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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Bounce Time, Again

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great charts. With the SPX bouncing back down off that 1370 level, what do you think that tells us? Is that strength or weakness. In fact, it's hit that level three times last four days and bounced lower. With commodities popping and bonds getting hammered today, seems like the market is pricing in higher inflation here going forward. Bad for equities?

Ben Bittrolff said...

SilverDollar,

As of right now, it looks like 1370 held. More importantly, the financials have lead the decline.

There is definitely some wonky stuff going on with curve today.

Commodities are indeed up. But think it is not inflation related. For example Platinum and Palladium are up on supply concerns because of ESKOM. Crude is up on OPEC production cuts speculation and that Texas refinery fire (which is actually Bearish if anything. One less refinery means less demand for raw crude. The fire is Bullish for the various products.).

As far as inflation is concerned, I'm firmly in the Deflationist camp. Money is being destroyed at an unprecedented rate. Each write down is the destruction of money. The really big write downs haven’t even hit yet.