Yesterday, I listened to a bunch of mainstream news about North Korea acting belligerently. It seems this young leader over there is feeling his oats. Well, the bellicosity of North Korea is nothing new, and I suspect the heir to the throne heard the hollowness in his words as he watched the US B-2 bombers fly across South Korea. My point here is unless he is absolutely nuts, the market cares little for his chest pounding, as seen by the opening in the green this morning.
It seems the market now is all about the fundamental data. I wrote last fall that the time was coming soon when fundamental data would come back into vogue. This morning, the market is all about the jobs report and the factory data coming this week. As I said, the market now cares about the fundamentals. So, find your market, target it well, and get your money in.
- The U.S. market has performed better than the European one, but for good reason. The market isn’t expensive when you consider the growth.
This morning I have a question that speaks to the craziness out there. No, not the North Korea type craziness, but some home-grown nuttiness that comes from folks thinking along ideological lines and then trying to capitalize on that thinking with a specific group of American thinkers.
- Yesterday, I heard David Stockman in an interview say that Ben Bernanke is the most dangerous man in the word or something like that. His point was that Mr. Bernanke and the Fed policies are destroying the global economy. Did I understand him correctly?
Why, yes my friend, you did understand Mr. Stockman correctly, the same Mr. Stockman who ran President Reagan’s budgets, the same budgets that ran up the US debt to then unimaginable levels.
When little Toto sniffs out something behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz and Dorothy then pulls back the curtain to reveal an elderly man moving knobs and wheels, the Wizard calls out loudly, “Ignore the man behind the curtain.” That is my advice to you. Ignore Mr. Stockman and others of his ilk that speak in such definitive and dramatic terms. All they are doing is trying to stir up the audience for the network they are on, sell a book, or, perhaps, they actually believe their own words.
In any case, there are legitimate reasons to be concerned about the Fed policies, as they are truly untested, but suggesting that Mr. Bernanke and the policies of the Fed are destroying the global economy strikes me as eerily similar to the provocative and nutty of words of Kim Jung Un, the loud-mouthed leader of North Korea.
- European shares bounced back after a two-week slide and with a blue chip index breaking above a resistance level, as the M&A activity helped lift sentiment.
- Chrysler Group said its vehicle sales in March were the best since December 2007, and estimated the industry’s annual sales rate last month was 15.6 million.
- Delinquencies on bank-issued credit cards sank to 2.47% in the fourth quarter — the lowest level since 1994, according to an American Bankers Association report released Tuesday.
Trade in the day; Invest in your life …
