“A secular sideways market.”

That’s the best succinct description that I’ve heard so far of the stock market we’re in. It comes from Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank, at a panel that we shared at the recent Las Vegas MoneyShow.

At the same conference, Sam Stovall, the chief equity strategist for Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ Equity Research Department on another panel I had the privilege of sharing, peered into his crystal ball and offered that the gain on the S&P 500 would be about 4% in 2012. With lots of volatility—so much so that this year, Stovall told Bloomberg, that a 5% move should just be considered “noise.”

It’s reassuring to me these two smart market analysts see something like what I’ve called the “New Paranormal” market http://jubakpicks.com/tag/paranormal/ in my March 2 post. In my paradigm that market is characterized by lots of volatility but not much net gain—Ablin’s “sideways”—and achieving an annual return of 5%–Stovall’s 4% for 2012—should be considered a major achievement. This is still a paradigm under construction (and I’ll post a link for you to get a copy of its latest revision from the MoneyShow on May 16 on my http://jubakpicks.com/ site in the next few days.)

But watching the market action and listening to investor sentiment over the last few days has already suggested a new element to add to the model. It’s what I’m calling the Dangers of Deflationary Investor Sentiment. And I think it’s a major obstacle to achieving even the 4% to 5% returns that characterize a secular sideways market.

So let me start by telling you what this is, why it’s dangerous, and what to do about it. (Along with a few stock picks for execution during this current sell off.) Read more

Update Qualcomm (QCOM)

Talk is just talk. Even, or maybe that’s “especially,” when it’s from a company’s CEO.

But it can still give investors a sense of where a company thinks it’s headed.

Take, for example, the talk from Qualcomm (QCOM) CEO Paul Jacobs in Hong Kong on November 18.

Jacobs told reporters that Qualcomm hopes to sell a fourth-generation chip based on the TD-LTE standard, China’s home growth cell-phone technology in China in 2010. Read more