Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Market comments for Aug. 17th, 2011

Today I have put together a 3 month chart of the S&P 500, which shows we are battling a similar fight between the Bears and Bulls, as we are in the Dow charts. Pretty much all the Indexes have a similar pattern. What is driving our patterns is not a sector problem, specific industry issue or stock issue but rather a phase of US growth that has slowed down enough to give many investors pause as to whether they want to take on more risk right now by buying stocks of less risk by selling them. The chart below shows the S&P and its low support level at 1120 and the upper resistance level at about the 1200 level. We won't break out of this range, either lower or higher, until the news turns one direction or the other. Listening to domestic economic news is not enough. You must also listen to what is happening in Europe with its debt issues as well as China for any glimpses of a major slowdown there too.

This morning the PPI data for July was released and it showed a +0.2% reading compared to a -0.2% reading for June. Expectations were for a +0.1% reading for July.

Core PPI came in at +0.4% for July as compared to a +0.3% reading for June. This makes a rise of 7.7% year over year in Core PPI. That is inflationary. Gold has advanced in premarket and European markets are mixed this morning within a tight range.

Tomorrow Initial Jobless Claims data will be announced at 5:30am PST, along with data on CPI, Existing Home Sales, the Philadelphia Fed data and Leading Indicators. So much to digest here.

The meeting yesterday between Germany's Merkel and France's Sarkozy left many unsatisfied as expectations were high for some major announcement and there was none. They did not embrace the aggressive purchasing of Eurobonds as a solution, nor did they strongly propose the Financial Purchase tax I had spoken about yesterday. Just to show another similarity of chart patterns, the chart below is of Germany's DAX Index. Notice the similarity of the patterns most recently.

And lastly, VP Biden went to China to assure leaders we are good for our debt to them and not to worry about the downgrade of the US from AAA to AA+ rating. Good luck selling that when they are looking for some tangible reassurances. VP Biden is good with the blarney so we shall see.

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