Insider buying more than doubled last week with insiders buying $252.12 million of stock compared to $87.63 million in the week prior. Selling on the other hand decreased with insiders selling $693.93 million of stock last week compared to $825.55 million in the week prior. We had another volatile week in the equity markets with little overall impact as the S&P 500 ended the week only down 0.81%. Commodities like oil and natural gas however saw continued selling pressure with WTI brent crude down more than 15% to $26.05 on Thursday before rebounding on Friday to close down 4.69% for the week. Gold, in contrast, continues to rally with...
It’s been a very tough stock market for traders who are battling along with the bulls and bears. Friday’s action was somewhat encouraging, albeit on lower volume. Lower volume does not show commitment but rather a potential bear market rally. The market rallied due to jawboning of crude cutbacks. Crude flew up and the stock market followed. What is interesting is that many of the prior leaders are now also failing. REITS are failing and crossing their respective 50 day moving averages. Uncertainty is the theme for the stock market right now. However we do not walk away from the stock market. We are always building our watchlist. ...
Market Overview On Thursday, a decline which started at 1947 on the SPX broke the January 20 low of 1812 by a couple of points, and immediately reversed to finish on Friday’s close at 1864, with a 52-point bounce.Because of this being a potential double bottom, some analysts were quick to call this a bottom for the downtrend which started at 2116?Is it? Maybe yes and maybe no!It all depends on whether the next few days confirm it.What would it take for a confirmation?Either to keep going and surpass 1882 after a minor pull-back, or to spend some time consolidating above 1812 and then resume the rally.The two currently carry about equal weig...
Tech and Large Cap indices sit on the border between a bear market or a steep correction. While Small Caps have fallen into bear market territory, there is still a chance for other indices to come in from the precipice. The most bullish of these markers is Nasdaq Breadth metrics. Nasdaq Bullish Percents and Percentage of Nasdaq Stocks above the 200-day MA have dropped to levels last seen during 2011 lows. The relationship between new highs and lows in the NYSE is also building a head of steam. There is no clear marker for a low, but action here is approaching levels last seen during the worst of the credit crisis. The Transports...
Long before the mainstream media caught on to the topic of SWF selling of stocks, we warned a month ago that as a result of the collapse in oil, and assuming oil remains priced at roughly $31 per barrel, the world’s largest SWFs shown in the chart below… … would be forced to liquidate at least $75 billion in equities and the lower the price of oil goes, the more selling there would be. Subsequently, we showed both the equity sector and region allocation of SWF equity exposure, noting that financial stocks located in Western Europe are most exposed, something both DB and CS have found out the hard way. We also warned (i...
Global stock market volatility, oil price collapse and economic slowdown in China continue to rattle investor confidence this year. Former high flying stocks have come back to earth in the past few weeks as investors worry about the impact of weak global demand on corporate earnings. Investors had poured a lot of money into these stocks despite their sky high valuations but “risk-off” sentiment is sending many to “safer” assets now. As the domestic economy continued to recover slowly but steadily over the past few years, US stocks remained one of the best asset classes in the world. But of late, domestic economic growth has been rathe...
The traditional definitions of a “market correction” and a “bear market” are 10% and 20% declines, respectively. All eight indexes on our global watch list have been in correction territory, and as of the end of last week, seven of the eight had dropped into bear territory. The S&P 500 is the one outlier. It has been hovering in the correction zone since January 13th. The UK’s FTSE 100 is a near outlier. It dropped below 20% on February 9th, but after three days of bear stigma, it rallied to a 19.7% decline of Friday. Here is a column chart illustrating the maximum decline to date and the most recent level ...
This stock’s yield will only be this high temporarily, so if you worry about having a dependable income stream to help you during your retirement, jump on this chance to earn a 17% and growing yield forever. As the stock markets fall, my email box and news feeds are starting to fill up with dire rumors as to why a particular company is in trouble. These warnings generate the fears that dividends will soon be cut, eliminated, or worse. These rumors can generate extra selling pressure on share values that have already fallen significantly. I find it somewhat amazing that a chat room thread or an uninformed article on a third-tier financial ...
In January 2016, global foreign reserves (FX) continued their decline after an absolute peak in June 2014, declining significantly in distressed emerging countries and some notable oil-producing economies (see Figure 1). Figure 1. China and Saudi Arabia, the leading owners of foreign reserves outside the OECD circle, both experienced an outflow greater than 5% of their outstanding reserves in less than 6 months (see Figure 2). A common factor explains these drawdowns: both the countries are struggling to defend their currency peg to the Dollar. The pressures on the exchange rates can be traced back to three intertwined drivers: the (still to ...
All successful social media businesses have one thing in common: they are constantly growing their user bases. Sadly, Twitter (TWTR) reported 320 million users in the December quarter, flat with the previous quarter and up 9% YoY, missing analysts’ expectations by 5 million users. And to make matters worse, the service lost over 2 million active users during the period. In a world that is becoming more and more connected every day, Twitter has done the unthinkable: it has shrunk. Twitter Is Important Before we get into what’s right and what’s wrong with Twitter, I want to make it clear that I believe that Twitter is very, very important...