Don’t look for V shaped recovery here

It’s tempting to look for a fast recovery for a market blow-off like this that doesn’t have any obvious big economic drivers.   But it’s rare to see “V” shaped recoveries when fear gets this high.  I’m expecting the market will need to form a bottom here before there can be a sustained rally.   At least a couple more down days are probably in …

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Stock splits—will the confusion ever end?

I understand how stock splits, forward and reverse can confuse novice investors, but I was shocked to see Reuters Money publishing a guest post titled:  “An inside look at a bad stock trade.”   This investor’s analysis of VXX’s 4:1 reverse split was: “Such a split means that investors would have one-fourth of the shares they owned before the split, but at four times the …

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Buy on rumor, sell on news

I was very surprised Monday morning when sentiment turned around and the market went into decline. Perhaps people were nervous that the House wouldn’t approve the budget proposal, but it seems more likely mixed economic news prevented any sort of euphoric  reaction, or people realized that an agreement to add another trillion or two of debt really isn’t cause for celebration. I held onto my …

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Has most of the drama played out?

With Greece’s Euro problems successfully extended out a few more months, and the economy continuing to consistently send mixed messages, the focus of fear is the budget cap.  I’m thinking neither party has the stomach for the wholesale disruption of the Treasury’s affairs.   I wouldn’t be surprised to see one more major upswing in the VIX, but right now the prospect of a happy ending …

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A Brief History of Fear—VIX Over the Last 30 Years

One of the scariest things about market panics is their unpredictability.  All of us remember the dark days of 2008 and 2009, not so many the October 1987 crash.   For me, both of those crashes carried the same sense of disruption—the feeling that things would never be quite the same again. I’ve been looking at the history of volatility because it’s clear to me …

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