Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Waiting to Act

The weakest equity markets in the world are in Asia.  Japan is trading like it's still in a deep recession.  China is trading even worse.  India is also bad.  Australia remains weak.  Yet the U.S. market is less than 2% away from post 2009 recovery highs.   Europe is no longer lagging and trading about even with the U.S. equity freight train over the past few months.  It is no coincidence that the 2 world markets that are performing the best have also had the most central bank yapping.  I cannot remember a time when almost all of the attention was focused on central banks for so long.  It has been like this for months. 

The whole market is a house of cards right now getting built higher and higher.  At current valuations, with this kind of economy and lack of insider/corporate equity demand, the market just can't go much higher. 

A top is approaching, but timing tops is always tricky, more difficult than timing bottoms.  Tops are processes, and usually you want to wait and short when there is enthusiasm.  I don't see that at all right now, so I can't short this market.  But going long doesn't feel all that great either, with the current fundamentals and valuations.   So we're left to wait and react.  I am looking to short enthusiasm.  It could be coming within a couple of weeks, probably from an announcement from one of the central banks. 

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