Obwohl J. Moreland im Prinzip Bulle ist, erhöhte seinen Cash-Bestand nach dem Dienstag-Ausverkauf auf 50 %.
Er hatte bereits Anfang Februar vor massiven Insider-Verkäufen gewarnt...
http://www.ariva.de/board/245194?pnr=3064204#jump3064204
...aber gewartet, bis unterstützende Chartsignale kamen. Nun, meint er, habe die Rallye "ein Rad am Wagen verloren".
Market Analysis Time to Raise Some Cash By Jonathan Moreland Street.com Contributor 3/1/2007 10:39 AM EST
So 50 or 100 points up on the Dow is supposed to make us all feel better about Tuesday's swoon? I don't think so. But any market strength after that forgettable day is excellent for one thing: raising cash at still-decent prices for your stocks.
As my market-related commentary on Feb. 1 relayed, I have hardly been a table-pounding bear. Even though I went to a sell signal on my top-down, insider-based market indicators in early January, I had only raised my cash levels up to 5% for most of the time since then. The fundamentals and technicals of my individual stocks just weren't showing the sort of deterioration that would make me sell them.
The takeaway from that last market column was that it was "better to think of the present bearish-leaning top-down calls of insiders (and other systems) as reliable (though not infallible) warning lights on a car's dashboard. You may not need to pull over when they first come on. But you probably should slow down a bit and move over to the slow lane in case a wheel does fall off."
Well, I view Tuesday as the day some lug nuts finally flew off. And I think it's finally time to get more defensive.
I did this on Wednesday by selling numerous positions and building up my cash levels all the way up to 50%. That's pretty defensive for me.
In answer to the question of what to sell, investors should think outside of the typical industry theme. Whatever doesn't look sound technically in your portfolio should probably be taken off the table now.
Do I know for sure that a larger market selloff is imminent? Of course not. No one does. But what does appear obvious is that the risk of a larger pullback has increased to an uncomfortable level. If you agree with that last statement, it should be all you need to justify raising cash.
By comparison, all the discussion about just what caused Tuesday's swoon is less relevant. If there was a "good" reason why the markets acted as they did, what has changed in a day that makes that threat less dangerous to your wealth? And if there wasn't an identifiable reason for the fall, then -- to paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson in the remake of Shaft -- "does that make it less dangerous, or more dangerous?"
Personally, I would argue "more dangerous." The fact that the collapse doesn't appear to be the result of the bursting housing bubble, defaulting subprime loans or any of the other normal talking points of perma-bears is troubling indeed. The selling wave started in China, where economic activity is hot, hot, hot.
Too hot, obviously, for comfort. To be fair to the perma-bears, the risk that China's financial system is not sound enough to support its (and much of the world's) growth has been discussed as a potential global problem in the past. But if you throw out enough risk factors, one will eventually prove correct.
The underreporting of nonperforming loans on the books of most Chinese banks was the cause of hand-wringing a couple years ago. If you had acted on that fear then, you would have missed a ton of upside. In any case, I'd be surprised if many of the professional bears expected their much-awaited swoon to start in China.
Yet it did. And institutions showed their hand. They are skittish. And that should make you worried too. To be clear, I don't want a crash. I'm still net long and have numerous stocks that I feel deserve to go up on the basis of fundamentals. But no one said investing had to be fair. On Tuesday, it didn't even make sense.
The good news is that taking some money off the table in recognition of the increased risk Tuesday's trading spotlighted still puts you well ahead of the "sky is falling" crowd who thought you should have bailed out of stocks wholesale months ago. But after being more concerned about missing upside by acting too bearishly too quickly, my calculus has definitely changed after Tuesday.
The bigger risk to me now is not listening to the message of Tuesday's severe technical breakdown. That message: It could happen again -- and for no good reason.
I look forward to being proved wrong and missing some of the upside of this amazing buying opportunity before recommitting my cash. As I said, I'm still net long, and it won't be the first time I've passed up a few percentage points in order to sleep better at night. Heck, I'll even put cash back to work next week if facts show that I'm obviously overreacting.
But right here, right now -- my call is to raise cash. |