Market On Open, Monday 22 December
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Is That …. Green In The Distance?
by Alex King, CEO, Cestrian Capital Research, Inc
Everyone is now convinced that 2026 will be a terrible year for stocks, because AI boom and crypto bust and 1929. And I would agree, except for this whole run up since the 2022 lows there has been a constant chorus of “this is a bear market counter-trend rally” or “this is crazy and it will stop soon” and “the real economy and the market are at total odds and that can only mean one thing” etc. In 2020 when stocks were rallying after the March lows, again the rally was disbelieved by many. “How”, mused many, “can stocks be going up when everyone is sat at home not going to work and not buying stuff in the street”?
Bull markets, it seems, are questioned and hated and mistrusted and disbelieved by the chatterati. But someone must be buying - right? Otherwise why would prices run up? So I have to conclude that either (i) the commentariat are ignorant and wrong, or (ii) the negativity is just a misdirect, chaff dropped from atop Big Money Towers to bamboozle the poors, and/or (iii) that real investors just get on with it and follow the market as it is, not the market as portrayed on endless media surfaces.
The reason I think it’s so important to check in with charts every day - even if you don’t trade every day, even if you run retirement money and make only a few tweaks per year - is that charts tell you what is actually happening with the market, not what you think may be happening or even worse what people with media distribution power want you to think is happening. But for as long as there are public securities markets, for as long as trade-level data is made available free or at very low cost, why wouldn’t you keep a weather eye on things?
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Alex King
OK. Let’s get to work with our daily market check-in.