Is it Wednesday already?
What a fun week we’ve been having. I had told Members when we were looking forward in the weekend post: “Wednesday is a biggie with Mortgage Applications, Challenger Job Cuts, ADP Jobs Report, Productivity and Unit Labor Costs, ISM, Construction Spending, Oil Inventories, Auto Sales AND the Fed Beige Book, which I think may show optimism building into the holidays (as they want to spin it that way) so, if we are going to get a push up, Wednesday should be the day.” Well, it’s 7:15 and it looks like we’re peaking out at 1% in the futures. Europe is up 1.5% at noon.
Yesterday’s very poor finish to November left us in no mood to go bullish into the close and we’ll probably be shorting this open as I’m just not seeing any real news out of Europe to justify this rally so I have to think it’s entirely a relief rally that’s pushing the Euro higher ($1.31) along with the Pound $1.56 while the Dollar drops to 80.80 and that’s down 0.6 from yesterday’s close and we generally have a 1.5x negative correlation so there’s your “rally” named in just one note. We pulled our longs and went back to cash in the $10K-$50K Portfolio with another $300 gained on the day and that’s on track (up $1,000 on day 2), but we still have $1,500 at risk on the bear side so we’ll be a little nervous if the Dollar can’t hold 80.50. Overall, I’m still very pleased with my October call to get to cash and this morning Bloomberg decided to congratulate me, saying:
The dollar proved to be last month’s best investment, beating stocks, bonds and commodities, confounding officials around the world who said Federal Reserve policies would debase the U.S. currency. The U.S. Dollar Index, which tracks the currency against those of six major U.S. trading partners including the euro, yen and pound, rose 5.2 percent in November. The Thomson Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index of 19 commodities was little changed. The MSCI All Country World Index of stocks fell 2.2 percent after accounting for reinvested dividends. Bonds lost 1.1 percent including reinvested interest as measured by Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Global Broad Market Index.
The Fed is certainly doing their best to push us higher and here’s a…
