Monday, January 18, 2010

US profits up, stocks down: Market madness this week?

Saw this piece in the Star

(TheStar)NEW YORK: Stocks got carried away about the recovery.

That at least is one interpretation of two curious market moves so far this earnings season.

Intel Corp. blew away expectations Thursday.

Ditto for JPMorgan Chase & Co. the next day.

And how did investors show their gratitude? They sold stocks by the bucketful. Intel was off 3 percent on Friday, and JPMorgan down 2 percent.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell almost 101 points.

"The market may have gotten ahead of the underlying economy," says CreditSights analyst David Hendler, by way of explanation.

JPMorgan's report showed that "loan demand is still contracting," which means a full recovery is still a ways off.

The weak outlook may have caught Wall Streeters by surprise, but here's the bigger shocker: that they were surprised at all.

The weak recovery is news?

http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/1/18/business/20100118073627&sec=business

If you believe that this is just one of those regular recessions, these numbers in this chart may interest you. One more assumption: you must believe that it's inflation rules and not deflation. We are way below the average in terms of length and % up from the bottom.



Volatility hits record low!.



When I surfed the net over the last two days, most people have reached head scratching level - do not know what to say because things are not as bad it seems neither as it's good as it should be. Absent of big powerful negative news, those missed to buy enough in the last 9 months, will step in.

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