Has the US market really bottomed ?

When it comes to the US market, there have been a lot of mixed signals between what is mentioned by Wall Street and the Stock market behaviour over this and last week especially.

Overlay this with all the results that are coming out, one would have thought that the natural reaction in the market would be to fall. Lo and behold, the market overall is still on an uptrend.

How should we as retail investors make sense of the situation ? Lets take stock.

1. CPI (July) stands at 8.5%, down from June 9.1% historic high in 40 years.

2. PPI (July) stands at 139.81; slight dipped when compared to June's value.

3. US GDP estimated to be 2.5%.

4. Employment rate (July) stands at 60%.

5. Unemployment rate (July) stands at 3.5%.

From the above statistics (assuming actuals) it could be inferred that a "tight" labour market exists amidst a still inflationary market.

With that in mind and the FED's objective of bring inflation back down to the 2% to 2.5% range - there is still a lot of work left to be done, isn't it ?

The FED still need to bring inflation rate down by a WHOOPING 6%. It is mid August already. Do you think (logically now) that it is even achievable by Dec 2022 - which is only less than 4 months away ?

Assuming the FED stretch it a bit until end Feb 2023, this still means FED needs to bring inflation down by 1% monthly until Feb 2023 and with a "Soft Landing" as put forth by Mr Powell. Feasible ?

Before it's forgotten, FED is still going to adjust interest rate progressively upwards until around 4%.

How will you navigate the investment landscape, given the above facts and figures ?

For me, will use this time to :

(a) read up a bit more on what is there to invest for the longer term in the different sectors.

Recommendations by Tiger members like $ChargePoint Holdings Inc.(CHPT)$ , $Roblox Corporation(RBLX)$ , $Berkshire Hathaway(BRK.B)$ , $Alphabet(GOOGL)$ , $Amazon.com(AMZN)$ , worth a look maybe?

(b) continue to observe the market and seize the opportunity to liquidate some of the paper-loss stocks that I have been holding onto.

(c) It is timely to re-balance the portfolio that is heavy on Tech stocks.

(d) If there is any sudden fall in any stock(s) gathered in above point #a, will take a small stake in it.

Ideally will try to buy in when the price is fair. And how to know its a fair price ? Apart from above point #a, it would involved looking at the short-listed stock/s technical chart, on its Moving Average, MACD, WSMR and RSI.

What about you ? Are you taking this time to do more homework or are you seizing the opportunity to invest now that the market seems to be trending upwards.