commentary will only be available at BigWaveTrading.net so be sure to check out the new FREE site sponsored by BigWaveTrading.com where Joshua Hayes and Market Speculator will be regularly posting some additional commentary about the markets.
  
  Today was another day in the stock market that has just gone to prove that cash is in fact king. When you try to play a stock market with a heavy hand or even on margin in an environment like this you either have a serious illness or you just have never taken the time to study history and to have learned that the smartest thing to do is NOTHING. A stock market that is this volatile that has THIS MANY BLOWUP is definitely not a stock market you want to be messing with.
  
• Stocks Selloff On Higher Volume, Helping Send Some Indexes To New 52-Week Closing Lows- Stocks sold off yet again but this time it did so on higher volume which is helping make my point that selling can start off slowly and pickup as it sells off. If you look at the downtrend since last February, you can see that this is the case now as it has been in the past with other market selloffs.
  
  The good news, today, is that, like most sessions recently, the market staged a very volatile and powerful reversal. This time it was to the bull side and it was needed for the trapped longs as stocks looked like they were going to put in another very bearish day of trading.
  
• IG Index Daily Market Update 07/07/08-

  IG Index Daily Market Update 07/07/08

• Should the NASDAQ be considered a tech index?- Many bloggers and stock market commentators often refer to the NASDAQ as "tech-heavy" and it is often treated as a proxy for tech stocks in general.
  
  In order to trade the NASDAQ many investors use the PowerShares QQQ Trust ETF (QQQQ). Those who are seeking a little more juice may use the ProShares Ultra QQQ ETF (QLD) which is intended to deliver twice the performance of QQQQ on a daily basis.
  
  In any case, we know that the NASDAQ 100 and these ETFs contain stocks that fall into more sectors than just tech. Specifically, the NASDAQ 100 index is limited to the 100 largest non-financial stocks listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market and includes sectors such as media, health care, consumer services, etc.
  
• IG Index Daily Market Update 04/07/08-

  IG Index Daily Market Update 04/07/08

• July 3, 2008 Mid-Day Stock Indexes Review-

  iraepsteinfutures Ira Epstein and Company Futures Trading, Online Trading, Technical Analysis, Stock Indexes Review, Sales: 800-284-3010

• Oil aboard !-

  “Every crowd has a silver lining.” – Phineas Taylor Barnum.

  We are all oil experts now. As simple-minded trend-followers watching CNBC sector analysts on Wall Street have spent recent months trampling over each other to issue increasingly facile pronouncements of ever-rising price “targets”, the value-added commentary department for oil was temporarily closed after the Financial Times quoted Tom Bentz, “senior energy analyst” at BNP Paribas, who exclusively revealed on June 7^th that,

   

  “It’s still a bull market in oil.”

   

• Stuck in the Middle- “Well I don’t know why I came here tonight I got a feeling that something ain’t right I’m so scared in case I fall off my chair And I’m wondering how I’ll get down those stairs Clowns to the left...
• Power failure on Wall Street- “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” – Voltaire. Have there ever been bigger dislocations between the behaviour of financial markets and the likely fortunes of western economies ? Has the reputation of Wall Street and the...
• Unsafe as houses- “Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich – something for nothing.” – George Bernard Shaw. Where have shareholders in UK lenders and homebuilders been living for the past year – under a rock ? When the Nationwide...
• The end of an error- “It is well enough that the people of this nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” – Henry Ford. If anyone was in doubt...
• Pricing power: signal versus noise- “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning...
• The infantilization of markets- “What are the facts ? Again and again and again – what are the facts ? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell”, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbours think, never mind the unguessable “verdict...
• Sacrificing some sacred cows- “Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.” - Ambrose Bierce, ‘The Devil’s Dictionary’. Certain combinations of words can be virtually guaranteed to lower the spirits. One thinks of constructions like “Michael Winner”; “diplomatic solution”; “Ricky...
• ‘Stuff’ versus paper- “Unfortunately, self-regulation stands in relation to regulation the way self-importance stands in relation to importance..” - Willem Buiter, in The Financial Times, on the latest laughable attempt by banks to weasel out of any kind of real regulatory oversight. “There...
• Some inconvenient truths- “We are born brave, trusting and greedy – and most of us remain greedy.” – Muriel Strode. Just following the investment markets this past year has been a largely thankless task. A Chinese water torture of ongoing black comedy from...
• Wall Street to write off another 300,000,000 staff- Download wall_street_to_write_off_another_300000000_staff.pdf (The PDF document is fuller and contains graphics) “You don’t have to predict it. We’re in it.” - Paul Volcker, former US Federal Reserve chairman, responding to a question on whether he still predicted a dollar crisis in...
• Bernanke Goes Forth- “Edmund: You see, Baldrick, in order to prevent war in Europe, two superblocs developed: us, the French and the Russians on one side, and the Germans and Austro-Hungary on the other. The idea was to have two vast opposing armies,...
• Not waving but drowning- “The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn’t want to go bankrupt. People must again...
• After Goldilocks- “Today you can go to a gas station and find the cash register open and the toilets locked. They must think toilet paper is worth more than money.” – Joey Bishop. The so-called ‘Goldilocks’ economic environment, writes Peter L. Bernstein,...
• Living beyond our means- “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” – George W. Bush, August 5 2004. *Please note: there are a...
• The modern banker as ‘Typhoid Mary’. Discuss.- “Bear [Stearns] executives also believe the market for collateralised debt obligations, which is dormant, will eventually come back, though the instruments will probably have a new acronym to make them more palatable.” - The Financial Times, 14th February 2008. According...
• Farmageddon- “There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later...
• Squinting into fog- “A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.” – Sidney J. Harris. Pimco’s Bill Gross calls them ‘Old Maids’. Canada’s Eric Sprott refers to them...
• All in the mind- “Minds of moderate calibre ordinarily condemn everything which is beyond their range.” - Duc de La Rochefoucauld. In ‘Fooled by Randomness: the Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets’, Nassim Nicholas Taleb – to demonstrate why we...
• Stocks in turmoil as Neasden bank reports shock profit- “You couldn’t get a clue during the clue mating season in a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance.” – Edward Flaherty. January 29 (London) – European stock...
• Can Chen Zhi save the world ?- “In most of the cities and towns of this country, this Wall Street panic will have no effect.” - Paul Block, editorial, November 15, 1929. What a weight of global expectation hangs on the shoulders of the Chinese and Indian...
• Time, gentlemen, please- “Even in such a time of madness as the late twenties, a great many men in Wall Street remained quite sane. But they also remained very quiet. The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a...
• Where Are Precious Metals Headed In 2008 (With A Focus On Gold)-

  Precious metals have appreciated considerably in midst of all the mess within the US economy. Gold has pushed from under $300 an ounce in 2002 to over $1000 - an all time high in nominal terms, while silver during the same time period rose from under $5 an ounce to over $20.