Saturday, May 15, 2004

Meme Watch - Rebound and The Election Year Media

Rebound

Watch carefully. There are a lot more signs that the market is bottoming out from this recent sell off. Did I get caught by surprise? Yup. Was I 80% committed at Dow 10,500? Absolutely. Do I have average downs the whole way back through 10,000. Most definitely.

Why? Because the sell pressure is subsiding. Things just cant go down much further without taking out stops that will bring us to Dow 8500. No one thinks we are going back there with an earnings picture like we have, and with economic indicators coming in the way they are. Even Inflation seems to be capped with a Fed number of about 2.5 to 3. That says we have a floor, and a top. A range that we are at the bottom of.

I know. I'm a bull. I can't help it. Believe me, two years ago, I was holding dividend paying stock only and not trusting market action at all. I guess you could say that I traded my way through the bad, and this is nothing compared to the market in 2001 and 2002. Back then we had to trade against abysmal earnings, and even worse economic numbers.

The Election Year Media

This can not be discounted the way everyone seems to be going along with it. Lets face it, the main media outlets are gunning for Bush. They report all of the bad and let the good bubble up every once and a while. Is it our fault? They seem to think that we WANT to hear this scandalous stuff. When I talk to people and read the blogs I read, I don't see that. I see people who want to have pride in their country as we are under siege and turn away from news that makes us feel shame. That's all I hear from the news outlets. Shame on the military, shame on Bush, shame on Rumsfeld, shame on the greedy CEOs, and on and on and on and on.

They are either working for the terrorists, or they want to change the political picture. Since Tom Brokaw wouldn't be able to survive in a cave without his "product", I have to believe that they are trying to affect politics. That is manipulation, and we have to turn away from it. Yet the markets seem to want to react to it. The trader in me KNOWS I have to game it that way, but the citizen in me, the US citizen who has invested in both the economic, municipal, and political landscape wants to expose it and bring it down. I have a feeling that it is going to have to be a little of both for me for now.

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