Sam,
>>noticed in today's Barrons that the Commitment of Traders
Commercial Trader position in the S&P is getting close to
flat for the first time in a long time.
I don't normally look at this indicator, so I'm assuming
they normally reflect a heavy short position with regards
to the S&P 500?
On CNBC a new worry that I hadn't heard of or thought
about before was mentioned by Pisani. He said many of
the smaller mutual funds in the $100 million dollar
range could not really be run economically (ie profitably)
and with most of them reflecting 15-20% losses on ave,
there was a real concern that many of them would be
forced to close up shop which would then add to the
dumping of shares on the open market. I don't have
statistics to back this up, but my gut feel is many
of these guys have been trying to "hide" in retail,
homebuilding and financials. I think these are the
next sectors to go. You can see some of that today,
(and yesterday) with Hot Topic, Kohl's, etc. Retail
sector is starting to crack.
Was watching Bergstrom, Volcker, etc on an economic
forum on CSPAN. There is strong sentiment that the
US will not be the engine of growth to get us out of
this terrible slump. They are looking to Asia.
Pretty ironic when you consider how trashed out Asia
was just 4 years ago. Pretty ironic also when you
really think about it: Asia is the area of growth not
so much because they've cleaned up their act, but
because we've descended to their levels, where they
were back in 1998. All the criticisms of them that
were made then can be made of US corporations today.
The only thing missing is the trashing of our currency
...with the US running a current accounts deficit of
$4 Billion PER DAY, can that be far behind?
Peter. |
