8/05/2007

There are no monsters in the market

A benign correction of less than 10% (as of now) has lot of people losing perspective and looking for monsters in the market. It is human nature to externalize the problem and to look for monsters in the market. Even a 20% correction at this level will be a normal market behavior.

The mortgage problem has been around for years and if you line up all the perma bears and macro commentators who claimed market doom based on it for last 4 years, the line will stretch to the moon. If you had followed their advise, you would be out of market for last 4 years. There was money to be made (and lots of it) till July on long side. Now the worm has turned and there is money to be made on short side.

Now there is a clamor for Fed rate cuts to get rid of the monster in the market. Every time market takes a 5-7% dip, if Fed starts bailing out, the markets will stop functioning. In fact if the Fed cuts interest rates on Monday, the market will most probably tank, because people will start believing Fed sees some monster we can not see.

This is just a benign correction after multi year rally. It is cleaning up some of the excesses in the system. Downside moves are always more volatile and attract more emotions. The market has acted as per script so far.

From time to time the market also acts to remind people there is no easy money and free lunch in the market. The hedge funds and the big banks had been in the news before this correction, for the ease with which they were making money and for their free spending ways, so Mr Market is just reminding them , who is the boss. Some veterans had forgotten the rules of risk management, so market is just reminding them their own rules. Some had grown too big and as a result realizing it is difficult to turn a large tanker. Some dip buyers are realizing the mathematics and probability distribution of dip buying based systems. If some hedge funds go belly up, some rich dudes will lose money, which is not bad. Some investment banks will go belly up, which is not bad, the business is about risk and reward. Good methods and judgment is what should get rewarded and bad judgment punished.

There are no monsters in market. There are only, for a given time frame and capital level, speculators with well thought out methodologies and risk management strategies and there are speculators who get it wrong. As long as your strategies are aligned to the market, you make money. When the alignment breaks, you see monsters.

The markets act the way they act, you can not control the market behavior, what you can control is your response to it. Methods trump over markets and any monsters in the market.
The market is a mechanism to transfer wealth from less skilled speculators to more skilled speculators. That is nature of the game since market inception.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

good analysis, i imagine you have seen Cramer blowing off begging for a discount window low rate because his friends are losing money , jobs and they are in full blown panic.They are getting spanked by Mr Market. They made and marketed and sold to investors financial engineered instruments not counting that the market can turn down.I dont know whats going to happen this week after the Fed Meeting, no one knows how much this panic going to last or spread and im not going to predict, but what im doing is going thru IBD200 and EP now on and making a watchlist in Telechart, because after all the turmoil, its going to be a buying oportunities, new leadership and the new rally is going to begin and is up to us to take advantage of all of this.

wilfee said...

Pradeep ,
Hope you are enjoying "poone". My last time there..i went hiking with buddies from INS shivaji..tiger point. I am getting a good education in trading for sure on stockbee. thanks for all that.

Adam

Pradeep Bonde said...

Thanks.
Lonavala is hardly recognizable with so much development there. while driving through Lonavala on way to Pune, it was so crowded, and there were new bungalow schemes under construction everywhere.
I haven't been to Tiger Point since 2000. If the rain stops here I might make a trip there.

Greendog said...

Hello Pradeep,
My mother is in Pune right now undergoing cancer treatment, looks like I'll be heading there soon...Anyhow I was wondering on your take on the divergence of oil stocks with the price of crude. With hurracaine season upon us and lots of these top names getting sold off drastically, do you see them as a good oportunity as longs in the near future? We'd want to see some basing action on the charts first right? I'm looking at VLO,TSO,APA,COG,BP and so forth...
I can't help remember being long some of these names befroe Katrina hit and making tons of money with some call options..Do you see a possability of a similar occurence later in the summer? Your insight is very helpful and keen, thanks so much for such good work,
best wishes,
Gabriel

mrstrader said...

Based on what I see in the charts I agree with you, Pradeep, that basically today is a headfake. However, I was surprised to read that IBD calls today a "follow through" day based on the DOW, thus ending the "correction". Time will tell I guess, and I will be interested how IBD explains this if the "correction" continues.

Pradeep Bonde said...

Greendog
Currently the oil stocks are having nasty pullback. Unless they appear in any of the scans I use, I see no reason to be bullish on them.