Investors skeptical of European measures

The chase by Marty Cej:

European stocks are lower, industrial commodities are sliding and U.S. index futures are pointing to early losses after the weekend?s EU summit left investors and lawmakers skeptical that the long-term steps agreed upon will solve the debt crisis in the near term. European leaders ended the summit with a pact to draft a new treaty that enforces tighter fiscal integration but details won?t be settled until at least March. In the meantime, the EU leaders have agreed to lend up to 200 billion euros to the IMF to help it support the weakest members of the euro-zone, and to accelerate the permanent rescue fund ? the European Stability Mechanism ? by a full year to mid-2012. Between now and March, the markets will look to the European Central Bank for support and wonder whether Standard & Poor?s will cut its ratings on European countries before Christmas. One definitive result of the meeting was British Prime Minister David Cameron?s political alienation from the broader European Union. By standing up for Britain?s financial services industry and opposing a transaction tax, Cameron has thrown his political future into some doubt and potentially removed White Hall from the next phase of decisions in Brussels.
The U.S. Federal Reserve?s policy-setting Open Market Committee reveals its latest take on the U.S. economy tomorrow at 2:15 pm Eastern. The FOMC is not expected to invoke any new measures to stimulate growth so the market?s attention will be on how the Fed sees the recent spate of stronger-than-expected economic data, including a big drop in the unemployment rate and remarkably resilient consumer confidence numbers. Today, Headline sits down at 1:00 pm with Alice Rivlin, a member of the President?s Debt Commission and a former Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve.
It should be noted that stronger-than-anticipated retail sales last month have many analysts and economists arguing that U.S. shoppers are now already tapped out. A survey by UBS and America?s Research Group (ARG) this morning says that with ?

two weeks to go before Christmas, holiday shoppers buffeted by the weak U.S. economy have already spent all they can afford to on gifts? ?More Americans are living week to week,? said ARG Chairman Britt Beemer, who noted that the new findings are the bleakest in the survey's 27-year history. "They simply have no money."

And what about Canadian monetary policy? Rather than speculate we?ll simply ask Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, who joins us Tuesday on Headline. We?ll talk about the outlook for the Canadian economy, Canadian interest rates, household debt, global financial regulation and the skiing near Basel, Switzerland, maybe.

This is one interview you will not want to miss.
Sun Life Financial said this morning that it is cutting 800 jobs, closing two lines of business in the U.S. and will take a small charge as it intensifies its ?focus on reducing volatility and improving the return on shareholders' equity by shifting capital to businesses with superior growth, risk and return characteristics.? Paul Bagnell is listening in on the conference call for more details and Peter Routledge, director of research, financial services, National Bank Financial, will join us with his take on Sun Life and its competitors at 10:30.

Suncor is pulling out of Syria and EnCana is fighting back against claims from the Environmental Protection Agency that its drilling activities in Wyoming are poisoning the water.
Stock movers today could include Air Canada, GMP, Ivanhoe Energy and Yellow Media, all of which were booted from the S&P/TSX Composite.

Bill Carrigan Says... North America Bull Starts To Run

Times have changed since my first appearance in this space about 15 years ago.

Back then we were investors. Now we are traders. An investor used to be an owner of a business with long-term growth prospects. Now an investor is simply a trader who has held a declining stock too long.

Back in the late 1990s investors were enjoying the late stages of a powerful 20-year linear advance in the major global equity markets. The dominant theme or prime driver of growth was the “new economy” technology boom of 1980 to 2000.

The other dominant theme was the emergence of the financial services and financial planning industry stimulated by the big banks’ entry into the investment dealer space.

Buy and hold worked from 1980 through 2000. The Dow ran from 800 to over 10,000 and all you had to do was to find a way to get on board.

Investors stampeded into the mutual funds which at the time had no competition from the little-known exchange traded fund (ETFs) industry. “Buy, Hold and Prosper”, became the business mantra of the former AIC mutual fund boss Michael Lee Chin who embraced the emerging financial services industry.

The technology bubble burst in 2000 and the “buy-and-hold is dead” movement got underway. Now the fashionable mantra is the cynical “buy, hold, and lose” and “buy, hold and suffer.”

The unfortunate fallout of the technology bubble of 2000 and the subsequent financial crisis of 2008 is that we don’t invest anymore. We trade.

If you do a Google on “online trading” you get 68 million results.

Recently, I got a question from an industry professional wishing to know my one-and-only investment pick. He said his clients were long-term investors. When I asked for a time horizon he replied, “Oh, at least two months.”

How sad and what a waste. What is the point of putting in hours of analysis and then tossing a solid investment away just because you made a few fast bucks?

The root of the problem seems to be that investors and analysts are hyper-focusing on the fiscal and monetary problems in the U.S. along with the noise of the European Monetary Union, wars and the threat of another recession. This in turn has investors jumping in and out of equities in reaction to good and bad news days.

If I had to select my one-and-only investment pick today for at least a 2-year hold I would want a skilled management team who can guide the company through the noise of the global economy.

At this time the Dow Industrial Average is the obvious choice because most of the 30 components are global multinationals, all with skilled management teams.

When you own the Dow you gain direct exposure to names like was McDonald’s Corporation, International Business Machines, Hewlett-Packard Co., Caterpillar Inc., Walt Disney Co., Coca-Cola Company, United Technologies Corp. and Chevron Corp. — all multinational businesses. The dominant theme among the group is their activities in globalizing and expanding their operations overseas.

Our chart this week is the monthly closes of the Dow Jones industrial average plotted above the monthly closes of the iShares MSCI EAFE Index (NYSE-EFA). The EFA is an ETF that seeks to replicate the MSCI EAFE index. The index has been developed by MSCI as an equity benchmark for its international stock performance (Europe, Australia and Southeast Asia).

We can see that, from the 2007 price peaks of both plots, the Dow is the stronger investment product beginning with the financial crisis collapse of 2007 — 2009. The Dow on a peak-to-peak monthly closing basis lost about 50 per cent compared to the 60 per cent loss of the EFA.

More important is the recovery period of 2009 through 2011 with the Dow retracing 83 per cent of the financial crisis collapse compared to the EFA retracement of only 60 per cent of the financial crisis collapse.

Currently the Dow is still out performing the EFA with the recent August lows, well above the July 2010 lows. Over the same period the EFA gave back all of the same period gains.

Canadian dollar accounts can own the Dow via the TSX listed BMO Dow Jones industrial average Hedged to CAD Index ETF (ZDJ) and U.S. dollar accounts can own the Dow via the NYSE listed SPDR Dow Jones industrial average ETF (DIA).

Keep your investment close to home and buy, hold and enjoy.

Bill Carrigan, CIM is an independent stock market analyst

Last August I attended a buddy’s annual rib fest. He wore a T-shirt with a bold statement, “I love vegetarians: more meat for me!”

My next T-shirt will read, “I love the euro crisis: more cheap stocks for me!”

Last Wednesday was a bit of a wake-up call for the bulls when the Dow Jones industrial average dived 3.2 per cent or 389 points as the Europe’s debt crisis focused on Italy’s borrowing costs. That was the Dow’s largest points and percentage drop in seven weeks, and the sixth largest points and percentage drop this year.

Even before Friday’s stock market gains, when you look at the bigger picture, the Dow was only down 8 per cent this week from its 2011 closing high of 12,810 on April 29 and had rebounded more than 10 per cent from its 2011 closing low of 10,655 on Oct. 3.

To regain my confidence as a bull, I need to confirm the nasty April through October mini-bear in the equity markets is over. Technically a bull market will post a long series of higher highs and higher lows. A bear market will post a series of lower highs and lower lows.

The turning points, such as bull market peaks and bear market troughs, are called junctures. Was the early October low in the Dow a juncture?

Our chart this week shows about five months of daily closes of the Dow Jones industrials plotted above the daily closes of the 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds. In this example, I am comparing the level of the Dow to investor fear as illustrated by the flight into U.S. Treasuries. Note the recent prices relative to their August lows. In mid-September, the 10-year bond yield broke below the 2 per cent level of the August lows and the Dow industrials held firm just at the August low. This price divergence has created a bull set-up because while investor fear was greater (lower bond yields), the Dow held firm. This is called bullish divergence.

This week, the price divergence was even greater, with the 10-year Treasuries still at the fearful 2 per cent level and the Dow well above the early October low. Internally the Dow is very healthy. All 30 Dow components are now sitting well above their relative early October lows. A very bullish scenario!

The bottom line here is that, from a technical perspective, the August through October lows are an important juncture that will likely become the origin of a major bull market.

We need to participate. We need to focus more on the earnings and guidance from companies such as Cisco Systems Inc. and less of the names of the Greek and Italian prime ministers.

First you need to know what kind of an investor you are. If you lack experience and are not being advised, keep it simple and just buy the Canadian and U.S. equity markets in two baskets.

For Canadian exposure, you can buy the iShares S&P/TSX 60 Index Fund, which trades under the symbol XIU on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The XIU gives us direct ownership of 60 Canadian large-capitalization companies.

For U.S. exposure, you can buy the SPDR S&P 500 fund, which trades as SPY on the New York Stock Exchange. If you wish to operate only in Canadian dollars, another exchange-traded fund choice is the TSX-listed BMO Dow Jones Industrial Average Hedged to CAD Index ETF, symbol ZDJ.

These products contain the shares of large domestic and multinational corporations, which allow you to participate in both the Canadian and the global economy.

If you are an experienced investor or have an adviser, you may seek to enhance the returns of the above broad and diverse products and drill down a bit into the stock sectors such as the financial, technology or industrial groups of stocks.

In Canada, the three prime price drivers are the energy, materials and financial groups of stocks. Related ETF investment products are the TSX-listed iShares S&P/TSX Capped Energy Index Fund (XEG), the iShares S&P/TSX Capped Materials Index Fund (XMA) and the iShares S&P/TSX Capped Financials Index Fund (XFN).

Another important but lesser profile stock group is the TSX industrials, rich in domestic and global corporations. Unfortunately for Canadian investors, no ETF covers just that sector.

In the U.S., the three prime price drivers are the industrial, technology and financial groups of stocks. For related investment products, try the NYSE-listed Industrial Select Sector SPDR (XLI), the Technology Select Sector SPDR (XLK) and the Financial Select Sector SPDR (XLF).

Again if you only wish to operate in Canadian dollars, BMO Financial Group has a series of ETFs that cover most of the major global asset classes.

Bill Carrigan, CIM, is an independent stock-market analyst.