Rev Shark:
Forget Yesterday; Prepare for Big-Caps
2/15/05 8:18 AM ET
Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story -- a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.
-- Eric Hoffer
If yesterday seemed particularly slow, there was good reason. The indices moved only slightly and we experienced the lowest volume of the year. There was strong action in a few big-cap technology stocks, such as Google (GOOG:Nasdaq) and Network Appliances (NTAP:Nasdaq), but overall it was a slow and lazy day.
Despite the fact that nothing much happened, market participants are driven to sift through the details and search for something meaningful. We want to find some sort of pattern or cause-and-effect relationship that will alert us as to what will come in the days ahead.
What makes this particularly tricky is that most market participants are not totally objective, no matter how hard they may try. If they are holding lots of long positions, then obviously they are leaning toward the bullish camp. If they have high levels of cash or shorts, then they tend to search for the negatives to help reinforce the fact that they have not embraced the market.
On a day like yesterday, when little occurred, it is particularly easy for us to read whatever it is we want to see into the action. The bulls will find positives and the bears will find negatives. The truth is probably in the middle: It was a meaningless day that has little predictive value and no relationship to what is to come.
That doesn't mean we do nothing. There are still plenty of interesting trading opportunities in individual stocks to consider and we should never stop planning and strategizing and researching what we will do in the days ahead as various market scenarios play out. We simply have to keep in mind that we don't have a lot of good predictive evidence to work with now and we need to be careful about projecting our biases on to the market.
Keep an open mind about the market. We are setting up for a strong move in one direction or the other. So often the case, that move is likely to be the one that surprises the most people.
The early action this morning is positive. We are seeing some early strength in big-cap technology stocks once again. They are the key to this market right now and should provide clues as to where we are headed.
Overseas markets were generally higher, oil is up just slightly and we have some economic news coming up that will provide a slight tremor or two.
Gary B. Smith:
