Sellers controlled Tuesday's stock market session (August 1).
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Let's play a game. I'll call it, When Was That Quote/Headline?
Gimme hint, you say? Okay, this one belongs to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy. Keep reading once you've made an honest guess…
The month - February. The year - 1980. At that time a barrel of oil traded in the mid $30s. In the six or so years that followed, prices steadily declined to $10.
No, I didn't make it up. And no, it wasn't Herman Melville.
The month - November. The year - 1857. The source - The Boston Globe. Really.
What's that you say? Coulda been from ANY hurricane season during the past 40 freak'in years?
Look, I agree, so calm down. It was today, from the AP wire service. The story also mentioned violence in the Middle East: Israel, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, blah, blah. These same items -- a tropical storm, Israel/Hezbollah, Iraq -- were named as suspects in today's stock market decline.
Of course, we all know how RARE tropical storms in August have been in recent years, almost as rare as a day in Baghdad this year without a large bomb exploding. As for Israel and Hezbollah, well, didn't that begin about three weeks ago? Gosh, let's see what the charts say about that.
If you see what I see, then a few simple words sum up the respective trends in these markets over the past three weeks: stocks mostly up, oil mostly down. I'll leave it that, instead of making a bad joke about the "effect" of the fight between Israel and Hezbollah.
By the way, two of the quotes above (including whale blubber) appear in the August issue of Bob Prechter's Elliott Wave Theorist, which tackles the "Peak Oil" notion head-on, and the "Sudden Wave of Violence" that has dominated the broader headlines in recent weeks.
As always, Bob Prechter offers insights into these issues that you absolutely, positively will not read elsewhere. A subscription to the Financial Forecast Service is fast and easy -- follow the fast steps below to begin.