Dow-NASDAQ: DJIA Afternoon Update 12-14-2018
Buy the Dips?
The DJIA and NASDAQ are both potentially approaching inflection points which may determine whether they manage to catch another bounce or offer confirmation that what is happening is something other than a short-term dip. It isn't clear yet but the market is providing clues with current levels that we should be watchful and perhaps even wary if we weren't already.
Some Levels
The DJIA has been crossing above and below 24,576 for quite some time. It hasn't meant much in the short-term. The DOW has even crossed below the psychological level of 24,000 multiple times this year. That didn't mean too much either. The NASDAQ today has crossed below the psychological number of 7,000. None of this means the market have to move lower. But they should serve as a warning. The DJIA keeps bouncing off numbers within its 6th level of 22,528 to 24,576. The NASDAQ has been working its way lower towards 6,963.20 which marks the line between its 2nd and 1st levels. 6,937.60 - if closed below on a monthly level for the NASDAQ could warn of further downward pressure.
Do Events Lead Numbers or Do Numbers Lead Events?
Most would tell you that, clearly, events move numbers. One argument against that idea is that similar events (or causes) do not result in similar outcomes (effects). The conventional wisdom about correlations, economic indicators, interest rates, inflation, etc. changes. Or, the conventional wisdom stays the same but then the events doesn't bear out any of the wisdom. It is no less likely that cause and effect are reversed 180 degrees from the conventional view. Why is it any less probable that numbers are the trigger for events? It is much easier to explain away randomness with more randomness. The argument ends up being prices are random because events are random because the Universe is random. And then, randomness somehow transforms into order. We have layers of seeming randomness created by layers of seeming chaos and on and on. But, perhaps, there is order in the numbers and we simply haven't studied enough to understand it.
Tyranny of Experts
Only the experts can tell us what our own senses reveal to us? We need someone, so we are told, to interpret the chaos and disorder for us.Without those experts, we're thought to be incapable of understanding what is going on. But many, perhaps most, of those experts are asleep. They have a philosophical or religious conception of reality that masquerades as a scientific viewpoint. In reality, they are practitioners of scientism or members of a kind of cult that purports to have the one true view.
The Matrix Has You
The Matrix was a program and a system of enslavement for the minds of those living within it. We too are often enslaved by our own thoughts and beliefs. We believe we have reality firmly within our grasp but have never even made an effort to reach out and seek it. The markets, like so much else in life, run away from our understanding. We become convinced that events happen haphazardly. We are bewildered when things don't happen as we anticipated. We console ourselves that randomness rules the Universe and we cannot conceive of the order of things. Markets are unpredictable. Changes in leadership catch us by surprise. The economy turns down at points of maximum optimism. So many are so wrong at the worst possible moment. We live in an age where people are starting to wake up. Many who think they are awake are still asleep. The Matrix has you...Still!
