Market Must Hold in Here

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. In addition to the term helicopter economics, we have also coined the term, helicopternomics, to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government and to update the old-fashioned term wheelbarrow economics.

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The major U.S. stock indices hit five year lows yesterday. The Dow and the S&P 500 are now going to test their 2002 lows, also the 1998 low in the case of the Dow, around 7200 and 775 respectively (mentioned many times in this blog as the target price to look out for). Nasdaq is heading toward a support level in the 1250 to 1300 range, the shoulder area of the reverse head and shoulder pattern that it made in 2002 to 2003. Its stronger support is around 1100. This would be the next place to look for a market sell off to stop. The Dow, and even more likely the S&P, would be below their 2002 lows if this happened. The charts offer little guidance for any significant breaks of the 2002 lows, since there is no significant support until much, much lower levels.

Once again yesterday was a crash day, with all the major U.S. indices closing down 5% or more. I have lost count how many times this has happened in the last three months. The gains from last Thursday's mystery rally were completely dissipated in four trading days. The Dow held up the best with only a 5.1% drop, but closed at 7997, the first close below 8000 since 2003. Small caps were the hardest hit, with the Russell 2000 falling 7.9%. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were in between with 6.1% and 6.5% drops respectively. Financial stocks had the biggest losses, with Citibank leading the way down with a 23% loss (the New York Investing meetup has been saying since fall of 2007 that Citi is insolvent and the market is now realizing it). Bank America, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs all had 10% or greater drops. GE, the next major bailout prospect, fell 10%. Autos of course were also hit hard, with GM falling 10% and Ford 25%. Ford barely remained above penny stock levels.

What is currently roiling the market, other than the usual unrelentingly bad economic news, was that the bailout prospects for the auto industry fell apart on Capitol Hill yesterday. Members of congress grilled the auto chieftains on their extravagant spending, including the private jet trips they took to the hearings. While there is certainly profligacy in auto company spending, it can't compare to Wall Street. The TARP legislation failed to eliminate multi-million (or even deca-million) bonuses given to Wall Street management, their high salaries, lavish executive perks as was revealed recently with AIG, nor the dividends they are paying to their shareholders with government bailout money. Suddenly Congress has discovered that taxpayer money shouldn't be wasted irresponsibly with auto companies (whose political contributions can't match Wall Street's). While overall this is certainly a good thing, the economic impact of all the major U.S. auto companies going into bankruptcy should not be underestimated. Market action yesterday made that very clear.

Having a policy of selective government bailouts is the worse of all choices. A government can bail out no company if it wants to maintain a free market system or it can bailout every company if it doesn't. The government certainly shouldn't do bailouts based on political favoritism. At hit or miss bailout policy also is likely to insure the least results for the most money spent -. something the U.S. government has proven particularly adept at in the last several years.

NEXT: Five Year Lows are Bad, Eleven Year Lows are Worse

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.