Ticker Sense

Worry About the “Crash” Index?

Barron’s Streetwise column last weekend mentioned Yale’s institutional “crash confidence” index, which is signaling “more nervousness than at most any other time in the past three years.”¹ 

As shown, the number of respondents who saw little chance of a market crash has actually risen and furthermore its record does not seem to warrant cause for concern. 

 

¹ “The Good News in the Bad News”. Barron’s. 5/21/12.

² “Stock Market Confidence Indices”. Yale University.  (http://icf.som.yale.edu/stock-market-confidence-indices)

S&P 499?

Alexion Pharma (ALXN) will be added to the S&P 500 on 5/24, replacing Motorola Mobility (MMI) which was acquired by Google (GOOG).  The deal of MMI officially closed this morning and MMI is no longer traded.  Looks like the S&P 500 is going to be short a member until Thursday.

May 21st Blogger Sentiment Poll

Blogger Sentiment Poll Participants:           

24/7 Wall St (+) The Aleph Blog (-) Biiwii (N) Bruce Krasting  BullBear Trading (-) Carl Futia (+) Dash of Insight (-) Dividend Growth Investor (+) Elliot Wave Lives On (+) Expected Returns  Fallond Stock Picks (-) Global Economic Intersection (N) GEI – Investing Blog (-) Humble Student of the Markets (-) In the Money  Learning Curve (-) MaoXian  Night Owl Trader (-) The Mess That Greenspan Made  Oil Trader’s Blog  Peridot Capitalist (N) Prometheus Market Insight  Quant Investor (N) Shanky’s Tech Blog (-) Short Takes  Smart Money Tracker (+) The Reformed Broker  StockAdvisors.com  Traders-Talk  ValuePlays  VIX and More (+) Wall St. Cheat Sheet  Wall Street Folly  Wishing Wealth (-) Zentrader (-)

Facebook Could Make 2012 a Record for Internet/Social Media IPOs

If Facebook raises over $16 billion in its inital public offering tomorrow it will eclispe 1999's record setting year of $15.8B raised from internet/social media IPOs.

Netscape & Google

With Facebook set to price Thursday and begin trading Friday we have been digging around in our databases on IPOs, looking for insight, ideas, etc.  While there are no close (or even really remotely close) comparisons for Facebook, two names from the past were interesting: Netscape and Google. 

 

May 14th Blogger Sentiment Poll

Blogger Sentiment Poll Participants:

24/7 Wall St (N) The Aleph Blog (+) Biiwii (N) Bruce Krasting  BullBear Trading (-) Carl Futia (+) Dash of Insight (N) Dividend Growth Investor  Elliot Wave Lives On (+) Expected Returns  Fallond Stock Picks (+) Global Economic Intersection (N) GEI – Investing Blog (-) Humble Student of the Markets (-) In the Money  Learning Curve (-) MaoXian  Night Owl Trader (-) The Mess That Greenspan Made  Oil Trader’s Blog  Peridot Capitalist (-) Prometheus Market Insight  Quant Investor (N) Shanky’s Tech Blog (-) Short Takes  Smart Money Tracker (N) The Reformed Broker  StockAdvisors.com  Traders-Talk  ValuePlays  VIX and More (+) Wall St. Cheat Sheet  Wall Street Folly  Wishing Wealth (-) Zentrader (-)

Newsletter Porfolios Outperforming in May

Our portfolios from Reminiscences, are outperforming this month despite a "difficult" market.  The star this month is our Trading portfolio which is ahead of the market by over 4%.   Disney (DIS) and Macy's (M) were two of the trading names this month.  Both have reached their objective and would have been sold (following our parameters) for a gain of 2.4% and 2.8% respectively.   Not bad considering the market is down 2.1% over the same period.

Energy Sector Enters a 10% Correction

The S&P 500 energy sector (S5ENRS) entered a 10% decline.  Closing down 10.5% from its high on 4/24. 

Since 1962 on average, the sector continues down an additional 6.9% before bottoming.

Cisco's Earnings After the Bell

Cisco (CSCO) is scheduled to report their 3Q12 earnings after the market close today.  Analysts’ are currently looking for $0.47 in EPS on $11.57B in revenue.  This accounts to 11.0% gain in EPS and 6.5% gain in revenue from the same quarter one year ago.   Since 2003 CSCO has beat on EPS in 89% of reports and beat on revenue in 68% of reports.  Despite that trend in exceeding analyst’s projections, the stock has opened down the morning following the report 59% of the time and 73% of the time it trades lower during the day.  Traders tend to pay the most attention to management’s comments and guidance during the conference call and specific business segments sales and metrics, and look past the headline EPS and revenue numbers.

"Difference Between the US and Europe ..."

We came across two interesting and entertaining articles today on the European crisis from Derek Thompson at The Atlantic.

"The Key Difference Between the US and Europe in One Simple Graph"

"The Funneist Graph I've Ever Seen About Why the Euro is Totally Doomed"

May 7th Blogger Sentiment Poll

Blogger Sentiment Poll Participants:                

24/7 Wall St (-) The Aleph Blog (+) Biiwii (-) Bruce Krasting  BullBear Trading (-) Carl Futia (+) Dash of Insight (N) Dividend Growth Investor (+) Elliot Wave Lives On (+) Expected Returns  Fallond Stock Picks (-) Global Economic Intersection (N) GEI – Investing Blog (-) Humble Student of the Markets (N) In the Money  Learning Curve (-) MaoXian  Night Owl Trader (-) The Mess That Greenspan Made  Oil Trader’s Blog  Peridot Capitalist  Prometheus Market Insight  Quant Investor (N) Shanky’s Tech Blog (-) Short Takes  Smart Money Tracker (N) The Reformed Broker  StockAdvisors.com  Traders-Talk  ValuePlays  VIX and More (+) Wall St. Cheat Sheet  Wall Street Folly  Wishing Wealth (-) Zentrader (-)

"Birinyi Bullish as Bears With Deja Vu Can’t Wait to Sell"

Read Laszlo Birinyi's comments in today's Bloomberg story here.  Also for some figures we ran on "Sell in May..." see the previous post.