The Ramifications of the SNB Move

Lior Alkalay - INO.com Contributor - Forex


By now you’ve heard the news; a Swiss tsunami has hit FX markets. In a historic move that took even the most seasoned investors and experienced brokers by complete surprise, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) has removed the 1.2 floor for the EUR/CHF, effectively eliminating the Swiss Franc’s peg to the Euro. The Swiss Franc, as a result, surged a jaw dropping 38% vs the Euro and 29.7% vs the Dollar in only a few hours, leaving Swiss equities tumbling and Swissie bears crushed. Undoubtedly, this aggressive move and the volatility it generated will be talked about for years. But what does this SNB move say about Switzerland, about the Euro and, more specifically, about the Swiss Franc’s future?
Continue reading "The Ramifications of the SNB Move"

The Super Bowl Indicator - Seattle Seahawks (Bulls) VS. Denver Broncos (Bears)

Have you ever heard of the Super Bowl Indicator? Who do you want to win? Are you a Bear or a Bull?

How it works

The Super Bowl Indicator rules state that if a team from The National Football Conference (NFC) wins the Super Bowl, a bull market will prevail. If a team from American Football Conference (AFC) wins, a bear market will prevail.

The Denver Broncos are from the AFC, and they will represent the bear market in 2014. The Seattle Seahawks are from the NFC, and they represent the bull market. If the Seahawks win the Super Bowl there is an 80% chance that the markets will rise this year.

I don't know about you, but I want the Seahawks to win.

There are two notable exceptions as of late:

2013 saw the Baltimore Ravens (AFC) win the Super bowl, and the DOW rose 26.5%. This should have been a bear market. Continue reading "The Super Bowl Indicator - Seattle Seahawks (Bulls) VS. Denver Broncos (Bears)"

Snapchat and the Disappearing Bears in the Stock Market

See what happens in the financial markets when the bears vanish

By Elliott Wave International

If Inspector Gadget or Maxwell Smart had lived in the digital age, their bosses would have used the smartphone app Snapchat to deliver their secret missions.

Snapchat is a popular app with about 8 million users that lets your smartphone send a photo that self-destructs seconds after your recipient views it. As of September 2013, users were sending about 350-400 million vanishing messages a day -- which compares with the 127.5 million shares that changed hands in the Dow on Jan. 27, 2014.

But when Evan Spiegel, the Stanford student who came up with the idea, unveiled it to his product design class in 2011, his classmates gave it a thumbs-down. Disappearing photos? Who will use it? Little did his classmates know how the app, originally called Picaboo, would go on to capture the attention of teenagers and young adults. And even a few older folks who want to connect with them, such as 51-year-old Senator Rand Paul, who recently signed up to woo younger voters.

The idea of the disappearing photo applies beautifully to the situation in the stock market today. Pessimists on stocks are disappearing quickly. And so are bearish analysts. Not in 10 seconds, but they are still doing a version of a Snapchat disappearing act. Here's how The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast describes it (emphasis added) in this excerpt from our just-released 2014 State of the Global Markets report: Continue reading "Snapchat and the Disappearing Bears in the Stock Market"

Young FrankenMarket Lives

In failing to take a “healthy” correction to the equivalent of SPX 1350 to 1450 from the upside target zone of 1550 to 1590, the market is now running on policy and momentum. Hence we now dub thee Young FrankenMarket; Ben Bernanke’s creation, sustained by government and legacy MBA debt, following Alan Greenspan’s monster that was stitched together with artificially low interest rates that ultimately manifested in a huge commercial credit bubble.

Payrolls came in at 165,000 and an over bought, over loved* market popped its cork and exploded into blue sky. It had to be more than an okay ‘jobs’ report that did the trick. It was likely the combination of a still inflating Fed (and ECB, Europe popped hard as well) with some data that was good enough, but not so good as to call into question the Fed’s systematic inflation regime. This is Bernanke’s FrankenMarket, created by policy.

After making bearish patterns and/or negatively diverging from the Dow and S&P 500, the Russell 2000, Nasdaq 100 and Semiconductors all broke to new all-time (RUT) or recovery (NDX, SOX) highs on Friday. This left one notable holdout, the often-watched Transports. Since I normally do not give much weight to Dow Theory, I’ll not do so now. But it should be noted that the Trannies are not at new highs… yet [edit: They are now].

So it appears that recent writing I have done about a topping process may have been incorrect or at least, early. The current period reminds me a lot of Greenspan’s monster that emerged from the credit bubble early last decade, FrankenMarket as I called it in the first public article I ever wrote. Continue reading "Young FrankenMarket Lives"

What Do You Think?

Silly season is coming to a close very soon and it's time to get back to serious trading.  We were wondering....

What Is Your Market Outlook for 2012?

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Every Success,

The MarketClub Team