To: Gottfried who wrote (18444 ) 4/8/1998 12:45:00 PM From: Shelia Jones Respond to of 95453
We are a "down group". But this is "not a recommendation to buy". Although you may lose less money here. More exciting info from thestreet.com: The Chartist: With the Party Over, It's Time for Sobriety By Helene Meisler Special to TheStreet.com 4/8/98 10:02 AM ET Two days ago the Dow Jones Industrial Average threw a party and nobody came. The invitations went out but were "declined" by the Nasdaq, the Transports, the Utilities, the S&P 500 and even the advance/decline line. Seems the only attendees were the financials, and that's because Citicorp (CCI:NYSE) and Travelers (TRV:NYSE) crashed the party. Sounds like a hell of a party, eh? Now that the DJIA has closed above that magical 9000 number, we can get back to analyzing the market properly, without all the distractions that number brought. What about that correction I've been jawboning about for the past month? Is this the beginning? Will it ever happen? Statistically we've been in that correction phase for at least two weeks. It is interesting to note that in the past 10 trading days the advance/decline line has been down six out of those 10 days, with a net loss of 737. In that same period, the DJIA has rallied about 52 points and the S&P is up almost 4 points. Therefore, the average investor's portfolio has either churned or lost money in the past two trading weeks (except of course if you owned Citicorp!). This is why it's been so difficult to make money in the past few weeks. Most stocks are already in the midst of their corrections. As for market sentiment, it's hard to find a bear these days. Last week's Investor's Intelligence reading showed the smallest percentage of bears (22.6%) in six years! That's part of the problem with this market right now: the lack of bad news. That's right, tops always come on good news, not bad. If the news were bad, we'd be worried and thus the market would have a wall of worry to push it higher. Two short months ago when the Dow began its recent ascent we were mired in bad news. There was the Paula and Monica affair, the Asian crisis, and don't forget about the Iraq situation. Now we're making nice with Iraq, the judge has thrown out the Paula Jones case, and Asia seems to be stabilizing. And don't worry about the Fed either; last week it voted to keep rates steady. The good news has already been discounted. We have had it hammered into our heads day after day, so much so we can repeat it in our sleep: "Inflation is low. Interest rates are low. Asia will help keep our economy in check." Is there anyone out there who doesn't know this yet? So, what's going to scare 'em? Earnings disappointments? Maybe. A jump in rates? Perhaps. If we knew what would scare the market, the market would have already discounted that news, the same way it's discounted the good news. Okay, so what's an investor to do? Wait patiently. Wait for the fear; wait for the news to get so bad that you wonder what awful news the next day will bring. A correction is the market's way of weeding out the weak vs. strong stocks. In a decline there will be some stocks that refuse to go down with the market. There will be none or very little selling pressure in them. They will begin to hold before the market does. This will be the group we want to watch because what refuses to go down with the market will typically be the leader when the market re-emerges. We're not sure which group(s) this will be, but keep your eyes on those groups that have already been down for a while. They will have a tendency to begin to stabilize first, as the selling is done in them. Two groups that come to mind are technology and oil service. However, I must caution here, this is not a recommendation to buy these groups. We have not yet seen them hold in the face of a decline; we are simply pointing out that these are two "down" groups that might become washed out during a correction.