Never Judge a Book By Its Cover

First: As you might see from my previous post, I was expecting today to be a big day, but it wasn't. In all the market ended less than 2% down from where it opened on Monday. That leads me too....

They say that you should never judge a book by its cover. Well that might work for books, but I think that's it. (OK, might work for people too.) If this week had its own book cover, what would it look like? It show that the past two weeks have been rocky as the markets have been being tugged in every direction, but this week would provide some much needed data, and therefore, direction. Well, we stalled all week to get to PPI, then got stuck in a showdown until CPI, and then moved higher, lower, higher, and then lower before the final buzzer. So to tie back to the opening, a quick look at this weeks cover would have made you think that the market would end up with a swift move up or down. Now after flipping through the pages, it turns out to be a pretty boring book. Of course I'm sure market purists could find plenty of reasons why this was such an interesting week.

Sure, we may have received a bunch of data and reports, but nobody knows what to do with it. I guess the next step would be to see what the FOMC decides. Actually, unless you're missing half your head, we all know what is going to be decided. (Hint: Interest rates remain unchanged.) Why? Can't raise rates because the economy appears to be slowing and that would cool things off even further. Can't cut rates because inflation hasn't found a hole to hide in yet. So if you take a step forward and a step backwards, where do you end up? The same place you started! The words behind the words is what has the potential to move the market. Almost as if it is a different language, we will all wait to see what the Fed says. Will his words give a hint about possible future direction? Only his mouth knows for now. So until then we will see.