Monday Morning: Futures Down on Swine Flu but …

Equity Stock Futures are showing a 2% down open across the market.

The gap down is being attributed to the swine-flu scare which

is sweeping the world.

Though it is tempting to believe that the long awaited pullback might be starting, I would be careful here, and not go all in on the bearish side, lest this turns out to be another fake-out like last Monday.

Some other items I have been pondering about:

(1) Non-Market Cap Weighted Indices : The Value Line Arithmetic and S&P500 components (arithmetic weight) actually show a nice double bottom pattern.

One reason people feel that the bottom is not in is because the current V shaped bottom is not something which can build new bull markets.

The non-market cap weighted indices seem to weaken that hypothesis.

(2) Earnings: Even if we ignore the banks, the non-bank earnings have been a mixed bag with beat rates will in the middle of historical rates. This perh aps suggests th

at the sentiment became a bit too negative earlier this year, precipitating the collapse.

This rally might just have been a return to the equilibrium state from a state of extreme pessimism.

(3) Psychological Structure: Have markets all over the world already priced in and discounted the coming series of bad news

? Fundamentals matter but if everyone is waiting for a magnitude 10 earthquake, a magnitude 7 is a big relief. Is the talk about continuing real estate collapse etc., kind of getting long in the tooth? It is clear that the Obama administration will keep on pumping 100s of billions of dollars to keep the RE/Banking propped up, whether it mortgage cram-down, refi-assistance, foreclosure moratorium, and of course non-stop cheer-leading.

Americans by nature are optimist, and it does not take that long to get the 85% who have jobs to get back to their old ways. Also thanks to depressed prices and low interest rates, homes are a lot more affordable than they have been for a long time. This will provide some sort of pricing support in most markets.

The nationwide price averages are misleading since most big price drops are concentrated in the worst affected areas and not pandemic as the headlines may suggest. Averages are not the best indicator for estimating the amount of bad debt which will be created.

Today’s breakdown is due to an extraordinary event (the swine flu). How long it will last is yet to be seen? I personally am primarily in cash with some put positions. In spite of all the negative indicators, I have not yet seen the market reflect the convincing bear case.

We have chopped around in this range for a month now and the longer we stay here, the less likely the chance for a big drop.

This entry was posted in Financials/Real Estate, Macro, Trading and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.