{+++} The bulls got their follow through day today. The market felt stronger to me than it actually was as the indexes did well, but didn’t explode. Tomorrow we have the new jobs number for February. Gallup had a poll today that said the real rate of unemployment is still about 9.1%. They did a lot of work on this, and if this thinking grows roots, the market may wake up to what the “real” numbers are. We all know the “shadow” number is closer to 20%. Keep in mind they use different data than the Fed.
Let’s say Gallup is right and we have a disaster jobs number tomorrow. Two things will happen. They may sell the market hard, but guess what? That will enable Bernanke to put the printing presses in overdrive. So bad new could be spun as good news. We’ll have to see how they react.
If you look at this market, the bulls only seem to give the bears a day or two to be right, then they “buy em and bid em” once again.
The market yesterday seemed to get on this “QE3 is right around the corner kick” again. This came out of no where yesterday, but the market thinks this could happen whereby the Fed will come in a buy some mortgage backed bonds. We’ll see, perception is reality anyway.
Two of the longs listed last night had really nice moves today, TRMB and PSMT, but I didn’t trigger them because they gapped up and never came back to my entry price. If you went ahead and took them, congrats. AKAM did the same, but still could be a pullback buy so I left it on the list.
Two names did trigger today. GMCR short and CRR long. GMCR is getting put in the wood shredder in after mart trading as Starbucks announced they are coming out with a similar product. This is still very much a stock pickers market and the rotation game is still in play.
I’m eying sectors like coal and steel as possible bottom fish candidates. Stocks like CLF and WLT may be way overdone to the downside. I also think DE “may” have bottomed at the 200 simple moving average. No positions yet. They could go much lower if this market corrects, so I’m keeping my powder dry.
Tomorrow could be whacky Friday. I will see you in the chat room in the morning.
Joe