Market direction finally bounced. I commented in last night’s market direction outlook that for 4 trading sessions the S&P was moving sideways and that often this will end with a move lower. Nice to see that the market direction moved back up rather than down. It was also very nice to see that the NASDAQ market direction moved back above 3000. The NASDAQ is important for the health of the overall market indexes. I read an interesting article this evening on why tech stocks should not be in any investor’s portfolio. Here is a quick summary of the analyst’s comments.
Intel Stock
The world biggest chip maker has been left behind by the mobile revolution and never saw it coming. Intel stock is down 18 % over the past 5 years and if you include dividends Intel Stock is still down 4.4 %. I thought this was a good stock to comment on since I have earned double-digit returns over the past 10 years in Intel Stock and since 2009 on my website. This goes to show the value of simple option strategies.
Microsoft Stock
He doesn’t mention much about the growth of dividends in Microsoft Stock but he does complain that the stock has been treading water for more than a decade. There’s a lot of truth to his statement as while the dividend has grown from 11 cents in 2007 to 20 cents today and the stock has really gone nowhere. In November 2007 it was trading at $34 and today it is trading for $29.50. But again for those of us who like to sell options we have earned double-digit returns every year from this go nowhere company.
Apple Stock
His argument on Apple Stock I felt was pretty weak. In November 2007 it was trading for $165 and today it is at $596 for a gain of 261%. But the analysts zeroes in on the recent decline in Apple Stock as a sign that all tech stocks are no good.
While there is some truth to his views on tech stocks, ever sector has their day in the sun as it were and their days in the rain. This is natural within stocks. A lot of returns have to do with timing and when investors bought and sold. if investors had bought in the fall of 2008 or the late winter of 2009 they would have more than doubled their money in any of the above 3 stocks. Timing is everything with both stocks and options.
Market Direction Today
In my afternoon market direction comment I explained that I felt that a lot of the market direction bounce higher had a lot to do with yesterday and the fact that there wasn’t a lot of selling. This I believe brought a lot of investors back into the market. The S&P and Dow managed to hold the market direction correction to the 100 day moving averages. This was a good sign to a lot of investors and with the recent selling some decent companies were hammered down pretty hard. Those companies in general had a fairly decent day today.
But what about tomorrow? I think it is all about jobs tomorrow.
Jobs And Market Direction
If the jobs numbers are weaker than expected the market will definitely pull back as this will create anxiety among a lot of investors regarding the Presidential Election. It isn’t so much that who wins really matters, it’s more the uncertainty that bothers investors. It has always been this way and will continue to be so in the future. Investors hate unknown factors. If the jobs numbers are better than expected the market direction should rally pretty hard.
Market Timing Technical Indicators From Nov 1 2012
Here are today’s market timing technical indicators.
Momentum is unchanged from yesterday despite the rally. MACD is moving higher but still negative.
The Ultimate Oscillator is positive and indicating more upside ahead.
Rate Of Change is higher but still negative.
The Slow Stochastic after today’s rally is indicating market direction will be higher more than two days out and Fast Stochastic is in agreement indicating that the short-term, one or two days out is higher as well.
Market Direction Outlook For Nov 2 2012
While the market timing technical indicators are showing signs of definite improvement for market direction, the biggest factor will be tomorrow’s unemployment numbers. Those numbers cannot be predicted by the market timing technical tools so much of what they are telling us today can only be considered in the wider impact of the overall unemployment numbers. If the numbers are reasonable then the market timing indicators will hold merit. If though the numbers are poor, I don’t believe any market timing technical indicator can withstand the selling pressure that investors may mount on the indexes.
The outlook tomorrow then is all about the jobs numbers and market direction is basically going to be determined by those numbers when they are released at 8:30 EST.