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world stock market, us stock market
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1/24/04 Investment House Alerts Report
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IH Alert Subscribers:
MARKET ALERTS
Targets hit alerts issued Friday: SVVS; IVIL
Buy alerts issued: SNUS; CORI
Trailing stops issued: Protected some more gain. CYBX; ORBK; DTAS; TRPH; MVSN; KEI; ZMH; NANX
Stop alerts issued: None issued
MARKET SUMMARY
Stocks struggle again, but the leading sectors emerge once more.
Microsoft, KLAC, SYMC and others rekindled investor desire for tech stocks and NASDAQ opened higher and ran 19 points, clearly setting the pace. SP500 was tagging along, but hit near resistance at 1150 and once again failed. That is a key resistance point for that index and the market as well as it represents one of the early tops in the December 2001/January 2002 double top. That double top set off the last down leg in the long downtrend for large cap stocks. It is therefore an important top. For the third consecutive session it tapped that level and could not break through.
That killed the early rally as some sellers entered and tried to take stocks lower. They managed to keep the market down most of the session. Small and mid-caps stubbornly hung on, however, while volume was running lower and NASDAQ tested the 10 day MVA. The sellers did not have the numbers to make the selling stick, however, and when NASDAQ hit the 10 day and held, buyers came back into the market in the last half hour. NASDAQ sliced 15 points off of its loss in that late surge as once more buyers could not resist the opening.
Make no mistake as to who the buyers are. We are not talking about you, me, and the supposed legion of 'day traders' so often referred to. There has been a dramatic surge of money flowing into mutual funds, particularly tech funds. It slowed to $15.5B in December, but has been up 10 straight months. Overall $180B was put into funds in 2003, the best since 2000. In this month the pace has slowed slightly, but over 70% of the money is going to domestic US funds. That money has to work its way into the market, and thus each time there is the slightest pullback the fund managers move in. When NASDAQ hit the 10 day MVA they saw an opportunity. It was not an accumulation session as volume was lower, but really the lower volume was good to see: selling volume did not race higher as the market sold off most of the session. And while it was good to see the intraday action return to a more positive look again, what NASDAQ really needs is more of a pullback toward the up trendline. Those mutual funds desperately seeking to get in on the action, however, are not giving it any chance to take a breath. Not fatal action, and there are still many stocks that are not extended and ready to move higher, but the higher it goes without a rest, the harder the drop when it comes because the market always overshoots a bit, both on the upside and the downside.
THE ECONOMY
The campaign spin hits high gear, but things are not as bad as they seem.
There is a lot of talk about changing the country's direction from candidates for president. A lot of that centers around jobs and deficits and how the current administration squandered both. As reported in the Thursday report, however, the recession's starting point is going to be pushed earlier, something that is without question given the March 2000 stock market crash that forecast the downturn that started three months later as jobs started to contract and manufacturing production rolled over. The recession was well on its way, indeed already present, before the tax cuts that purportedly 'squandered' the surplus and caused over 2 million jobs losses were put into place. To the contrary, without the tax cuts the deficits would be worse and we would still be losing jobs. The deficit was going to occur due to lower tax revenues from lower economic output. The tax cuts mitigated the downturn and jumpstarted the comeback. If changing directions means turning back the expansion, that is something nobody wants, at least those of us not running for political office.
Jobs, unemployment rates not a great forecaster in elections.
It is such an easy pitch to hit, the candidates are finding a hard time laying off this one. Over two million jobs lost in the recession. The recession is purported to officially have started during the current administration (though, as noted, that claim is about to be undermined by the bean keepers). Thus the reasoning is the administration caused the job losses. In reality, the administration caused the problems about as much as the guy who comes upon a car wreck and tries to render aid actually caused the wreck. We have discussed at length in prior reports the Fed's actions that overly heated and then choked off the economy and the stock market, inevitably leading to the recession and job losses. All of that was basically done and the crash was well in motion by the time Bush took the oath of office.
With the almost cataclysmic drop in economic activity from such lofty heights, the job loss should have been expected. With all of the company implosions (remember all of the dot com deaths?), unemployment should have shot through the roof yet it never came close to past recessions. In Q4 2002 unemployment was at 5.9%. When Clinton ran for term 2, the same quarter showed 5.6%; Reagan had 8.5% to deal with; Carter had 6%. Given who won those races, it appears that the rate of employment had little to do with the election results. Even if it does, an honest examination of the facts shows the job losses were baked into the cake given the monetary and fiscal missteps that started in the late 1990's. With the household survey showing an increase of 1.2 million jobs from March 2003 to December 2003 and the payrolls survey (that measures traditional employee hires by major corporations) showing 278K jobs created from August to December, it appears the tax cuts have worked as they always have, mitigating the downside and then ushering in the recovery. As we have noted before, the job creation to this point is ahead of the historical schedule for the start of job creation based on the true measure of economic recovery, i.e., when the stock market bottomed.
If companies are hesitant to hire even when they are enjoying a strong jump in business, who can blame them? After all there is hesitation to make the tax cuts, the very thing that spurred business investment and is fueling the recovery, permanent. More than that, those who would be president all want to raise taxes on those very groups that have taken their tax savings and funded the recovery. Business may be booming now, but business owners know all too well that if the policies are changed business could easily dry up. Business owners, like the stock market, hate uncertainty because they cannot plan. If they cannot plan they do not spend. If the articulated stance of potential leaders is against business, they most certainly will curtail their activities. For example, JDSU said it was not going to get caught in the same bind as before even though business was booming. If booming business is not yet bringing on the jobs, one can easily imagine what an utter desert the job market would be without the stimulus that jumpstarted the economy.
Deficits aren't what they used to be. Literally.
One of the other main issues is the deficit. The 'squandered future' argument is premised on the belief that even during an economic downturn the trillions required to fund the plethora of social programs would always be there at the ready but for the tax cuts. There is a lot of talk about how this is a record deficit. While we would love to see spending sliced in half by the reduction of fraud and waste in social programs and halving the size of government agencies that run the programs, we bristle when we hear talk of record deficits. Maybe in actual dollars, but those mean little over 200 years. Everyone knows that $1 today is not worth $1 in 1972; they have to be inflation adjusted. Moreover, and most importantly, the economy itself is bigger: a larger dollar deficit may not really be larger if the overall economy grew.
What are the numbers? You compare the deficit as a percentage of GPD, i.e., how much of the economy it takes up. That is the only way to compare apples to apples. In 2003 federal spending was 19.9% of GDP. During the 1990's spending averaged 20.7% of GDP. That means there were years well above the 20.7% average. In the mid 1980's after the tax cut shot the economy into high gear and tax revenues surged, the deficit ballooned to 24% of GDP because more money was spent even though tax revenues jumped by hundreds of billions of dollars. Part of that was the price of out-producing the USSR into economic ruin. The benefits, however, were huge as the investment spawned by tax incentives created new technologies, millions of jobs, and huge surpluses once we did not have to spend so much on the cold war.
Right now we have to spend on the war on terror, putting up big bucks to do so while also running a lot of fraud-riddled social programs that require an ever expanding federal government to run them. Very similar to the 1970's and early 1980's. Also similar are the supply side tax cuts that are starting a massive investment back in the US by businesses and individuals. The expanding economy is already churning out more tax revenues, sending deficit projections lower by almost 30% still very early in the recovery (it is amazing that this is being denied. The born again deficit hawks have switched positions: instead of looking at the actual reports on the deficit they are looking at the projections based on the static analysis that see $1 out of tax revenues as creating $1 in deficit. Recall how they debunked the administration deficit projections because they were just projections, instead preferring to look at actual revenues. You have to at least be consistent in your frame of reference, but no one calls them on it).
Yet we continue to hear how the burden will crush future generations. This is the SAME arguments that were made in 1984 when Mondale ran against Reagan, promising tax hikes to cure our ills. Reagan won, the tax cuts stayed in place, the economy continued to expand, and all of that investment produced the 20 year expansion and ultimately the surpluses. Growth trumps deficits that inevitably arise when the economy slows and tax revenues cannot keep pace with the entitlements and other federal spending. No doubt spending could be slashed across the board and federal programs need to be reviewed to reduce duplication and fraud. The euphemism 'nondiscretionary spending' needs to be exorcized from government with every program put under scrutiny. The current administration is guilty of overspending: not one veto and no attempt to reduce the size of government. The growth spurred by the tax cuts that provide incentives to invest in America and a reduction in spending would once again cure the deficit concerns over the next 5 to 7 years. Both sides have to reduce spending and continue to empower the individual to make decisions as to what to do with limited resources to best drive the economy.
US is expanding, most of the world is not.
Finally, it would be remise not to put the US recovery into a world context. While the US enjoyed over 8% growth in Q3, will enjoy 6% or more in Q4, and will have projected growth of 4% to 5% in all of 2004, much of the world remains in recession. When the US went into recession the rest of the world followed. Now that the US is emerging, our continued appetite for foreign goods, even with a weaker dollar, helps the remaining world economies. Even Germany's chancellor, after Germany slipped back into recession, noted how the growth in the US proved that tax cuts work. The numbers certainly prove it with surging GPD and deficits turning out to be much smaller than projected.
Tax cuts have a multiplying effect, returning more dollars than they take. Those with myopic vision and a gross misunderstanding of economic history believe that debt reduction is paramount, even more important than stimulating the economy. They do not realize that the latter leads to the former, and that a focus on deficits without stimulus will not cure a deficit. If you applied to business what the 3 leading presidential contenders said in the Thursday debate, a business could never take out a significant loan in order to grow the business even though that loan would help it buy equipment and expand to markets that would return revenues that would more than pay for the debt servicing. Why? Because it would create a deficit. Now if there was too much debt, there would be no loan approved; that is the concern we face if the deficit gets so large it chokes off foreign investment just out of fear. As noted, however, with the current deficit running below the AVERAGE deficit in the 1990's, those golden years of prosperity that many critics blissfully long for, that is simply not the case. We overcame much higher deficits as a percentage of the economy because the early deficit was dwarfed by the tax revenue increases the investment incentives triggered. It is easy to get sidetracked with emotional arguments, but facts are facts.
THE MARKET
The market may have finished mixed for the week with NASDAQ and DJ30 breaking their winning streaks, but it was constructive action as price/volume action remained solid: up on rising sessions, down on falling sessions. With that in mind along with the continuing strong uptrend, the struggles at the end of the week don't look that bad. After bumping 2150 for three sessions, NASDAQ has made a quick 10 day MVA test but late Friday was already trying to bounce. Not bad action as it is just coming off of a nice 3 month consolidation and is taking a quick breather after its first breakout run. SP500 rallied to resistance at 1150 and failed to break over that level after tapping at it for three days. It is much more extended, having run almost straight up for a month and covering 100 points. It needs a rest, but is still holding the 10 day MVA as it continues its uptrend. Indeed, all of the indexes are holding their uptrends, some stronger than others.
Indeed, Friday the leadership hot potato was passed again as NASDAQ and the small caps took the lead. The small cap uptrend is arguably the strongest in the market, and they were leading Friday. Notably absent were semiconductors. SOX undercut the 18 day MVA and is close to testing its up trendline and 50 day MVA (roughly coincident at 515). Some key chips have broken their 50 day MVA (AMAT, INTC, MCHP, NVLS) while others are heading that way (KLAC). It is important to note, however, that many smaller chip stocks with new technology and niches are performing very well. SOX will be an early indicator for us as to whether the market is going to hold the near term pullback or head lower. It is already ahead of the pack but typically overshoots support a bit, giving the rest of the indexes a chance to test their support levels while it makes wider gyrations. The market has been trying to take a breather, and SOX is, as usual, ahead of the rest of the pack. We are still looking for more of a pullback, but again, we do not anticipate a severe correction given the strong leadership and price/volume action.
End part 1 of 3
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world stock market
us stock market
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