Unfortunately this week has been a rather busy one for myself and I have little mental time to properly do some market research even though I am getting bombarded with email alerts for low prices that have been triggered.
“V” type bottoms rarely happen in the marketplace. The only exception I can think of was the March 2009 low and that was after a protracted agony of a financial crisis.
I notice that in today’s (Wednesday’s) 5% plunge in the markets that crude oil managed to hold its ground while the indicies fell. Also, certain issues of stocks that could be considered “higher quality” were not hammered – indeed, some of them rose despite the indexes falling a significant amount.
I am expecting Thursday to be a positive market day, although I say this with the safety and comfort of seeing the S&P 500 futures up 1.7% well before the market is going to open. During financial storms, you always see sharp action in both directions as the market continues to suck in all of those that continue to try to play their risk-on and risk-off charades in a very short time frame. As long as people are still talking about which bargains to pick up in the markets, it is still not time to buy unless if you are worried about covering your short sales.
I remain mostly sheltered with a very large cash position at present.
Which system do you use for your price alerts?
Interactive Brokers, but you can also get a free service from Yahoo Finance and I am sure others are out there as well.
TMX also has a pretty good service for price alerts.
If you don’t like the bombardment option i also use stockscores.com and create lists which highlights the companies when they fall below my set price. Saves the email in box from overheating and just lets me check it when i have time.