Jan 23: Futures Down, WYE, GLD up

Technicians would say that the market has indeed anticipated the bad earnings with their interpretation of the graphs, with Brian Shannon at alphatrends saying (ad nauseum) "this is a day trading environment" and T.LO telling us to go to cash in September, etc.

The market and TA have been telling us, what Mamis calls the message of the market. We don't necessarily know "why" the market keeps going down... we will only know "why" after the fact. We can only know the "what" and "the what" is that financials are dead. D-E-A-D. Period.

We can conjecture all day about the "why"... and it's fun to do: maybe 25% of banks are insolvent and will be gone in 6 months, maybe BAC and Citi will be nationalized, maybe Obama is a stealth Communist and the market is factoring it in, etc... but the reality is that we cannot know the why until after the fact.

Aberrations will occur, such as the recent January Effect, but these are counter-trend rallies that cannot be trusted.  Like Kappa Kappa gamma girls: it's okay to play with 'em, just don't marry 'em... and it's time to stop playing and get back to work.