“Pins and needles upon we sit,” Yoda might say if he were around to see the current market behavior.

  • Global investors are on hold, waiting for comments from the Federal Reserve’s policy-making arm on when the central bank will wind down its monthly $85B purchases of mortgage-backed securities and Treasury securities.

“Upon Fed policy they wait?” His voice drips profundity, as his ageless wisdom churns the thought. “Crazy they are. More loudly the fundamentals speak.” And, so they do, if one is listening.     

  • Investor’s Intelligence reports that Bullish Sentiment rose on the week to 46.8% from 43.8%.Bearish Sentiment fell to 21.9% from 22.9%

Okay, so the Investors’ Intelligence report speaks to nothing, really, other than it gives us an idea of where the general sentiment of financial advisors lies, and the general sentiment is a turn in the market is coming, at least at the moment. Now, if you like and want sentiment, I can give that to you, and sometimes sentiment does precede actual fundamentals, so here you are.

  • Asia’s top companies have become more optimistic about their business outlook with the retail and shipping industries rebounding sharply in the second quarter of 2013, the latest Thomson Reuters/INSEAD Asia Business Sentiment Survey shows.
  • Australia continued to improve in the second quarter, driving the country’s sentiment index to its highest level since the first quarter 2012.
  • Corporate sentiment in Japan showed solid improvement with the index rising to the highest level in three years as aggressive monetary stimulus starts to revive its economy.

Actually, though, the only sentiment we should care about in the short term is that which drives the market and that which drives this market is that which derives from the very words of the Fed, which will spread sometime later today. So, let’s just wait and see which words come and what the market will do when those words come out. After that, we can make some decisions about what to do next.

Maybe we will actually look at some fundamentals, such as …

  • The American Institute of Architects (AIA) reported that the Architecture Billings Index (ABI) was reported at 52.9 in May, which is up from last month’s reading of 48.6.

May the force be with you.

Trade in the day; Invest in your life …

Trader Ed