Whenever a company prepares for a public offering, executives have been known to spend an inordinate amount of time choosing the combination of letters that will serve as the company’s ticker and often nickname within the investment community. To many, the fixation on selecting the perfect ticker seems like an irrational obsession on par with Patrick Bateman’s affinity for business cards. But there’s some evidence to support the idea that picking a clever ticker can be worth quite a bit of money.

An academic study titled “Would A Stock By Any Other Ticker Smell As Sweet?” (PDF) examined the performance of “clever ticker” stocks such as Southwest (LUV), Internet America (GEEK), Lion Country Safari (GRRR), and Explosive Fabricators (BOOM). This study uncovered that between 1984 and 2004, “a portfolio of clever-ticker stocks would have beaten the market by a substantial and statistically significant margin, contradicting the efficient market hypothesis.” Theories on the reason for this outperformance have been all over the board. Many have written it off as a coincidence, while others posit that a cool ticker is indicative of a more relaxed management team, and perhaps a more creative and productive corporate culture.

January was very discouraging for stock markets and, by extension, high yield (junk) bonds.

From mid-January when 2009 earnings were reported, investors have been largely disappointed and sold stocks. Since junk bonds are simply stocks with high yields, they also suffered. But rates on junk bond funds remain at relatively modest levels (near 10%) with premiums over the 10-year Treasury bond of 600+ basis points, both not far from their lowest levels.

A trend is a trend is trend. Until it changes my friend.

We've just witnessed two weeks of continuous equity and commodity weakness along side this, corresponding strength in US Treasuries. In situations like these (and by George there have been many in our trading life) we continually ask ourselves is this a tradable change in trend?

Take a quick look at any long term chart; and you will see rather a lot of volatility. I've yet to see a chart that has consistently smooth trends. And so, by our measure at any rate, despite two weeks of downwards pressure we have yet to see major technical resistance levels broken across the major asset classes. The USD is of course an exception, however we take note of the problems with the Euro. The charts below show were we put major resistance levels - always subjective but you have to have a take a stand.