We had the best of both worlds today. A new rally high was set and the bears generated some down side action. AMZN had some lofty expectations after being up 30+% and going into earnings close to an all time high. It was not surprising that a 3 cent beat was sold. There are many negatives out there today like the intraday reversal, a bottoming dollar, small cap. weakness and waning momentum, but going into the close QE II again soften the blow. Let’s see what the bears can do tomorrow.
Item of interest:
1) One Co-worker frantically wants to sell her mutual funds yesterday after receiving her 3rd qtr statement that showed a 10% pop. She wants to get out when things are good. She was still down since the inception of her 401k and Simple IRA. How many people just wants to get out even or is the sentiment still too bearish?
2) Commercial real estate prices are still weak. Our company purchased a 2nd warehouse to handle the booming business before the economy cratered. We thought we were getting a good deal at the time since commercial real estate had already started to come down and we got a 15% discount. With the economy at crawling speed, we no longer have a need for a 2nd warehouse. So a $4mil plus warehouse is now going for $3mil plus. There are offers and renters out there at the $3mil plus level, but I don’t think we see $4 or even $5 mil anytime soon.
3) I just finished refinancing my house in the Los Angeles area. The appraiser told me that there was almost zero new buy/sell activity around September. All the jobs he is working on are refinancing related. I see 3 houses around the neighbor hood on sale for months and they confirmed the appraiser’s story. One house recently dropped their price from $1.3 mil to $1.1 mil. Housing feels real slow post the tax incentive. Is this just slow seasonality or are we in for more pain next year?
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