Monday Update: Futures Keep Rising; Chinese Accumulate Dollars
A modest rally in the futures is drawing the ire of short sellers all over the blogosphere. Apparently the North Korea nuke test is bullish, as evidenced by the rebound in Asian and European markets last night. Long MA POT and GOOG stock.
Business Insider, Henry Blodget’s blog, reported that China’s dollar reserves grew in March, putting a nail in the coffin for the ‘dumping dollars’ permabear myth. This is yet again another reason to buy & hold stocks.
In March alone, China?s direct holdings of US Treasury securities rose $23.7bn to reach a new record of $768bn, according to preliminary US data, allowing China to retain its title as the biggest creditor of the US government.
Why do the Chinese keep accumulating dollars? Because they have an economic surplus (remember their economy is till growing despite the supposed global recession), and therefore have no where else to park their money. Also, in order to avoid a catastrophic trade war they need to keep inflating their currency, which in turn helps relive the debt burden of the United States. If the Chinese start dumping dollars, we can respond buy not importing as much plastic crap, which would devastate their economy. It is this dependency that allows the United States to inflate its way to prosperity.
North Korea Nuclear Test: Bullish?
Believe it or not, North Korea’s test of nuclear weapons may, in fact, be bullish. While scenes of nuclear winder, mass extinction, and giant mushroom clouds may make for a thrilling Hollywood feature, it’s also a compelling reason to buy stocks, too.
Futures dived following the test, but have since fluctuated in positive/negative territory
Historically, foreign conflict has been beneficial for the stock market and economy. The market surged in the 50’s and 60’s during the Cold War. World War 2 enabled the United States exit the Great Depression. The Iran conflicts in the late 70’s had no adverse impact on the economy, and proceeded a historic eighteen year bull market. Finally, as wee all know, the first and second Iraq wars were invaluable economic stimulants, as evidenced by the bull markets that followed in each instance.
Maybe Obama should try to gently provoke North Korea into testing more weapons. The same for Iran, too. That will help push gas, food and commodity prices higher, the dollar lower, which is thus good for the stock market.
Sunday Update: Futures Move Higher
Euro, Oil, and US index futures are steady rising.
Now may be a good time to cover, if you can. There are no more shoes to drop. The financial crisis has been fixed. This is no different than may 24th, 2003. The S&P 500 could open 12-20 points higher Tuesday and end the day 30 points higher easily. The short trade is over. The sooner you realize this the less pain you will endure in what may be a very long bull market.
Open Table Surges on IPO Debut…Web 2.0 IPOs To Come?
On a more positive note this week, Open Table (OPEN) went public and absolutely crushed expectations. Smartist, globalist, web 2.0 companies is where the economic growth is, and are leading the transition to a type 1 civilization. There is no recession or doom and gloom in Silicon Valley. No recession with social networking. Millions of people still logging into Facebook and Myspace every day. People aren’t reading the liberal biased newspapers, but are instead getting their news in succinct, bite-sized chunks from Twitter.
If Facebook went public it would be valued at $40 billion within six months of its IPO. The stock would triple within it’s first day of trading, and never look back. That’s because Facebook has huge traffic growth, immense profit potential, market dominance, and is immune to the mental recession and fake credit crunch. Accordingly, Mint.com is worth $2 billion, Slide.com $5 billion, and Twitter.com $15 billion.
Despite these lofty valuations, Web 2.0 is by no means a bubble. If any of these companies went public I would buy the stock as soon as trading commences, regardless of price. As evidenced by the success of the Open Table IPO, no lessons were learned from the first dot com boom; investors are amiable to shelling out big premiums for growth.
In addition, we need to ensure that the wealth gap widens, while older workers are outsourced or downsized so that innovation isn’t hindered. A dynamic, youthful, technologically proficient workforce is a prerequisite for economic global growth, technological synergy and singularity.