A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
— George Bernard Shaw
So far the 200 day simple moving average is holding. The market was higher yesterday, but gave us fits and starts a couple of times and for every massive rally head fake, we saw some stalling that looked like a sell off was starting. The market is tentative, walking on eggshells, exhibiting light volume and is looking over its shoulder, clearly waiting for the first guy to blink.
Greek Prime Minister Papandreou faces a confidence vote in his government today that may determine whether Greece becomes the first euro-area country to default.
Greece is still a complete disaster and will eventually slide into the Mediterranean, but for now we get to play this silly game of “tag” on a daily basis, while we wait for the “nanny state-ers” to figure their mess out. Because of this obnoxious daily dynamic, the market will chop until someone believes Greece may actually get off the front page for a week or two.
The upside is that the entire world is watching Greece now more than ever, so the chances of them screwing this up are small…for now. Calamity will ensue if they don’t.
Every time I feel like being a knife catching, bottom buying psychopath, I simply look at the charts of GOOG, AAPL, most energy and material names. These stocks are now broken, and most are below their respective 200 day moving averages. No time to be a hero OR Christopher Columbus. He thought the world was round…he got lucky. I’d rather pay higher, but that’s just me. No rush here.
Over the weekend, I wrote a post about earnings pre-announcements and noted that the financials were most vulnerable to downgrade. Yesterday, in a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, Citi went negative on some of the banks, you can read the story here.
P.S. For you window dressing buffs… The quarter and first half of the year gets put in the books next week. It will be interesting to see if the momentum boys step on each others necks and rush to the buy button this go round, as they elbow themselves to the front of the room to chase performance. It could go the other way this time.
$C, $GOOG, $AAPL $XLF