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It’s not all Good but it’s Better than expected!

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China’s stock market was up over 6% this week and it can only be based on a possible new stimulus package. That’s good. And overnight, big, important bellwether US companies, GE and Honeywell, reported well. Financials did OK this week, which surprised many for the current US reporting season. That’s also good.

We started the week at 5279.7 on the S&P/ASX 200 index and finished at 5268.2. That’s down 11.5 points and it has to be good that we didn’t give up much of the 4.5% gain of last week.

Remember, I told you during the week that October, forgive the market speak, is a “month of bottoms”. And so far, so good, on that front.

For the record, September 30 brought the most recent low of 4918.4. You’d have to go back to July 2013 to see that level, so that was a significant, big bottom!

Interestingly, if you look at the chart of the S&P/ASX 200 index, the stock market ripped after hanging around those lows. At the same time, the S&P 500 was heading higher too and some way along that rising market, the market started talking about the Fed getting closer to its first rate rise.

We’re in a “Fed will rise some time sooner or later” zone. The fact it’s looking more like later now is helping stocks head higher.

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The season is also good for stocks, with October historically positive for Wall Street despite the big crashes often happening in this month – 1929, 1987 and the GFC had a 1 November start in 2007 and doubled up on 15 September 15 2008. So October did bring a lot of stock price crashing but it wasn’t a starting month.

In fact, we shouldn’t be too cocky because the 1929 crash was October 28 and in 1987, it was October 19. That said, the month has a good history of setting us up for an end-of-year rally.

Only a damn black swan event could ruin this rosy outlook and I’ll look at that unwanted possibility on Monday.

On the local front and the PM’s magic seems to keep working with the media. Though they’re preoccupied with his Cayman Islands investments, the media is largely giving him a fair go – for a millionaire! – and it looks like his luck or magic seems to be creating what I’ve dubbed the “Turnbull turn on” effect! We’ve seen a pretty good week on the economics front, as I’ll show below. If we can see a stock market rally add to this improving economic outlook, then the turn on factor might crank up a gear!

Certainly at this stage, we’re seeing rising global stock markets plus better local economic readings, pretty good earnings results in the US reporting season, some positive AGM-related news locally and some better news for commodity prices. This all adds up to a better-than-expected outcome than you might have thought when we hit 4918.4 only 17 days ago!

Next week is a huge one for the US reporting season and it should be the big watch for the week, along with China’s GDP number on Monday morning.

A bad number there might be good news for stocks, as it should lead to “more stimulus is coming” speculation. I’d rather see my Chinese buddies pull a rabbit out of their hat and provide better-than-expected numbers. Good news might still be good news, even in a world recently where bad news has been good news, taking a line through the Fed’s delayed rate rise on global economic concerns, which has helped stocks.

What I liked

What I didn’t like

What I loved this week

Freelancer’s Matt Barrie rang me to see if he could come on my show this week. The day he came on, his share price rose over 12%. Earlier in the week, Domino’s CEO Don Meij rang to say he’d like to come on the show and his share price rose over 5%!

Could this be Switzer magic?!

Top stocks – how they fared

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The week in review

(click the blue text to read more)

What moved the market

The week ahead

Australia

Overseas

Calls of the week

(click the blue text to read more)

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Source: Issei Kato / Reuters

Food for thought

There’s a way to do it better – find it

Thomas A. Edison – American inventor

Last week’s TV roundup

Stocks shorted

ASIC releases data daily on the major short positions in the market. These are the stocks with the highest proportion of their ordinary shares that have been sold short, which could suggest investors are expecting the price to come down. The table also shows how this has changed compared to the week before.

This week one of the biggest movers was Monadelphous Group, with a 0.77 percentage point increase in the proportion of its shares sold short to 15.12%. Myer went the other way, with a decrease of 1.43%, leaving 12.96% of its shares sold short.

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Source: ASIC

My favourite charts

Dollar in prime territory

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The Aussie dollar is trading in the territory that supported our economy during the worst of the GFC. Go you good thing!

Turnbull turn on!

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The economy could be getting its mojo back through some Malcolm Turnbull stimulus, with the monthly Westpac consumer sentiment index on its way to positive territory after rising 4.2% to 97.8.

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