Mondays never let us down, do they?
Thank goodness too or we would have regretted flipping more bullish on Friday but the combination of thin trading and a short week with no data on Monday was just too much for the pump-monkeys to resist and they are out in force this morning, sending the Dow futures 40 points higher, over 100 points above Friday’s low, where our lower levels held and we made some upside bets (see Weekend Wrap-Up for details). We are mainly in cash for the duration of the year but we’ll be keeping our eyes open for some nice opportunities, like shorting oil again as they cross below $75 (now $75.08 at 7:30) on the last day of January contract trading, using $75 as the stop line to the upside – that play should be an easy way to scalp a few quarters.
Gold popped back to $1,118 overnight but not too impressive as silver is laying around at $17.35 while copper was rejected at $3.16 and couldn’t hold $3.15 either so we’re probably heading back to test $3.10 this week once the dollar reasserts itself after losing ground to the Euro ($1.435) and the Yen (90.50) in overnight trading (after the Nikkei closed up, of course). None of that matters, of course, in the final 8 trading days of the first decade of the 21st century as it’s VERY unlikely the Dow will match it’s Dec 27th, 1999 finish of 11,497 or the S&P 1,469 or especially the Nasdaq, which is not even at 1/2 it’s 1999 finish of 4,069.
The NYSE, oddly enough, has been a small winner over the past decade, having finished 1999 at just 6,876 and the Russell has been the best performing index, now at 610 and up over 20% from the decade’s start at 504. This is GOOD – this makes me feel good about America and about our prospects for the future. Of course our big industrials had a rough decade – we shipped our manufacturing overseas and there’s little left there. Of course tech can’t compete with the idiotic bubble of 1999 and the S&P also fell victim to globalization and performed poorly against increasing foreign competition.
But at home, our broader and generally smaller companies – the ones that employ 70% of all American workers, have found a way to survive and thrive through difficult economic circumstances and that, my friends, is what capitalism is all about. While…
