Lost in the discussion of job creation or losses is what sort of jobs are being created ...

One advantage older investors have is that we have been there, done that, and seen about everything — usually several times. It came as no surprise to me whatever — other than the timing — to hear that Brazil has decided to forbid foreign ownership of land and may confiscate all property purchased back as far as 1988.

The market was hit with a one two punch today in an otherwise quiet economic week.  Philly Fed, reported at 10 AM, was dismal and just the tonic needed to break below S&P 1085 as traders were trying to mostly ignore the weekly unemployment claims.  With the S&P 500 here sitting around 1080 I will add 2% allocations into short BGU + TNA (4% total).  I still am wary of snapbacks since this market is very stubborn.   My "stop out levels" will be around 1085ish.

We've had two days in a row of bad housing metrics, weak guidance from Lowe's and not such great data from Home Depot and Walmart, but the dip buyers came in yesterday morning and the Potash news has a bid under the market today.   I said in the weekly summary the best hope for bulls is not that the data in housing/retail will be good but that expectations are so low that even bad news is ok.  So far, that seems to be the case... but all those serial housing bottom callers must be tiring by now.

Year 4, Week 2 Major Position Changes