Thursday, May 1, 2008

Thoughts on the Dow Jones Industrial Average Retaking 13,000

"The river laughs, the mountain smiles"
"The market, she be a wily wench"
-I have no source for either quote but am quite sure they are not original to me.

This market will continue up until the pundits start talking about Dow 16000 (I've seen one so far), the Europeans get really comfy with the idea of profiting from both the equity move and the currency kicker and Pa says "Ma, maybe we oughta call that broker feller".

We aren't there yet. I've got some of our other posts, including the two that missed the market bottom by a week, below this commentary by David Gaffen at MarketBeat:

Those in love with round numbers had much to commemorate in Thursday trading, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 13000 for the first time since the beginning of the year, and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index rose above 1400, putting the index a few percentage points south of the 2007 year-end close of 1468.36. “I don’t think sideways is in the cards,” says Ted Weisberg, floor trader at Seaport Securities Corp. “Either short-term we’re going up like a rocket ship if we can stay above 13,000…or they could fail, and clearly weaken into a short-term downtrend.” Investors poured money into retailing and banking stocks in what some described as a re-think of Wednesday’s Federal Reserve’s statement and the report on first-quarter economic growth. “The economy may have skirted a condition or have a condition that is less fearful than what market participants had thought — we may be more on the edge of recession than in a recession,” says Michael Strauss, chief economist and strategist, at Commonfund. The 0.6% initial estimate of first-quarter gross domestic product already received a mild boost from construction spending data released Thursday, which Global Insight economist Patrick Newport says could boost GDP to a 0.9% rate of growth....

Here are our recent posts, in order, starting with the March 17 buy recs:

BUY; BUY; BUY (for now) Bottoming The Market

Salvador Dali and Abby Joseph Cohen

Markets: I Scream, Triple Dip

Bull and Bear Markets, According to Oaktree’s Howard Marks

Europeans, Buy Those U.S. Assets NOW

Based on Our Proprietary "What's on T.V." Timing Model...