Daily Investment Interpretations

February 8, 2010

2010-2-8:  The markets closed at their lowest level since this pullback began. The NASDAQ Composite declined 15.07 points, -0.7%) to close at 2,126.05, the Dow dropped 103.84 points (-1.04%) to close at 9,908.39, and the S&P 500 fell  3.08 points (-0.89%) to close at 1,056.74. Oil fell sharply to $71.70 a barrel. Gold fell $13 to end the day at $1,066. The VIX climbed 0.4 to 26.51.
    I haven't yet shorted the market, nor have my advisory services, but it could happen at any time.
       The analyst interviewed in this video clip thinks that although there's overheating in certain parts of the Chinese economy, it has reached bubble proportions: How fast is China likely to cool?  
  
2010-2-8 (Mid-Morning):  The markets rose last Friday morning, then fell precipitously, and then rose equally precipitously into the close. The reasons for these gyrations was that, early on, the markets got some moderately good news in the form of the Friday unemployment reports. Then came word that Portugal had eschewed an austerity program, and had instead decided to go the well and borrow money however their regional governments chose. Portugal then held a Treasury auction, where the country was only able to sell $300,000,000 of the $500,000,000 it was trying to sell. Coming on the heels of the Greek debt crisis, and concerns about Spanish and Eastern European debt, this sent shock waves through the financial community. This, in turn, sparked a flight to the perceived safety of the dollar.
    Toward the end of the day, computerized trading programs drove the markets up as dramatically as they'd fallen.