American Express reported
earnings up 7%, but it was down 1/4% in after-hours trading. Ebay’s earnings were up 20% and, finally, a
stock went up in after hours trading! Ebay was UP almost 7% after-hours.
When stocks are down on
good news…well, that’s bad news.
MarketWatch reported
earlier today that about 10% of the S&P 500 companies had reported so far
and 80% of them beat expectations.
That’s the number I’m going with.
Let’s get upbeat!
Here’s what seems to be
influencing this market…
MarketWatch (18 Apr 20120:
“The country has high unemployment, weak growth and is saddled with enormous
debts and a big deficit....(No not the U.S. - it’s Spain)...Yields on 10-year
Spanish bonds touched 6% on Monday, a level not seen since before the ECB
launched the first of its long-term refinancing operations. A level of 7% or
higher could prompt the need for a financial bailout as it gets extremely
expensive for a country to finance its needs on the open market.” http://www.marketwatch.com/story/losses-hit-spanish-stocks-as-debt-auction-looms-2012-04-18?link=MW_home_latest_news
{We don’t know what our
real interest rate is here in the U.S., since, as we noted a few blogs back,
the Fed bought over 60% of US debt in 2011.
That screws with the “law of supply and demand” and lowers our interest
rates. The miners may all die, but our
canary will be fine.}
Another Spanish debt
auction is coming up Thursday (today if you’re reading this tomorrow…you know
what I mean) and that seems to be spooking the markets. If the debt auction fails we could see a big
move down. This looks like a replay of
last year, but the U.S. economy seems to be in better shape than last year; not
great, but better.
Thursday will be all about
Spain, so I won’t even try to guess the outcome.
Let’s hope for good news in
Spain because we could get a really nice bounce up.
THE MARKET
The S&P 500 was DOWN
0.4% Wednesday to 1385. VIX was UP 1% to
18.6.
NTSM
The NTSM analysis remains
HOLD as of the close Wednesday.
MY INVESTED POSITION
I bought back into the
stock market at S&P 500, 1155 on 7 Oct after the 6 Oct NTSM buy
signal. I remain 100% long in the
long-term portfolio (100% stocks in the 401k.). (See the page “How to Use the
NTSM System” – the link is on the right side of this page). That's way too much for most normal folks. If you can't sleep because you're worrying about the stock market - sell some stocks.
