Tuesday, February 4, 2014

European Banks at Risk…Recession?...Correction? It’s not over.

EUROPEAN BANKS AT RISK (Reuters)
“European banks have loaned in excess of $3 trillion to emerging markets, more than four times U.S. lenders and putting them at greater risk if financial market turmoil in countries such as Turkey, Brazil, India and South Africa intensifies…"We think EM (emerging markets) shocks are a real concern for 2014," said Matt Spick, analyst at Deutsche Bank. "When currency (volatility) combines with revenue slowdowns and rising bad debts, we see compounding threats to the exposed banks." Story at…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/04/us-europe-banks-emergingmarkets-idUSBREA130H320140204?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews
 
RECESSION INDICATOR
I track the spread between cyclical stocks (Morgan Stanley Cyclical Index) and the S&P 500 as a proxy for recession.  It doesn’t really measure risk of recession, but instead, it tracks investor’s anticipation of recession.  As of 24 Jan, the cyclical stocks are sharply underperforming the S&P 500 and over the last 10-days, cyclical stocks have fallen more than 4%.  Bottom line: This indicator says the fear of recession is high.  Like the Dow Theory that tracks transports vs. the Dow, weak cyclicals compared to the S&P 500 is a warning of trouble ahead and may be suggesting the economy is in worse shape than currently thought.
 
DOW THEORY
Dow Theory is currently SELL according to David Kneupper at the “DK Report”.  His dashboard of indicators is getting quite negative.  See the “DK Report” at…http://stockcharts.com/public/3828047/tenpp

DENNIS GARTMAN: UGLY CORRECTION COMING (CNBC)
The stock market could soon drop another 8 percent, but it's still a bull market, the editor and publisher of "The Gartman Letter" said Monday on CNBC.  "You can't say that a bear market has started until you've broken the trend lines—until you have rallied back, failed again, start to move lower. I'm not willing to say this is a bear market at all," said Dennis Gartman on "Fast Money."  Video at CNBC at...

MARKET REPORT
Tuesday, the S&P 500 was up 0.75% to 1755 (rounded).
VIX was down about 11% to 19.11.
 
The 10-year Treasury Note yield rose to  2.63%. Rates at 3% or above are considered by some traders to be “trouble-for-stocks”, but recently rates have been falling because of a flight to safety.  As bond-prices rise, yields fall.
 
MARKET INTERNALS (NYSE DATA)
The 10-day moving average of stocks advancing remained 43% at the close.  (A number below 50% for the 10-day average is generally bad news for the market.)  New-lows outpaced new-highs Tuesday, leaving the spread (new-hi minus new-low) at minus 39.  (It was -77 Monday). The 10-day moving average of change in the spread remained minus 23. In other words, over the last 10-days, on average, the spread has decreased by 23 each day. 
 
Market Internals are a decent trend-following analysis of current market action, but should not be used alone for short term trading. In 2013, using these internals alone would have made a 16% return vs. 30% for the S&P 500 (in on Positive out on Negative – no shorting).  Of course, few trend-following systems will do well in an extreme low-volatility, straight-up year.
 
NTSM
The NTSM system remained SELL today.
 
CORRECTION
All four areas of analysis, Sentiment, Price, Volume and VIX are currently negative.  It’s rare that the 4-primary indicators have flashed sell at the same time.  In the past 5-years it has happened only twice: 6-days after the top in the April 2010, 16%-correction and 5-days before the bottom in the June 2012, 10%-correction.  The corrections lasted 49 and 41-days from top to bottom.  As of today, this correction is 13-days past its prior high of 1848, so it appears that it will take longer to resolve the market’s problems.
MY INVESTED POSITION
I am about 30% invested in stocks as of 20 December (S&P 500-1540) because I upped my stock holdings by 10% on the 20th of December.  30% is a reasonable level of stock holdings for a correction, so I don’t need to reduce holdings since I don’t think this will be a major crash.  Even if a surprise collapse did take the stock market down by 50%, I’d only lose 15% in the stock portfolio.  On the other hand, if I am wrong, leaving 30% invested in stocks hedges the bet since no system is perfect.