LIF.un , Labrador Iron Ore income fund, by special request.

Lately I have been busy moving with all the little and big chores that entails. Furthermore  the market defies logic and consequently I have been wrong on two calls , so I have been a little less outgoing. This will change soon. Here, for starters, and by special request, is my view on LIF.un. For those of you that remember the precipitous drop that this stock had about this time 2 years ago. That was caused, so I understand, by the BMO that chose to discontinue its long standing relationship with Lawrence & Co by making a margin call at precisely the lows in the, then illiquid,  market. That was then, here we are now;

lif.un oct 2010

On this one I do not claim any degree of perfection, just a little market wisdom. There are a number of reasons why this is a sell.

1. There is no shortage of iron ore on this earth. Anyone that has travelled a little around this globe will know that virtually every second country has iron ore deposits, many in abundance , so “peak iron” is not, in my view, around the corner.

2.The overwhelming key to success in this business is simple buying low and selling high. No one actually does that, because high and low are relative concepts and therefore hard to use. Nevertheless I would argue that $20 was low and $57 is high.

3 Both the RSI and the MACD are non confirming the new, recent high, technically not a good situation!

4. The drop in ‘08 is , in EW terms, best described as an A-B-C. Typically these patterns are retraced to the top of the B wave, where we are now

5. Even if we go higher yet the double-top level is not far away and it always makes sense to sell at that level,if only for a brief time period.

6. The channel go up from the lows of $20 or so to the highs in August is very well defined even if no clear count presents itself. However given the large number of overlaps it remains quite plausible that this entire move is corrective, implying that the main trend is in the other direction.

7. The move up from the June ‘10 low looks a lot like a wedge. These tend to retrace in their entirety implying a price of about $42 in the near future.

8.This is the China/commodity trade par excellence. We all know that commodities are invariable the last to peak in a multi decade bull market, so that may be exactly what this one is doing. Concerning China,I have my doubts that they will remain the economic locomotive of the world.

9. As a broker, unless you have the misfortune of buying right at the top, you , or rather your client, should have money in the trade. Nobody ever lost by taking a profit.

S&P (SPX)

SPX Oct 2010

The S&P, actually the SPX, reached the perfect point today as well. The A-B-C corrective move has traced out a near perfectly symmetric pattern and has exceeded the target (see the World) calculated a week or two ago at 1144 ( the 61.8% retracement) by a relatively small fraction, and only for the second time for the past week. We will see if it holds and if it means anything at all.

The 20+ points up today was supposedly the result of the Japanese Central Bank lowering it’s rates, this time to zero. Why that is good is beyond me as they started this process 20+ years ago to no avail. Also the ISM services index was up a percent or two, barely above 50%. It was not that long ago that most of us had not even heard of this indicator, let alone assign any credibility to it.

The Russell 2000 is trading at 688, 2 points above the calculated target of 686. In the mean time the CAC, AEX and SMI are trading well below these values. Time will tell. Below is the TSE also completing a possible wedge.

tsx oct 2010