Monday, March 22, 2010

Will Newser End Without Newspapers?


If you can ignore Michael Wolff's distracting, ad hominem attacks against David Carr -- calling him, among other things, "semi-retarded" -- there is a legitimate question buried in yesterday's polemic. Apparently, there's some rivalry between Carr, a media columnist for the Times, and Wolff, the founder of Newser, a content aggregator; Carr thinks Wolff undistinguished, and Wolff calls Carr "really quite a nitwit."
Okay, but what's important is not a pissing match between two middle-aged men, it's the worlds-apart worldviews espoused by these former colleagues about the state of American journalism.
"Let me not put too fine a point on this: newspapers suck," Wolff said in a phone interview this morning -- a somewhat rabid take on a familiar line: that new media is rightfully, and thankfully, supplanting old media.
Carr, by contrast, holds that newspapers have essential -- and perhaps inimitable -- strengths. "Sometimes," Carr writes, "people have to make the calls, hit the streets and walk past the conventional wisdom."
Rather than assess their respective characters (after all, Carr and Wolff have each other for that), let's consider the content of their reporting. I've surveyed the major columns that the two have written on the future of journalism since the New Year -- Carr for the Times, and Wolff for Newser -- and listed their sources (see the appendix below).
Carr has written four columns this year, in which he made 16 citations. Of those, five were personal interviews, 10 were citations from articles or speeches, and just one was a standalone link. He's obtained information from the Chairwoman of the SEC, the founders of Huffington Post, the Editor of the Wall Street Journal, executives of Google and the Associated Press, and authors, writers, analysts and bloggers.
In short, Carr has tried to interview and write about someone who represents almost everyone involved in, or touched by, the future of newspapers. And unlike colleague Richard PĂ©rez-Pe?a, who covers newspapers extensively, Carr is a columnist, and not a beat reporter.
By comparison, Wolff has written 12 articles this year, in which he made 46 citations. Not a single one came from personal reporting.
Of the 46, eight were direct links to The New York Times website, one a direct link to the Los Angeles Times, one to the now-online only Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and another to Editor & Publisher, a journal about newspapers. 22 of Wolff's links point to internal Newser articles, which summarize or paraphrase other publications. Nine come from the Times, and 13 from other content-producing publications. Wolff also cites his own website nine times, and three of the links do not work.
In other words, Wolff depends entirely on working journalists -- and particularly those at the Times -- for evidence, unless he's referencing himself or a blank page.
"At Newser," Wolff writes, "we make the Times shorter. Meaning no disrespect to David Carr, the Newser version of his story is cleaner and quicker than the Times version." But without Carr's actual writing and reporting -- in this case, including quotations from an author, analyst and blogger -- there would be no "Newser version."
And that's the larger point here: in relentlessly attacking the Times in column after column, Wolff implicitly rejects the premise of his own website -- "that the Times...no longer puts out a necessary newspaper" -- by almost exclusively relying on the Graying Lady to make his point. Wolff can't source a blog without the Times, but we're supposed to renounce the paper?
(Wolff, for his part, says it's not a question of sourcing but rather a "question of being about.")
Wolff is convinced that the Times is dispensable, and that citizen journalists can fill the void. Yet do-it-yourself-ism is frowned on in almost every other profession: citizen policemen we call vigilantes; citizen doctors we call quacks; citizen bankers we call Ponzi schemers; and citizen musicians sing karaoke. Perhaps anyone can be a postal worker, and, as Wolff's site does, deliver the envelope -- but who's writing the news inside?
"Let a million flowers bloom, or whatever," Wolff said this morning, and one or many will take the Times' place. But as for just who these change agents are, Wolff admits, "I don't think we know the answer to that."
Wolff holds up Arthur Sulzberger, Bill Keller, and Carr as straw men, as incorrigible tree-killers, doddering fools, flacks and has-beens. What he fails to see, however, is that the newsmen aren't clinging to print for dear love, but for dear life. As Newser ably demonstrates, there's no working alternative yet -- and maybe not ever -- to traditional newsgathering, like that practiced by Carr.
It's hip for bloggers to bite the hand that feeds them, and Wolff's got some oral fixation. It's not good enough for him to kick the Boston Globe or Seattle Post-Intelligencer while they're down; he needs to cite their own articles while he's doing it. We all have a personal stake in The New York Times, but for Wolff it's more than that, it's his bread and butter. Without the news, he's just an -er.

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Sunday, March 21, 2010

Artists create a gory message


Over 45,000 cubic centimetres of blood drawn from red-shirt protesters were used yesterday by artists to paint 70 metres of canvas with expressions of the red shirts' spirit and resolve to oust Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and call on him to dissolve the House."I want everyone to know how people power is important for us," said Akarapol Ngern-Nei, a 15-year-old student from the Victory Monument area of Bangkok, one of the 40 independent painters.Click here to find out more!"Abhisit must return power to the people so they can have something to eat," he added as he painted while trying to avoid the smell of blood.
His pictures showed hundreds of demonstrators surrounding Democracy Monument at Rajdamnoen Road.
Seven blank cloth canvases, each 10 metres long, were laid down on the second floor of Pom Maha Khan near Phan Fa bridge, the main protest site.
Mai-Neung Kor Khuntee, an independent artist who led the group, said all the pictures would be wrapped around Pom Maha Khan as a symbol to tell the world about their political struggle.The artist will also mix some blood with cement to build four city pillars and sculpt an image of Nuamthong Paiwan, a taxi driver who used his own cab to ram a tank in a show of defiance against the military coup in 2006.His statue will be set up in front of Privy Council President Prem Tinsulanonda's Si Sao Tewes residence.
The rest of the blood will be mixed with resin for headbands as souvenirs for protesters.
Akarapol said people had donated their blood as a sacrifice for their beloved country, just like their ancestors had sacrificed their lives to save Thailand from invaders in the past.The young artist said he learned painting at his school in the Min Buri district of Bangkok.
He wanted to show his political inspiration through the pictures of thousands of red-shirt protesters and the Democracy Monument.
He said he would display his artwork to foreign reporters so people around the world could understand the political situation in Thailand.
He has visited and joined the rally at Phan Fa bridge every day since March 12, coming during the day with his friends.He also volunteered for the blood collection campaign last Tuesday and used his blood to splatter Government House and other places.
Next to Akarapol, a 40-year-old Bangkok resident known as Boy had drawn a picture of a gun and two hands fouled with drops of blood.The gun, drawn in blood, means violence and the two hands are those of the government that had hurt people,he said.Vichak Srithai, 49, an independent artist from Ubon Ratchatani, used a cloth canvas to paint a Buddha image with candle wax soaked with blood."When the blood dries, the image of Buddha will be shown," he said.His contemporary artwork signifies the power of drama, which will bring justice to the people, he said.At midday, the red shirts were few as the temperature was rising to 40 degrees Celsius, but in the evening thousands of protesters gathered again at Phan Fa Bridge.

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Lincolnite will not apologize for starting a movement


About two years ago, Lincolnite Rick Brening was talking with a friend about social issues.
"I haphazardly said, ‘We shouldn't have to apologize for what we believe in.'"Out of that observation, a movement was born.Brening, along with Lincoln native Jake Stutzman and Eric Carroll of Lubbock, Texas, co-founded the company I Will Not Apologize.It started as a maker of T-shirts boasting self-affirming statements like "I Will Not Apologize:"For Believing in Absolutes.""For Going Green.""For Being a Nerd."A few months into selling the shirts, Brening said, "We realized that there is a huge community of people that have been lulled to sleep. They've lost their fire. They've lost their desire to speak out."
So I Will Not Apologize began to evolve into something more than just shirts.
"We took it further, this message that it's OK to stand up for what you believe in," Brening said. "Even if it's difficult for others to hear."So began IWillNotApologize.com.
In the past month, the Web site has changed its format. It's not the final version of the site, but it's a good midpoint from what the site started as and what it will become, Brening said.
The latest version looks and feels a lot like Twitter. Upon arriving at the site, you're asked to finish a sentence: "I Will Not Apologize ..."here's no sign-in. It's completely anonymous. And you can be unapologetic for whatever you want.People are not sorry for a lot of things."For procrastinating." "For being weird." "For my muffin top." "For being a grammar snob." "For being a Christian." "For not being a Christian."
The moderators delete hateful entries and profanity, but otherwise, anything goes.
"It's been fun over the course of the last few years to watch it blossom," Brening said. "One of the tenets of the movement is that we don't know where it's going to go. We let the people decide."
The guys decided early on that the site would be driven by the users and not the other way around.
"Now we won't shy away from the fact that we are ourselves proud Americans, proud patriots and, by and large, proud conservatives," Brening said. "But if you're a proud liberal, be a proud liberal."
The point of I Will Not Apologize is not to push an agenda, he said. It's to shake up people with shy and shaky belief systems, people who are afraid to proudly proclaim who they are.
"We want to give people their voices back," Brening said.

Red shirts threaten to 'disarm' soldiers

Weng Tojitrakarn, a red-shirt leader, Monday mobilized 1,000 female soldiers to search military tents around the Phan Fah rally site to check whether the deployed soldiers are carrying weapons.
Weng Tojitrakarn announced on the stage at 9 am that he would send 1,000 red-shirt women to check the military tents.If any military tent refuses the red-shirt female volunteers to go inside and check for weapons, the red-shirt movement would put up a sign saying "this military unit is armed with intention to kill innocent people".Earlier the day, a red-shirt leader announced that the red-shirt people would search the military tents and would disarm the soldiers and turn them over to police.

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Tuesday, March 2, 2010

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Monday, January 25, 2010

Real Estate Bust in China?

Every time I turn on CNBC and forget to hit the mute button, I hear about how China's a bubble and how you need to know how to play it. Now, some parts of the Chinese market seem a little frothy, but I've seen bubbles in Asia firsthand, and I just don't buy it here.

I lived in Shanghai for four years starting in 2001 and in Singapore for five years before that. While I lived there, I had the opportunity to see the growth and stumbles of these Asian markets and countries.

I moved to Singapore in February 1996, which meant I caught the tail end of the Southeast Asian boom that began in the early '90s. I remember being amazed at the price of real estate. While my husband's company paid for our rent (thankfully!), can you imagine our shock when we discovered our apartment rent was S$11,500 per month (at the time, about US$9,000)? In the following year and a half we watched as the rent on similar apartments in our building moved up to more than S$15,000 per month -- over 35% in less than 18 months. (And you thought we had a housing bubble here?!)

That was the summer of 1997, the beginning of the "Asian crisis." Thailand revalued the baht in early July 1997 and sent Asia into a tailspin. At the time, most of these currencies were pegged to the U.S. dollar, or at least were set to trade in a band. This revaluing sent most of the currencies outside their bands and caused their stock markets to plunge, and the economies followed suit.

By early August, Indonesia revalued its currency (the rupiah). Malaysia, not to be outdone, sometime around Labor Day decided it too would revalue, but it would "peg" the price of the revaluation; there would be no wild swings for them. This caused yet another round of dislocation in the markets. If you were involved in the U.S. markets back then, you might recall the severe plunge we had into late October 1997 -- the S&P lost about 12% in about two weeks, helped along by this Asian currency crisis. We made a low in October 1997; the Asian markets, however, continued to slide for about another year.

Here is a chart of the Singapore Straits Times Index from July 1997 through the end of 1998. With the exception of that oversold rally in early 1998, the index did not make a low until what folks in the U.S. refer to as the Long Term Capital Management crisis in the fall of 1998. I know most folks believe the Asian crisis was in 1998, but the root of the problems and the slide started in the summer of 1997 -- autumn 1998 was just the culmination.

[img]http://images.thestreet.com/rmoney/technicalanalysis/55817.bmp[/img]

In the fall of 1998, I traveled to Shanghai for the first time. We stood in amazement at the number of cranes dotted throughout the city, mostly because they were all idle. Remember, Asia had been in a financial crisis for over a year at this point, so idle cranes had become the norm. Nonetheless, we fell in love with the city, and when my husband was offered a transfer there in late 2000 we jumped at the chance.

To show you how different it was to arrive as expatriates early in a boom (as compared to our arrival in Singapore late in the boom), we rented an apartment which was about 1,000 square feet larger than what we had in Singapore for a "mere" $5,000 (U.S.) per month.

We arrived in Shanghai in February 2001 just as it was recovering from the Asian crisis. China was on its way toward becoming the factory floor of the world. It was quite early in the boom; just a few short months after our arrival, Beijing was picked for the 2008 Olympics and things really ramped up economically, but that burst wasn't necessarily reflected in the market. In fact, note on the chart below that the decision for China to host the Olympics coincided with a peak in the stock market (should Brazil worry?):

The country kept booming along, but the stock market was not so hot. The SSEC almost halved from the time we arrived in early 2001 until late winter 2003. In late winter 2003, SARS became an issue in China. People stopped going to restaurants, theaters, shopping, everywhere. For a city of 20 million, the place was eerily quiet.

The chart above shows that SARS was a problem for the Chinese market, but it wasn't terribly high to start with -- all the decline in late 2003 did was bring about a retest of the lows. Then in late December 2003 the SSEC took off and zoomed ahead. But a long-term chart of the Shanghai Composite suggests that all while China's economy was booming, the stock market was not. China's stock market did not take off and go on a tear until 2005; it then went straight up until 2007 -- up 500% in two years.

By the time the Olympics came around it had halved from the high.

I have noticed all these hot small-cap Chinese stocks jumping up lately, and I find it curious that the SSEC isn't higher now. In fact, the SSEC made its high last summer and has not been able to surpass that high.

Overnight into Thursday, the Shanghai Composite was down 2% on some "tightening" moves by the government there. My first observation is that if China is the new growth engine of the world (as I keep hearing and reading), then why hasn't the SSEC made a higher high since last summer? And why can't it beat out the high of a few months ago?

Perhaps a shakeout down to the 3100-ish area would give the SSEC a much needed shakeout toward support and may even provide it with the right shoulder of a head-and-shoulders bottom.

Dow theory

I also agree that we are closer to the end than the beginning. However, I don't think all of us are bullish - well some are definitely much more bullish than the public but there are others - such as rffrydr - that are somewhat bearish and also raise very good points at the same time.

For me, the divergences are now starting to become a concern, although they are still somewhat muted, given that:

1) I had been expecting large gap outperformance for a long time, so a month or so of divergences (where the DJIA and the S&P 500 out performs everything else by a significant margin) is not too much of a concern to me. Of course, this doesn't mean that I cannot try to do so some "tactical" adjustment and trim down our 100% long position in our DJIA Timing System

2) Valuations are not too stretched - either from a P/E or a Fed model standpoint. One may say there is not too much of a difference between a P/E of 18 or 20, but to me, that is more another 160 point runup in the S&P or a further 1,500 point runup in the DJIA.

3) There is still a lot of potential buying power on the side. The best evidence is the huge chunk of change sitting in the balance sheets of private equity firms. ISI just completed a study and argued that there is sufficient buying power for private equity investors to take over 50% of the S&P 500 corporations. Because of this private equity "threat," many corporations are now also hurriedly buying back their own stock (not that they were not doing this before) - as exemplfied by the $15 billion promised buyback of IBM.

Once investors catch on to point number 3), then it will be time to start selling - but for now, until the Barnes Index rises to over 70, I think I will stand pat for now.

Insight into goldman sachs earnings

Goldman Sachs Grp. (NYSE: GS) reported net profits of $8.20 per share on revenue of $9.62 billion. This blew away the earnings per share number which was expected at $4.97, however, missed the revenue number slightly which had been expected at $9.65 billion. When analyzing these numbers, this is just the start.

The key with Goldman Sachs that will worry Wall Street and should truly bother Main Street is that not only did Goldman Sachs not beat revenues which means their earnings beat was due to cost cutting, but, two-thirds of their revenue was derived from trading! That is correct, they made over $6 billion just from trading. Why is that shocking? Well as we know, trading can be up and down. Normal people lose some and win some. Even a great trader has a lousy trade here and there. Granted, Goldman Sachs is way above a great trader, they have computer programs to push the markets in certain directions, buy program abilities and connections to the government that other companies only dream of.

Why should Main Street be worried? Again, because two-thirds of their revenue came from computer trading programs and Goldman Sachs traders. Main Street needs to be assured these trading programs and traders are not manipulating, bullying the markets and pushing the markets in a direction on purpose to take the "little persons" money. If Goldman Sachs is paying billions in bonuses, whether in stock or profits, Main Street needs to know their trading profits are not out of the wallets of hard working Americans getting "played". Transfer of wealth from the small to the big is not the answer to a recovering economy just a divergence between rich and poor.

This applies to all other major Wall Street firms as well, though Goldman Sachs is by far the biggest gorilla in the room. JP Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) and Bank Of America Cp. (NYSE: BAC) are others. Watch carefully the proposals by President Obama on excessive risk taking.

2009 and 1930 are a match

General theory:

Both are credit collapse depressions and not typical inventory/business cycle recessions. The fault lies in the build-up of the bubble itself. No subsequent effort can prevent the collapse after the bubble gets going, but various efforts can propel the bubble longer and/or higher and make the subsequent collapse even more catastrophic. Examples...the 1920's was a bubble that last for about a 5 year period and was set to end in early 1929. There was a bit of a panic in the bond market in early 1929. The Federal Reserve responded by juicing the market, and the Super Bubble of Summer 1929 followed. The collapse could not be prevented, but Federal Reserve policy made the bubble worse.

Our bubble, believe it or not, did not start in 2003. It started in 1982. The 1980's and 1990s were the larger equivalent of 1924-1929. The markets started going parabolic as early as the mid-1980's. The bubble tried to burst itself several times (Crash of '87, S&L Crisis 1990, Nikkei Crash 1990, Asian Crisis in late 1990's, Long Term Capital 1998) but the government was always there to bailout the system, continuously adding to moral hazard that started in the 1980s and has lasted for more than 2 decades now. We then had the recession in the early 2000's that was the equivalent of early 1929. The Federal Reserve and the U.S. Government then intentionally created the housing bubble as a means of staving off the inevitable collapse, but only made the situation far worse, creating the Super Bubble of the 2000's.

The point I'm trying to make is that the collapse cannot be prevented. It is inevitable from the time the bubble was created in the first place. It is revisionist history and completely false to suggest that easier monetary policy can prevent a deflationary collapse. I have looked through the Wall St. Journal reports of 1930. They show that, contrary to popular belief, the Federal Reseve's monetary policy was extremely lax in 1930 and the big banks all had more than enough excess reserves even as the rally ended and the markets broke to new lows. The banking system was so oversupplied with money that Wall St. banks could not buy up securities and U.S. Treasuries fast enough. Yet the market continued to decline.

Why? Because the shadow banking system disappeared. The 1930 rally was only a technical one, and after the top, the declines continued relentlessly. Sound familiar?

Technical Analysis:

A-wave breakdown came in Sept-Nov 1929 and Oct 2007 - March 2009:

Wave 1 of 3 marked the decline from the top to a mini-panic and in both markets can be labeled as an ABC move. The selling continued to the "orgy of speculation" diplomatic cris during the first week of October 1929 and the Bear Stearns bailout in March 2008. Both times, the government had to step in and calm markets to prevent a total crash. A 50% retrace followed these short term bottoms. Memorable in the Bear Stearns case because it was thought by some that it would be the lone casualty in the credit crunch and that the bailout gave implicit government backing to all financial firms and hence an end to the recession.

Wave 2 of 3 saw the selling resume (again it can be labeled as an ABC move) to panic levels. This is the crash wave. In both instances it started with an "insider's crash" mid/late October 1929 and Summer 2008. A bailout followed both times. In October 1929 the heads of the Wall St. banks and the President of the NYSE personally went onto the floor, pooled together the equivalent of billions of dollars in today's money, and bought up stocks at overpriced value to end a crash. We too were beginning our crash in June and July 2008 when the government started to intervene with bailouts (and hinted at future bailouts) of IndyMac, Fannie and Freddie, Lehman, AIG, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, and others.

In both 1929 and 2008, a crash followed despite the bailout efforts. In 1929 the following week saw the Crash of '29 and despite our bailouts we still witnessed the Crash of 2008. It's important to note that it is a fallacy to suggest the Crash only occurred because Lehman was allowed to fail. Sure, the govt. could have stepped in and saved them if they had wanted to. But then it might have been AIG or GS or Merrill Lynch or any other number of banks that might have been the one. Even if all of them had been bailed out, it would have either been the failure of one on a cash flow basis or eventually the failure of U.S. bonds. At some point, the crash would have occurred no matter what.

After another correction, Wave 3 of 3 (ABC) was capitulation selling in November 1929 and February-March 2009. This was public panic only as the banks and government intentionally drove down prices. If you remember Geithner's speech last February where he essentially announced he had no plan...it was on purpose. If you remember Dodd and others going on talk shows and talking about bank nationalizations and then bank stocks collapsing...it was on purpose. The goal was to intentionally drive down stock prices in order for the banks to buy them up cheap and sell back at a profit. A recapitalization via the public. Both in November 1929 and February-March 2009 the declines went from what would eventually be the 23.6% fibonacci level to the 1929 and March 2009 lows.

It can be confirmed that the drop in share prices last winter was intentional because it is marked by the head of an inverse head and shoulders formation.

Corrective B Wave:

Wave 1 of 3 (ABC) was marked by an aborted head and shoulders formation in both markets. Both markets quickly rallied off the lows back to the 23.6% fibo retrace level, erasing in the intentional drops that preceded. These rallies marked the left shoulder. At that point, massive recapitalization occurred, especially for the banks. Nobody envisioned the kind of rally we've had, the only goal was to get money as quickly as possible and there was massive secondary issuance in May and June. Not so coincidentally corresponding with the Stress Tests, and a similar move happened in late 1929 as banks and businesses recapitalized themselves expecting large losses in 1930.

A correction then put in the right shoulder on the aborted head and shoulders formations in both markets. Both times, the neckline was roughly the 23.6% fibonacci retrace level. Neither time did the market break down, instead explosive earnings rallies followed in January 1930 and July 2009.

Wave 2 of 3 (ABC) is characterized by an explosive earnings based rally that took the market from the 23.6% to the 38.2% fibonacci retrace level in January 1930 and Summer 2009. The explosive rallies were both surprising yet welcomed by the markets, and it is at exactly this point in time that capital market stress began to dissipate considerably. This wave completed when the 38.2% fibo resistance was turned into support.

A correction occurred both times with one last dip down to the 38.2% fibo support. The important thing to note is that the explosive earnings rallies and corrections really formed the left shoulder on a MUCH more massive head and shoulders formation. Left shoulders are bubbles, and the ones formed in early 1930 and Summer 2009 were both the result of easy Fed monetary policy.

Wave 3 of 3 (ABC) puts in the head on the MUCH more massive head and shoulders formation. It is a distribution rally from the 38.2% to the 50% fibonacci retrace levels. This happened in March-April 1930 and started for us in October, with a dip ending in early November, and the last rally to the top since then. In April 1930 the market moved above the 50% resistance but without impetous and the move failed. I am forecasting that the same is occuring for us right now.

A Blowout Quarter exists or not?

The volatility last week was wild with earnings that just did not cut it. However, the real shock came when President Obama, due to a republican win in MA and the super majority gone in the senate, was forced to talk of tightening the noose on bank and the future risk they wish to take. Considering these banks like Goldman Sachs Grp. (NYSE: GS) made half their revenue from trading, a high risk venture, this put a major scare in Wall Street. It also sets up a possible war between Wall Street and the administration. Since President Obama took office, he has been a dear friend to the banks and in turn they have scratched his back. However, with a possible war looming, Wall Street is on edge and rightly so. This culminated with a near 600 point drop in the DOW from Wednesday through Friday last week. This week promises to be even more wild with Apple Inc. (NasdaqGS: AAPL) reporting earnings after the bell on Monday and much of the S&P later this week.

While market commentators and analyst try and figure out where the next move is going, I just turn to the charts. Apple is one of the most interesting charts to look at after the dramatic fall in the markets the last few days. The daily chart took out the 20 and 50 moving averages, yet today is getting a solid bounce ahead of earnings. The bounce on Apple is holding just below the 50 moving average. Any technician must be concerned that Apple took out key support in recent days. I know it sounds like blasphemy to question whether or not Apple will have a blowout quarter, however, here I sit wondering just that. Even if they beat earnings, which I do expect them to do solidly, based on the charts, I do not expect the stock to move higher. In fact, I look for a sell off down to a target $190.00.

In addition to all the major earnings releases this week, watch for the FOMC Policy Statement on interest rates on Wednesday afternoon and for the State of the Union Address Wednesday night. As a Chief Market Strategist and trader, this type of market is a dream come true. Learn it and master it.