-- Posted Wednesday, 28 January 2009 | Digg This Article | Source: GoldSeek.com

Rick’s Picks

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

“Phenomenally accurate forecasts”

The bar chart below, of the Dow Industrials, is about as packed with tedium as you could find over a two-week stretch. We’ve been projecting a bullish outcome, although for purely technical reasons and only for the very short-term.  But with the economy hovering miles from a bottom, perhaps a little boredom on Wall Street is as much as we could hope for? Even so, it seems curious that stocks been having such difficulty giving up ground lately. (Our target for the Dow is  6883 – a 15% decline from these lofty heights.)  If we had to guess, we’d say that a steady stream of merely bad economic news, including 65,000 layoffs  announced the other day by a bunch of Fortune 500 companies, has numbed investors to reality.

Surely things are certain to get much worse, since mounting layoffs cannot fail to have a domino effect.  But it has seemed as though any day on which we are not greeted with news of yet another mega-bank failure produces little net gain or loss on Wall Street. While the day-to-day survival of the banking system is not exactly cause for exuberance, neither, it would seem, is it deemed reason to inflict damage on shareholders.  We stopped shorting the bank stocks ourselves when we realized that the ones that remain are not going to fail. The bad news is that they are all certain to be nationalized, probably within a year, and that this could not conceivably be good for capitalism. In the meantime, 90 minutes seems to be the investment horizon for most who are actively buying and selling stocks these days, Even those “investors” who could pass for visionaries on CNBC seem not to be looking much further out than a week or two.  

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Information and commentary contained herein comes from sources believed to be reliable, but this cannot be guaranteed. Past performance should not be construed as an indicator of future results, so let the buyer beware. Rick's Picks does not provide investment advice to individuals, nor act as an investment advisor, nor individually advocate the purchase or sale of any security or investment. From time to time, its editor may hold positions in issues referred to in this service, and he may alter or augment them at any time. Investments recommended herein should be made only after consulting with your investment advisor, and only after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company. Rick's Picks reserves the right to use e-mail endorsements and/or profit claims from its subscribers for marketing purposes. All names will be kept anonymous and only subscribers’ initials will be used unless express written permission has been granted to the contrary. All Contents © 2007, Rick Ackerman. All Rights Reserved. www.rickackerman.com 

-- Posted Wednesday, 28 January 2009 | Digg This Article | Source: GoldSeek.com

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