Green Shoots Have Turned to Pond Scum

I guess Halliburton (NYSE: HAL) has been deactivated and Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) has lost this little memory unit. If you see it lying around, well hell, they’ll buy it from you no doubt. Or, worse, you might get thrown in the slammer since nobody, but nobody messes with the Da Boyz.

The green shoots have turned to pond scum as investors, currently sans HAL, don’t up from down. Volume is heavier on sell-offs while light on bullish days. In the meantime breadth data remains terrible.

The McClellan Summation Index continues to fall from high levels indicating the bull trend is over for awhile probably.

Okay, tomorrow we start earnings season off with Alcoa being first up as usual. Nothing much good is expected and the company always has a lot of unique items in their reports. But, it will give us an indication of economic conditions revealed in their statements excluding Wall Street spin.

Biden was shooting his mouth off the past few days regarding Israel’s right to attack Iran and how the administration underestimated the depth of the current recession. So he argued for another stimulus package—yeah, more spending, that’s what we need! He’s no doubt in Cheney’s old secret hideout but bound and gagged. The longer this administration rolls out nonsensical programs the less the American people like it. Don’t get me wrong, the Bush administration got a lot of things wrong domestically but these guys seem way over their heads.

But the goofiness doesn’t stop with Biden. The new CFTC chairman ruined commodity markets today with a trial balloon arguing for position limits on commodity positions. You know, get the evil speculators! What will they meddle with next? This dumb idea is in part what put commodity markets on its okole (OH-Koh-Lay: Hawaiian for your posterior) today.

For us, we have small positions and roughly 80% cash in portfolios. Which way next should prove interesting and earnings should tell the tale in that regard.

Now let’s hope Goldman finds its trading software so markets can return to their previous manipulative ways. The guy doing the best job with Goldman is Tyler Durden and his Zero Hedge blog. Goldman made the mistake of engaging with him which makes it even more fun.

Disclaimer: Among other issues the ETF Digest maintains positions in: MDY, IWM, QQQQ, GLD, DBC, USL, DBB, EFA, EEM and FXI.


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