EconoMonitor

Lookout Below (part 63)

Here we go again: Futures look very weak, with the Dow indicating a drop of 175 at the open.

The cascade is weak Euro (Greek related or not). The soft EU currency means a strong dollar, and that is pressuring Gold, Oil, and stocks. The 200-day moving averages have been minor support, but indices (Dow & S&P500) are in spitting distance. If we open where the futures suggest, we are blow right through them.

As noted yesterday, watch the May 6th intra-day lows—especially the volume as we approach that level.

I honestly don’t see what the Greek riots have to do with equities—despite the usual chatter. This has been going on for 6 months—why the sudden impact now? The good visuals make for good TV, but lousy equity strategy.

More likely, market weakness is based on other factors: We are sitting on top of 70%+ gains; mutual fund managers are all in, impacting liquidity; Supply is in control over Demand. Overall, the market simply looks tired.

Once again, with markets just a few weeks from their 18 months highs, I have to ask: Can you really believe equities “forecast” anything?

I find it so much more accurate to say they are a future discounting mechanism, one that reflects a million monkey’s probalistic expectations of future events. Often right, sometimes wrong, occasionally spectacularly so. But a leading indicator that accurately forecasts the future? Don’t make me laugh…

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click for updated Futures Futes-5.20.10.png

 


Originally published at The Big Picture and reproduced here with the author’s permission.

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Edwin G. Dolan is an economist and educator with a Ph.D. from Yale University. Early in his career, he was a member of the economics faculty at Dartmouth College, the University of Chicago, and George Mason University. From 1990 to 2001, he taught in Moscow, Russia, where he and his wife founded the American Institute of Business and Economics (AIBEc), an independent, not-for-profit MBA program. Since 2001, he has taught at several universities in Europe, including Central European University in Budapest, the University of Economics in Prague, and the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, where he has an ongoing annual visiting appointment. During breaks in his teaching career, he worked in Washington, D.C. as an economist for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and as a regulatory analyst for the Interstate Commerce Commission, and later served a stint in Almaty as an adviser to the National Bank of Kazakhstan. When not lecturing abroad, he makes his home in San Juan Islands, Washington.

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