Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Who's watching who?


5:12 am (Hawaii) Finally awake as of 4:20 am here. Took awhile to get the cobwebs out. Woke to find the Dow up 200 points, not a surprise after the huge surge in futures in the middle of the night. Funny how "rumors" get around that way. By the time Helicopter Ben begins his press conference in 3 hours, will the market be surprised if he announces QE3? And if he does, where do the indices go?

Currently:
DJ 10,939 (+129, +1.1%)
Nas 2,142 (+54, +2.3%)
S&P 1,137 (+18, +1.7%)

A QE3 announcement or strong hint would push everything higher at warp speed, but would S&P 500 go back to 1,333? I have my doubts.

My Regular watch list is 77% green, strongly bullish. GNK (+15%), SINA (+10.6%), Citi (+10%), LNKD (+9.7%) ... a ton of plays are up more than 3%. Includes BIDU (+7.5%), NFLX (+3.7%) and AAPL (+3.9%).

DGP, XG and GSVC are all up, so I'm a little happy, but this is so temporary. Just about everything is up except a few stragglers and spot silver. Silver miners like EXK are barely positive (+0.4%). Spot silver near its low of the day at 37.64. No surprise there. JP Morgan is, in all likelihood, as short silver as it is long gold.

Spot gold is well off its overnight high, now 1732 after hitting 1780. What a crazy run. Metals list is 60% green, led by AVL (+15.3%), REE (+8.1%), MCP (+7.2%) and ZSL (+6.3%). My Debt Spiral list is 86% green, with only FAZ red (-11.6% to 70.48). FAS is making its QE3 run (+10.6%), as expected ... but is this QE3 day?

Now's not the time to go long, certainly, and definitely not long in a large way. Most stocks are near their opening-bell prices. Bernanke and the Fed will probably say they're aware and prepared to boost the market when necessary, and that'll be enough to tide everybody over until Jackson Hole on the 26th. But if he says nothing, the shitstorm will return.

With the chaos in the ME and now London (four days now), fear is becoming prevalent. That's another factor, the visuals. It happened last year when Greece first erupted, and the TV reports sank the market. Now there's the helicopter/SEALs takedown/shooting controversy in Afghanistan, and all eyes are on the White House. The mood is sombre, to say the least. Pressure's on the Fed to make this Christmas.

I'm prepared for either direction. Still holding my little positions of DGP, XG and GSVC.

No comments: