A dog that did not bark today was the stock market. After Monday's drubbing, bulls wanted to stage a "Turnaround Tuesday". Instead, with less than an hour to go in the regular stock trading session, stocks are flat with the VIX down (a lower VIX indicating less fear in the marketplace as judged by certain options activity). However, Treasuries reversed from down in price to up in price, joining gold in the plus column.
Meanwhile, my favored proxy group for the fundamentals of the economy, namely large financials, are depressing. JPM, generally considered the best of the TBTFs, is weak again today. BofA stock looks horrible, as do C and AIG. A high-quality not-quite TBTF, the President's banker (Northern Trust) also has a failing chart. DE and CAT don't have hot charts, either.
I recently read an erudite piece out of Cumberland Associates that "sell in May and go away" historically has not applied when some circumstance or another that in my approaching dotage I cannot remember is present, as it was when the writer wrote that. But at least for industrially sensitive stocks and commodities, today's action is more consistent than not with the thesis that for the next few months, investors' trading accounts are better off on defense than offense.
Disclosure: I am short BAC and NTRS, though I am long a much greater quantity of offsetting longs in a similar investment niche. I am also long gold in various forms and have certain other longs and shorts. My major recent asset allocation change has been to sell out of almost all foreign currency positions and energy stocks as soon after the reported "hit" on Mr. bin Laden occurred and silver and oil began crashing, and replace much of those positions with long Treasury bonds and most of the rest with cash.
Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2011
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