Financials Stampede
Tim Knight | Jan 17, 2013 05:30PM ET
Well, as I sit here on Thursday evening, the ES is completely unchanged. It seems astonishing, but index after index, and ETF after ETF, is at lifetime highs. There are a handful of indexes, such as the Dow 30, which aren't quite there yet, but the Dow's equivalent ETF, (DIA), is at a lifetime high (based on dividend adjustments, which is really the only sensible way to do it, but I digress).
On the rare occasions I've offered up long ideas recently they have tended to be in the area of financial stocks. I'm not talking about the JP Morgans (JPM) or the Goldman Sachses (GS), but lesser-known names. The fact that these all tended to be in the same sector wasn't deliberate on my part; it just so happened that the chart patterns were really good on the long side, and naturally, since they were so closely correlated, they tended to garner my attention as good long plays.
Anyway, since there's precious little I can offer as convincing proof that the market is about to fall to pieces ("Wave 3! We're at the cusp! The cusp, I tell you!"), let's review some of the more successful long ideas of late:
And, as a particularly aggressive one, there's the Bank of Ireland (IRE), which has been on a breathtaking ride up, down, up, down, and then up again over the past five years (the chart below is just recent history, of course):
I will close with one of the very, very few stocks in a sea of 10,000+ securities which, for me, remains a jumping-up-and-down great bearish chart, which is our old pal (and, lately, daily favorite) HerbaLife (HLF). Sorry to be so obsessed with this one, but it's one of the best-looking setups I've ever seen.
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We've got just Friday left before a three-day "I have a dream!" weekend, so I'm going to sign off for now.
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