CheetahhhhhhhBlog Mark III

Tristan is trying to stand. Today he surprised us and used the Bug’s bed to prop himself up on his feet. He also calls me “ba”.

Bernard Cornwell is one of my favorite writers, and I really love his Alfred the Great series. I was all excited for months about the next installment, the Burning Land. I was tremendously pissed when some publishing dispute between McMillan and Amazon delayed the release of the Burning Land for the Kindle until March 1st. Well, on March 1st I downloaded it with trembling hands and read. I have to say, Cornwell lost a bit of spark with this one. It’s still good, but not like before. I’m not sure why, but I have observed that the first works of an author are usually his best. Cornwell is a very prolific guy, he has about 50 books to his name, and most of them were pretty good, so maybe he was just a little off his stride while writing this one.

We were trying to live without air conditioning as an austerity measure. Apparently it’s OK without aircon in June, the rainy season. Right now it’s pretty frakkin hot on Luzon island and Van was getting very crabby. We have the air conditioners running again.

I read that the average hedge fund is up 1% for the year, and the S&P500 is about -.25%. So I suppose Teggatz Enterprises is going gangbusters, because we’re up about 13% after expenses.

I will give a brief opinion about the market. I don’t think it’s going to rise much more. I think we’re coming up on May, and you should sell in may and go away, because the market enters the “summer doldrums”. Further, the Fed will end quantitative easing at some point, and the market will begin pricing this in. By “pricing this in” I mean that traders will start anticipating an end to Fed liquidity measures, and this has bearish, or in the very least neutral, implications. Furthermore the NASDAQ and S&P500 right now have a chart pattern of a double top, which is bearish. Furthermore it will take a lot for the NASDAQ and S&P500 to rise above their double tops, I think. I anticipate we will see a lot of sideways movement. However if there’s one thing a trader should have learned in the last year, it’s to not underestimate the current bull market. It’s on steroids. So we may still see a rise. However I doubt it, and I’ll tell you why. There is very low volume on the stock exchange. This means institutional investors, such as mutual funds etc, are sitting on their hands. Now, this low volume is also indicative of a big shift out of US equities into emerging market equities, but this shift should actually reverse pretty soon, as even the Wall Street Journal is starting to talk about an emerging market asset bubble. This blog was pointing it out to you a long time ago. I read in the Financial Times that several hedge funds are getting out of emerging markets. but to return to my point, the low volume on Wall Street suggests that the market is running out of steam. As usual I could be totally wrong.