How High Can Mountains Be?

How High Can Mountains Be?

All of a sudden, answering this question became a big concern with me. Thursday evenings seem to be fertile ground for these types of questions (along with the other six days).

Is there a maximum limit to the height of mountains? Unsurprisingly, this question has been asked before. A web search turned up numerous attempts at an answer, but the Talking Physics'  website provided the most complete response (the above title is a link to the site).

If one assumes a mountain is cone shaped, and it is made of granite, which is one of the hardest substances and least compressible, the author of this article calculated the maximum height a mountain on Earth as:

Any higher and the granite would likely start fracturing and deforming. Most other materials have a lower compressive strength, so any mountain made out of them would likely begin deforming at lower heights. Assuming we can't find a mountain made of pure diamond, the physical properties of granite likely provides the limitations on mountain height on Earth (note that the tallest granite mountain on Mars could probably be 2.1 times as high as one on Earth).

If you were trying to one-up your neighbor and build the tallest mountain possible in your backyard, how would you know when you've reached the limit? Probably when you added a 12-inch tall rock and the mountain didn't increase 12-inches in height. You would look at it and say “something isn't right”.

Back to what started this train of thought. How would you know when the stock market may be reaching its height limit, at least for the time being?

In early October 2013, the S&P 500 steadily moved up, slowly setting new highs. There were several days during that period where volume on up-close days was above average. By late December, new highs were accompanied by very low volume, and within a couple of weeks, the S&P quickly dropped 6%.

A short-term low was set in early February and the S&P rebounded to new highs with several days of above average volume on up-close days.

The S&P has recently tried to set new highs but volume is quickly falling off. As back in January, a 12-inch rock isn't producing a 12-inch increase in mountain height. That may change with today's jobs report or other encouraging news on the economy. But until it does, be a little suspicious of this ‘rally'.

In today's Seasonal Forecaster, we are taking profits on a couple of positions currently up 19.2% and 20.2%, because of a similarly suspicious setup.

Of course, there's much more you need to know and many more stocks you can capitalize upon each and every day.  To find out more, click this link www.markettamer.com/seasonal

By Gregg Harris, MarketTamer Chief Technical Strategist

Copyright (C) 2014 Stock & Options Training LLC

Unless indicated otherwise, at the time of this writing, the author has no positions in any of the above-mentioned securities.

Gregg Harris is the Chief Technical Strategist at MarketTamer.com with extensive experience in the financial sector.

Gregg started out as an Engineer and brings a rigorous thinking to his financial research. Gregg's passion for finance resulted in the creation of a real-time quote system and his work has been featured nationally in publications, such as the Investment Guide magazine.

As an avid researcher, Gregg concentrates on leveraging what institutional and big money players are doing to move the market and create seasonal trend patterns. Using custom research tools, Gregg identifies stocks that are optimal for stock and options traders to exploit these trends and find the tailwinds that can propel stocks to levels that are hidden to the average trader.

Related Posts