"Sell on Rosh Hashanah and Buy on Yom Kippur."
Rosh Hoshanah begins at sundown on Wednesday, 28 September this year, and Yom Kippur at sundown on Friday, 8 October.
And the selling did come in today as stocks turned lower after a stronger open.
We are into the end of the month tape-painting period, and barring any fresh negative developments from Europe we *might* have seen a bottom to the selling. But...
There was a gathering of hedge fund gurus today, including the heads of Carlyle and Blackstone. And some of these wealthy and worldly wise sages are saying that the US needs a 'financial shock' to scare the politicians into action, presumably some action that they would approve. Some shock like back to back 1000 point down days, or several huge drops in the dollar.
And Europe is floating the idea of a financial transaction tax again, which would have a devastating effect on the HFT crowd since the amount, although slight at about .1% for stocks and bonds and .01% for derivatives adds up when you are doing thousands of transactions per hour and running trillions in derivatives. The Wall Street crowd is adamantly against it, almost Dimon-esque in its opposition. I suppose that a nice wide exception for the wiseguys would work, but Europe does not seem as inclined to pander as the Yanks.
More threats to the economy from the financial sector? Why not, it has worked every time so far.
So the US market is jittery, and it is hard to see them stick a rally with any conviction in this environment of high volatility and artificial money flows guided by a few hands.
A vote in Germany on the bailouts is coming so let's see how it goes.
