Running Out Of Time

Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 6:11 PM

As we see yet again, the path of least resistance continues to be higher.

While we only managed to eke out a one point gain in the S&P 500, a new high is still yet another new high. Only the Russ was unable to rally again today.

I must say that at least so far this has been a “holiday-like” options expiration week. If you remove the first 30 minutes of trading yesterday, we’ve been doing very little since.

The talk of the day among many is that between the Las Vegas Expo starting tomorrow (I’m not planning to attend) and Thanksgiving holiday next week (which tends to be a bullish time), the market is running out of time to correct itself. Beyond just pure conjecture, it is tough to really know and frankly fairly useless to spend much time trying to figure that one out other than to simply recognize a bit of complacency as the holiday approaches. In fact, if the Mr. Market really desires to frustrate the herd, he will make a big move either way when everyone lets their guard down (if that is even remotely possible given current sentiment concerning this rally and economy).

In my view, there probably would be no better time than next week for the market to make a big move with most on vacation. Because of that it makes some sense to me to at least be prepared just in case we see something a little different than usual. After all, one of the clear trends this year is that historical tendencies have been especially error prone so why should we just expect that not to continue during the upcoming holiday season? Like many of you, I wouldn’t mind a few very quiet weeks to wrap up 2009 and that’s the problem. The market rarely affords that kind of comfort blanket especially when we desire it the most.