GS fraud charges a weak excuse for a sell off

Friday's sell-off was mainly attributed to the news that GS is being charged by the SEC for fraud relating to its dealings with mortgage securities 3+ years ago. There was also disappointing news from Google and it was option expiration day which I have noticed lately, tends to be a down day. Combine all this with an overbought market it's not really a surprise to see a decent down day which I was expecting sooner or later.

Now, the question is, is this GS news the catalyst that sparks the next correction? I have my doubts unless we start seeing other charges made to other large players and even if that happens something like this is not a bull market killer...this excuse would be weaker than the ones that sparked previous corrections.

If the high of this move from Feb is in it's quite likely that there will be at least 1 week of topping behavior which suggests a run back at those highs.

I don't even know why I talk about these little wiggles in the market when I don't even play the indices anymore...it's more like a sideshow for me. Instead, I continue to focus on individual names and although I have a large cash position right now due to the sale of some winners, I'm still riding some a few names. GDC.to is one that has done very well for me this year and this week it had a nice breakout to new highs on good news. I expect this one to hit at least $6.

I was looking at the 5 years chart of the NASDAQ and noticed that it's only about 15% away from surpassing the previous bull market peak in 2007! The retail index as measured by the RLX is also in the same situation! Yet all we hear in the media is "new normal" and "consumer deleveraging". Folks, the stock market is sending a very powerful message here that so many people simply refuse to believe....it's saying the sky is about to get a lot brighter in the months ahead. Eventually though, I still believe we are going to get a multi-month period of choppiness. Coming into the year I made a post saying that based up history, after the first 10-14 months of the start of a new bull market you tend to see a multi-month choppy consolidation period. We are now in month 13. Of course, there's no law that says we have to see such a consolidation period but odds suggest we will. But if you try to time all the ST peaks and valleys of a bull market you WILL eventually get left behind and I'm sure it has happened to a lot of bulls already. That doesn't mean you shouldn't ever take profits...nothing is the game is certain and you need to ensure that you will live to see another day...but you need to have some conviction and courage to keep a LT position at all times if you want to make big money in a bull market. Very few people do this.

The dual nasty bear markets of the 2000’s have left so many investors permanently scarred especially the 2008 collapse which was the worst collapse since 1929-1932. I believe it will take a new generation of investors who don't have such bad memories before we will ever see the type of euphoria we saw in late 1999 - early 2000. In the meantime, while so many investors continue to be wrapped up in anger, denial, bitterness and perpetual pessimism you can still take advantage of opportunities out there especially in the small/micro cap space because that's where you can find market inefficiencies. Many of those companies were the last in line to get financing after the crash and now that credit markets have thawed out; they are starting to get it again.

I'm still quite busy with my new house and I'm going to be posting less frequently.