market folly

Raymond James' chief investment strategist Jeffrey Saut is back with his latest weekly market commentary. This week's piece, entitled " 'Tis the season?" focuses on how we have entered the best six months for equity markets historically. The months of November through April have typically performed better than the months of May through October. Saut also highlights this intriguing statistic, noting that "over the past 12 years the DJIA has always shown a profit between November 11th and December 5th." Always is quite a strong word when it comes to equity markets, that's for certain.

Saut's investment strategy this week also focuses on whether or not this is possibly a beginning of a new secular bull market or a "bull market within the confines of the trading range we have been in for the last nine years?" It's a tough question to answer and he admittedly can't answer it either. In fact, he says that nobody can answer that question right now. His team has been cautious after the March lows on a few occasions where they felt the market was overextended. They (like many others) were wrong and have tried to adjust accordingly and play the tape ala what famed trader and hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones would recommend. In the end, Saut and his team feel the market indices "will trade higher into the first quarter of 2010."

Embedded below is his latest investment strategy letter (RSS & Email readers come to the blog to read it):



You can also download the .pdf here.

We've covered Saut's commentary each week so make sure you also check out some of his notable previous thoughts where he talks about how numerous fund managers wished they would have bought at DOW 8000... ah yes, hindsight. Also, Saut has examined Dow Theory sell signals in the past and he has also put out this insightful piece on what a 'permanent' investment might be. We'll continue to cover his thoughts on a weekly basis.