Things Fall Apart

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

from ‘The Second Coming’ by William Butler Yeats

Will the market find purchase today, is there any obvious level of support to cling to in the storm?  I am unable to determine this and so I watch and I wait before acting.  The sales we made last week of the riskier parts of our portfolio “felt” right at the time and this morning they look right.  With the S&P 500 having blown through its all-important 50-day moving average, I feel little temptation to even consider putting that exposure back on.

I’m not sure if today’s vortex has anything to do with the supercommittee’s “failure” to make a deal – nobody actually expected one.  I think we’re still in this Euro contagion fear mode until such time as the ECB bites the bullet and becomes the Fed circa 2008.  How close you think we are to that moment is the only thing that matters for what your equity market positioning is.

Watching earnings, home sales or anything else here is a stupid waste of time.