Goodbye to Pulses Magazine

Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.
~ Henry Anatole Grunwald

The past three years saw a good many articles published by Pulses. Unfortunately, I never knew about this magazine until ~4 months ago, late- September, reading reviews of it on someone else’s blog. I forget whose. The favourable reviews convinced me to check it out at Kinokuniya but I wasn’t convinced about the quality of the articles and the magazine as a whole. Was it worth its $5.50 price tag? Didn’t wanna waste money unnecessarily you see. So that got me borrowing a stack of 6 from the library, reading it over a month. That was how I spent my October.

November was my first issue. The article on the banks caught my attention. Been eyeing OCBC since the crisis so it was only natural to want an update on the banking sector. I remember thinking that unlike the Edge, which writes mostly on the micro issues, by that I mean zooming in directly on the companies itself and the news of the week, Pulses seemed to focus on the broader view, focusing on market trends, sector trends, the latest buzz, etc. I liked that. Both publications complemented each other, I felt. But the best part of Pulses? Very little ads, compact and fitted in an edition that allowed easy fitting into a bag (unlike the Edge heh).

Today as I read the Editor’s letter of the December issue, I was disappointed to learn that the publication will cease come January ’11. And here I was ready to subscribe, flipping the pages to find the subscription form!

Kudos to SGX, SPH & The Business Times for a worthy publication. Kudos too, to the Pulses team. You’ve done great work in business journalism. It was a pleasure reading the articles. I especially like the monthly column from the Commonsense Investor and wonder if he has a blog I could continue to follow. Does anybody know?

But from next month onwards, guess I’ll have to look for another affordable read that’s macro-focused.

Recommendations anybody?

~K

Breadtalk Dips But What Next?

My expectations that prices will bounce by this week hasn't materialized but my hopes that prices will dip to its 50 day moving average has come true. (See Breadtalk Buying Opportunity Soon for initial analysis.) Not only has it dipped, yesterday prices broke through the 50dma and continued heading south today. Mixed feelings about this.

From the looks of the chart, there are a couple of positives and negatives. Let me list them.

Positives:

1) Prices seem to be following an uptrend channel.

2) Price closed at support of $0.61.

3) RSI, Stochastics and MFI are in oversold regions

4) ADX reveals that the selling is not a strong trend currently.

5) Volume is low despite the selling.

Negatives:

1) Prices had trouble breaking resistance of $0.645 resulting in the dip.

2) 14dma looks to be heading to form a dead cross with 50dma by the end of the week.

3) OBV is has turned down.

4) 4 consecutive black candle days.

If selling continues, I'm expecting a dead cross to form between the 14dma & 50dma. This has a danger of plunging prices down even further thereby breaking the uptrend channel and compromsing support at $0.61 which could send prices down to the rising 200dma as well as previous resistance at $0.59. As stated, ADX doesn't show any trend forming yet despite the selling continuing as evidenced from the 4 black candle days. This gives hope that there could be a rebound especially since RSI & Stochastics indicate stocks are oversold at the moment. However with OBV turning down, and no upturn from RSI and Stochastics this gives an uncertain picture as to when the rebound might take place, if it takes place.

Shall wait a couple more days for clearer signals before deciding the course of action to take. 

Good luck peeps!

~K