Cyprus and the Manic Media Bailout

Daily Reckoning . Archives . Unsubscribe

The Rude Awakening Monday, March 23, 2013 | 1030 Hours Cyprus and the Manic Media Bailout News reporting in the age of permanent crisis... The financial media’s twisted carnival ride... Plus: All-time highs in sight Greg Guenthner coming to you from Baltimore, MD... Greg Guenthner Last-minute bailout... Where have I heard this one before? Eleventh-hour deals are quickly becoming the norm these days. Cyprus has become the latest member of the just-in-time club, notching a deal late last night in Brussels to grab its $13 billion bank bailout. The third-smallest eurozone economy didn’t come out squeaky clean, though. There’s still the matter of shuttering its second-largest bank. And anyone with an account larger than 100,000 euro is taking it on the chin. Of course, these new developments have triggered a huge relief rally for the U.S. markets, which plummeted last week as the Cyprus banking crisis began to unravel. Wait a just a minute — that’s not what happened at all... In the real world, the S&P barely budged last week, finishing Friday afternoon down less than a quarter of a percent since the weeklong crisis began. This morning, S&P futures are up four points. That’s it. Four measly points. Hardly worth noting, really. In fact, the reaction to the entire Cyprus situation here in the U.S. has been completely and utterly mundane. If I could somehow black out your access to charts or any other market information, you probably would have thought that the situation in Cyprus had brought the market to its knees last week. The financial media was all over this one (again) with its manic reporting. Every headline and blog post just one week ago breathlessly predicted doom and turmoil. This morning, they flip the switch to talk of all-time highs again: The financial media has you strapped to some sort of twisted carnival ride, yanking at whatever vulnerable emotion happens to bubble to the surface any given moment. The fiscal cliff reporting just a couple of months ago was no different. Same with sequestration. Now it’s Europe again. You can’t build a solid investment plan off these sensational headlines. There’s no sense in puking your guts out on the media’s spinning wheel of terror. When you buy and sell based on the crisis du jour, you’ll find nothing but pain and losses... Rude Numbers Targets, Predictions and Wild Guesses 100,000 has become an extremely important number if you happen to save your money in a Cypriot bank. Anyone with an account of less than 100,000 euro will be spared from a levy. $1,590 buys an ounce of gold this morning. Gold continues to sink after failing to top resistance at $1,615 late last week... $14.57 buys a share of Dell Inc. stock this morning. The computer maker rose more than 3% early this morning as Carl Icahn has jumped in with a new bid for the company. Meanwhile... $13.98 buys a share of BlackBerry stock. Shares are almost a buck lower this morning on a Goldman Sachs downgrade. 16 teams remain alive in the NCAA tournament. Florida Gulf Coast University is this year’s Cinderella, becoming the first 15-seed to ever advance to the Sweet 16. Rude Trends When to Buy... When to Sell All-time highs are back in the crosshairs for the S&P 500. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if the market steadily crept to fresh highs by the end of the day. After all, last week’s orderly consolidation has provided a springboard for the major indexes to leap higher. A little certainty injected into the markets over the weekend — no matter how trivial it might be — could let the market off its leash. Even if we are in store for another spring correction like we saw last year, stocks are signaling that we will see higher ground before the markets begin to top out. Plan accordingly. [Ed. Note: Send your feedback here: rude@agorafinancial.com ... and follow me on Twitter: @GregGuenthner] Ignore At Your Own Peril Today's Must-Read Links Massive Rare Earths Discovery at a Former Soviet Nuke Plant! Since when is the Pentagon giving out FREE investment recommendations? Ronald Reagan’s Little-Known ”Loophole“ Additional articles and commentary from The Daily Reckoning on: DR iPhone APP To end The Daily Reckoning’s Rude Awakening e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from The Daily Reckoning and The Rude Awakening, cancel your free subscription here. Please Note: If you unsubscribe from The Rude Awakening, you will also be unsubscribed from The Daily Reckoning. If you are you having trouble receiving your Rude Awakening subscription, you can ensure its arrival in your mailbox by whitelisting the Daily Reckoning. Copyright 2013 Agora Financial, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Protected by copyright laws of the United States and international treaties. This newsletter may only be used pursuant to the subscription agreement and any reproduction, copying, or redistribution (electronic or otherwise, including on the World Wide Web), in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited without the express written permission of Agora Financial, LLC. 808 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21202. Nothing in this e-mail should be considered personalized investment advice. A lthough our employees may answer your general customer service questions, they are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular investment situation. No communication by our employees to you should be deemed as personalized investment advice.We expressly forbid our writers from having a financial int erest in any security recommended to our readers. All of our employees and agents must wait 24 hours after on-line publication or 72 hours after the mailing of a printed-only publication prior to following an initial recommendation.Any investments recommended in this letter should be made only after consulting with your investment advisor and only after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company.