|
TRUE NORTH WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
16 JAN
06
Market
Review
Dane Halling
Air pockets ahead, in front
of another reporting deluge
Sobriety returned
to the US stock market after the festival rally. Semis hit a small brick
wall, and we'll have to wait to see what their reaction will be. Alcoa and
Genentech set the tone on the corporate front. Not a great start to Q4
results season, although it's the darkness before the dawn perhaps?
This week several mega tech names report, including AAPL, EBAY
& YHOO. Only Apple has not stumbled in this market at all, and it
seemingly can do no wrong.
Our attention has centred on a few high
growth names, most of them familiar to regular readers of our dispatches.
QCOM has held its high ground despite the handset players pulling back
hard. They're not tightly correlated for sure, but at the end of the day,
what happens at Nokia & Ericsson clearly has a bearing on QCOM's
fortunes.
NQ showed
a new bullish pattern on the hourly
chart , as the whole market
rallied to close flat on Friday after initial weakness.
Overall, short
term indicators are somewhat mixed, which is undertandable as we await
another packed series of earnings news from literally thousands of
companies. This economy is not firing on all cylinders. Energy costs,
consumer nervousness, hesitant corporate boards. Again, the
threat of a bird flu pandemic is on everybody's minds. And then we've got
this insane situation in Iran. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
And yet, we continue to believe that we have seen in these last few weeks,
especially among the emerging economy shares as well as in key growth
areas such as semis & biotech, an early glimpse of what the next bull
market might look like. So near term corrections are something we
need to negotiate as we move nearer to this powerful phase in market
history.
Sign up on the True North
website
for regular commentary during the
trading week from Dane Halling on market strategy, sector trends
& stock-specific notes.
QQQ/ SPY Advisor
Our very own QQQ/SPY
Advisor (QS Advisor), has been hanging tough the last few days with a
decidedly bearish tilt.
The QQQ/ SPY advisor
retains his swing sell signals on both the SPX and NDX in position since
the 10th of January.
As you can see on this chart of the SPX,
the 5-Day Oscillator is working its way lower after having achieved
severely overbought status.
Likewise on the
NDX.
Near-term he expects the
market to continue in a retrenchment mode. Nothing terribly severe,
but the likelihood is for some lower prices in the days ahead. We continue
to expect the current short-term decline phase to be fairly benign, but it
does not appear to be over at this point. We haven't seen Tech break down
yet, but with these early leaders flagging, we're likely to see further
deterioration in the benchmark indices.
For a free trial of the QQQ/ SPY Advisor click here:
http://www.truenorthinvesting.com/QQQ.htm
Active Global Investor
Our Active
Global Investor service has just released its portfolio for 2006. Here is
a preview of one of the portfolio's stocks which maintains its buy
rating.
Icici Bank (IBN): India's
booming bank! Purchased in November for $32.30.
The average age of India's population
is 25 years and as the well-educated middle classes swell, it is
to be expected that they adopt a more western approach to life. That means
they adopt a relaxed view of personal debt. They will need more mortgages,
credit cards and personal loans to make their dreams a reality and
this bank is set to profit from it. It is positioned to welcome new
customers in their droves and more importantly, hang onto them for a very
long time. It trades on a PE much higher than you would associate with a
British or US bank, it won't deliver anywhere near the dividend you
normally expect but this is a growth pick. It's got momentum behind it,
good fundamentals and a long way to go. I expect to hold for
sometime.
Active
Global Investor service
Using diligent
asset and stock allocation, the aim is to invest in outperforming growth
& income stocks and let profits run until such point in time when a
companies stock appears extremely overbought, or sentiment for one reason
or another has changed.
The portfolio,
which consists of stocks, investment
trusts, exchange-traded funds, and power shares, can easily be
reproduced by the private investor with a medium sized portfolio.
The portfolio
management team focus on high quality
companies with excellent earnings visibility around the
globe.
For a free trial and for more on this service, visit: http://www.truenorthinvesting.com/global.htm
**********************************************************************************************************************************
Good luck out there & have an excellent week!
Dane Halling
Dave Evans
True North
Investing
| 
