Trader’s Narrative

For economic and market news and to see what you may have missed last week, check out the list below. It is a small sample, to see it all go to news.tradersnarrative.com:

• How High Will the S&P Go?
• A Colossal Lack of Judgement
• The Next Big Technical Pattern
• Get a FREE Subscription to Financial Magazines
• An Anthropologist’s Take on What’s Wrong with Wall Street
• Fed Jawboning And Market Performance
• The 500 Millisecond Advantage
• Charles Kirk Q&A with Larry Connors
• Get the “Best of Trader’s Classroom” eBook for FREE (limited time)
• Marc Faber - turns bullish short term (!)
• Cramer’s Latest Sleazy Marketing Pitch
• Charts of the Demand/Supply of Crude Oil
• Thoughts on the Changing Demographic Face of Trading

For the complete list, follow the graphic below:

And remember to check back regularly since there are interesting links added throughout the week.

Week Ahead:

To catch up on what you missed and to prepare for next week, here are just a few picks from the past week’s reading list at news.tradersnarrative.com.

• “Dumb Money” by Daniel Gross (look forward to Ritholtz upcoming book)
• US Tax Burden Near Historic Low (what? didn’t hear you, too busy teabaggin’)
• Get a 120 page report FREE from Global Market Perspective (limited time offer)
• David Tice: S&P 500 set to plunge 62% - that’s a real bear!
• Cramer attacks Jon Stewart for ambushing him
• Get a Free Subscription to Futures Magazine
• Yale economists discuss the financial crisis & Geithner’s response (must see video)
• Why we should have not only saved Lehman Bros. but invaded it.
• Warren Buffett’s investment in a Chinese electric car company
• Where in the World is Paul Volcker? and why is he so quiet?

Follow the link below to get much, much more:

And remember to check regularly since there are new links added everyday.

Week Ahead: US Results, Data Dominate

A short trading week due to the Easter holidays but a key moment nonetheless as the market teeters on a +27% rally powered by very low volume. To catch up on what you missed and to prepare for next week, here are just a few picks from the past week’s reading list at news.tradersnarrative.com.

• Why D-Day Could Come as Soon as Monday
• The Real Unemployment Rate (try 15.6%)
• Robert Shiller’s new book on “animal spirits”
• How Banks Will Game the PPIP (Geithner’s plan)
• Do Your Genes Determine Your Investing Destiny?
• Free Subscription to Futures Magazine
• Trading Fibonacci Levels
• Roubini Eviscerates Cramer (almost makes you feel bad for the Booya… almost)
• Abnormal Markets: High Yields Outperforming Investment Grade Bonds

Follow the link below to get much, much more:

And remember to check regularly since there are new links added everyday.

WSJ Economy Survey: Things Not Getting Worse

To see what you missed, here are a few samples from this weekend’s reading list from news.tradersnarrative.com:

• Cramer’s fame outshines his stock picks
• Taking apart the $819 stimulus package
• Salary cap hijinks (little substance underneath all the noise)
• Dubai real estate collapse
• Bank of England cuts again (to the bone)
• Markopolos : tell me again why this guy isn’t running the SEC?
• Trader Monthly magazine shuts down (no more bottles and blondes, sniff)
• Using VWAP to Determine the Structure of the Trading Day
• Housing Affordability at Record High (try getting financing)

And remember to check regularly since there are interesting links added regularly throughout the week.

Usually I have trouble parsing Cramer’s advice. But just a while ago he was surprisingly lucid. I’m referring to Cramer’s call for people to take out money that they would need in 5 years’ time. Remember that? Here it is again, in case you missed it:

Well, it turns out a very reliable indicator is now flashing buy. The funny thing about this indicator is that it isn’t a short term buy signal. But whenever it has indicated a buy point, as it is now, the market has been higher four years in the future.

VLMAP
The indicator is the Value Line’s Median Appreciation Potential which is the median measure of how much higher or lower a large sampling of stocks will be trading as indicated by Value Line’s analysts. VL itself frowns on using it as an indicator but according to a market timing system devised by others, VLMAP signals a buy when it rises above 100 - meaning that in 4 year’s time, stocks will be trading higher by 100%.

As Mark Hulbert reports (link above) the last two times that VLMAP has given a buy signal were after the tragic events of 9/11 and at the bear market bottom in 2002. It also gave a signal in mid-July when the markets spiked lower.

Hulbert was kind enough to send me the in depth study he cites in his article. It concludes:

While it is clear from the above regressions and analysis that VLMAP is not a perfect predictor of the market, it is also true that VLMAP does have strong statistically significant forecasting powers. …The Value Line Composite Indexes, especially the geometric version, have the best track record in comparison to VLMAP. During the decade of the 1990s, the Russell 2000 is the best market measure as predicted by VLMAP.

While VLMAP may not represent the long sought after Holy Grail for predicting the market, it nonetheless proves to be beneficial and worthy of investors’ attention.

You can download & read the whole report in my Free Trading Resources section (under Reports & Articles). But be careful you don’t get stuck there rummaging through all the other free stuff there.

I don’t have a crystal ball and this indicator is, like everything else, far from an iron-clad guarantee that the market will indeed be higher… but watching Cramer put in that sober performance, I couldn’t help but think that he will regret it. It was a gut feeling but now there is quantifiable data to back it up.

But of course, considering the short term memory of the average “Cramerican” within four years, even if the market is higher, they won’t bother to remember it. Just like they ignore his call at the top of the tech bubble cheerleading bloated stocks even higher or his most recent disasterous calls:

In March, he said Bear Stearns “is not in trouble.” After Bear Stearns tipped over, he wrote in his New York magazine column that the bottom had finally come. “I feel the bear has been tamed, and the worst of the clawing is over,” he said. And on Sept. 15, he hosted his friend Robert Steel, chief executive of Wachovia, and suggested that its $10.71 share price was a bargain. Two weeks later, it was at $1.84.
Source: Cramer Retreats Along With The Dow

Booya?