Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Everyone is a Contrarian

This morning was the 3rd time that we bounced off of the 1040 area in less than a week, this bounce has been the weakest and we are already fading.  Isn't there an old maxim that the more times you test support, the weaker it becomes? 

The TA trading funds, HFT bots, and paper napkin chartists are all lined up with buy orders around 1040, but they also have a bunch of stop orders a few points below it.  It would not surprise me to see a stop run down to 1025-1030 in the overnight Globex session or intraday Wednesday. 

4 comments:

Petsamo said...

An upleg would be nice.

Tsachy Mishal said...

How do you come to the conclusion that everybody is a contrarian? Just based on the price action? How do you explain the put buying despite testing the levels that everybody is buying?

Tsachy Mishal said...

How do you explain every sentiment survey showing widespread bearishness?

Market Owl said...

I have seen on CNBC and many other media outlets about the extreme bearishness in the surveys and how its a contrarian indicator, like it was in March 2009.

Yes, the equity put call ratios were high today, but they were relatively low for all of last week.

I am not saying its a great time to be short, but I don't think the long side is all that compelling either.