Monday, March 31, 2014

Flash Boys

In investing, the best Outcome is Income!

As a contrarian I should not have been surprised that today's market acted opposite from what I thought after 60 Minutes excellent coverage of Michael Lewis's "Flash Buys" interview (and book) on the "rigging" of the stock market by HFTs (High Frequency Traders)! Although many people are addressing this problem, it doesn't really affect long term investors very much, or even swing/position traders; but hopefully, as with the Bitcoin time lag, regulators can fix this inequity.

  More on equity returns at my Examiner.com column:  http://www.examiner.com/stock-market-in-san-francisco/brent-leonard

Sentiment and Breadth extremes last week included the monthly figures of ETF flows, all increasing to recent record highs: domestic equity, Int'l, and Bonds, although MMF (money market) outflows lessened. Margin debt again hit new highs, but as reported elsewhere, this is a common occurrence (until it doesn't). As shown below, most other indicators are within range:

Date> 3/28/2014 3/21/2014
Indices: DJIA  16323 16302
  NAZ  4155 4276
SPX  1857 1866
WklyVolume (Bshs). naz/ny 11.4/3.6 10.5/4.4
Specul.Ratio hi=bullish 3.17 2.39
Sentiment: put/call-CBOE  61 57
VIX>50-alltmlow=8.8 14.4 15
Advance/Dec-NYSE.. 1485/1713 1940/1258
Weekly Net: -228 682
     Cumulative: 157313 157541
Weekly  NYSE hi/low 213/64 337/65
New Hi's/Low's Nasdaq h/l 161/110 350/59
McClellan  Oscillator -10 -12
McClellanSum .+750/-1000 768 897
Newsletter Inv.Intel -Bull:tues 54.7 52
Surveys Bear:-5yrs 17.5 17.4
AAII  -Bull :wed. 31.2 36.8
Bear  28.6 26.1
COT:SPX w/w large/small (net)k 7k/24k 9k/(31k)
COT:gold  comm.hedg long-short.000 (127k) (146k)nh
CEOinsider selling 25:1 25:1
off.&bd b/s.vs. 10% holder b/s 200:40 140:50
3-box rev Bullish%-  72 76
US equity -ICI Fund Flows WeekDelay (3.8B)
MMF flows Change in $B (3.2B) (31B)
MargDebt- top (300M) monthly  466B
ETF:mthlyEqty/ Int'l/Bond-$B 1035/397/266
2-yr Tsy Yield: Inflation 0.45% 0.45%
InsiderTotal: 50exer.

With record numbers of dollars coming out of Money Market Funds, mostly into the crowded trade of short term bonds, anyone who has a minimal knowledge of covered call options and/or an interest in hedging stock market exposure might want to check out: brentleonard.com for an alternative strategy that is low-risk as well as highly rewarding. For those of you wanting more details and actual trading results, a new book is available for $14.95 at Amazon.com: Zero (IN)Tolerance


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Monday, March 24, 2014

Sorry Toto- Kansas Gone

Stanford bumps Kansas from the March Madness in an upset game. Picking teams is like picking stocks - one never knows.
Sentiment extremes last week include records (at least recent ones) in the 2-year Treasury yield of 0.43%; commercials are also selling gold bigtime - whether it is hedging or bailing, one never knows.

 The S&P 500 (SPX) futures large traders are long, but small traders remain short. Most other Sentiment Indicators reverted to the mean last week - Bull/Bear surveys, VIX, CBOE put/call ratio, et.al. See below:

Date> 3/21/2014 3/14/2014
Indices: DJIA  16302 16065
  NAZ  4276 4245
SPX  1866 1841
WklyVolume (Bshs). naz/ny 10.5/4.4 11.2/3.3
Specul.Ratio hi=bullish 2.39 3.39nh
Sentiment: put/call-CBOE  57 67
VIX>50-alltmlow=8.8 15 17.8
Advance/Dec-NYSE.. 1940/1258 1196/2006
Weekly Net: 682 -810
     Cumulative: 157541 156859
Weekly  NYSE hi/low 337/65 240/90
New Hi's/Low's Nasdaq h/l 350/59 293/57
McClellan  Oscillator -12 -29
McClellanSum .+750/-1000 897 938
Newsletter Inv.Intel -Bull:tues 52 55.1
Surveys Bear:-5yrs 17.4 17.4
AAII  -Bull :wed. 36.8 41.3
Bear  26.1 26.8
COT:SPX w/w large/small (net)k 9k/(31k)
COT:gold  comm.hedg long-short.000 (146k)nh (125k)nh
CEOinsider selling 25:1 76:1
off.&bd b/s.vs. 10% holder b/s 140:50 150:60
3-box rev Bullish%-  76 75
US equity -ICI Fund Flows WeekDelay 1.9B
MMF flows Change in $B (31B) (2B)
MargDebt- top (300M) monthly 
ETF:mthlyEqty/ Int'l/Bond-$B
2-yr Tsy Yield: Inflation 0.43% 0.35%

With record numbers of dollars coming out of Money Market Funds, mostly into the crowded trade of short term bonds, anyone who has a minimal knowledge of covered call options and/or an interest in hedging stock market exposure might want to check out: brentleonard.com for an alternative strategy that is low-risk as well as highly rewarding. For those of you wanting more details and actual trading results, a new book is available for $14.95 at Amazon.com: Zero (IN)Tolerance


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Monday, March 17, 2014

What's The Big IDE?

The Ides of March are certainly providing a lot of market Volatility, partially due to all the revolting people around the globe; the NASD to NYSE Volume ratio ( speculation) made an all time high; but the CBOE put/call ratio yanked up 15 % points, a contrarily Bullish sign - more puts traded. The VIX leapt up from 14 to 17, which is usually a coincident, not predictive number.

For more, please click on:  http://www.examiner.com/stock-market-in-san-francisco/brent-leonard
To get it automatically each week, click on SUBSCRIBE
 
Here are the numbers:

Date> 3/14/2014 3/7/2014
Indices: DJIA  16065 16452
  NAZ  4245 4336nh
SPX  1841 1878nh
WklyVolume (Bshs). naz/ny 11.2/3.3 11.0/3.6
Specul.Ratio hi=bullish 3.39nh 3.06
Sentiment: put/call-CBOE  67 52
VIX>50-alltmlow=8.8 17.8 14.1
Advance/Dec-NYSE.. 1196/2006 1864/1344
Weekly Net: -810 520
     Cumulative: 156859 157669
Weekly  NYSE hi/low 240/90 512/35
New Hi's/Low's Nasdaq h/l 293/57 500/46
McClellan  Oscillator -29 10
McClellanSum .+750/-1000 938 1050
Newsletter Inv.Intel -Bull:tues 55.1 54.6
Surveys Bear:-5yrs 17.4 15.1
AAII  -Bull :wed. 41.3 40.5
Bear  26.8 26.6
COT:SPX w/w large/small (net)k 3k/(31k)
COT:gold  comm.hedg long-short.000 (125k)nh (121k)
CEOinsider selling 76:1 40:1
off.&bd b/s.vs. 10% holder b/s 150:60 160:50
3-box rev Bullish%-  75 75
US equity -ICI Fund Flows WeekDelay 1.9B
MMF flows Change in $B (2B) (4B)
MargDebt- top (300M) monthly 
ETF:mthlyEqty/ Int'l/Bond-$B
2-yr Tsy Yield: Inflation 0.35% 0.37%
InsiderTotal: 1265k/32k

With record numbers of dollars coming out of Money Market Funds, mostly into the crowded trade of short term bonds, anyone who has a minimal knowledge of covered call options and/or an interest in hedging stock market exposure might want to check out: brentleonard.com for an alternative strategy that is low-risk as well as highly rewarding. For those of you wanting more details and actual trading results, a new book is available for $14.95 at Amazon.com: Zero (IN)Tolerance


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Monday, March 10, 2014

HOLDING THE BREADTH:

Despite Monday's selloff the overall markets' breadth, or advances versus declines is still very strong. Last week saw new highs in the cumulative A/D summation, the McClellan Summation (similar) also broke 1000; it also hit 1560 in June of 2003 after a strong runup, but only to advance for a few more years after the hiccup. The McClellan Oscillator, the weekly number, however, has been declining the past couple weeks to +10.

Markets did hit new highs last week - Nasdaq and S&P 500, and NAS Volume increased over NY (speculative) to a 3-handle. New highs to lows ran above 10 to 1 on both the above indexes.
Other notable extremes: the Investors Intelligence Bears dropped to 15; the gold commercials continue to increase their shorting. Insider selling continues to be huge.
Here are the numbers:

Date> 3/7/2014 2/28/2014
Indices: DJIA  16452 16321
  NAZ  4336nh 4308nh
SPX  1878nh 1859nh
WklyVolume (Bshs). naz/ny 11.0/3.6 10.9/3.7
Specul.Ratio hi=bullish 3.06 2.95
Sentiment: put/call-CBOE  52 58
VIX>50-alltmlow=8.8 14.1 14
Advance/Dec-NYSE.. 1864/1344 1825/1192
Weekly Net: 520 633
     Cumulative: 157669 157149nh
Weekly  NYSE hi/low 512/35 457/63
New Hi's/Low's Nasdaq h/l 500/46 446/50
McClellan  Oscillator 10 42
McClellanSum .+750/-1000 1050 924
Newsletter Inv.Intel -Bull:tues 54.6 53.5
Surveys Bear:-5yrs 15.1 17.2
AAII  -Bull :wed. 40.5 39.7
Bear  26.6 21.1
COT:SPX w/w large/small (net)k 3k/(31k) 6k/(29k)
COT:gold  comm.hedg long-short.000 (121k) (117k)*
CEOinsider selling 40:1 111:1
off.&bd b/s.vs. 10% holder b/s 160:50 200:50
3-box rev Bullish%-  75 72
US equity -ICI Fund Flows WeekDelay 3.1B
MMF flows Change in $B (4B) 20B
MargDebt- top (300M) monthly  451Bnh
ETF:mthlyEqty/ Int'l/Bond-$B 987/377/248
2-yr Tsy Yield: Inflation 0.37% 0.32%
InsiderTotal: 1265k/32k

With record numbers of dollars coming out of Money Market Funds, mostly into the crowded trade of short term bonds, anyone who has a minimal knowledge of covered call options and/or an interest in hedging stock market exposure might want to check out: brentleonard.com for an alternative strategy that is low-risk as well as highly rewarding. For those of you wanting more details and actual trading results, a new book is available for $14.95 at Amazon.com: Zero (IN)Tolerance


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Monday, March 3, 2014

PC: Political Correc-tion

What a Revolting World! As a Contrarian it was interesting for me to see that the takeaway from the media (Barron's) this weekend was that the U.S. stock market would soar due to a global flight to safety, and that gold would tank. (DJIA down over 200 points on Monday, gold up $30). In Barron's Other Voices column, Walter Weil, a retired hedgehog, noted the long term failure of the Investors Intelligence Bull/Bear Indicator to predict the market a year later! However, what he failed to observe was that immediately following each signal, the market did decline short term - not a year later.

Although markets have been hitting new highs, not all Sentiment Indicators are doing the same: the NASD to NY is quite high, but not RECORD; the same with newsletter surveys, put/call, and both McClellan charts.

Records are occurring now in Margin debt; Barron's case for over bought Gold is born out by Commercial Traders, now at a Record 117k short contracts. For more commentary and this week's meetups, please see:


http://www.examiner.com/stock-market-in-san-francisco/brent-leonard

Here are the Sentiment numbers for last 2 weeks:

Date> 2/28/2014 2/21/2014
Indices: DJIA  16321 16103
NAZ  4308nh 4263
SPX  1859nh 1836
WklyVolume (Bshs). naz/ny 10.9/3.7 7.9/2.9
Specul.Ratio hi=bullish 2.95 2.72
Sentiment: put/call-CBOE  58 57
VIX>50-alltmlow=8.8 14 14.7
Advance/Dec-NYSE.. 1825/1192 1948/1247
Weekly Net: 633 701
     Cumulative: 157149nh 156516nh
Weekly  NYSE hi/low 457/63 353/52
New Hi's/Low's Nasdaq h/l 446/50 368/47
McClellan  Oscillator 42 44
McClellanSum .+750/-1000 924 727
Newsletter Inv.Intel -Bull:tues 53.5 46.5
Surveys Bear:-5yrs 17.2 17.2
AAII  -Bull :wed. 39.7 42.2
Bear  21.1 22.8
COT:SPX w/w large/small (net)k 6k/(29k) 5k/(25k)
COT:gold  comm.hedg long-short.000 (117k)* (97k)
CEOinsider selling 111:1 130:1
off.&bd b/s.vs. 10% holder b/s 200:50 200:25
3-box rev Bullish%-  72 70
US equity -ICI Fund Flows WeekDelay 4.1B
MMF flows Change in $B 20B (49B)
MargDebt- top (300M) monthly  451Bnh 445B
ETF:mthlyEqty/ Int'l/Bond-$B 987/377/248 1028/399/246
2-yr Tsy Yield: Inflation 0.32% 0.32%

With record numbers of dollars coming out of Money Market Funds, mostly into the crowded trade of short term bonds, anyone who has a minimal knowledge of covered call options and/or an interest in hedging stock market exposure might want to check out: brentleonard.com for an alternative strategy that is low-risk as well as highly rewarding. For those of you wanting more details and actual trading results, a new book is available for $14.95 at Amazon.com: Zero (IN)Tolerance


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