Is the Stock Market Tired?

The anonymous blogger who goes by the name Jesse Livermore, @Jesse_Livermore on Twitter, made a comment today that the market was tired.

With all due respect to "Jesse", whom I really like:

That's nonsense.

Tired a physical state that can befall people and other living things.  Stocks don't get tired.  Markets result from the actions of people buying and selling stocks in this context. I assume Jesse knows this and is just using shorthand for the situation that he sees, that the market has reached a top and that there are more people selling than buying at current prices.

But buyers aren't "tired" of buying.  No one ever gets tired of making money.  This is what traders and investors do.  They buy stocks.  They sell them when they don't think they are going up, but they don't get tired.  If they get tired and go home, they neither buy or sell stocks, and the price doesn't change.

My point is, don't think of markets in terms of human actions or situations.  Markets don't get tired, or sleepy, cranky or annoyed, happy or gleeful.  Stocks move up based on whether someone is willing to pay a higher price, and fall when they don't.

OK, now I'm tired.

Nothing in this blog is recommendation to buy or sell anything.  

The End of the Bull Market

This is it.  The end of the bull market.  March 4, 2014.  The SP 500 hit a high of $1876 and change today, on a big increase sparked by Russia backing off of the Ukraine.  Of course, it wasn't really a back off.  They simply did what they had already planned on doing.

Why here, why now?  I don't have a lot of fancy charts, although if I tried I could come up with something to validate my position.  But why bother?  I could just as easily find another chart that would say the opposite.

The market has been frothy for a while.  The momentum names are flying.  I saw Netflix ($NFLX) hit $450 today.  Chipotle is over $570.  Tesla who I have a small short position in, is 4 times an analyst's estimate.  I have been bullish because I didn't see an alternative place to invest.  But now I see commodities are racing.  I am long Corn and Coffee through options, but there are plenty others.

I am not predicting a crash.  With interest rates this low, I doubt the market falls a lot.  But I don't see it going up for a long while, a position I now share with Henry Blodgett.

I am still long in my long term accounts, although I may rethink that position.

I am not making any recommendations on any specific investment.  Enjoy the ride.