You know, although the few days before the Christmas day off are usually pretty lethargic, today's action was oddly tepid considering we've still got a couple more days to go. Looks like people are trying to stretch a three-day weekend into a full week off.
We can't say we blame them. It's tough to imagine the market tacking on any more gains to the 8% advance we've seen since the election, and if the Dow Jones Industrial Average was going to break through the 20,000 mark, it would have done so by now. On the flipside, the bulls can be reasonably confident the rest of the market is going to do everything it can to avoid a pullback. Nobody wants to be out of position on the chance stocks do the unthinkable and rekindle the rally.
We will have to pay the piper sometime, in the form of a pullback. That payment doesn't look like it's due until after the new year starts though.
Hello all. Just as we said in yesterday afternoon's newsletter, this morning we've got a brand new trading idea for you, and it's not hyperbole to call this name a one-of-a-kind opportunity in the right place at the right time.
Do you know the difference between a cyclical trend and a secular trend? The former means the ebb and flow that makes a stock investment-worthy (and then sell-worthy) is recycled over and over. A secular trend, however, is a one-time-only paradigm shift that changes the world forever. The rise of the internet was a secular trend. The advent of electric cars is a secular trend.
The notable part about secular trends that means the most to investors: There's a lot of money to be made by picking the right stocks at the forefront of that trend.
Hello friends and fellow traders. We hope you all had a great weekend, especially considering the lackluster start to the new trading week. We're not terribly surprised, actually. This pre-Christmas-break week is usually a fairly dead one, and slightly bearish more often than not. The Santa Claus rally -- if we get one -- only applies to the few days between the holiday day-off and New Year's Day.
And yet, once again despite the lethargic beginning, we've got plenty to talk about.
Before it even has a chance to get buried within everything else we've got for you today, note that we'll be sending a new trading idea to you tomorrow morning, right around the open. It's a cannabis play, which continues to be one of the market's few bright spots right now. And, as we've suggested more than once of late, this stock isn't a direct play on recreational or medicinal marijuana or cannabinoids, but rather, an indirect "support" play... where the real money in the business is being made.
And for those of you who also happen to be members of the Under the Radar Movers newsletter, you're getting the weekend started on a high note. As disgusted as it may make non-members feel to hear URM subscribers nailed down another big winner, that's exactly what they did today. The Under the Radar Movers long-term portfolio exited its Rudolph Technologies (RTEC) position on Friday for a gain of 54%. It had only been in the long-term portfolio since May.
I suppose it's that little detail that merits an explanation.
As far as market recoveries go, that wasn't a great one. Yeah, a gain is a gain, but we gave up half of the intraday gain we mustered on Thursday, and volume was just mediocre. I'd say investors are still a little shell-shocked from Wednesday's news that the Fed is planning to dish out one more rate hike in 2017 than anybody was counting on.
Here's the question we all need to be asking - what if we need three more rate hikes?
I know the headlines may suggest the economy isn't equipped to deal with any real degree of higher consumer or business costs. Namely, we learned today that consumer inflation was only up 0.2% in November, and on Wednesday we found out retail spending was only up 0.1% last month, and only up 0.2% when taking automobiles out of the equation.