FANG’s Take a Bite Out of the Market – Ep. 406

Rate and Review This Podcast on iTunes

Dow Swings More Than 900 Points

Well we didn’t have a Black Monday today, but we did have a pretty big selloff, especially if you measure the decline from the early morning pop to the late afternoon drop.  I think it was better than a 900 point selloff.  Earlier this morning the Dow Jones was up about 350 points, and I think halfway through the final hour, we were down as much as 560 points.  Now, we managed to recoup a good chunk of those late day losses in the final half hour, with the Dow down just 245 points. Just over 1%. The NASDAQ trimmed its loss to 116 points – 1.63%.  Of course, all the analysts are focusing on the fact that we didn’t close on the lows!  “Hey, it’s strong; look, we had a huge rally, impressive rally off the lows!”

A Downside Reversal

There was nothing impressive about that rally. This actually was a downside reversal. Remember we were all talking last week about the upside reversal that wasn’t?  When the market was way down, and then it only closed a little bit down? That’s not a reversal. Today was a reversal.  We were way up, and we closed way down. That is a real downside reversal, and that’s far more significant than the meaningless, fictitious reversal that we had last week.

Warning Signs Ignored

Look at some of these individual stocks: Boeing, last week, which was one of the only Dow stocks that actually had a good day – remember it had better than expected earnings, and Boeing went up?  It was down almost over 7% today – Boeing getting killed.  IBM, though, a much bigger deal: down 4%.  A new 52-week low – multi-year low. This should have been a warning sign right out of the gate. It’s kind of amazing that people ignored the news that came out over the weekend on IBM and they bought the market anyway.

Red Hat Hail Mary

IBM announced that it was buying a company called, Red Hat, and it’s an all cash deal.  They are way over-paying for this company. Now IBM is the poster child for stock buybacks. And the fact that they are throwing this Hail Mary by over-paying for this company really shows you that time is running out.