The United Kingdom (England et al) is the first of the European countries officially in recession with 2-consecutive contracting quarters of GDP.
US RECESSION?
The Morgan Stanley
Cyclical Index has underperformed the S&P 500 by about 2% over the past
month. That’s hardly indicative of panic-selling
in advance of recession.
CATERPILLAR
Speaking of cyclical
stocks, Caterpillar did well, earnings-wise, but some investors were disappointed
they didn’t do even better. Caterpillar
expects the world’s economy to get better and result in better sales
ahead. If that isn’t right they will be
stuck with too much capacity and the naysayers will be right. For now, I’ll just suggest that the
performance last quarter doesn’t look like recession, but the world-wide
economies have slowed.
APPLE
Not for Apple though. I joked yesterday that the QQQ was changing
its name to Quaple. That’s not too far
off. Last time I looked, Apple was 16%
of the QQQ and it must be higher now.
UNEMPLOYMENT
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) --
"First-time claims for unemployment benefits remained elevated for the third
straight week, the government said Thursday, a sign that a job recovery might
be stalling. The Labor Department said
the number of people filing for first-time unemployment benefits totaled
388,000…” That’s a high number. Full Story at:
THE MARKET
The S&P 500 was UP 2/3%
Thursday to 1400. VIX was DOWN 3.5% to 16.24.
The S&P 500 dipped
below the bottom trend line only to bounce back yesterday so that’s a good
technical sign.
NTSM
The NTSM analysis remained
HOLD today, Thursday.
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). 100% in stocks is quite extreme so don’t do
it unless you have a high tolerance for risk.
