2011 Wrap Up

As of mid-day, the markets are chopping around rather aimlessly, within a couple tenths of a percent of yesterday's closes.  Here is a view of 2011.

After a year of chopping around aimlessly, net gain for the SP 500 is 0.0%.  DJI is up a bit, NASDAQ down a bit.  This is a market going nowhere.  Check out the 5 year plot at Yahoo Finance, and it's a pretty similar picture, but with DJI and NASDQ reversed.  Over a five year span, the market has gone nowhere.

Look back since the beginning of the current century, and it's even worse.  (Chart snipped from Yahoo Finance, interactive chart.)

 
The SP500 is down over 12% over this time.  The DJI is up 6.6%, while the NASDAQ is off a whopping 32.6%.

This is where the SS privatizers want to put your retirement savings - with Wall Street rentiers skimming the cream off the top.  Of course, they will do this irrespective of your gains and losses.

And I think there are plenty of losses looming over the horizon.

Thursday 12-15

From my view of the wave count in the SP500 index, it looks like the current small level wave down is not yet complete.  Subwave 5 of 3 appears to be under way, inching toward the 1200 Rubicon.  Not labelled, the high point at the end of trading last Friday is also a wave 2 top, at the next higher level of trend.  In fact, most of the touches since July 8 at 2's at some level. 

The Rubicon could provide some round number resistance.  The lower border of the up-slanting channel highlighted yesterday could come into play as well.  With waves 4 and 5 looming in the near future, more meanderings across the 1200 line are quite possible.

When it is finally and convincingly breached on the downside, it will be years, possibly decades, before it is exceeded again in any meaningful way.

Look out below.

Channels, and More Channels

A few days ago, I wondered if the early December surge in the SP 500 Index would reach the top of the trading channel.  It did.  Here's an updated look.

It touched the channel top on Dec 7, and has been dropping since.  I've outlined a few channels.  The big one originated with the July 8 peak, and its top line has been touched several times since.

The lower channel boundary is a parallel line off the August 9 bottom.  Upward activity has been within a channel made by connecting the Oct 4 and Nov 28 lows to define the bottom.  I've place the top boundary on the Aug 31 high.  Other interpretations are possible.  I like both of these channel definitions because the mid-lines seem to have some support-resistance characteristics.

I've also included a new down-sloping channel from the Dec 7 top.  This may broaden if downside activity picks up.  As things are headed, the index could break out of the up-sloping channel just about as it crosses the Rubicon, one more time.

April - Nov 2011

Were you excited by that big end-of-the-month stock market surge this week?  Let's put it in perspective.  Here are daily closing values for the SP500 index.

Several weeks ago I put a red trend channel top line connecting the high points of 7/07 and 10/28.  A parallel channel bottom extends from the 8/08 low.  A  mini-peak on 11/08 reached out and touched the top line again, marking the end of an up-sloping channel dating from the 10/03 low.  After that, the index fell - once again faltering at its mid-line, and bounced off the yellow mid-line of the down-sloping channel on 11/25.  That was last week's surge; it peaked on 11/30, with two days of no follow-through.  Unless there is positive action in the next few days, this increase will have faltered without challenging the channel boundary.   

The heavy red down-slanting line at the top goes back to the peak in 2007.  Longer range views can be seen here and here (second chart.)

Here's another look at the last five years.

The heavy green line slanting up from just below 700 on the ordinate axis connects bottoms all the way back to the early 80's.  The last touch prior to the march '09 piercing was in February 1991.  Should that line fail as support, there is no other support line. 

Anywhere.

I truly believe we are witnessing the advent of The New Dark Ages.