MorningWord 1/4/12: If you were to look at the performance of the German equity market and see the DAX up 3.6% ytd (off almost 2% from yesterday’s highs), after just 2 1/2 trading days you would think that some one knows something in front of Merkel and Sarkozy’s pre-summit summit meeting scheduled for Jan. 9th. As our equity markets have been only open for half the time thus far this year our gains are a bit more muted up only about 1.5% in the SPX (less the 40bps in the futures this morn, so about 1%). Economic data out of Germany that was better than expected is clearly the culprit for the DAX’s early out-performance of the SPX, but this could also be a little bit of catch up game as the SPX was unchanged in 2011 and the DAX closed down 15%.
There is nothing like the changing of the calendar to help you forget the ills of the prior year. The “January Effect” can be very compelling for professional fund managers, to play a little bottom fishing with last years losers, but by no means does it signal the course for the balance of the year. If anyone thinks for a second that the lows are in for the year than you better get your head checked early and often this year…..The VIX‘s muted sell off yesterday was a clear indication that uncertainty remains, and when the SPX was up a little more than 2% at one point mid day yesterday I would have expected to see the VIX getting creamed, especially on a day that saw, the Euro, Gold, and Crude all rallying with serious equity market rally the world over.
Yesterday in my morning post I suggested that I would be very interested to see how the banks act and if they actually can lead the way……Financials were clearly one of the best performing sectors yesterday with charts of stocks like Citi appearing to be at an important inflection point. Since making an intra-day low in early Oct in the low 20s, and then rallying almost 60% from that point, the chart has made a series of lower highs and higher lows and looks like the triangle pattern that has formed is about to be broken one way or the other……This is a tough call here because when the U.S. bank stocks finally bottom they may go up for weeks……
Stay tuned on the bank stocks, it won’t be long before we start to get some earnings out of the group, as a week from Friday we will see what the usually upbeat CEO of JPM has to say when the company reports their Q4 and gives guidance for Q1 2012. With most of the major banks up btwn 4-6% (C being the outlier up more than 7.5%), it may make sense to see how these stocks act on the next piece of scary news out of Europe before piling in the first few trading days of the year. This morning’s sell off in Europe could be just that test for the space, if they can hold in a down market and then continue to outperform in a stable to up market than they could be at the start of a stage where they will begin to discount any additional bad news.
So here is the thing, I want to be optimistic as we head into the meat of January and Q4 earning seasons, but at this point given the mixed earnings news that we got in Dec, and the unlikely chance that much changed in the last few weeks I think at this point a dose of caution makes sense for individual investors. If you are a mutual fund manager or a hedge fund manager who feels deeply wounded because you didn’t get a fat bonus in 2011, then by all means shoot for the feneces right out of the gate, because frankly that is what you are paid to do, but for us regular folk our main goal is still preservation of capital and take what the market gives us by making best attempts to define our risk. So I remain cautious and continue to wait to short extended stocks or buy ones that get overdone on the downside always with an eye towards identifying a catalyst that I think the market is mis-pricing.
Fear continues to be in the air, the yield on the Italian 10 year remains near highs just below 7% and the Euro has just broken back below 1.30 about 1% off of this mornings high…..So the name of the game in the early going, similar to the end of the year, is no disasters, you have the whole year ahead so no need to be foolhardy out of the gate.
MorningWord 1/3/12: After a fairly volatile year in 2011 that saw a 21% peak to trough draw-down in the SPX and a 30 plus point surge at its highs in the VIX (but still closing up over 30% on the year), the SPX closed dead flat on the year, who would have thunk it?
The DAX has had a heck of a year so far up almost 4% in less than 2 days of trading after closing down about 15% on the year in 2011. This sort of early enthusiasm could have some legs, but I sincerely doubt that we have seen the lows of the year (haha). The higher they go in Jan the harder they will ultimately fall when European sovereign debt fears hit once again…..
Even with the relative calm int he equity markets over the last few weeks, there continues to be signs of fear……..As I mentioned above, the VIX remains elevated well above the historical average of ~20, but with the new year rally it will be interesting to see how long it holds before once again becoming a teenager (the VIX has remained above 20 since July 26th). As European equity markets rally the yields on European Sovereign debt remains elevated towards last years highs….the yield on the Italian 10 year continues to hover around 7% signalling continued fears that the crisis is not over.
As I write at 9am the S&P500 futures are up about 1.6%, about 50 bps off the opening highs……while Europe’s equity market strength can be attributed to better than expected manufacturing and unemployment data in Germany, but all eyes will be on our own ISM Manufacturing data to be reported at 10am today.
The Euro is trading at a one week high vs the US dollar and back above 1.30, while crude oil is back above $100……Gold is having a day after collapsing into year end to close at the lowest levels since mid July after falling almost 20% from the peak made in Sept.
As for our equity markets I think it is important to keep an eye on the banks, after many suffering their worst performance ever (excluding 2008 of course) it will be very telling to see if they fall right back into the pattern of last year of taking one step forward and 2 back, or whether they can actually start the bottoming process……As I noted in this space on a handful of occasions in December, many fund managers might have been exciting very unprofitable holdings in the banks to get them off of their sheets into the year end, possibly for tax reasons only to reestablish new positions in similar but different names in the new year. Many savvy market participants feel that the banks stocks hold the key to any sustained rally in US equities…..and this relatively un-savy market participant agrees.
I am also keeping a close eye on many of the high valuation growth names that in my opinion started to come undone last year, names like HANS, GMCR, LULU, DECK, RL, CRM, NFLX, GRPN, LNKD, SINA, BIDU, WYNN and the like…….early strength in this group clearly shows conditioned appetite for risk, but I would argue the more bullish would be the selling of these sorts of names and the move into more stable holdings……..Either way I expect these stories to come back to earth one by one as AMZN, NFLX and GMCR did in Q4.
Oh and then there is AAPL…..everyone’s favorite. I have a lot to say here and am writing up some thoughts regarding this stock for 2012 and beyond. After fairly dramatic out-performance last year (up 25%) vs the SPX unchanged and the Nasdaq down a little less than 2%. I think the likelihood of an early rally followed by under-performace as investors digest the company’s prospects for its first full year without Steve Jobs is fairly strong. The company will get an early test as media reports suggest that the company is holding a press event in late Jan that will focus on iBooks, my goodness who cares, just put out a press release and get back to trying to innovate. Remember the Stocks reaction in Oct to the “evolutionary” release of iPhone 4s, get ready for more disappointment, or “sell the news” price action after Tim Cook fails to captivate the Apple faithful during these events.
As for my own trading I come into the year with the least amount of positions in more than a year and find myself largely in cash……..I will look to the 2011 playbook of taking profits on longs when things get extended and laying out shorts soon after and conversely covering shorts when things get oversold and even getting long shortly after. Again it comes back to not forcing things in an uncertain market, I am going to sit back a bit until a clear trend exists or things get a little overdone on either side.
Either way I am excited to get back to trading after a couple weeks off, stay tuned.