Dow - 11/20

[zenobia]

Futures down -63.  Starting to come up a little.

[yellowrocker]

With the talk about double-dip recession from Obama and gloomy unemployment numbers, the Dow has got to be way UP today!

[zenobia]

ooh!  Back down to -93!  Fun!

[jtmo3]

I believe it was/is time for a little support for the dollar. I would expect a little pullback in the market and the dollar to come up. These guys have been masters at manipulating just enough to keep things right where they want them. How long can they do it? You decide.

[gin]

on the dow.. big down volume at the open today..
today 97 million
11/19 33.5 mill
11/18 27.8 mill
11/17 25.7 mill
11/16 26.6 mill

question is.. why was there wall of worry built overnight

[joewp]

The PPT is really busy these days, aren't they? 

[kimberley862]

I came here looking for this thread!

-45 right now

[worriedfloridian]

I am not an expert on the Dow, but I just read the "Colossal Failure of Common Sense" book by the Lehman Brothers trader who wrote about Lehman tanking.  It was a fun read because as a trader he was one of the grunts (as investment banks go) not one of the big wheels.  His department's specialty was bear markets -- back in 2005 his department (only) was the killjoy because it couldn't figure out how the housing bubble was holding because it contravened every single indicator that his department always used as a red flag to mark when things should be heading south (of course everyone else at Lehman ignored these guys; especially as stock continued to go up despite all the indicators -- hence the books title "Colossal Failure of Common Sense") . . . . he said it got particularly worse during the first half of 2008, as oil started its long march up and the cracks in the housing market were exploding into gigantic fissures -- stocks were still doing great, all things considered. . . . the head of his department finally resigned (before Lehman purged everyone else) because she said she couldn't read markets anymore; they didn't make sense as they had in the past.  Many reviews of the book criticize it because the author was a "grunt" and not a CEO or CFO or anything and therefore "what did he know?"  (Apparently more than the execs who far outranked him, unless his book is utter bullshit and he's making things up in hindsight that he didn't really do or say at the time).

Anyway the book taught me that the stock market in these times is not an indicator of anything, period.  It does what it does at this point independent of anything else that is going on.  Except perhaps for the types of manipulations people on LATOC talk about (making stocks go down to strengthen the dollar, etc.)

So I peek at the markets now but don't take them as a beacon/harbinger of doom (or of recovery, either).  Just kind of as a non sequitur.

[zenobia]

Ta da!  The PPT is pushing hard!

[TheDoctor]

Ta da!  The PPT is pushing hard!

Damn that PPT!  I'm losing my shorts on my shorts.....