Skating on Thin Ice
Bob Carver
Friday, November 17, 2006
Investors have enjoyed the rally since mid-July in the stock market. In the Dow Industrials, the gain has been almost 14% in just about 17 weeks. In fact, if the rally continued over a whole year at the same pace, the Dow would be up over 42%. Obviously, this isn't very likely to happen and some kind of correction is going to see some of those gains given back. Such a continuous string of gains builds up trading profits for the bulls and corrections are the mechanism by which the market allows those profits to be liquidated. When an advance has gone on for such a long time, the correction is likely to be sharp.
Now, each stock has its own personality and dynamics and will follow its own rythm, and some indices will top before others. Traditionally, the broad market and tech stocks will top first, followed by the blue chips. That process has already started as the broad market appears to be puting in a top. However, the tech stocks are still relatively strong and the blue chips are even stronger. Eventually, all will succumb to the pressure of too much paper profit and too little liquidity to bid prices higher.
Sentiment shows that OEX traders remain overly-bullish, but QQQQ traders are growing concerned about the market. However, since option expiration is Friday, some of this may simply be due to expiration "noise".