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Think what you will of former President Barack Obama, he was a great investor-in-chief.

On March 3, 2009, days before the start of the amazing bull market rally that turns eight this week, he told us that stocks had gotten so cheap they looked like a good deal.

Eight years on, the S&P 500 Index SPX, -0.23% is up 249%. Its posted a compound annual growth rate that would make Warren Buffett smile: 13%.

Now that the market has risen so much, apparently on expectations of business-friendly reforms from President Donald Trump, Id love to know what Obama thinks about whether to buy or sell, given his record.

Alas, we dont know his market view. The truth is, whatever he thinks might be tainted by partisanship. Theres a lot of that going around now. As an investor, you should try to avoid this pitfall, especially if you are on the left. Buffett, who backed Hillary Clinton, recently quipped that for half of his adult life this country had a president he didnt vote for, but that never kept him out of stocks.

But it feels like its time to sell. After all, Trump appears unpredictable, to put it mildly. And at least two signals are telling us to be cautious about this rally.

1. Insiders are bleak

We may no longer have Obama to help us with market guidance, but we can turn to other higher-ups: corporate insiders. The news is bleak for bulls. Insiders are selling this rally hard so hard theyre driving insider sentiment into extremely bearish territory.

Read: In stocks, nearly every type of active manager got worse at their job in 2016

The selling has pummeled an eight-week sell-buy ratio tracked by Vickers Weekly Insider, which analyzes insider activity. It is up to 6.3 from around 3 at the start of November. Insiders have continually stepped up selling, relative to buying, in the post-election rally. The current sentiment reading is solidly bearish, says David Coleman, of Vickers Weekly Insider.

2. Investors may be too bullish

I like to watch investor sentiment for contrarian signals. After all, the best time to buy is when investors are frightened. And a good time to sell is when investors are exuberant. This means there are fewer people left to come in to buy your shares and drive them higher. Besides, in the market, the crowd is often wrong.

Here too, though, we see bad news for bulls. Various sentiment measures I track show lots of optimism.

The Investors Intelligence bull-bear ratio, a measure of stock-newsletter-writer sentiment, rose to 3.82 last week. Generally, anything above 4 is a big red flag. The National Association of Active Investment Managers survey shows an allocation to stocks of 102%, the second-highest level on record. Put buying, a signal of bearishness, is low relative to call buying, which signals optimism.

Still too early to dump the Trump bump

Even though insiders are negative and investors are extremely optimistic often a bad combination for bulls its still too early to sell the Trump bump in the market. Heres why.

First, the insiders. Like many investment analysts, Coleman at Vickers Weekly Insider cautions investors against making decisions on the basis of insider sentiment alone. Insiders can be early. Markets can rally for a while even though they are negative.

Next, while sentiment seems very high, its not high across the board. There are several exceptions that suggest we arent at extremes, maintains Bruce Bittles, the chief investment strategist at Baird. I dont think theres enough optimism to overwhelm the trend in the market, which is decidedly bullish. You need more optimism than this to stop a market that has broken out of a trading range. Thats because, for him, the optimism is not deep-seated.

Also see: Bull markets eight-year anniversary reminds us that the Dow rewards the bold

Retail investors, for example, are still relatively cautious, he points out. The number of bulls in the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) survey recently stood at 37.9%, which is below average.

The yield on 10-year Treasury bonds is still around where it was in the fourth quarter of 2016, suggesting bond vigilantes are cautious on economic growth.

And the financial media remain cautious. Journalists are worth watching for a sentiment read, because they are often very good contrarian indicators. Theyre not necessarily dumb. Theyre just good at knowing what people want to read about. That makes them a good reflection of investor mood.

And, tellingly, the mood in the press remains skeptical of this rally. Nobody wants to talk about the market going higher, says Bittles. Every reporter I talk with is trying to get me to say the market is going to go down because of the uncertainty. But the uncertainty is what drives a market higher.

Here, Bittles is referring to the adage: The markets like to climb a wall of worry. Thats another way of saying you need cautious investors on the sidelines to come in and drive your stocks higher. The cautious media mood is telling us thats still the case.

Read this article:
Opinion: Will Trump top Obama as investor-in-chief? - MarketWatch

Michelle Obama has led a relatively quiet post-White House life. After taking a break from social media Jan. 20, the former first lady has tweeted only a half-dozen times, including that humble brag about her beach vacation. But in the past week, Mrs. O has gotten her mojo back, starting with a little shade thrown at the Trump White House tucked into an Instagram.

For International Womens Day, Obama visitedD.C.s Francis L. Cardozo Education Campus,specifically the high schools International Academy, which caters to newly arrived immigrant students.

I loved visiting this school because it tells the American story in so many ways, wrote Obama on Instagram.

By embracing young immigrants and their diverse cultures and contributions, Cardozo is a model for our entire country, Obama continued. The girls I met with today are ready to take on the world. Weve just got to make sure that the world is ready for them.

Obama has stayed out of politics since exiting the executive mansion in January. But theres no mistaking her very public emphasis of immigrant students as a political stance one that could be seen as at odds with the Trump administrations immigration policies. She has nearly 20 million followers across all social media platforms and has always used new media as a means to get her messaging across.

By contrast, although first lady Melania Trump has remained mum on social media about International Womens Day, she did host a luncheon at the White House in honor of the day. The first ladyarrived to a standing ovation and delivered remarks, but those were not readily available to the press pool. Her stepdaughter Ivanka was also at the White House lunch and tweeted earlier Wednesday, Today, we celebrate women and are reminded of our collective voice and the powerful impact we have on our societies and economies.

View post:
Michelle Obama celebrates 'young immigrants' on International Women's Day. Shade or no? - Washington Post

Former President Obama must answer questions about U.S. government surveillance of Trump Tower during the presidential campaign, Sean Hannity said in his opening monologue tonight.

Hannity pointed to anexplosive new report from Circa News, which found that the FBI briefly investigated a computer server tied to President Trump's business, that was allegedly communicating with a Russian bank.

The agency, however, has not gathered evidence of election tampering to date that would warrant criminal charges against any of the presidents associates.

Hannity said that during the campaign, a plurality of staffers would have had customary technological ties to the Trump Organization.

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Hannity said it's time for Obama and intelligence officials who oversaw this operation to "come clean."

"What do they know? What information was gathered?" Hannity said. "They need to assure you, the American people, that this was not not spying on a political opposition party just weeks before an election."

He added that just days before leaving office, Obama expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share intercepted personal communications with 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.

"We've been asking: Why did President Obama wait until the last minute, two weeks before he leaves, to issue that order?" Hannity said. "It's an order that he did not apply to himself for eight years. And since this order was signed, we've seen an explosion of leaks coming from intelligence agencies."

He said all of this raises "very serious" national security, ethical and privacy issues.

"Until we get answers, we're going to keep asking these questions," Hannity said.

Sara Carter, of Circa News, later said that there were reportedly a total of two simultaneous investigations, and that only one was subject to a FISA warrant.

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The rest is here:
Hannity: Obama Must Answer 'Very Serious Questions' About Wiretaps, Leaks - Fox News Insider

Samantha Bee finally got to weigh in on President Donald Trumps address to the Joint Session of Congress and TV news reaction MSNBC got scorched in the process.

Last week, Americas one-man white supremacist employment program managed to talk about his dystopian agenda using an indoor voice, without mentioning his electoral college win or deporting anyone from Congress, Bee said at the top of TBSs Wednesday night Full Frontal.

For this astonishing feat, the pundits rained golden compliments down on him in the warmest shower hes ever had outside of Moscow. The segment then cut to clips of TV news talking heads foaming over at Trumps performance.

Look, I know its extraordinary that he learned to read something, finally. I didnt think he could do it either! But you dont have to gush like hes a toddler who just made a boom boom on the big-boy potty, she scolded.

According to Bee, only one person in all of TV-news punditry wasnt buying it that night.

Cut to a clip of a black woman in the audience at a CBS News post-speech town hall, complaining: Thats not the Donald Trump that Ive seen for the past 30 days. Where is that guy that says what he wants to say, that is loud? Im gonna look for him on Twitter tomorrow, and see what he really thinks. Great job to the speech writer, but I will see Donald Trump at 12 AM!

Shhh! Dont tell the truth! It sounds biased! Bee cautioned. Then, she added, You know, maybe cable news should hire more black women. Except not you, MSNBC! No, you just sweep her out of the way to make room for whichever Roger Ailes harassment survivor pops out of your underground railroad next week.

Trump did not long get to enjoy his victory over his own tongue, Bee regretted.

Enraged by more leaks, this time having to do with Russia and his new Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump became steaming, raging mad. And, as a nervous nation started to wonder if Tiffany was the only one of Trumps acquaintances not talking to the Kremlin, the president did what any strong leader would: hightailed it to Florida faster than a Jewish grandmother in November, Bee continued.

From there, POTUS tweeted on Saturday that former President Barack Obama had wiretapped his office at Trump Tower just before his electoral college win.

Oh, thats new: white guy shoots himself in the dick, tries to pin it on a black guy. When has that ever happened? Bee snarked, rhetorically.

Continued here:
Samantha Bee Explains Donald Trump's Obama Wiretap Tweet: White Guy Shoots Self In D*ck, Tries To Pin It On ... - Deadline

Former president Barack Obama responded to President Donald Trump's accusation that Obama ordered the wiretapping of Trump Tower phones while still in office .

"A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice," Obama spokesperson Kevin Lewis said in a statement on Saturday. "As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false."

Earlier Saturday morning, Trump posted a series of tweets claiming that Obama in October sidestepped a court ruling to wiretap the then-presidential candidate's phones on a level that was "Nixon/Watergate." Trump did not include any evidence or links to back up his assertion.

"I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!" Trump tweeted just before 7 a.m. eastern. "How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!" the president added.

Link:
Donald Trump: Barack Obama Disputes Wiretap Claim | Time.com