I just laugh when i hear stuff about a supposed correlation between the stock market and the economy.
Easy money, i close 70% of my long yesterday. Moving stop tobreak even for remaining. Got to say this is a super easy money.
Those who said or try to correlate economy and market, blame Fed, blame bubble ben, blame hft, blame bankers, government, fool themselves by looking at BS price chart, money printing, pension fund are the losers that get caught in the Short side, instead of cut their loose, they choose to give themselves more excuses and hold their losing positions.
i am not hurt on my short and i was positive for 5 minutes on Thursday even haha. i was a economists major and i was in the financial field. i think a lot of people take this way to serious. my life is not going to change if the market goes up or down but i do believe in free markets without government involvement. the fed never let the underlining problems heal and that is the very reason i question the markets. also i respect anyone who was long and made money. if you ask me if i think the market will go up i would say yes but i feel the bigger picture is down. i think you have to much nerve to tell someone what to do with there money though. "The stock market is linked with the macroeconomy through such macroeconomic variables as consumption, investment and production. Periods of bad macroeconomic activity such as during recessions volatility for stocks, exchange rates, and macroeconomic variables such as inflation, money growth, production and interest rates tend to be higher than in normal non-recessionary periods. Ludvigson (2001) document that expected stock returns vary at cyclical frequencies and with macroeconomic variables. Moreover, Schwert (1989) documents that financial volatility can predict macroeconomic volatility while macroeconomic volatility has little power, if at all any, in predicting financial volatility. Thus, stock markets are in constant interaction with the macroeconomy and yet there is a disconnect." http://www.vijana.fm/2013/01/05/the-relationship-between-the-stock-market-and-the-real-economy/
I agree. Those they though the academic qualification can bring them money are in the dream. I still remember my first day to my ex-company (the biggest evil in WS as someone claim it to be) , the orientation speech to all of us (about 20 in the room), the content is almost as below (sorry I can't remember the full speech).. " Welcome to be part of the family, the first thing I want all of you to forget is your PhD qualification, regardless is from Finance, Engineering, mathematics or whatever because I don't care, the earliest you forget your qualification, the earliest you will become a profit trader. We hire you become of your trait, not because of your qualification or intern experience ..". It take me a while to understand how true is this.
"The way you lose money in the stock market is to start off with an economic picture. I also spend fifteen minutes a year on where the stock market is going. All these great, heady, thinking deals kill you." - Peter Lynch
While I do not take issue with the concept of avoiding great, heady, thinking deals it is important to note that given what Lynch did for a living he was always net long in large size. He had no choice.
Your task for this week - look up the meaning of i) Secular bear market ii) Cyclical bull market iii) Dead cat bounce (aka suckers rally) And then dig up past data to discover when we were last in a secular bear market.