The Bears Team:
- Emerging Market Interest Rates Keep Marching upwards. The inflation seems to be slowing.
- China, Australia continue raising interest rates. Not really sure this is bad for US when you look out months
- De-leveraging
- EU Issues:
- Greece out of the EU? Issue seems eminent! Will EU and IMF kick the can down the street again or kick Greece out of the EU and devalue ate the Drachma.
- IRELAND! GREECE! What about Portugal, Spain, and Italy? What about a recurrance of Greece unresolved issues?
- European pop-up issues from the banking, lending, or housing issues from the little or big PIIGS. Moody's or S&P downgrades possible.
- Future Headlines? - "EU Division Eminent On Spain (or Italy) Moody's Bond Rating Downgrade!"
- Earnings are starting to slow.
- EU continues to just spend its way out of Banking issues. The shell game will have to get resolved soon. Every 3 month we start with problems in Greece then Italy then Portugal then Ireland and finally Spain.
- US State Bankrupsies:
- CALIFORNIA STATE DECLARES BANKRUPSY! just kidding! But someone is going to post something like this and the market will react. California, New Jersey, Ohio and populous "Blue" states still are running unsustainable deficits. There is a lot of downside to a credit downgrade of a state and a lot of potential what next questions. What will be the market ripples on a large state downgrade?
- China Real Estate Bubble starting to top. Will this migrate to banks anytime soon.
- Middle East and OIL:
- Oil is on the low end of the $80 -$100 dollar range.
- Middle East - Arab Spring is settling in. Syria is the last festering overthrow to move forward. The larger issue is what next! Iran - Syria - Lebanon - Shia Vs. Sunni
- Israel and Iran are unusually quite. When will hatreds in the Middle East ignite again.
- WIKILEAKS seems to be quite.
- QEII ended - Now what?
- Where are the Rogue States:
- North Korea is always good for a pop downward:How much BS can South Korea tolerate from North Korea. North Korea massing special ops troops on the border. Will posturing ever be misinterpreted into WAR?
- Iran
- Venezuela
- Russia
- Currency Wars to deflate currencies - GOLD
- . How will China, Brazil, and Japan continue to lower the Dollar?
- How will the US continue to lower its currency in the face of downward competition on developed currencies.
- Companies are running out of ways to cut costs. Given they are not growing what will propel valuations higher.
- Investors Still Remember the Painful Days of 2001 and 2008. 1998 LTCM 1991 Commercial Banking Crisis and 1987 Crash is probably old by now:
- remain skittish about past Dot Bomb and Financial Busts. Major downturns have not had enough time to be solidly in the past. Market memory is still very negative so greed is not likely to take hold for quite a while.
- Market has had a run since the March 2009 lows.
- There is a long way down especially in peoples minds.
- Money flows are coming out of stock and going into Mattresses?
The Bull Team:
- Stocks are on sale again.
- EU have fixed the PIIGS cash leak temporily.
- US budget is over and we are moving on.
- Stocks have dropped from DOW 12,928.50 to todays level. Stocks are more valuable when their price gets cut. Simple concept, but not sure if this is apparent in the market yet.
- Where else you going to put your money:
- Bond - Ya Right! Just because yield keep dropping does not mean they will. Besides how low can they go.
- Real Estate - Starting to level off, but never a really liquid asset.
- Gold - Maybe as that new currency has the least amount of hair. Levels do seem speculatively high at the current time.
- Unemployment is near 9% for first time in years, yet there is constant floundering on the numbers.
- Economic Activity is starting to happen but at like 1-2% which is historically slow.
- Bernanke has great wisdom about depressions.
- Bernanke is creating calm in the markets from his WISDOM.
- More elected republicans make DC more business friendly (less effective politicians)
- Government gridlock is likely to limit spending programs? We will see.
- Earnings are likely to push further higher on continued cutting and trimming of budget.
- Corporate Earnings still good in the US.
