Bears on the Run

Aug 16, 2012 | Market Commentary

Friends

It’s official! The bear’s hair is actually on fire. With no good news of any kind in sight, stocks continue to climb the proverbial “wall of worry”. Today’s release of the weekly jobless claims number, nor the Philly Fed Survey report, would give anyone a reason to celebrate. Nevertheless, stocks enjoyed a decisively positive day, albeit on light volume once again.

For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 85 points to close at 13,250. The S&P 500 was up 10 points to finish the day at 1416. Gold was up $9.70 to trade at $1616 per ounce, while oil was up $.80 to trade at $95.13 per barrel WTI. So where do we stand? We have volatility at 4 year lows, volume at 4 year lows and stocks at nearly 4 year highs. The bears are trying to process that.

Is it time to take some chips off the table? Seems like a no brainer. At the very least one wouldn’t think that one should not have all his chips exposed. For fully invested bulls, certainly be careful, but for now, stocks seem to want to continue to climb the “wall of worry”.

Today’s outrage- bankrupt MF Global’s former CEO John Corzine (former Democratic Governor and Senator, not to mention former CEO of Goldman Sachs) is not only NOT going to be facing jail time for his company commingling over $1 billion of clients funds (totally illegal) and losing it (totally immoral), but word is that he is ready to open a hedge fund. You can’t make this stuff up. Where is the outrage??? Believe it or not, his buddies in the Hamptons will no doubt give him money to manage, and they’ll con others into doing so. I’ll stop now. Let’s just enjoy the market going up.

Have a nice evening everyone.

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