August 2013: Ibex broke 8,600 as penny stocks fueled the party

August 2013: Penny stocks for the coffers, doubts for the Ibex

The Ibex 35 started August 2013 flirting with 8,400 points and ended it looking at 8,735 without daring to admit it wanted 10,000. In between, the selective index broke the famous 8,600 level, swayed by non-Spanish liquidity, and finished with a surge that led many to repeat that the index was "on its way to 10,000 with a firm step." It wasn't euphoria. It was something else: cheap money, German elections around the corner, and a European Central Bank acting like the Federal Reserve while Berlin looked away.

The Ibex between 8,400 and 8,735: rising without believing it

The dominant thesis in the analyses of that August suggested the Ibex wasn't rising because Spain was recovering, but because the ECB was printing money "at full estimulante ilegal," taking advantage of German silence before the elections. The most optimistic calculation assumed that once 8,600 was surpassed, the path was clear. The pessimistic view placed a correction at 8,400 as a minimum and warned that the upside potential was residual against a 300-point bearish drop "due to volatility."

The technical dispute played out on the S&P 500. One side marked 1,687.50 as a red line: as long as it didn't close below, shorts were dangerous. Another warned that if this reference was broken, the American index would fall to 1,660 and drag everything down. A third spoke of a "bear pain zone" between 1,723 and 1,727 that could be reached with little effort, as the buy-sell ratio among large traders remained above one.

The core issue was a familiar one: quantitative easing. Some in the market argued that printing money to support the economy "benefits a few and harms many," recalling that the last time a new paradigm was discussed was in the late nineties. The bulls' response wasn't much better: Bernanke was indeed a formidable force, but as long as the music played, few were in a hurry to leave the dance floor.

The penny stocks that paid for vacations: Prisa, Amper, and Sacyr

While the index debated with itself, real money moved in small-cap stocks. In Prisa, surveillance was meticulous: a block of 35,383 shares appeared for seconds on both the bid at €0.202 and the ask at €0.204. Coincidence or not, the stock had been above €0.20 for days, with isolated trades of 18,000 shares at €0.09 fueling suspicions of manipulation. The question no one answered with data: who placed those orders and why?

In Amper, the Friday close at €1.29 with low volume was seen as an invitation: breaking resistance and easy money for anyone who entered on Monday. In Sacyr, 10,000 shares were released to the market after hitting €2.99, with a warning that if the stock fell to the lower end of the channel, it could visit €2.6X. And in Gamesa, some closed with a €750 capital gain that, added to the gains from Sacyr that morning, made €1,000 in a single day. The circulating summary: buy at breakfast, sell before naptime.

The most striking transaction was recounted by a private investor who had held 60,000 shares and sold at €17.6 upon seeing the situation: over €3,600 in capital gains in less than 24 hours, admitting it was done out of antiestéticar, not conviction. Penny stocks don't reward the brave; they reward those who exit on time.

The pension limit: the €2,000 that don't add up

An interesting plot twist emerged regarding public spending. The question was simple and stark: how can thousands of pensions of €2,000 be sustained when newly graduated engineers earn "just over €1,000" a month? The harshest answer proposed a 60-year cap, a maximum of €1,500, a minimum of €800, and an end to early retirement at 55.

The liberal counter-argument was that those who contribute the maximum for thirty years should not receive less to compensate those who contributed little. And the counter-attack from the "establishment" flank: millionaire early retirements are concentrated among politicians, bankers, and public company employees, all funded by the common pot, while others prepare to retire "at 70" with pensions that, if they arrive, will be around €600. The consensus, so to speak: the pay-as-you-go system as designed is unsustainable. The disagreement: who pays the bill.

Syria, gas, and oil: when geopolitics enters the chart

In the last week of August, the market stopped looking at charts and started looking at the map. With international observers leaving Syria and Obama announcing intervention after the alleged chemical attack, the discussion moved to Congress with a deadline of "until September 9th" for military action. The market's interpretation was swift: pull back to buy time.

The geopolitical analysis went further. It was argued that the underlying motive was identical to Libya's — a corridor to transport gas to Europe and reduce Russian dependence — and that the key country for this corridor was precisely Syria, an ally of Moscow. Regarding who financed the rebel groups, Saudi Arabia and Qatar were the repeated names. And concerning chemical weapons, the circulating theory pointed to an accident during their handling by the opposition, which, according to the most skeptical, would explain Washington's change in tone. None of this has been proven.

A one-hour MACD and a system that only works on a cross

Amid the noise, a technical testimony emerged that deserves preservation. A trader confessed to having spent years testing systems and concluding the opposite of general intuition: the simpler the system, the better it works, and the more complex, the fewer signals it gives but the more reliable they are. His tool was a MACD on a one-hour timeframe with delayed confirmation of one candle, applied exclusively to the EUR/JPY cross. Thousands of operations per year and a single market. The lesson: systems are not universal; they adapt to the movements of specific crosses.

Others documented the opposite: spending months out of the market after a bad streak, with a hole of 12% in leveraged capital, and returning only when the chart speaks clearly again. The honesty of noting one's own losses is rarer than it seems.

The manipulation that almost no one disputes

The recurring accusation that August was manipulation in specific stocks. The most cited case was the sequence of daily candles in a mining stock: an identical pattern between July 12th and 23rd and between August 16th and 26th, with the last candle capping the repetition. The conclusion drawn was that the pattern could not be a coincidence. It's an indication, not proof.

What trinc was the trading itself. A trader claiming to operate with eight-figure portfolios warned that he only made "small incursions" from the short side to test the waters, and that the real selling would come at 1,600. Whether this was true or marketing, no one verified it.

Where analysis gets stuck

The Ibex closed August without breaking anything. The 8,600 resistance held, the promised 10,000 did not appear, and penny stocks gave back as much as they yielded. One significant unanswered question remains: why did a market rising on borrowed money and an economy laying off engineers at €1,000 coexist without the index reflecting it? That is exactly where analysis stops.