Welcome Back Old Friend

Equities start the day lower as I restart an old friend. It’s been awhile since I wrote an evening recap and I sit here wondering why? I always had such fun writing about the market in off color ways, so the fact that I’ve left my recap on the sidelines the past few months makes no sense. If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about Wall St it’s that there’s still a dearth of entertaining authors who can convey both information and humour. Josh Brown is one, Barry Ritholtz is another, but they aim to cover a broader scope of topics than I do. Now I’m not saying I’m the funniest person in the world, or the only person trying to do something unique, I’m just saying that I promise to keep it light hearted. So let’s reboot this thing shall we?  Let’s write about daily market news and poke fun at them. Seriousness abounds, you get it every millisecond of your life, I hereby promise to make you smile at least once a day. Anyway, where was I? What happened while I was gone? Did the market blow up? I’ve been labeled a perma bull before so was I wrong to like stocks for the past….oh I don’t know…3 years? Let’s goto the scoreboard: Nasdaq 5000.  SPX 2115. Oh my. If I hadn’t written such a sappy intro I’d have space to marvel at those numbers. Let’s marvel at them in the next few paragraphs instead.

After the open it appeared my triumphant return to writing jinxed the market. Nothing but straight down kids…maybe I should go back to tweeting?  No real news for the selloff so we’re going with the old fashioned “stocks do fall every now and then”. Let’s face it, the last meaningful declines were late Jan / early Feb…it’s been awhile. Let’s switch gears for a second and look at the move in Treasuries / yields lately. Utilites have been dropping for a month and yields on UST keep grinding higher. But why? I mean there’s the obvious “fed raising rates” thing but to me it smells like an unwind. The “lowflation / no flation / disinflation” trade has been insanely crowded, it was ripe for a turnaround. At one point we were talking about Nestle bonds with negative yields, how is that not a top sign in bonds? So keep your eyes on rates, I don’t think there’s a “great rotation” but it feels like some rotation. What moved today? Lots of energy winners on higher crude:  RRC  NBR  DNR plus DISCK and DISCA because they have cool tickers or maybe someone is bringing back the discman, tough to say. Losers were STX, MU, AMAT all on negative comments. Hey I have a negative comment: that dress thing last week was so dumb.  How can we all get distracted by such a non-event? I mean it was obviously blue. Anyway, by lunch we sat on 2,103, down 65bps, on a typical “the mkt needs a breather” type day.

The final hour saw a bit of dip buying but not enough to get us back to green. We closed at 2,107 down 45 bps in a ho-hum session. So back to that marveling thing: the story, as boring as this sounds, is STILL THE SAME. Muddle along US economy, companies buying their own stock like tickle me elmos, Europe regaining its footing, US consumers still spending, housing still recovering, rates still low, people waiting for dips, etc etc. How many times have we heard top in the past few years? Endlessly. News flash:  it’s not a top when people call top. It’s a top when everything is too easy and there is no angst over pullbacks. Am I still bullish? Yep. Should I write more recaps? Yep. Are we sick of snow yet? Yep. Did one of our most powerful politicians use Gmail to solve the world’s problems? Yep. Should we end this right here? Yep.  

Final Score:  Dow -45bps, S&P500 -45bps, Nasdaq -56bps, Rus2k -63bps.    

News Highlights: 

We’ll end tonight with a look at brakes.   I mean you gotta use them right?  Especially in this situation?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4w4aMSUhp8

Have a good night.