Menu
Date: July 30, 2018

Selling the News

On Friday, I wrote about the strong GDP report and given the market’s rally into the number, I wouldn’t be surprised to see sellers come into stocks but buyers into the bond market. While bonds jumped up at the open, they very slowly eroded some of those gains during the day in a quiet session. Stocks, on the other hand, opened up with some small gains before being swamped by sellers the rest of the morning, perfectly epitomizing “sell the news”. On an individual stock basis, look no further than everyone’s darling, Amazon, for a textbook case of selling some really good news. Couple that with Netflix’s and Facebook’s punishment on  bad news and you have the makings of a very tired tech sector.

With the exception of the Dow Industrials which I opined was slowly becoming the leading index, the S&P 500, S&P 400, Russell 2000 and NASDAQ 100 saw some real carnage, confirming the pullback has arrived. Repeating what I have said and what I will continue to say, the downside magnitude should be confined to mid single digits, worst case, and the opportunity to buy the dip, yet again, should be forthcoming.

So far, all four key sectors seem to be behaving fairly well into the weakness and high yield bonds are still moving higher.

On an individual stock basis, look no further than everyone’s darling, Amazon, for a textbook case of selling some really good news. Couple that with Netflix’s and Facebook’s punishment on  bad news and you have the makings of a very tired tech sector.

Author:

Paul Schatz, President, Heritage Capital