Morning Market Thoughts

by DAN Good morning. The market is opening slightly down but, of course, we expect this to change throughout the day as stocks go slightly up. Isn’t that the pattern?

This is the last day of August, which takes us to September — the month that volume picks up. We we look at historical evidence, neither bulls nor bears have any kind of edge. The results are mixed, and they are also pretty low in magnitude. Takeaway? We’ll probably see a continuance of the current channels. But at some point, volatility will pick up for the simple reason that volatility is cyclical. Low volatility always begets high volatility, which in turn leads to low volatility. We’ve just been in a low volatility environment for a prolonged period of time. But don’t get lulled into too much complacency. Things can change, and they’ll change fast.

As you contemplate your trading/investing activity, it pays to be mindful that there are just three trading days before a 3-day weekend…which precedes a lot of decision making by fund managers who have been biding their time through the summer. This is an annual occurrence. Nothing special about this year.

If you haven’t been watching the evening Strategy Sessions, you might want to check in at the forum. My notes are posted there each night. Sometimes they are detailed, with price alerts on select tickers. But they always list the tickers under coverage. This can be a time saving method of making sure that you don’t miss information on one of the stocks you are following. You can also go to the vertical navigation bar on the right side of the forum to see which stocks have been the topic of conversation in the forum that day, as well as a list of stocks that are moving. This resource is invaluable to me, and is also used a lot by many members.

Check it out.

See you in the forum today.

–Dan

Market Update