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January 26, 2020 | Breakout in Dollar and T-Bonds Could Be Signaling a Major Tone Change

Rick Ackerman

Rick Ackerman is the editor of Rick’s Picks, an online service geared to traders of stocks, options, index futures and commodities. His detailed trading strategies have appeared since the early 1990s in Black Box Forecasts, a newsletter he founded that originally was geared to professional option traders. Barron’s once labeled him an “intrepid trader” in a headline that alluded to his key role in solving a notorious pill-tampering case. He received a $200,000 reward when a conviction resulted, and the story was retold on TV’s FBI: The Untold Story. His professional background includes 12 years as a market maker in the pits of the Pacific Coast Exchange, three as an investigator with renowned San Francisco private eye Hal Lipset, seven as a reporter and newspaper editor, three as a columnist for the Sunday San Francisco Examiner, and two decades as a contributor to publications ranging from Barron’s to The Antiquarian Bookman to Fleet Street Letter and Utne Reader.

 

Friday’s nasty stock-market reversal was the most interesting we’ve seen in a long while. The ostensible cause of the selloff was mounting anxiety over the spread of the deadly coronavirus from China to the U.S. and elsewhere. Three cases have been reported so far in the U.S. and 2,000 worldwide, and although no one seems to expect a major outbreak in North America, it’s not hard to imagine a mere handful of new cases hobbling, for starters, the airline industry and an import/export sector that was expected to revive because of the recent trade deal.  The spread of the disease in China may already have derailed the country’s tepid economic recovery, with a corresponding impact on energy markets that took a beating last week.

Heedless Buyers

I’d written here on Friday that it would take a lot more than a virus to kill a U.S. bull market that has been powered by reckless buying. But we shouldn’t dismiss the possibility that coronavirus could turn out to be the black-swan event that investors knew would arrive eventually. The heavy selling that ended the week was noteworthy because it was accompanied by bullish breakouts in the Dollar Index and T-Bonds. Although it is difficult to predict exactly what this may portend, it is safe to say that if the respective uptrends in these massive markets gain momentum over the next week or two, a major tone change for financial markets and the global economy could lie in the offing.

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January 26th, 2020

Posted In: Rick's Picks

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