Possible Market Retreat

I have several concerns regarding the recent rise in stock prices. First, while the economy is stabilizing, it doesn’t justify the large run-up we’ve seen.
My second concern is a technical one. We’ve seen increasing prices with decreasing volume. This divergence occurs before a turnaround Plot of the Dow from April until now is show below. The top line shows the price increase, the bottom line shows the volume decrease.

Market Divergence

My third concern regards fundamentals. Project work has not increased, and continues to decrease. Project take ideas and make them real. Projects implement innovation, projects are the mechanism by which organization’s change.

The fact that project work is decreasing tells me that we’re not changing. We’re trying to sell the same things we sold before the recession in the same way we sold them. Supporting this claim, many of the managers that ran large banks and investment companies into the ground are still in place. The “to big to fail” banks are still to big to fail. Many of the Wall Street and banking companies have returned to the very same practices that led us into the recession.

President Obama has injected money into the economy which has worked to stabilize the markets, but unless we change our habits and improve our management, we’ll be right back where we were last year.

The good news is, that isn’t not all doom and gloom. I as seeing traces in serious improvements. I just hope it’s enough!

Cheers.