05/06/2017 Weekend Update

[Cobra]

The SPX and Nasdaq 100 are at the all time close high but interestingly the institutional buying and selling chart from stocktiming actually shows more distribution than accumulation. For a few seconds I thought I looked at a wrong chart...

[Cobra]

Here's the new weekly strong stocks count. Just don't forget that we just hit all time high.
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2457

[Cobra]

please don't forget our weekly sentiment poll here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2455

[BullBear52x]

It is what it is department:
Go away in may or gone camping at least
Third time charm is coming in the theater near you.

[Trades with cats]

From one of Trader Tom Dante's follers

From Trader Tom Dante publicly posted

For anyone developing their own trading plan, I thought these had some reasonably good points.
These people are currency traders as well as the DAX (after all they are London based)
I would never post any of their comments because they would make the patrons of an Irish soccer pub blush.
But despite the very rough wrapper it doesn't mean they don't have some decent ideas.

[Trades with cats]

Oil news internet connections

This is from John Kemp at Reuters. Gives a nice view of how the news flows.

CL. So I thought this view of the flash crash was interesting, as it shows how indexes and currencies all went down with CL.

This is Coolbizones recent publicly posted Elliott Wave count for CL. If he is wrong he will change his mind as he doesn't just talk he has skin in the game. Watch his count unfold in comparison to the excellent technical views of oil others post on this board. At this time the price of oil is totally in the hands of those folks who manage highly leverged hedge funds that don't always trade oil. The managed commodity account traders are in this also, I just don't know how. But it is all about belief at this point in time. I think the technicle charts can give us an idea of where the turn points are, but the action depends on the new kids sticking with OPEC/NOPEC or deciding they have been used.

I keep repeating that line that the first out is a smart trader and everyone else is just in a panic. So a guy with an eye popping track record over the last several years and a reputation as an unrepentant oil bull announced that he was out this week just before the carnage hit. Just saying.

Mr. Andurand

[Trades with cats]

Sorry got the one picture in the wrong place. Too clever for my ability!

[Trades with cats]

From Zerohedge, I could not resist putting this up. Anybody cough Urban Camel cough who is posting stuff that sounds reasonable on the surface about how this market rally is all about profitability and stock buybacks are not that big a deal, especially when they are doing stage magician slight of hand with the comparisons needs to explain how this chart is possible. Particularly since we have seen it in many many previous incarnations. Market Watch ran an article this week by a research firm that has trained its computers to digest and summarize 10Ks. They reach the opposite conclusion. After you add back all the one time stuff from the footnotes nothing is happening. This year is better because the prior year they charged off losses from commodities. Executive compensation hiding as stock buybacks is running an extra 2% of income but they hide it. Especially important when less than 10 companies account for over 1/2 of the gains in S&P and just five of those same companies account for almost half the NASDAQ gains.

What I find unbelievable is that three of those five are competing head on in the same market (cloud computing), two are competing in on line tailored advertising and finally one is trying to go head to head with two of the biggest cash bonfires on the planet, electric self driving cars and subscriber custom content, i.e. Tesla and Netflix.

Every Time in the modern era this sort of thing has happened it hasn't ended well. You can't short it and if you try to talk to a true believer they will hate you. So just sit back, get some popcorn and wait for the train wreck.

[tsf]

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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/charlie- ... 47339.html

Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charlie Munger thinks stock market investors might find better investment opportunities overseas right now.

Speaking at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting on Saturday, Munger said, “I do think the Chinese stock market is cheaper than the American stock market. And I do think China has a bright future.

“There will be growing pains of course,” Munger added.

Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett quipped after Munger’s comments, “Charlie has created a headline.”

The S&P 500, the benchmark U.S. stock market index, currently trades at 25 times trailing earnings, according to data from Yale professor Robert Shiller. This is among the most expensive valuations in the market’s history. Stocks in China were trading closer to 8 times earnings as of the end of March.

Munger’s comments followed a question asked by a shareholder on whether he thought it was possible for someone investing in Chinese stocks to re-create the success Buffett, Munger, and the Berkshire team have enjoyed over the last several decades.

Munger did not address that specific part of the question. One imagines the answer is “No,” but simply on the basis of there being no reason to expect Berkshire’s performance to be replicable. Since 1965, Berkshire Hathaway’s compounded annual gain is 20.8% annually. Over that same period, the S&P 500 has gained 9.7% including dividends.

Just before Buffett and Munger were asked about the Chinese stock market, Buffett opined at some length on the value of investing in a low-cost index fund rather than trying to find a hedge fund or other manager who charges more fees but beats the market over time.

In his comments, Buffett largely echoed what he wrote in his most recent letter to Berkshire shareholders.

“There are no doubt many hundreds of people — perhaps thousands — whom I have never met and whose abilities would equal those of the people I’ve identified,” Buffett wrote.

“The job [of investing], after all, is not impossible. The problem simply is that the great majority of managers who attempt to over-perform will fail. The probability is also very high that the person soliciting your funds will not be the exception who does well.”

At the outset of the meeting, Buffett said Vanguard founder Jack Bogle — considered the godfather of low-cost index fund investing — would save investors “hundreds of billions” in the future.

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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-b ... 00136.html

Warren Buffett told CNBC that Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) has $90 billion in cash, and he's looking to "buy a big business."

The billionaire investor has been talking for a while now about wanting to make a large-scale acquisition but said he does not have anything on his radar now.

"I hate cash," Buffett said in an interview that aired Friday on "Squawk Box," one day before Berkshire's annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.

"I mean we are investing," he said. "But [cash] is a holding position until you find something else. But the very fact that interest rates are that low makes it hard for us to buy other things because other people buy things with borrowed money, and borrowed money is so cheap."

He added: "If we are competing with equity money against slim equity plus a lot of debt, we're at a disadvantage."

Buffett said he thought Berkshire was doing well with $90 billion cash until he saw this week that Apple's (AAPL)cash pile swelled to $256.8 billion in its fiscal second-quarter.

"I'm very jealous," he laughed. "I thought I was doing OK until I looked at their balance sheet."

"On the other hand," he said. "We've got ours here in the United States." Apple keeps most of its cash outside the U.S. for tax purposes.
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