Wall Street Double Talk and Double Opportunity of Falling Oil Price

By Tony Sagami

The stock market has developed a new type of love-hate relationship with the price of oil. In the past, falling oil prices were treated as an economic positive because they freed up more money for Americans to spend on other things, such as dining out or clothing. However, the steep plunge in oil prices has triggered a reverse psychology reaction on Wall Street: falling oil prices are bad because they signal a slowing global economy.

An even bigger head scratcher is the convoluted reaction that rising oil prices are good for the economy. Go figure.

Wall Street’s collective reaction, silly or not, is important because oil prices are what is currently driving the ups and downs of the stock market. And if you can divine the future direction of oil prices… you’ll find yourself on the right side of the stock market roller coaster.

What do I see when I connect the dots? That oil prices will fall even further.

Connecting the Dots #1: Helmerich & Payne. Helmerich & Payne is the largest lessor of oil rig drilling platforms in the US and recently announced that it would lay off up to 2,000 workers and chop its rig construction pace from four to two new oil rigs a month.

Moreover, Helmerich & Payne said that its active rig count has slid from 297 at the end of Q3 2014 to less than 200 today. “The rig count reduction thus far has been more swift than many expected,” said CEO John Lindsay.

And the price that H&P is receiving on that smaller amount of working rigs is falling. The daily revenue per rig is expected to average $27,000 to $27,500 this quarter, well below the $29,457 it received last quarter.

Connecting the Dots #2: Oil Pros Take Flight. For the week ending January 27, noncommercial traders increased their bets for oil prices to fall even more by adding 22,771 short contracts.

NOTE: Investors who use futures as hedges are called “commercial traders” while those who trade for speculation are called “noncommercial traders.”

The professional traders in the commodities pits make mistakes like the rest of us… but they’re right enough to make a living at it, so it’s dangerous to bet against them.

Connecting the Dots #3: Baker Hughes. In the last week of January, U.S. oil producers shut down 94 drilling rigs, which is the largest one week shutdown in 28 years!

That leaves 1,233 active rigs in North America—a three-year low.

Connecting the Dots #4: Supply Glut. The US Department of Energy reported that crude-oil stockpiles reached 406.7 million barrels in January, the highest level since the government started keeping records in 1982.

Higher supplies wouldn’t be an issue if demand were keeping pace, but thanks to improved drilling technology (fracking), the US is now awash in oil.

Connecting the Dots #5: USW Strike. Adding to the oil-patch pain, the strike of 3,800 members of the United Steelworkers union from nine refineries and chemical plants that process roughly 10% of US gasoline, diesel, heating oil, and jet fuel.

There are many ways to profit from falling oil prices, such as airlines and trucking stocks, but the most profitable is by betting against the companies that supply oil drilling equipment.

The Philadelphia Oil Services Index (OSX) is a price-weighted index composed of 15 companies that provide oil drilling and production services, oil field equipment, and support services.

If you’re confident that oil prices are headed lower, you can buy put options on the OSX index. And if you’re right… you’ll make a bundle. For example, my Rational Bear subscribers made over 200% in a few short weeks.

I’m not suggesting that you rush out and make big bets on oil prices tomorrow morning. As always, timing is everything, so wait for my next signal; but I am very confident that the profits of oil services companies are headed for the toilet.


Tony Sagami

30-year market expert Tony Sagami leads the Yield Shark and Rational Bear advisories at Mauldin Economics. To learn more about Yield Shark and how it helps you maximize dividend income, click here.

To learn more about Rational Bear and how you can use it to benefit from falling stocks and sectors, click here.

The article Connecting the Dots: Wall Street Double Talk and Double Opportunity of Falling Oil Price was originally published at mauldineconomics.com.

Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Procter & Gamble, the Strong Dollar, and Pepto Bismol

By Tony Sagami

Applied Materials. Boeing. Coach. Ford. Intel. McDonald’s. Nike. Pfizer.

What do those household name companies have in common? Not much, other than that a huge part of the sales come from outside the US.

Really, really huge.

Collectively, the 500 companies in the S&P 500 get 46% of their sales and roughly 50% of their profits from outside the US. They are truly multinational giants.

Expanding your customer base is always a good thing, but doing business overseas is not without peril, and one of the under appreciated perils is the impact of currency movements. A stronger dollar can hurt companies that do a large share of their business overseas because sales in other countries translate back into fewer dollars.

Just ask Procter & Gamble, which reported their Q4 results last week.

P&G sold $20.16 billion of toothpaste, laundry detergent, diapers, toilet paper, and razor blades last quarter, but that was a 4% decline from the same period a year ago.

Worse yet, profits plunged by 31% to $1.06 per share, which was not only well below the $1.13 per share Wall Street was expecting but also a horrible 31% year over year drop. That’s bad.

What’s behind those terrible numbers? The U.S. dollar.

“The October-December 2014 quarter was a challenging one with unprecedented currency devaluations,” said CEO A.G. Lafley.

The US Dollar Index was up 13% in 2014 and is now near a 9-year high. That strong dollar is a big millstone around the neck of US exporters, whose products are now more expensive for foreign buyers as well as negatively affecting profits once those foreign sales are converted back into US dollars.

Worse yet, Lafley said the environment will “remain challenging” in 2015.

The US dollar is now at a 9 year high and threatening to go higher. Much, much higher. By historical standards, the US dollar is still cheap and expected to go higher by many observers, including Procter & Gamble.

P&G warned Wall Street that its 2015 sales will fall by another 5% and its 2015 profits will shrink by another 12%.

Think about those two numbers: 5% lower sales and 12% lower profits.

The strong dollar is a big problem for P&G because it gets roughly two thirds of its revenues from outside the US, so it’s more affected by the strong US dollar than most companies, but P&G is far from alone when it comes to currency woes.

The line of companies that have warned that the strong dollar is hurting their profits is getting longer and longer. Microsoft, Pfizer, McDonald’s, Caterpillar, United Technologies, Emerson Electric, 3M, and even Walmart have warned that the rising dollar is depressing their profits.

What does this mean to you? That a LOT more companies are going to report lower than expected sales and profits in 2015 and those that do will see their stock get hammered, just like P&G.

The problem is that Wall Street is blind to this profit-crushing trend.

In 2014, the S&P 500 companies collectively earned $117.02, and the median forecast of Wall Street strategists for 2015 S&P 500 earnings is $126, which is an optimistic 7.6% growth in earnings.

Unless you think that Procter & Gamble is an isolated island of trouble (and it’s not), you should be very worried that Wall Street is grossly underestimating the profit crushing impact of the strong dollar as well as grossly overestimating corporate America’s earnings growth.

That massive disconnect between reality and the Wall Street dream world is going to translate into some very tough times for stock market investors. If you haven’t added some defense to your portfolio… you may need lots and lots of a popular Procter & Gamble product: Pepto Bismol.


Tony Sagami

30 year market expert Tony Sagami leads the Yield Shark and Rational Bear advisories at Mauldin Economics. To learn more about Yield Shark and how it helps you maximize dividend income, click Here. To learn more about Rational Bear and how you can use it to benefit from falling stocks and sectors, Click Here.

The article Connecting the Dots: Procter & Gamble, the Strong Dollar, and Pepto Bismol was originally published at mauldineconomics.com.

Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Income Inequality? American Savers Treated Like Dogs

By Tony Sagami

One of the hot political topics these days is income inequality, but one of the groups of Americans that’s the most mistreated by Washington DC is the millions of Americans who have responsibly saved for their retirement.

When I entered the investment business as a stock broker at Merrill Lynch in the 1980s, savers could routinely get 7-9% on their money with riskless CDs and short term Treasury bonds.

In fact, I sold multimillions of dollars’ worth of 16 year zero coupon Treasury bonds at the time. Zero coupon bonds are debt instruments that don’t pay interest (a coupon) but are instead traded at a deep discount, rendering profit at maturity when the bond is redeemed for its full face value.

At the time, long term interest rates were at 8%, so the zero coupon Treasury bonds that I sold cost $250 each but matured at $1,000 in 16 years. A government-guaranteed quadruple!

Ah, those were the good old days for savers, largely thanks to the inflation fighting tenacity of Paul Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan from August 1979 to August 1987.

Monetary policies couldn’t be more different under Alan “Mr. Magoo” Greenspan, “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke, and Janet Yellen. This trio of hear see speak no evil bureaucrats have never met an interest rate cut that they didn’t like and have pushed interest rates to zero.

The yield on the 30 year Treasury bond hit an all time record low last week at 2.45%. Yup, an all time low that our country hasn’t seen in more than 300 years!

These low yields have made it increasingly difficult to earn a decent level of income from traditional fixed-income vehicles like money markets, CDs, and bonds.

Unless you’re content with near-zero return on your savings, you’ve got to adapt to the new era of ZIRP (zero interest rate policy). However, you cannot just dive into the income arena and buy the highest paying investments you can find. Most are fraught with hidden risks and dangers.

So to fully understand how to truly and dramatically boost your investment income, you absolutely must look at your investments in a new light, fully understanding the new risks as well as the new opportunities. There are really two challenges that all of us will face as we transition from employment to retirement: longer life expectancies; and lower investment yields.

Risk #1: Improved health care and nutrition have dramatically boosted life expectancies for both men and women. We will all enjoy a longer, healthier life, which means more time to enjoy retirement and spend with friends/family, but it also means that whatever money we’ve accumulated will have to work harder as well as longer.

Today, a 65 year-old man can expect to live until age 82, almost four years longer than 25 years ago; the life expectancy for a 65 year old woman is also up—from 82 years in the early 1980s to 85 today.

The steady increase in life expectancy is definitely something to celebrate, but it also means we’ll need even bigger nest eggs.

Risk #2: Don’t forget about inflation. Prices for daily necessities are higher than they were just a few years ago and constantly erode the purchasing power of your savings.

The way I see it, your comfort in retirement has never been more threatened than it is today, and it doesn’t matter if you’re 20 or 70.

The rules are different, and you only have two choices:

#1. spend your retirement as a Walmart greeter (if you’re lucky enough to get a job!); or

#2. adapt to the new rules of income investing.

Today, the new rules of successful income investing consist of putting together a collection of income focused assets, such as dividend paying stocks, bonds, ETFs, and real estate, that generate the highest possible annual income at the lowest possible risk.

Even in an environment of near zero interest rates and global uncertainty, there are many ways an investor can generate a healthy income while remaining in control. Income stocks should form the core of your income portfolio.

Income stocks are usually found in solid industries with established companies that generate reliable cash flow. Such companies have little need to reinvest their profits to help grow the business or fund research and development of new products, and are therefore able to pay sizeable dividends back to their investors.
What do I look for when evaluating income stocks?

• Macro picture. While it’s a subjective call, we want to invest in companies that have the big-picture macroeconomic wind at their backs and have long-term sustainable business models that can thrive in the current economic environment.

• Competitive advantage. Does the company have a competitive advantage within its own industry? Investing in industry leaders is generally more productive than investing in the laggards.

• Management. The company’s management should have a track record of returning value to shareholders.

• Growth strategy. What’s the company’s growth strategy? Is it a viable growth strategy given our forward view of the economy and markets?

• A dividend payout ratio of 80% or less, with the rest going back into the company’s business for future growth. If a business pays out too much of its profit, it can hurt the firm’s competitive position.

• A dividend yield of at least 3%. That means if a company has a $10 stock price, it pays annual cash dividends of at least $0.30 a year per share.

• The company should have generated positive cash flow in at least the last year. Income investing is about protecting your money, not hitting the ball out of the park with risky stock picks.

• A high return on equity, or ROE. A company that earns high returns on equity is usually a better-than-average business, which means that the dividend checks will keep flowing into our mailboxes.

This doesn’t mean that you should rush out and buy a bunch of dividend-paying stocks tomorrow morning. As always, timing is everything, and many—if not most—dividend stocks are vulnerably overpriced.

But make no mistake; interest rates aren’t rising anytime soon, and the solid, all weather income stocks (like the ones in my Yield Shark service) will help you build and enjoy a prosperous retirement. In fact, you can click here to see the details on one of the strongest income stocks I’ve profiled in Yield Shark in months.


Tony Sagami

30 year market expert Tony Sagami leads the Yield Shark and Rational Bear advisories at Mauldin Economics. To learn more about Yield Shark and how it helps you maximize dividend income, click here.

To learn more about Rational Bear and how you can use it to benefit from falling stocks and sectors, click here.

The article Connecting the Dots: Income Inequality? American Savers Treated Like Dogs was originally published at mauldineconomics.com.

Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

The Single Most Important Economic Statistic that the White House Never Talks About

By Tony Sagami

For the first time in 35 years, American business deaths now outnumber business births. —Jim Clifton, CEO, Gallup Polls

I’ve been self employed since 1998, and let me tell you, the life of a business owner isn’t easy. It’s filled with long hours, a relentless amount of paperwork, and uncertainty of where your next paycheck will come from.

If you’ve ever owned a business, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Difficult or not, self employment is extremely rewarding, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Nor would the other 6 million business owners in the United States. Of those 6 million businesses, the vast majority are small “Mom and Pop” businesses. Here are more statistics on businesses in the U.S. :

• 3.8 million have four or fewer employees. That’s me!
   
• 1 million with 5-9 employees;
   
• 600,000 with 10-19 employees;
   
• 500,000 with 20-99 employees;
   
• 90,000 with 100-499 employees;
   
• 18,000 with 500 employees or more; and
   
• 1,000 companies with 10,000 employees or more.

Those small businesses are the backbone of our economy and responsible for employing roughly half of all Americans. Moreover, while estimates vary, small business create roughly two thirds of all new jobs in our country.

Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

For those reasons, the health (or lack thereof) of small business is the single most important long term indicator of America’s economic health. Warning: new data suggest that small businesses are in deep trouble.
For the first time in 35 years, the number of business deaths outnumbers the number of business births.

The US Census Bureau reported that the birth and death rates of American businesses crossed for the first time ever! 400,000 new businesses were born last year, but 470,000 died.

Yup, business deaths now outnumber business births.

Pay attention, because this part is important.

The problem isn’t so much that businesses are failing, but that American entrepreneurs are simply not starting as many new businesses as they used to. We like to think of America has the hotbed of capitalism, but the US actually is number 12 among developed nations for new business startups.

Number 12!

You know what countries are ahead of us? Hungary, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, Israel, and even financially troubled Italy are creating new businesses faster than us!

The reasons for the capitalist pessimism are many, but my guess is that the root of the problem comes down to three issues: (1) difficulty of accessing capital (loans); (2) excessive and burdensome government regulations; and (3) an overall malaise about our economic future.

Business owners are permanently smitten with an entrepreneurial bug, and the only thing that prevents them from seeking business success is the expectation that they’ll lose money.

Sadly, the lack of new business start ups is confirmation that American’s free enterprise system is broken.

"There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory... Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea—God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along." ―Elizabeth Warren

“When small and medium-sized businesses are dying faster than they’re being born, so is free enterprise. And when free enterprise dies, America dies with it,” warns Gallup CEO Jim Clifton.

I don’t believe for a second that America’s free-enterprise system is permanently broken. The pendulum will eventually swing the other way, but our economy will not enjoy boom times until the birth/death trends are reversed.

That won’t happen next week or next month. It will take serious, fundamental changes in tax, regulatory, and judicial rules, and I sadly fear that it will take several years for that to happen. Until then, our economy is going to struggle and will pull our high flying stock market down with it. Are you prepared?

If you’re not familiar with inverse ETFs, you’re ignoring one of your best defenses against tough times. An inverse ETF is an exchange traded fund that’s designed to perform as the inverse of whatever index or benchmark it’s designed to track.

By providing performance opposite to their benchmark, inverse ETFs prosper when stock prices are falling. An inverse S&P 500 ETF, for example, seeks a daily percentage movement opposite that of the S&P. If the S&P 500 rises by 1%, the inverse ETF is designed to fall by 1%; and if the S&P falls by 1%, the inverse ETF should rise by 1%.

There are inverse ETFs for most major indices and even sectors and commodities (like oil and gold), as well as specialty ETFs for things like the VIX Volatility Index.

I’m not suggesting that you rush out and buy a bunch of inverse ETFs tomorrow morning. As always, timing is critical, so I recommend that you wait for my buy signals in my Rational Bear service.

But make no mistake, the birth/death ratio is signaling serious trouble ahead. Any investor who doesn’t prepare for it is going to get run over and flattened like a pancake.


Tony Sagami

30 year market expert Tony Sagami leads the Yield Shark and Rational Bear advisories at Mauldin Economics. To learn more about Yield Shark and how it helps you maximize dividend income, click here.

To learn more about Rational Bear and how you can use it to benefit from falling stocks and sectors, click here.

The article Connecting the Dots: The Single Most Important Economic Statistic that the White House Never Talks A was originally published at mauldineconomics.com

New Video: 6 Simple Criteria that Guarantee Trading Success.....Just Click Here!

Q3 GDP Jumps 5%; Ha! The Crap Behind the Numbers

By Tony Sagami

I was raised on a farm and I’ve shoveled more than my share of manure. I didn’t like manure back then, and I like the brand of manure that comes out of Washington, DC, and Wall Street even less. A stinky pile of economic manure came out of Washington, DC, last week and instead of the economic nirvana that it was touted to be, it was a smokescreen of half truths and financial prestidigitation.


According to the newest version of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the US economy is smoking hot. The BEA reported that GDP grew at an astonishing 5.0% annualized rate in the third quarter.
5% is BIG number.

The New York Times couldn’t gush enough, given a rare chance to give President Obama an economic pat on the back. “The American economy grew last quarter at its fastest rate in over a decade, providing the strongest evidence to date that the recovery is finally gaining sustained power more than five years after it began.”



Moreover, this is the second revision to the third quarter GDP—1.1 percentage points higher than the first revision—and the strongest rate since the third quarter of 2003.



However, that 5% growth rate isn’t as impressive if you peek below the headline number.

Fun with Numbers #1: The biggest improvement was in the Net Exports category, which increased by 112 basis points. How did they manage that?  There was a downturn in Imports.

Fun with Numbers #2: Of the 5% GDP growth, 0.80% was from government spending, most of which was on national defense. I’m a big believer in a strong national defense, but building bombs, tanks, and jet fighters is not as productive to our economy as bridges, roads, and schools.

Fun with Numbers #3: Almost half of the gain came from Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) and deserves extra scrutiny. Of that 221 bps of PCE spending:

• Services spending accounts for 115 bps. Of that 115, 15 bps was from nonprofits such as religious groups and charities. The other 100 bps was for household spending on “services.”
   
• Of that 100 bps, the two largest categories were Healthcare spending (52 bps) and Financial Services/Insurance (35 bps).

The end result is that 85% of the contribution to GDP from Household Spending on Services came from healthcare and insurance! In short… those are code words for Obamacare! While the experts on Pennsylvania Avenue and Wall Street were overjoyed, I see just another pile of white collar manure and nothing to shout about.

Fun with Numbers #4: Lastly, the spending on Goods—the backbone of a health, growing economy—declined by 27 bps.

In a related news, the November durable goods report showed a -0.7% drop in spending, quite the opposite of the positive number that Wall Street was expecting.

Of course, Wall Street doesn’t want little things like facts to get in the way of their year-end bonus. As we close out 2014, the stock market marched higher and ignored things like:

• The reaction of the bond market to the 5% number. Bonds should have softened in the face of such strong economic numbers, but the “adults” (the bond traders) on Wall Street saw the same manure that I did.
   
• If the economy was as healthy as the BEA wants us to believe, the “patience” and “considerable time” promise of the FOMC should soon be broken…...right?

I spend most of the year in Asia, including China, and I am seeing the same level of numbers massaging by our government as China’s. In China, the government leaders establish statistical goals and the government bean counters find creative ways to tweak the data to achieve those goals.

Zero interest rates.

24/7 central bank printing.

See no evil analysts.

Financial smoke and mirrors.

That’s the financially dangerous world we live in, and I hope that you have some type of strategy in place to deal with the bursting of what’s becoming a very big, debt-fueled bubble.

Tony Sagami

30-year market expert Tony Sagami leads the Yield Shark and Rational Bear advisories at Mauldin Economics. To learn more about Yield Shark and how it helps you maximize dividend income, click here.

To learn more about Rational Bear and how you can use it to benefit from falling stocks and sectors, click here.

The article Connecting the Dots: Q3 GDP Jumps 5%; Ha! The Crap Behind the Numbers was originally published at mauldineconomics.com.

Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

The Healthy Bull Market: Bah, Humbug!

By Tony Sagami

Are you a long term investor? Convinced that all you have to do is wait long enough to be guaranteed huge stock market profits? Take a look at the chart below of rolling 30 year returns of the S&P 500 and tell me if it affects your enthusiasm.

The reality is that stock market results vary widely depending on what your starting point is. For example, any investor who put $100,000 into the stock market 1954 was rewarded with roughly the same $100,000 30 years later in 1984.

Yup… 30 years in, and not a penny of profits.



With the stock market at all-time highs, you may find it hard to be pessimistic, but the stock market is doing as well as it’s ever done, with a rolling 30-year return of better than 400%.

How would you feel about earning 0% on your money for 30 years?

Could the stock market go even higher? Yes, it could—but the odds aren’t favorable after the QE fueled rally has pushed stocks to historically high valuations. High valuations? Despite what the mass media and the Wall Street crowd try to tell you, valuations are quite high.

Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

The most popular myth spouted on financial TV these days is the notion that the S&P 500 is trading at 19 times earnings. Baloney!

First, that 19 P/E is based on “forward” earnings, not trailing earnings. As unreliable as economists and self-serving analysts are, I’m surprised that anyone—especially you—believes anything they say.

Second, that forward looking earnings forecast is based on those 500 companies increasing their earnings by an average of 23% over the next 12 months. Yup… a 23% increase!

That’s extremely optimistic, but I think especially misplaced now that the steroid of quantitative easing is behind us. Consider this: everybody agrees that stocks responded extremely positively to quantitative easing, so doesn’t it make sense to be concerned now that the monetary punch bowl has been yanked away?

The first place to look for signs of waning enthusiasm are small-cap stocks. While the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 were setting all-time highs, the Russell 2000 wasn’t able to punch through its March, July, and September peaks.



This quadruple top looks like a formidable resistance level for small stocks and clear evidence that investors are reducing risk by rotating out of small-cap stocks and into big cap stocks.



Additionally, financial stocks are showing signs of exhaustion too. Healthy bull markets are often led by financial stocks, but the financials are lagging the major indexes now. That’s why I think last week’s 3.9% GDP print smelled fishy; some weak economic numbers are spelling trouble.

Durable Goods Orders Not So Good: The headline number for October durable goods orders was strong with a +0.4% increase, but if you back out the volatile transportation sales, the picture is a lot uglier. If you exclude transportation—because just a few $100 million jet orders can skew the numbers—the 0.4% gain turns into a 0.9% decrease.

By the way, orders for defense aircraft were up 45.3%, but orders for non defense aircraft orders were down 0.1% in October. If not for some big government orders, the results would be absolutely horrible!

Unemployment Claims Rise Despite Holiday Hiring: The job picture, which had been improving, showed some deterioration last week despite going into the busy holiday hiring season. Initial jobless claims jumped to 313,000, a 7.2% increase from last week as well as much higher than the 286,000 forecast. It also broke a 10-week streak of claims below 300,000.

Before You Cheer Cheap Oil: After OPEC agreed to keep production levels unchanged, the price of oil plunged by 7% on Friday to less than $68 a barrel. That’s good news for drivers, but oil’s falling prices (as well as those of other commodities) are a very bad sign for economic growth. Moreover, the energy industry has been one of the few industries producing good, high-paying jobs. Thus, low oil prices could turn that smile into a frown in no time.



The Bond Conundrum: The yield on 10 year Treasury bonds was as high as 3% earlier this year but dropped to 2.31 last Friday. If our economy were rocking as well as the 3.9% GDP rate suggests, interest rates should be rising… not falling like a rock.

The stock market may not fall out of bed tomorrow morning, but the holiday season for stock market investors looks like it may be more Scrooge than Santa Claus.

30 year market expert Tony Sagami leads the Yield Shark and Rational Bear advisories at Mauldin Economics. To learn more about Yield Shark and how it helps you maximize dividend income, click here.

To learn more about Rational Bear and how you can use it to benefit from falling stocks and sectors, click here.

The article Connecting the Dots: The Healthy Bull Market: Bah, Humbug! was originally published at mauldin economics

Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!