Forecasts being taken out faster than thought possible......market is out of control....even a 5% pullback and we would still be up on the year!!!!! The S&P 500 has risen so quickly this month that it has already topped or matched many of Wall Street analysts' freshly minted 2018 full-year forecasts, collected in CNBC's strategist survey. The median target for year-end is currently 2,975, about a 6 percent gain from current levels. The S&P 500, however, has already added nearly 5 percent since Jan. 1. When it broke 2,800 for the first time Tuesday morning, the S&P had run through four of 18 strategists' 2018 targets, and it is now heading for four more – at the 2,850 level. The S&P jumped more than 20 points Wednesday, to just over 2,800 after Tuesday's sell-off.
That's exactly what it is...... But as I mentioned a few times in the last couple of days...law of large numbers.....as I mentioned the amount of market cap being added to these companies is insane compared to where their growth of earnings will actually be... meaning this entire market is priced to perfection...most of the S&p predictions for 2018 have already been met....and it's quite amusing how the fed will step in when the markets not going in the right direction to prop it up, but kicks back and watches from the sidelines as asset bubbles grow day after day after day....if this market was 5% lower into 2018 and 22% lower in 2017 trust me the fed would have taken all possible rate hikes off the table for 2018 and would have probably cut rates back down to 1/2%..... I'm sure most think this is a healthy market but in reality we have seen this before... everything goes gangbusters and then the crisis comes bubbles burst and everyone is sitting on trillions of dollars worth of losses....rinse and repeat rinse and repeat!!!
Oh blah who cares, as long as we can read the directions properly and make money trading. For now the direction has been up. Looking back over history, 2 of the past 5 years have seen equity closures on Jan 31st be lower than Dec 31st. As it stands now today, it will make it 2 out of 6 years. This month is shaping up to close higher than Dec 31st close. Considering how high these past 13 trading days have pushed up from Dec 31st does not mean some blood will not flow if longs enter here and hold until end of month. But from there, if history is a guide, smooth sailing into May for the longs. Then comes summer doldrums and watch out!
Record after record....it will a Fu©king doozy when this market falls apart and the funny thing will be how surprised people will be, again a 3-5% pullback would feel like a crisis...and you know what all the talking heads will say after the 5% "collapse" is the market needed a breather, it needed this pullback to resume it's upward momentum....always after the fact do the talking heads mention it as if they knew it was coming all along ..... By this Friday the market will be on track for the longest time in history of mankind that the market has not seen a simple small 5% pullback!!!!! History is already made without even a 3% pullback...last time was November 7th, 2016. The index has gone 393 sessions without a 5% drawdown, the second-longest stretch in the history of the index, according to Goldman Sachs data. The longest stretch occurred between 1994 and 1996, and lasted for 394 sessions. If the current trend continues—as seems almost inevitable, as the S&P closed at a record on Wednesday—it will match the longest streak ever at the end of trading on Thursday and surpass it on Friday. The S&P 500 has closed higher in nine of the 11 sessions that have occurred thus far this year, ending at a record in each of its positive sessions. It closed at records in the first six sessions of the year, something it hadn’t done since 1964. The benchmark index’s first ten sessions marked the best start to a year since 2003. The S&P is already in its longest-ever stretch without a 3% decline, a drop that is historically extremely common. A decline of such meager magnitude hasn’t occurred since Nov. 7, 2016; the index has been extending this record since surpassing the previous one in October.
Reagan and Bush economic adviser says stocks are due to fall By Chris Isidore January 17, 2018: 9:03 AM ET In Wall Street Journal column with the headline "Stocks Are Headed for a Fall," Feldstein argued that years of cheap money from the Federal Reserve has produced an overvalued stock market. He expects stocks to tumble as interest rates on bonds start to rise. "When interest rates rise back to normal levels, share prices are also likely to revert to previous norms," he wrote. "...The implied fall in the market would reduce the value of household equities held directly and through mutual funds by $10 trillion." He blames the steps that the Fed took in 2008 in response to the financial crisis, taking interest rates down to near 0%, and buying huge amounts of assets to pump money into the economy. Investors looking for returns on the investments moved into stocks and real estate, which inflated the value of those assets. But now with the Fed raising rates and selling its assets, he thinks the inflated stock prices are bound to end. http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/17/investing/feldstein-predicts-stock-market-plunge/index.html