Don't Blame Europe This Time - It's All About China

Asian stock markets have opened the week extremely weak (no pun intended). No doubt much of that is due to the SPX rolling over on Friday, but there is more. The Nikkei is down 1.8%, Hang Seng almost 3% and Shanghai 1.2% - all of them more than the 1% or so drop of the S&P in the last trading session of last week.

The mainstream media is quick to blame the noise out of Europe, but there is

Equities Ignoring Negative Data is Cause for Concern

This has been the trend over the last week - bad economic data comes out, yet the market plows on onwards and upwards. Last Friday, Univ. of Michigan Consumer Confidence disappointed by a point and a half (72 vs 73.5 expected). Ignoring that completely, the SPX rallied hard, investors choosing to focus on the positive but heavily engineered JPM earnings instead. It was a similar story when July Retail Sales printed a dismal -0.5% on Monday vs +0.2% expected.

The market tends to ignore bad data points in one of two situations. It does that at the bottom of long bear markets, under heavily oversold conditions,

3 Reasons Why Spx is Due for a Pullback

Technically the market has broken the uptrend started with the low of 11/25 and tested again on 12/20 and 1/30. The 14-day RSI has also just come off overbought levels thus triggering a sell signal.

Individual investors are more bullish than anytime during the past 6 months. The weekly sentiment survey by the American Association of Individual Investors shows 51% bullish, which is higher than at any time going back until at least the 9/22 survey. Having retail involvement is generally sign of a healthy market, except that

Sentiment on Australian Stocks is Slowly Turning Bearish

In relation to an earlier WhatIf post on the wisdom of RBA's decision not to cut rates, it was quite interesting to see Australian currency, policy may limit stock gains on Marketwatch. Higher rates are clearly a potential danger for Australia's economy. This had been pretty much ignored by the market and mainstream media, but it appears that the trend is changing. Also please refer to this WSJ article that came shortly after the rates announcement.

(For more WhatIf posts, click here)

Australia's Markets Defying Gravity (For Now)

Today the Aussie employment numbers surprised on the negative side. About 30k jobs were lost in December according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics press release. This compares to a consensus estimate of a net creation of 10k jobs, for a negative surprise of -40k. Both the Aussie stock index and the Aud/Usd fx rate met this with slightly more than a yawn.

The -40k surprise may not seem like a whole lot, but normalized by population size (22mm in Australia vs 310mm in the United States) this would be equivalent to US payrolls disappointing by approx 560k and such news would have completely tanked the SPX!

The Aussie (the currency that is) has been trading in line with global risk sentiment and out of synch with the fundamentals of the local economy. Other currencies have done that in the recent past, most notably the Euro. However when the regime shifts and the market starts pricing in the negative fundamentals the moves can be quite large. We just need to wait for the decoupling.

Gold Approaching Sell Target of 1650

In a WhatIf post from a week ago we were expecting a bounce in the Gold market with a sell target of around 1650. Spot bullion is now trading at 1635 with daily RSI in the 50's. We are approaching the target and Gold is no longer oversold so it would be appropriate to consider the timing of an entry. Recently the metal has been trading with a positive correlation to equities, and yesterday the S&P500 printed a new multi-month high, so we should wait for a change of sentiment in the equity market before establishing a short in Gold.

What if 2012 is the Year of the Samurai?

Forget the dragon, cards may be stacking up for Japan to outperform significantly in 2012. The Nikkei was down 17% in 2011 and in fact after peaking just over 20 years ago it is currently trading at around 20% of that all-time high (true, the component stocks and weights have changed so this is not an exact comparison). In fact for the majority of currently active investors and fund managers simply ignoring Japan has been a very successful strategy for most of their careers.

But lets take a careful look. Japan has a smoothly functioning, possibly overly harmonious, society with amazing infrastructure and a highly educated and motivated labor force. The quick recovery from the recent tsunami and nuclear disaster was no mean feat. When power shortages were looming in the summer, a modest amount of moral suasion by the government was enough for businesses and consumers to reduce consumption and mostly avoid blackouts. Japan, Inc. is alive and well.

And on a global scale the alternatives are disappearing fast. In terms of equities, US is unlikely to do anything spectacular, Europe is probably setting up for a recession, as for the BRICs its definitely time to handle with extreme care. Except for Treasury's, government bonds can be quite painful and even Gold is no longer the safe haven of years past. It is by no means a certainty, but the year of the samurai may be upon us.

More Downside Ahead For The S&P - Retail Investors Generally Bullish

According to the latest survey by the American Association of Individual Investors 40% of US retail investors are bullish and 30% bearish. The numbers are in line with long term averages compiled by AAII(people generally have an "optimistic" bullish bias). Judging by this, equity markets are more likely to experience a pull-back if not a real sell-off when liquidity returns at the start of January. The "Santa Rally" has probably ended.