Thoughts {03.25.15}

-Yo-Yo market action continues.  We've opened down about half a percent and are trading back to where we were roughly a week ago.  Also we were close to the old highs around 2,120 on the S&P 500 a few days ago and were repelled back away again.  That are is beginning to look like a more serious resistance level.  

-Heinz and Kraft are merging.  {Velveeta marries Ketchup!}

-There's been a lot of discussion about what's hurting the middle class and the working class.  This article here makes the argument that it's Robots, de-Unionionzation and China.  I wonder what would happen at say McDonalds or Walmart if both companies would publicly come out and say the following:  "We are giving our employees an extra wage increase on top of what's already been announced of $1.00 per hour.  We will pay for it by raising the price on all of our products by 5-10  cents.  All proceeds from this increase will go to our employees."  I wonder if they would lose business?  I actually think not but until somebody tries that experiment we'll never know the answer.

-Greece is projected to run out of money by April 20th.  I think it's 50-50 whether they get any extra cash or the Germans tell them it's time to go.  Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has been trying to play nice in Germany the last few days.  He so far seems to have had a nice session with German Chancellor Angela Merkel but so far has walked away with no new money.  

-Markets overseas so far are seeing better performance vs. the US so far in 2015.  Here's a performance chart of a select group of foreign ETFs vs the S&P 500 for this year via Stockcharts.com.

*Long VGK, VWO and VPL and long ETFs related to the S&P 500 in client and personal accounts although these positions can change at any time.  Kraft, Heinz, Walmart and McDonalds are components of various ETFS we own for clients and in personal accounts.