This Is About As Dull A Market As There Ever Has Been

It's been a slow week.

"How slow is it," the crowd chants, Johnny Carson style.

Well, the Dow is up 102 points as of Wednesday's close. That's the good news, and it's about as good as it gets. The NASDAQ, in three sessions, has gained six points, the S&P just under one point, and the NYSE Composite is down 22.75 points.

That's how slow it is.

As for the causes, anybody's guess will do, but the most likely candidates are uncertainty over just about everything, from impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives, to ongoing and increasingly-violent protests in Hong Kong, to backtracking in US-China trade relations, to just plain old vanilla market overbought conditions. It's not like the economy is booming (1.9% 3rd quarter GDP), or that most of the fuel has been courtesy of the Federal Reserve (another $200 billion added to their balance sheet in just the past two months), or that stock buybacks have been responsible for more than 60% of the gains over the past five years (maybe).

There are ample reasons for people to take a look-and-see stance. Just in case nobody's noticed, it's almost the end of 2019, allocations have already been made and funds are sitting on their hands, lest they get burned hitting the BUY button before year end.

If the New York stock exchange shut down for a day or two, or even a week or two, would it matter to anybody but the ultra-wealthy? Probably not, and, since the ultra-wealthy are, ahem, ultra-wealthy, why should they be buying stocks at nosebleed levels anyhow? They're waiting for the next greater fool, so they can sell some of their holdings at nice profits.

Thus, it's a simple assumption to make that if there are few buyers, and ample sellers who are holding out for the best prices, not much is going to happen, and that's why this week has been so slow. Whether that translates into a major downdraft, as many have been predicting once new highs were made last week, or another step up the ladder of success depends largely on news flow, and that hasn't been particularly encouraging of late (see above).

There's an old adage that reads something like, "never short a dull market," which falls a bit short in the logic department. If a market is dull, it obviously is in need of a catalyst to move ahead, move quicker, move at all. Will selling short bring out buyers? Maybe that's the idea, but there's no proof that a dull market is any more prone to melt up than a volatile market. If things are hot, people are buying and selling, brokers are making commissions (well, that's how it used to be), and stocks are going somewhere, up or down, that would seem to be a more dangerous place into which to sell.

There will be short sellers, but, at the present, there doesn't seem to be many eager buyers out there.

This is what happens when nothing happens. You have to write about nothing happening as if there is actually something happening.

Nothing is happening.

At the Close, Wednesday, November 13, 2019:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 27,783.59, +92.10 (+0.33%)
NASDAQ: 8,482.10, -3.99 (-0.05%)
S&P 500: 3,094.04, +2.20 (+0.07%)
NYSE Composite: 13,385.05, -2.57 (-0.02%)