Market Comments December 30, 2008 TSP Fund share prices as of: 12/29/08 Fund - G Fund F Fund C Fund S Fund I Fund 12.7387 12.5924 10.0426 11.5013 13.8814 $  Change - 0.0029 0.0211 -0.0278 -0.1755 0.1361 % Chg day - +0.02% +0.17% -0.28% -1.50% +0.99% % Chg wk - +0.02% +0.17% -0.28% -1.50% +0.99% % Chg mon - +0.22% +3.83% -2.72% -1.38% +4.84% % Chg 2008 - +3.74% +5.55% -39.36% -41.88% -43.94%   L2040 L2030 L2020 L2010 L Income 12.0933 12.2711 12.5625 13.6701 12.6846 $  Change - -0.0145 -0.0125 -0.0066 -0.0014 -0.0003 % Chg day - -0.12% -0.10% -0.05% -0.01% -0.00% % Chg wk - -0.12% -0.10% -0.05% -0.01% -0.00% % Chg mon - +0.35% +0.37% +0.45% +0.46% +0.42% % Chg 2008 - -33.70% -29.52% -24.55% -11.58% -5.83%

Today's Comments (Short Term Outlook)                             Printer  friendly

Light volume drifting Things could have been worse for the stock market yesterday as an early 150-point decline in the Dow, turned into just a 31-point loss by the close.  Between 1:00 and 1:30 PM ET, stocks found some support at last week's low point, and started to rebound.  Volume was light as you might expect, and the direction remains unpredictable.     The S&P 500 has been floating just under the 20-day exponential moving average for the last week, and there have been few catalysts to move the market.  The trouble in the Gaza Strip had an effect on oil, but didn't seem to bother the stock market - at least by the close.                        Chart provided courtesy of www.decisionpoint.com, analysis by TSP Talk The Smart Money / Dumb Money Confidence indicator on www.sentimentrader.com is at, or close to, a point where the smart and dumb money are coming together.  The smart money's confidence is decreasing while the dumb money's is climbing.                             Chart provided courtesy of www.sentimentrader.com, analysis by TSP Talk As they begin to meet in the mid-50's, I decided to look back at the last few times this has happened, particularly during this bear market.  The last four times the dumb money crossed above the smart money we had been close to a short-term market peak. It is close, but we have actually not seen a cross over yet.  While the dumb money moved up sharply from 38 up to 54 during the last week or two, the smart money held stead at 58.  It could be a play on the strong seasonality for them.  Here is the historical January seasonality chart. The data ends in 2006, but it is 57 years worth on data.  Below that is the New Year's holiday chart.  Both seem to tell us that the 2nd trading day in January seems to be the big one and if you remember from our chart yesterday, it has been positive during 8 of the past 11 Januarys.                                 Chart provided courtesy of www.sentimentrader.com Just a reminder:  Making an interfund transfer before 12 noon ET on the last day of the month (to be effective the 1st day of the new month) is considered a transfer in the "old" month.   Transfers made on December 31st before noon ET would count towards a December transfer.  After that and you're into January's transfers. So if you wish to make any changes that would be effective on the 1st trading day in the new month, you would have to do that using the prior month's interfund transfer.  Similarly, if you wanted to take advantage of the strong historical strength on the 2nd trading day of the month, but don't want to use up a January transfer, you would want to use a remaining December transfer.  But that would put you in the market on the 1st trading day as well.  That's all for today.  Thanks for reading!  See you tomorrow.