The Surge Will Not Be Televised

This past quarter (2Q08) has been the worst in VC history, at least since the modern era of institutionalized VC from 1978  For the first time, NO venture-backed company went IPO, and for the first time since 2003 (at the tail end of the dot-com bust) no info-tech company went IPO.  Today Initiate Systems became the 20th venture-backed company to withdraw their IPO due to lousy market conditions (no kidding!).  The number of withdrawals (largely in Q2) is triple the number of realized IPOs (all in Q1).  The Surge won't happen until the IPOs come back.  Even CNBC cannot make lemonade out of these sour lemons. 

Comments

[mhd]

Expecting a "surge" with a credit bubble blowing up is probably like buying Nasdaq after it dropped a 1000 points to 4000 and thinking stocks were going to surge. Crazy things happen in the markets, but a surge with current conditions seems ludricous te me. There will be counter trends, but I doubt they will be anything but corrections.

[yves]

We are on track for a bottom coming up as a great buy in green themes.Perhaps if people read carefuly my recent text, they would realise that I expect sideways action for years to come for the general market.That is why its called "The Zone" .One will have to chase bubble after bubble to really score big.We have been on a sell signal since May 2nd .I had been looking for 11,000 and we are getting close.Until then stay cash.
Yves

[LoneStarHog]

Here is your bullcrap SURGE. Who gives a damn unless the surge is REAL and not an ILLUSION!

Chart> http://www.nowandfutures.com/images/weimar_stocks.png

Buy gold/silver and the shares...

LoneStarHog

[Upstart]

Bottom is where the uncommon, maybe once in a decade plethora of Fibo. clusters resides in July. Short until then, adding more on a rally, closing out and going long on the right day.

[Rogue Poster]

As said on Wed 6/26 when you guys were talking about the surge, it is not wise to try and catch the javelin here. And it still isn't. This market is badly damaged and even it it were at the bottom, which it isn't, but even if it were it has a lot to prove before you can start being a buyer.

[Rogue Poster]

One more thing. It appears to me, and several others here as well, that you both are not listening to the markets. Instead it appears, with this constant talk of surges in the midst of a bloodbath, that both of you are trying to assert your will over the markets.

[yelnick]

Rogue, did you read this post? There ain't no Surge on the horizon anymore. The title is a riff on the first Rap song, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". We now first need a capitulation bottom before any Surge can emerge.

[TObject]

Rogue Poster "in the midst of a bloodbath"

Rogue, I would not call it "a bloodbath". Actually this is an orderly decline, and not much more. If you check VIX - no panic yet, we can't even jump over 24!

[DG]

Rogue Poster,

NDX ended Friday flat. Granted, after a big loss on Thursday, but a "bloodbath" would have taken the NDX down 4% on both days and probably ended the week on the exact low, rather than having a nearly 2% rally to end the week (again, talking NDX).

I think this was a nice play by institutional money to get retail to sell to give the big boys some cheap shares.

[Rogue Poster]

DG, TO. Alright maybe a bloodbath it's not, but a serious decline anyway. And I agree about the VIX; that's one of the reasons I'm saying we haven't hit bottom. I did not see the "big boys" picking up cheap shares on Fri. I saw mostly small odd lots being sold by meaning retail investors were jumping in. But forget about opinions for just a minute. Just pull up the SPX (which represents most of the market) weekly chart and look at the stochastics and MACD. There is no way any technical investor can look at that chart and say "we've hit bottom."

[MT]

Yelnick, your surge is coming, how big, I don't know.
Only your timing was not perfect.
Don't let your emotions take control over you. Indices are at short term bottoms. An up retrace of 50% of last down move from may 19th will start. If indices retraced 50% up, they are going down again and every one is expacting the end of the world. This down move ends this bearmarket (september/october '08). Oil is going down. Do you believe that world politics will risk a world wide melt down? Israel is still not unleashed, it's only giving signals that international comunity has to act now before they will, hope as a last resort.They will attack if they have to, but they prefer not.
Also America is not going to attack Iran in near future. The Republican Party wants to win the November election, and the president knows that Americans fighting in another Middle Eastern country and $200-or-more-a-barrel oil is not going to help. Oil prices wil go down and US $ will be safed from falling further. Look also to the Shanghai index. It completed 5 waves down and retraced 50% of the giant up move. It's about to start rising again.

[yelnick]

MT, I will comment in a follow up to this post.