..same

Another day, another leech on the back of the Bear!.  If only the trading Bear would do as their namesake and hibernate for the winter to save it’s hide!.   Unfortunately, the Bull is only given incremental up days, one after another as the lack of short exposure doesn’t allow for many ‘big’ up days.  As seen recently (Egypt situation)any short willing to press positions quickly covers at first sign of another failed attempt at downside.   Today, 2 hawkish Fed speaks/ China hike didn’t dampen accumulation of shares in the broad market.  Even though these are not catalysts to us,  it used to be that the market in recent years would gyrate on any small bit of negativity. This just shows the maturity of the market as it’s on one track mind to global economic strength.

Shadowlist

• Momentum/earnings/winners of ‘10 –   The risk in CSCO’s outlook exists following last Q and is keeping the movers at bay.  The only fuel for the Bears this week is the underperformance (2^nd day)of SOX to the tape, but this might be only a condition of some profit taking from the best group so far in ’11.  Air out of the NVDA’s semi types is a good thing.  On the hand, we are seeing  rotation as pointed out in the last few Journals to the consumer sec since late last week and financials as of Monday, which the Bulls can offset with.  As far as the fiber optical plays,  consolidation is continuing after big up day on Friday and so watch for another entry soon if this has any legs as a trade in ‘11
• Commodities –  Under hike cloud today.
• Financials – day 2 of being one of the market leaders.  As per Shadowlist ,we concentrate of GS/JPM and/ or RKH (ETF) for Regionals to trade.  But, honestly with earnings plays this Q and retailers this week the plate is pretty full to get overly involved in a trade here.
• Consumer –  Our retailers/ goods are still moving inline with the tape.  Since pre-Friday trade listed DJIM’s are up 6-9% eg.  LULU  $73 to 80;s, FOSL  73’s to 78’s, RL  108-115’s, PVH  59’s to 63. 
• Q4 earnings update -  this is just a good safe stock that has constantly come across, but because it’s a crawler and unknown it has never been added to trading list.  Until now,  AZPN  is a nice safe stock at 1.3b cap in the software space following a good report.

thank..Jennifer Hudson's waistline..

..for WTW and/ or my recent TBL' (Earthkeepers) purchase to get through another winter!

Coming into the week we noted ‘inflation’ would be the key ‘word’ and it has proven to be as all the market noise is related it.  Everything else, including Iranian boats and some overnight ECB buying (fat finger?), the market is turning a blind eye to as we see by recent trading day's 'green' closes.  Note, if Journals do not contain mentions of eg. boats, Middle east tensions or whatever heading into a trading day as every other media outlet,  it’s because we’ve turned a blind eye to it and are trading away the Shadowlist components.

A simple question now is does the US /global have an inflation problem?.  Okay, if so, why are the emerging markets on fire this week (>3%)?.   Sure, they’ve have beaten up so far in ‘11, but you can beat them up more on inflation fears!.   Yesterday, FOMC related forecasts didn’t change (positive)   So, this is the noise, the fear mongering, but what do you do as a trader?.  Consider this…What if inflation points ease down the road, you’ll beat yourself for not using your cash this EPS season!. That's as simple as it gets.  What we’ve been saying this Q (if not years now) is trade the earnings stories/ rotations and ignore almost everything else.   

Shadowlist

• Q4 Earnings update-  Look at today’s ~40% pops, WTW TDSC TLB, (picked TBL to alert today, but you can add all 3 to Shadowlist for now).  These are almost historical earning reaction gaps and incredibly there is more follow through intraday (see IPGP  comments recently).

• Momentum/earnings/“winners of ’10-   While some momo’10 names notably lag today in a melting up market (maybe something to monitor for broader mkt),  this year’s inclusions  to DJIM consisting of opticals/ EPS’/ new potential momo’s carry on.  NPTN, FN  alerted here at ~ $14/ $25, respectively are near highs of $21/$32.   When you catch momo, you really catch it!.  Buyers who missed the ride earlier got on board of NVDA (up >10% from red lows), despite many bearish analyst comments.   AZPN  got a $22 price tgt.

Smoke... but where's the fire?

It seems every asset class had had a major reversal recently, USD, commodities and even TSY’s are on the cusp of saying something is wrong in the economy with yields at recent lows.  You can throw in weaker Global equity markets w/ China recently, Russia down 10% =correction territory and even today as example, Europe was comparatively weak vs. US markets.  Still, US equities clings range bound since early last week.

Take into account the 'red flags'...the poor GDP, more GDP downgrades, Jobless claims, non-manufacturing data for the US economy recently and you seriously have to wonder how the equity market is hanging in Q2!.  It’s hard to sit by idle at this point as it looks like the market will show it’s resiliency once more as we’ve pointed out month after month since ‘09.  But note, every correction since the rally began has been a one-time event and/or natural disaster that you know the market will reverse soon as history proves.  This is why shorts have been gun shy to press as they’ve been burnt time and time again.  This time may prove otherwise as a greater question mark lurks and that’s the ‘economy’, transitory or not. Market is literally hanging on a thread (our health  20MA benchmark) and one more ominous  headline and it could be a slippery slope due to all things already coming up as ‘red flags’.

In all, as far as today, it was bounce day for commodities off a USD decline post 99bln market value beating last week. It wasn’t much of a surprise as all major players pumped commodities to recoup some of the huge losses.  The strength in the market was ‘narrow’ as the majority SPX top gainers were all commodity linked. (Transports/Financials/SOX) all underperformed the tape showing how narrow the strength was.

Nice to see RUT outperform for Shadowlist as some went after real beaten down ones like CRR WTW  and others in our retail composite ie LULU ACOM GTLS QLIK AZPN  look decent overall.