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All’s quiet on Wall Street

CEO’s, Board members. Up until a week or so ago, the insiders were out in force, buying up shares in their own companies trying to encourage others to buy as well.

Then the buying came to a crashing halt. Perhaps ‘crashing’ is an inappropriate term, but something big is going on. It’s too damn quiet on Wall Street.

“They’ve stopped buying,” says Charles Biderman, chief executive of stock market research company Trim Tabs, which tracks the data. “Insiders aren’t buying this rally. It looks to me that [they] are uncertain as to what’s happening.”

Insiders and business owners are uncertain, and so too are financial analysts and media pundits. The great daily waves of profits and losses recently only demonstrate a deep fear of the unknown –a regular battle for survival. In 2008, we saw a somewhat orderly daily march downward by comparison as the housing bubble and the gamey securities deals went bad.

This is something entirely new and different, and one gets the distinct impression that the problem is starting on the global level, and…that it’s clearly started. We’ve never been here before, ever, and that’s got the big boys very, very worried.

So what’s needed? More taxes?  More Printing ? More regulation?  Lower interest rates? More alcohol? No one really knows. It could be that there is no remedy for the global financial malaise except to let what’s going to happen happen. The business scene is changing daily now in the U.S., Europe and Asia.  Nobody has been here before. There is no precedent for this sort of thing.

If insiders, bankers and media pundits are all clueless and concerned at the same time, perhaps it’s time to do something about your IRA, your 401K, and any other nest-egg you’re sitting on.

All that can be observed at present is that insiders have stopped buying. It may signify nothing; it may signify everything.

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