Thursday, December 04, 2008

Thoughts for Thursday Eve



* Sector Themes - Housing stocks (top chart) have rallied on news of lower mortgage rates. Meanwhile, oil continues to make bear market lows. On the way up during 2007, the story was expanded demand from developing nations and peak oil. The extent of the drop in prices--roughly $100/barrel!--is one indication of the demand destruction wreaked by global recession.

* Sentiment and Blog Traffic - Lately has been at levels more typical of intermediate-term market tops than bottoms. I've been hearing more talk of market bottoming than market washout; I don't find fear levels all that high, surprising, given that we're trading more than 40% below market highs. For those interested, 38% of traffic to this blog comes from outside the U.S. Where does the traffic come from? Over 15% of blog viewers daily come to the site via Google searches; no other referral source accounts for more than 1.5% of traffic.

* Organizing Yourself - The Impact Oven site organizes your online financial research; you can register for a free trial while they're in beta by using the registration code: decemberbeta.

* Using Moving Averages - Market Sci takes a look at a 5-10-20 strategy.

* Tracking a Track Record - The Strategic Growth Model has been posting trades live to their site.

* Trading With TRIN - VIX and More has a couple of good posts on the Arms Index and its use.
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