Market Comment - February 10

(Marco Bonelli) Come on, do you really believe in the Greece story?

The country cheated its way into the EWS, now they cheat their way to more financial help (and even playing the tough guy) and everybody knows (or should know) that the whole story is a big farce since the country and its economy will be in big trouble for a long time. On the flip-side, they will almost certainly get financial help to pay the next bills in March and European politicians will high-five each other that this time they put a lot pressure on the Greek government and that they came up with a solid plan! Do they really believe their own nonsense?


So why does the market even listen? It probably doesn't and the Greek story is only justification to take profits, something many market participants already suggested for a while, mostly based on overbought technical indicators.

For the market it's better to keep on concentrating on the domestic economy, which continues to send positive signals - one of the reasons why the much anticipated technical pull-back resulted in numerous intraday pull-backs only for the market to close unchanged or higher each day. Weekly jobless claims, weekly rail traffic, higher exports in December (after declines in November and October) and imports at the highest level since July 2008 point to underlying strength that further supports the economic recovery in the US.

In the evaluation of the recovery, investors should particularly have an eye on consumer data: The data to watch will be February Michigan Consumer Confidence later today and January Retail Sales, to be reported on Tuesday. Retail same-store sales for January were surprisingly strong which bodes well for overall retail sales. Other sentiment indicators also suggest that consumers became more positive in regard of their personal but also the overall economic outlook. If the data support this story, it should be seen as another positive. In other words, a better than expected consumer confidence number later today could easily lead to another intraday reversal!

Improving fundamentals and the major averages marching higher finally resulted in a sudden shift in sentiment towards positive, not excessively bullish (yet) but clearly a sharp move from the cautious and even negative sentiment that even dominated until last week. As we are in the early stage of market participants becoming more positive, it is still positive for the market, as any pull-backs on back of negative stories or data will be used to buy the "weakness" (like this morning) and positive data will be seen as confirmation of the newly adopted positive stance which will either result in more buying or more complacency.

Let's see if consumer data poses as the needed catalyst to help the Dow Jones reach the 13000 landmark.

Trade well and have a nice weekend.


(Marco Bonelli is the Managing Director of International for CL King & Associates in New York. The opinions expressed are his own.)