In Off The Limb

OK, I went a little further up-river than I expected, but I'm back - in the US even.

I like to get away in the low-volume months of summer, as I've mentioned, but I prefer a mostly an auto-pilot strategy while traveling. This summer's market has required much more attention than that, so after a couple of days not getting it right, I took the occasion to ignore it altogether.

While I was gone, we saw a decent turn in market direction, in the broad sense, but it was led by ugly, broken groups and the more defensive medical and biomedical groups; not exactly what a healthy bottom tends to look like. At the same time the leaderships groups gave back gains in dramatic fashion. Oils, Agro's, Solars, Metals, etc. were smathered in the short-term.

This is a an interesting market, to be sure, but it remains a perplex mish-mosh whereby the glass appears both half-full and half-empty at the same time.

I'm trading again, but I am not going to pretend I have any strong conviction as to what will happen next (in the larger sense). The financial's may indeed suck the broad-market light into their apparent black hole, or the broad-market may instead burn brightly and drive higher after surviving dramatic negatives associated with the (concrete block around the ankles) financial's, rising inflation, economic malaise, the looming month of September approaching, etc., etc.

So while holding anything like a normal portfolio seems too risky at the moment, there are some reasonable swing and even daytrades out there. I'll try to point these out in the days to come; especially on the more dramatic sessions.

Talk soon.