Thursday, November 19, 2009

Something Amiss

Today was weird. Not going to speculate why, but alot of things just didn't add up. For one the market was down on light volume. Previous down moves of late are typically with heavier volume. No on believe the down move now and everyone has gotten burned selling and so there is no conviction anymore? May be a good thing if your a bear.

Despite the lack of volume, breadth was fairly negative. Widespread sell off. Financials especially got spanked.

Dollar was up today, commodities were down, EXCEPT Gold. Gold was up today. Interesting divergence.

The most amazing thing may have been in debt land. The three month U.S. Government t-bill yield went negative today!!! Meaning that people were essentially paying to lend money to the government. The last time this happened was right after the Lehman bankruptcy at the peak of the panic. The move down was fairly swift and dramatic. Yet, high yield debt and investment grade debt seemed to perform fairly well.

What is going on? Things just didn't add up.

I thought about posting something on Japan yesterday and wish I would have since it seemed like every blog talked about it today but the stock market in Japan has started vastly outperforming the rest of the world even while China is approaching year highs. Not sure what that is all about.

Things just seem amiss right now. Not sure that is bearish but at the same time it might be.

Tomorrow is options expiration day and than next week is a holiday short week which should be bullish. Interesting things.

1 comment:

CD Rates said...

I agree with you Japan is performing really well. Even at the time of recession Japan was stable and performing brilliantly.