“Trade what you see; not what you think.” – The Old Fool,
Richard McCranie, trader extraordinaire.
“The big money is not in the buying and selling. But in
the waiting.” - Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman, Berkshire Hathaway
“Bubbles tend to topple under their own weight. Everybody
is in. The last short has covered. The last buyer has bought (or bought massive
amounts of weekly calls). The decline starts and the psychology shifts from
greed to complacency to worry to panic. Our working hypothesis, which might be disproven, is that September
2, 2020 was the top and the bubble has already popped.” - David
Einhorn, Greenlight hedge fund.
My cmt: The 2 Sept high was 3581, so it looks like
David Einhorn was too early.
ELECTION SECURITY OFFICIALS: NO EVIDENCE VOTING SYSTEMS
COMPROMISED (USA Today)
“As President Donald Trump continued to pursue unsubstantiated claims of voting fraud in
multiple states Thursday, a national coalition of election security officials
described last week's general election as "the most secure in American
history." The security group, including the Department of Homeland
Security's Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the
National Association of State Election Directors, issued what appeared to be a
definitive coda to the 2020 vote.
"There is no evidence that any voting system deleted
or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised," the
coalition concluded. "All of the states with close results in the 2020
presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go
back and count each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security
and resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of
any mistakes or errors."
My cmt: I lean to the right. And because I believe the
Dems were unfair to Trump, I spent the last 4 years refuting Facebook lies by
the far left about him – that he was responsible for 130,000
coronavirus deaths; that he called the Coronavirus a hoax; that his
supporters wore Make-America-White-Again shirts and so forth. But now I see the
Right poisoning the Country with absurd lies about a “stolen election”.
Trump was significantly behind on the polls. Why would
anyone be surprised that he lost? The Arizona margin of loss was 3 in 1000 voters. The margin was closer in Georgia and
Pennsylvania. So, if 3 out of every 1000 voters were to change their minds, 3
critical swing states go to Biden. Did that happen?
His popularity was highest when he was onstage with Fauci
looking Presidential and leading the Pandemic response. Then a week before the
election he suggested at a rally that he would fire Fauci after the
election. Are you kidding me? With those
comments, and others that have irritated centrists, Trump pissed away his chances
to win. Now with baseless claims, he dishonors his Presidency and damages the democratic
foundations of the Country.
After the election, a friend said that he voted for Biden
because he thought Trump was dangerous. I
laughed it off. I was wrong. I will never vote for, or in any way support that
son-of-a-bitch again.
Here are two more articles refuting Trump’s claims:
TRUMP’S FRAUD CLAIMS HIT A BARR – EXCERPT (WSJ)
“Bill Barr can take the heat, and on Tuesday the stalwart
Attorney General guaranteed he’ll get it when he said ‘to date, we have not
seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the
election.’
Mr. Barr told the Associated Press that allegations of
“particularized” fraud, with some that ‘potentially cover a few thousand votes,’
are being explored. But President Trump is down by 150,000 votes in Michigan,
80,000 in Pennsylvania, and 20,000 in Wisconsin. As for the idea that voting
machines were compromised, Mr. Barr said the feds “have looked into that, and
so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that.’
...Fighting such claims is like whack-a-mole. No,
Pennsylvania didn’t count more mail votes than it sent out. No, Wisconsin
didn’t have 89% turnout. No, several states didn’t simultaneously quit counting
ballots on election night. No, ballots in Arizona filled out with Sharpie
markers weren’t discounted. In an election with 155 million votes, there are no
doubt irregularities and maybe some fraud. But for Mr. Trump to win the
Electoral College, he’d need to flip tens of thousands of votes in multiple
states.” – WSJ, Full Editorial at...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-fraud-claims-hit-a-barr-11606866056
My cmt: This piece is an intelligent read and it debunks
the claims by the Trump team, not just the ones I excerpted. The Wall Street
Journal leans right, so this is a legitimate criticism. It just reinforces comments by Gov Christie,
Republican, that we highlighted earlier and I am repeating below.
CHRISTIE (former NJ GOV) CALLS TRUMP TEAM NATIONAL
EMBARASSMENT (CNBC)
“Listen, I’ve been a supporter of the president, I voted
for him twice but elections have consequences and we cannot continue to act as
if something happened here that didn’t happen,” Christie explained...’They
allege fraud outside of the courtroom but when they go inside the courtroom
they don’t plead fraud and they don’t argue fraud,’ Christie said, adding ‘you
have an obligation to present the evidence, the evidence has not been
presented.’” Story at...
My cmt: Those who continue to support this sham are
hurting the country and enflaming those who refuse to consider the facts.
CORONAVIRUS (NTSM)
Here’s the latest from the COVID19 Johns Hopkins website
as of 5:45pm Monday. I averaged cases over the weekend, so it is not clear that
the reduction shown is real – it could be a reporting anomaly over the weekend.
US total case numbers are on the left axis; daily numbers are on the right side
of the graph with the 10-dMA of daily numbers in Green.
MARKET REPORT / ANALYSIS
-Monday the S&P 500 slipped
about 0.4% to 3695.
-VIX jumped about 17% to 25.16.
-The yield on the 10-year
Treasury slipped to 0.936%.
The daily sum of 20 Indicators declined from zero to -4
(a positive number is bullish; negatives are bearish). The 10-day smoothed sum
that smooths the daily fluctuations declined from +37 to 28. (These numbers
sometimes change after I post the blog based on data that comes in late.) Most
of these indicators are short-term and many are trend following.
The Long Term NTSM indicator
ensemble declined to HOLD, 21 Dec. Now, Price is bullish; Sentiment, VIX &
Volume are neutral.
The market remains extremely
overbought with the S&P 500 15.6% above its 200-dMA. If past history
follows, that tends to cap the gains going forward and suggest that the
downside risk is greater than the upside risk.
Is this the beginning of a
sell-off? I don’t know. Indicators are drifting down, but we have not seen very
strong signals.
I’ll continue to keep a low %
of funds in the stock market until I see a better buying point.
MOMENTUM ANALYSIS:
TODAY’S RANKING OF 15 ETFs (Ranked Daily)
The top ranked ETF receives
100%. The rest are then ranked based on their momentum relative to the leading
ETF.
*For additional background on
the ETF ranking system see NTSM Page at…
http://navigatethestockmarket.blogspot.com/p/exchange-traded-funds-etf-ranking.html
TODAY’S RANKING OF THE DOW 30
STOCKS (Ranked Daily)
Here’s the revised DOW 30 and
its momentum analysis. The top ranked stock receives 100%. The rest are then
ranked based on their momentum relative to the leading stock.
For more details, see NTSM
Page at…
https://navigatethestockmarket.blogspot.com/p/a-system-for-trading-dow-30-stocks-my_8.html
MONDAY MARKET INTERNALS (NYSE
DATA)
Market Internals remained NEUTRAL on the market.
Market Internals are a decent
trend-following analysis of current market action, but should not be used alone
for short term trading. They are usually right, but they are often late. They are most useful when they diverge from
the Index.
Using the Short-term indicator
in 2018 in SPY would have made a 5% gain instead of a 6% loss for buy-and-hold.
The methodology was Buy on a POSITIVE indication and Sell on a NEGATIVE
indication and stay out until the next POSITIVE indication. The back-test
included 13-buys and 13-sells, or a trade every 2-weeks on average.
My current stock allocation is
about 30% invested in stocks. You may wish to have a higher or lower % invested
in stocks depending on your risk tolerance. 30% is a very conservative position
that I re-evaluate daily.
The markets have not
retested the lows on recent corrections and that has left me under-invested on
the bounces. I will need to put less reliance on retests in the future.
As a retiree, 50% in the stock
market is about fully invested for me – it is a cautious and conservative
number. If I feel very confident, I might go to 60%; if a correction is deep
enough, 80% would not be out of the question.
