I was looking up the current S&P 500 price and saw this advertised link. Curious, I figured why not check it out.. and wow! Do these people even believe what they're writing? It's the most trumped up collection of randomly joined words that when deconstructed say
absolutely nothing! The best part is, this seems to be a free peek at a daily premium column, as in people actually pay to read this fountain of information.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/charting-the-sp-500s-break-to-clear-skies-technical-territory-2017-10-10-121032417A few of my favorite lines:
Right from the beginning
Consider that the unseasonal October breakout has been broadly-based, and statistically unusual, in spots, against the backdrop of persistently flat selling pressure. The charts below add color:
WTF, the
unseasonal October 'breakout'? New S&P 500 tops were hit in
September 12th, 13th, 15th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 28th, and 29th. October hasn't broken out of anything.
Also, statistically unusual
in spots? As every now and then statistically unlikely things are happening? That like saying 'in spots' I roll a 6 on my six sided die, which is statistically unlikely in isolation.
And yes, the charts below literally add color, a lot of color, so much color that it's almost impossible to see that things are basically just moving steadily up. In fact the whole article could be summarized by a 3 month chart of the S&P 500 with the following explanation: "The S&P 500 continued a long period of modest gains, ending at a new high of X.", but I guess people wouldn't pay you money to read that.
As illustrated, the S&P has knifed to the 2,550 technical target, punctuating a steep October breakout. The initial pullback has been distinctly flat.
'Knifed'? This isn't Iron Chef. Also, what the hell is a 'technical target'? Is the S&P 500 targeting a specific score? If so, how is it doing it in a 'technical' way? Maybe it's because the target is 'technically wherever it ends up at today'? If you want to be assured of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target. And again with this 'October breakout' that is simply a continuation of the 'September breakout' which came on the heels of the 'August breakout'. At lest the pullback is flat this time, as we can clearly see from all the colors on that professional Excel-like chart.
Tactically, near-term support (2,540) is followed by an inflection point matching the third-quarter close of 2,519.
Tactically? What the hell is near-term support and how are its tactics related to the prices of a broad market index? And ooo, inflection points, I guess we're solving for when the 2nd derivative is zero. Actually, my guess is that if he knew he could slip in something about 2nd derivatives, he would have just to obfuscate his text even more.
I could probably go on, there's just so much gold in that article, but it amazes me that this is the kind of writing is put out
every day and people pay to read it. The amount of excess and obfuscated verbiage is amazing, but then I guess it would have to be if you're trying to write an intelligent-sounding article where the entire conclusion is "it went up again and we're not exactly sure why".
I would love to see any other ridiculous articles from the financial sector if anyone has any to share!
