"TAP não sobrevive se se mantiver pública", garante Pinto Luz

[- GOE -]

Excelente texto Ulisses, obrigado por partilhares

[Ulisses Pereira]

"Don't Believe the 'Seasonal' Hype"

By Helene Meisler
RealMoney.com Contributor
12/15/2009 7:11 AM EST

"Raise your hand if you have heard about how options expiration week in December has a positive bias. Then please raise it again if you have heard about how we should rally into year-end.

OK, is there anyone with their hands still at their sides?

We call those trades seasonality trades. In a typical year we often will see the best six months of the year top out around April; this year we didn't make a low until March. In a typical year we see "sell in May and go away" work; this year that didn't work out.

In a typical year the week of July 4 is up, but that didn't work out this year. In a typical year we get some selling in September; that too didn't work out.

And let's not forget Thanksgiving week since that too is "seasonally" an up week in the market. This year the Dubai news managed to put a kibosh on that seasonality.

I am certain there are some seasonality trades I missed that did work this year. But in general the "rule book" on seasonality wasn't good this year. So if you're still standing there with your hand up in the air looking for the seasonal trade you might want to reconsider that!

We are overbought. Not extremely so, just moderately so. But then we were moderately oversold two weeks ago as well.

As I noted Monday and over the past two weeks, breadth has seen a marked improvement and that is bullish for the market. This constant group rotation of two to three days here and there is what is making breadth better, but it isn't finding its way into the new high statistics.

For example, last week I noted the Oil Services HOLDRs (OIH - commentary - Trade Now) exchange-traded fund was oversold around 108-110 and should bounce. It has actually done so rather admirably, but that's not the point. The point is that the OIH stocks looked as though they were going to fall off a cliff but instead have rallied. That helps breadth, but it doesn't make these charts anywhere close to new highs.

Apple (AAPL - commentary - Trade Now) traded the same way. So did Goldman Sachs (GS - commentary - Trade Now).

The flip side is that a week ago everyone loved the agriculture stocks. Oh boy, you just had to love those names like Potash (POT - commentary - Trade Now) and Mosaic (MOS - commentary - Trade Now). Now I see Potash down $8 from the highs and Mosaic down $4. So they come off the new-high list. In a market with a trend, stocks at new highs wouldn't give it up so easily in favor of stocks that are down and out. But once again, that is the group rotation.

Nasdaq made a new high Monday and yet the number of stocks making new highs was less than we had two weeks ago, and less than we had a month ago. So for those who said a month ago we would rally into year-end, I applaud you. But how many stocks are actually up nicely from a month ago? It s more likely that stocks that were down and out a week ago have rallied in the last week and stocks that were up have given it up.

As I noted Monday, the total put/call ratio has been quite high of late, which is actually bullish. But Monday saw the put/call ratio of the CBOE Volatility Index soar to a reading over 200%, something we haven't seen since Nov. 16, which turned out to be a month ago when we were at 1116 on the S&P 500 on our way down toward 1085.

With breadth doing so well it's hard to be bearish. But when everyone is expecting the seasonality trade to work so well and the new highs are lagging it's also hard to be very excited about the upside. Seems to me a good hard down day would take away some of that seasonal chatter and help relieve that overbought condition. "

(in www.realmoney.com)