Seeking Alpha by Adding Beta

Cyprus banks have been bailed out by giving a hair-cut to its own customers. Government which is supposed to protect depositors is putting a levy or tax unto 10% on deposits in banks. Whether this gets reversed or softened, it had made a big dent in confidence of bank depositors that their money is not safe. While Cyprus is very small economy in EU, depositors in Greece, Spain and Italy (which does not even have a government), must be looking at this and could start their own bank-run. Is this "Lehman" moment (or mistake) done by EU? We won't know the exact fallout since Lehman was much bigger and bank officials and governments have learned their lesson and most likely would come up with alternate proposal for Cyprus bailout. Markets tomorrow are definitely going to be volatile and S&P would have to wait for few more days to reach its all time high. Given that markets are up nearly 10% in less than 3 months of 2013, it would be prudent to take out the gains and stay ...

Spring is almost here. While many may balk at losing one hour of precious sleep on Sunday morning, I always look forward to day-light-savings as it gives more day-time to enjoy Sun! Spring means we can start looking forward to many things - wrapping up school and other kid activities, summer vacation, summer movies, IPL cricket season and don't forget stock market churn. This year markets are following the script almost to the letter. As historical data suggests, markets perform best during Oct to Apr cycle and perform worst during Apr to Sept cycle. If that pattern repeats, we are at end of cycle. With all indices recording multi-year highs with DOW even reaching all-time high, it is time to be careful. Most likely over next week or two, S&P would reach all-time high and possibly may try to breach 1600. After that market participants would realize that markets have reached too high too quickly. With Q1 wrapping up, markets would become cautious and start trending down. By e...