This Past Week's Correction of a Correction and More Interesting Happenings

The stock market's over valued. For some of us that's obvious. The stock market's not over-valued. For others of us, that's obvious. Which is it? Well, from a longer-term perspective, overvalued, from my not-so-valuable humble perspective. But still it keeps going up. So let's not spend time on the overvalued/not-overvalued issue, OK?

On the other hand, if you pay attention to "technical" conditions, you'd have to say it's overbought. That's different than overvalued. Overbought is more a short-term observation. And it is, indeed overbought. It's been overbought for some weeks now. And so this past week, we saw it drop - only to rise up again the next day. 

If Thursday's drop was a correction, that makes Friday's rise a correction of a correction, right? And so we're back to overbought again. Will another correction ensue? It's likely. This week? Who knows? Things could just drag on as they have been with little new highs continuing.

None of this seems all that interesting. Why? Well, I'll defer to our firm's "Brain Trust." These are the folks we pay for advice and prognostication who have proven themselves over the years. It's not always easy to find consensus with our Brain Trust since they don't all agree with each other most of the time. But if I were pressed, here's what I think they're saying: If we do get a correction soon, it won't be "the Big One." The Big One will come in time - maybe later this year, maybe next, maybe even a bit after that. But it's unlikely it will come now. 

And if a near-term correction does drop on us, it won't be so bad at first. At worst, it would be the first stage of the Big One - or something like that.

None of this particularly impacts our current decision-making when it comes to our portfolios. We've got a position in stocks. It's hedged. We're sticking with what we've got for now.

If this is ultimately not all that interesting, this week did bring some items that were. 

The EU Football (Soccer) Championship has been grinding on for a month now. Today's the final: Italy vs. England. I found the tournament interesting, and had fun watching a lot of matches. I'll likely watch the final today. Go Italy!

Then there was Wimbledon. It seems to be the preeminent tournament of the famous four "Grand Slam" Tournaments (Australian, French, English, US). I've watched some of the matches and today's the men's final. The women's was yesterday. Ashleigh Barty of Australia beat Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic. I caught the last set. Today's men's final - going on right now - pits Novak Djokovic of Serbia against Matteo Berretinni of Italy. I'm watching it as I write. Either guy winning would be OK by me. But for consistency's sake, Go Italy (Berretinni)!

(Berretinni's fighting back in the first set against #1, seemingly invincible Djokovic...)

There was some other interesting stuff going on, but it was all personal and most definitely wouldn't be interesting.

Summing up: The past week's market action wasn't really all that interesting. Longer-term, things will get more interesting - a lot more interesting. As for sports - if you like watching sports - not much is happening after the EU Championship and Wimbledon. In fact, unless you're a big Baseball fan, not much is going on the rest of the summer.

But that's OK. A few weeks of not much interesting won't kill you - especially during the summer. Summer's a good time to lay back a bit. I'll be looking to do just that. How about you?