Fascinating

It's been a fascinating couple of weeks in the market. Biggish rally which seems to have sucked in a lot of people seeking some relief from the constant selling pressure and suddenly the downside has "re-emerged".

Somebody made a good point though - last week was the end of the first quarter reporting period for unit trusts so while I'm sure they will deny it there must have been some "padding" going on.

Didn't really do much with the rally but rather elected to sit on the sidelines. The only thing I bought was a few more shares in Zeder to satisfy my farming fetish. Their results came out recently and weren't too shabby and I see I'm basically getting a 5% dividend yield from them (at R1.35) so I can't complain too much.

The unlisted investments are valued at R1.92 which looks like you get them at a pretty deep discount if you follow the rights issue at R1.35.

Anyway - watching the US market yesterday and rest of global markets today, the sell-off trend seems to be back. It looks like we've got two things to watch now which are likely to weigh on the markets going forward:

Credit card debt: In the US credit-card debt rose to 8.82 percent in February, the most in the 20 years that Moody’s Investors Service Inc. has kept records. Moody’s cited higher unemployment and forecast so-called charge-offs will exceed 10 percent by the end of the year.

As credit cards tighten remember the pressure this is going to have on retailers who depend on credit based sales... This is a very real problem and its coming to your doorstep...

CDS defaults rate on the up: Credit Default Swap default rates are on the up again which adds fuel to my thought that the rally may have suckered in a few more people.

Remember that this rate went up sharply when the "smart money" decided to start taking some collateral just before the October crash.... If this is on the up again then tread warily...

Autos
The auto companies are an interesting one... I think that while people accept that Chrysler and GM are effectively about to go into "prepared" bankruptcy I think the actual "shock" to the system will send shudders through the US markets.

Looking at the data, experts are predicting that GM will go down in the next 2 - 3 weeks...

Wouldn't be particularly long in this market I'm afraid.