Thursday, October 6, 2011

Quiet and observant day in the markets so far

     Steve Jobs was a true visionary whose loss will be felt for a long time in the company he cofounded with Steve Wozniak and the products he pioneered.  Steve Jobs changed all aspects of our lives.  He was a tech geek and his life was computers.  He is the type of person that epitomizes the entrepeneurial and innovative spirit of America.    He will be missed.

     After the frenetic activity of the past few months, today has been a quieter day so far.  I believe that traders are not making too many big moves in observance.  AAPL stock has not sold off like many believed and was actually up a little bit as I type this.  I was hoping for a huge selloff by idiots so I could purchase some shares on the cheap but it didn't happen.

     All markets are green so far today.



Economic Data
     More people sought unemployment benefits in the past week as new claims for unemployment rose 6,000 to 401.000 after a large fall last week.  This is a measure of new people filing for unemployment benefits.  We want to get below 400,000 and stay there for there to be signs of job growth.

Market Recap
     Today, we got a continuation of the bullish momentum of the past few days which has taken the SNP 500 from 1075 to 1160 in 3 days.  We are bumping up against the top of a downward channel we have developed on the SPY chart for the past few weeks. 
     If we can get past this channel resistance the next stop is the 50 day moving average at 118.28.  This has been a pretty powerful rally on good volume so I suspect we will get past trendline resistance and perhaps poke our head above the 50 day.

     All sectors of the market are participating in the rally with materials and energy being the leaders.  This is a good sign for the global economy.  Copper has also been rallying.  Perhaps it was hedge fund and bank liquidations that drove those stocks and commodities so low.  There were many incredible bargains over the past few days.

     Tomorrow, we get the government Non farm payrolls report for September.  It is expected that we gained between 50,000 and 60,000 jobs last month.  That would be consistent we a weak but steady low growth recovery.  If we can get that, we should be able to continue this nice rally we've had for the past few days.  Whatever the report says, it will move the markets.  Let's see what happens.

      

Disclaimer: Nothing in this blog should be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any securities! Please do your own due dilligence before buying any stocks or bonds!

14 comments:

  1. RIP Steve Jobs. A great marketing person.

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  2. SJ's death was already considered in the AAPL price. After he stepped down, everyone knew this was coming soon-ish. As awful as it sounds, it wasn't a big surprise.
    Earlier today started off like 3% down or something, but it wasn't like it was going to drop 10 or 15% and mass hysteria everywhere.

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  3. You said it really well, better than I could about Steve. Like Plumber I suppose I'm not too surprised there hasn't been a vast decrease in Apple share prices although the recent announcement about the 4S may have been what counterbalanced this. Steve's impact is going to be greatly missed, his early death is a real shame.

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  4. Yeah, Rafi's got it about right. It's still sad, though.

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  5. It seems distasteful that people would sell their stocks in a company because an influential member died. And I suppose that Apple played its part in buffering something that it may have anticipated. But enough cynicism: RIP, Steve.

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  6. I wonder if his death will have long term effects.

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  7. dude was sick for some time, no worries now. RIP

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  8. I dislike him and Apple products in general. Sure, he was great at marketing, but was awful at being a human.

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  9. very nice recap. And I can also imagine many people bought apple stocks because they liked steve jobs.

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  10. he should've added a "text the afterlife" app to the new iphone...

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