Seeking Alpha by Adding Beta

As every year, October month seems to be keeping up with its promise of being one of the most volatile month for stock markets. It started with a bang with Dow reaching record level on Oct 9 just to fall back about 5% in next 10 days culminating on 20th anniversary of famous 1987 crash! What a day Friday was with all events like options expiry, India and China markets crashing and on top of it wide coverage of 20th anniversary of 1987 crash in mainstream media! No wonder people got little scary and that's when it presents great buying opportunities. As I predicted in mid-Aug, I think this slide presents another excellent buying opportunities for long-term investors. My hypothesis is based on following analysis: Even though results from companies from financial and to some extent industrial sector are weak, other sectors like technology are producing very handsome results due to weak dollar and exports. Employment is still very strong with no major layoff annoucements outside mortag...

Typically October month is notorious for market volatility since all major market crashes have come in the month of October. But looks like 2007 October has started with a big bang with 2 big market rallies on Monday and Friday with Nasdaq jumping nearly 2.9% in one week. Next week earnings season starts in earnest and since there are no major pre-warnings, this earnings season should be pretty good. International markets especially emerging markets are on fire with BSE sensex almost touching 18000. If I have to make bold prediction, I won't be surprised if BSE sensex touches 20000 by the time 2007 wraps-up. That would be more than 100% jump since I was in India in June 2006. Even though Shanghai market was closed, all Chinese ADRs trading in US were highly volatile. One day, they were down by 5-10% and next day they were up by 5-10%. Is trading in Chinese stocks is becoming like gambling or fundamental landscape in valuations of these companies is changing? I hope it is later and ...