No Holiday Boat Parade is likely to greet the New Year; though we give thanks to the fabulous outgoing year’s gains which mark the first time for recent years, that we never suggested a formal trading short-sale. The last time was the five years of consistently bullishness from 2002-2007; which preceded the call for an ‘Epic Debacle‘ (we figured-out a derivatives crisis was at the heart of the Housing and banking problem; not just liquidity).
The outline for early-phase 2018 activity has been provided. It included the suspicion we’d see early tax-selling (mostly for gains) in December’s final days, as trades would have a normal settlement in the new 2018 tax year. We got that mostly for the last couple days in momentum stocks; but not in a heavy way for the broad market. That was until the late Friday fade, that accelerated in the very last minutes as the reports of Russian Oil tankers directly selling to North Korea in violation of UN sanctions hit the news. It came in the wake of a story of a Chinese ship doing that as well; however that ship docked in Hong Kong and was seized by ‘local’ authorities.
What this all shows is the market’s sensitivity increasing to news at these levels; perhaps more so than has been the case in much of 2017. Also in Iran protests ramping up and will likely spread this weekend beyond Tehran. The whole Middle East remains tense; the Saudi’s seizing more financial assets; beyond the jailed (or now released) Royals known of previously.
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