Welcome to 2012 Post: Week and Year Ahead look at the S&P 500

With December 21st, 2012 looming as the last day of the Mayan Calendar, it's time to get back to work...shake off the hangovers, and think about making some sweet moolah with Uncle Rico.  Wait a minute--if the 2012 is the year is all ends, what's the point of going back to work at all?  I suppose it might be useful to have a "fall back" option .... just in case.

Embedded below is some Scribd work on the SP500 with a glimpse at Apple.

The very short term outlook is for a bounce in the S&P 500 to start the year but the medium/longer term picture is bearish.  My guess is the mid-year swoon will be the result of the "Election uncertainty" or some other nonsense headline that media outlets will create to explain away week to week gyrations.

Market Commentary 2Jan12


Post-Holiday Edition Addend:


Over the Holiday week, my mom pointed me to a group called Kiva.  It's an organization that raises money for micro-lending financing and she's been doing it for over a year.  It's seems like a really worthwhile endeavor and it gives her happiness.  I donated $500 this month (small but a start).  The micro-lending development is extremely interesting to me -- a relatively small amount of money can change the lives of people in a productive/economic way.  Fuck the Sally Struthers "give food/money" bullshit.*  Give people a chance to make their own money and start their own businesses.  Loan repayments run 98+%.  Amazing.


*That's hyperbole.

If you're ever at a loss for Gift Ideas, just go to a Brookstone store or visit their website.  That place is cool for gadgets and other extraneous things people don't really need but might like opening on Christmas Day.

My brother-in-law is "gadget" type guy.  On the way back to the airport, he made me stop and this one particular Best Buy in order to buy this device called a NEST.  It's a thermostat that supposedly "learns" your habits and can be controlled from various "smart" devices like an iPhone or iPad.  It's created by some ex-Apple people.  It actually seems like a decent gadget.  There's been many a weekend spent away from home with the A/C blowing and going.  Though, at $250/pop I'm not sure it's worth it....  Now, if Obama could give me a Tax Credit or something....then we're talking.

What's the week going to be like for rookie Quarterback Andy Dalton of the Cincinati Bengals?  The former local Katy High School QB leads the once-terrible Bengals into the playoffs, coming back to his hometown Houston to play at Reliant Stadium, one of the several stadiums around Houston where he played some huge High School Playoff games.  It's been fun to watch him grow up the last several years ... now I wouldn't mind seeing him lose to the Texans.

13 comments:

Andy T said...

Tonight I'll be watching my first College Bowl game of the year, the OkState/Stanford game. It's the first one that has even mildly piqued my interest.

Is it me or has this year's Bowls been completely shitty on the offer side?

They wasted Boise State in some lame ass game in Vegas. Meanwhile we get Michigan/VaTech in the Sugar Bowl? yuck. Who cares?

Clemson/West Virginia in the Orange Bowl? WTF? I didn't even realize WV was above .500.

One of the better teams isn't even in a bowl game, my USC Trojans.

Why do they keep referring to the Rose Bowl as the "granddaddy of them all" when there's a much bigger game going down a whole week later.

And that "big game"...oh boy o boy...we get a rematch of a Field-Goal fest between LSU and Alabama.

I hope the BCS ratings are in the toilet this year. The only way we eventually get some kind of playoff is for these guys to start losing revenue....

Anonymous said...

AT,

the "Rose Bowl", from what I gather, is tagged with "grand-daddy of them all"-line, b/c it was (the first/one of the first) College 'Bowl' Games to exist..

also, when is Brent Musberger going to 'leave the Booth'? anyone else have hard time 'abiding by' that dude?

and, re: "Big Game", I wouldn't worry, too, much, about it going '9-6', again..I'm pretty sure that those betting the 'Under', as 'a Lock', are going to get their faces 'ripped off'..

STAN v. OSU should be a good match..

since I haven't started watching it, I'll go with OSU .. as, if, it matters :)

AAIP

AmenRa said...

ES doesn't start trading until 5am so no overnight ramp job buy the algos. Should make that first hour quite interesting.

AmenRa said...

Oh yeah Friday closed lower for the year and below the 200SMA. Might not be a big deal but it's definitely on the minds.

AmenRa said...

How da hell does ES gap higher by $20? That level is higher than all of December. I guess since they couldn't do a gradual run up overnight they had to go all out at the open.

cv said...

It's a thermostat that supposedly "learns" your habits and can be controlled from various "smart" devices like an iPhone or iPad. It's created by some ex-Apple people. It actually seems like a decent gadget

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The DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY thanks you for your compliance...

Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

BinT said...

Sign bailout or face euro exit, Greece warns


7:37 am ET 01/03/2012 - MarketWatch Pulse News Bullet
FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) -- Greece could be forced to leave the euro if it fails to seal an agreement on a second 130 billion euro ($169.5 billion) bailout from the European Union, International Monetary Fund and private bond holders, a government spokesman warned Tuesday. "The bailout agreement has to be signed, otherwise we will be out of the markets, out of the euro," the spokesman, Pantelis Kapsis, told Skai TV, according to a BBC report. The agreement has faced sharp domestic criticism.

...At this point, when the beggar makes the threat, I think I'd let him go.

BinT said...

By the way, high divident payors did much better than most other stocks in 2011. Repeat in 2012?

BinT said...

http://www.scribd.com/doc/77014834/MS-2012-Forecast

MS forecast for 2012. From ZH. I do recall watching two new years in a row on CNBC with ML forecasting Japan as the hot spot, and seeing them among the worst at year end...

Even MS forecast is down 7%...

Andy T said...

BinT....

Whenever people have asked me at parties...

"Well, what would you do with the cash if you 'had to' invest?"

I always say either buy some rental properties with predictive yields or get some high quality dividend yielding stocks.

Those stocks have had such good runs....maybe more to go...but yowsa....

AmenRa said...

Shhh!!! It appears reality is slowly coming back to the markets.

AmenRa said...

BTW if Greece does decide to leave the Euro you can kiss the French banks goodbye. Which would also give S&P a reason to downgrade France. I think S&P already has downgraded them and are waiting for the right time to release the report.

Andy T said...

There you go....

http://vitals.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/03/9917514-real-benjamin-button-stem-cells-reverse-aging-in-mice

Discovering stems cells that can mitigate/reverse the aging process.

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