Archive - Oct 2010

Since the current week claims number is irrelevant and will be adjusted higher next week, we first point out last week's 27 or so consecutive revision, which was pushed higher from 452K to 455K. This also brings the total YTD prior revision at 34 up and 6 down. The current week number of 434K was below expectations of 455K. Look for the next week's revision to meet or beat the actual expectation but who will care then. In the meantime, with the last number before QE2 announcement, we expect the Primary Dealers to immediately tell the Fed no more POMOs are needed. And as an aside, continuing claims were revised from 4441K to 4478K. This is 40 up revisions, and 2 down. Probably the most important data from an economic perspective is that 400k people dropped from EUCs and extended claims.

Recently, in regard to the banker silver manipulation schemes, the CFTC's Mr. Chilton’s stated, “Under existing law, to prove manipulation, the government is required to demonstrate not only specific intent; we also need to prove that as a result of the intent and market control, that activity caused an artificial price.” I believe that the huge pricing anamolies in gold markets that existed on a regular basis during July, August, September of 2008 and that still occur today between the futures markets in Asia and those in London/New York intraday, as well as the significant anomalies between gold pricing in the futures markets and gold pricing in the physical markets is proof that the bankers’ price suppression schemes against gold create an artificial price.

• BoJ decided to leave its super-easy monetary policy unchanged; cuts growth estimates.
• Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China Q3 profits beat est. on higher credit demand.
• Carlyle acquires CommScope for $3.36B.
• Comcast's Q3 net fell 8.2% on summer slowdown in subscriber growth.
• Conoco's profit doubled to $3.06B on gains from asset sales and lower writedowns.
• Dassault's Q3 net jumps 44% to €55.4M on 38% higher revenue.
• Daimler's Sept. profit surges from EUR56M to EUR1.61B.

Just the weekly stuff today—claims at the beginning of the day, Fed balance sheet at the end. And of course, POMO. Look for the accepted to submitted ratio to determine how much higher stocks will close.

RANsquawk European Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 28/10/10

I have maintained for several years now that bankers invented the SLV and GLD ETFs as part of their overall price suppression schemes enacted against gold and silver. Can we now leverage CFTC’s Bart Chilton’s recent allegations of silver manipulation to spur the SEC's heretofore immovable Chairman Mary Shapiro to action and investigate possible fraud in the GLD and SLV by the bankers?

Retail traders are notoriously wrong at picking market direction/tops and bottoms. Most retail traders very naturally seem to adopt a counter-trend stance and this offers very accurate signals for individuals looking to trade against this group. This daily report is designed to help traders focus their efforts on higher probability pairs. So what are the signals?

"In fairness, Larry [Summers] did a heck of a job," --Barack Obama-- "You don't want to use that phrase, dude."--Jon Stewart

As if there was any doubt before which way the arrow of control, and particularly causality, points in America's financial system, the following stunner just released from Bloomberg confirms it once and for all. According to Rebecca Christie and Craig Torres, the New York Fed has issued a survey to Primary Dealers, which asks
for suggestions on the size of QE2 as well as the time over which it would be completed. It
also asks firms how often they anticipate the Fed will re-evaluate the program, and to estimate its ultimate size. This is nothing short of a stunning indication of three things: i) that the Fed is most likely completely paralyzed due to the escalating confrontation between the Hawks and the Doves, and that not even Bernanke believes has has sufficient clout to prevent what Time magazine has dubbed a potential opening salvo into a chain of events that could lead to civil war: in effect Bernanke will use the PD's decision as a trump card to the Hawks and say the market will plunge unless at least this much money is printed, ii) that the Fed is effectively asking the Primary Dealers to act as underwriters on whatever announcement the Fed will come up with, and thus prop the market, and, most importantly, iii) that the PDs will most likely demand the highest possible amount, using Goldman's $2-4 trillion as a benchmark, and not only frontrun the ultimate issuance knowing full well what the syndicate of 18 will decide in advance of what the final amount will be, but will also ramp stocks on November 3 to make the actual QE announcement seem like a surprise. This also means that the Primary Dealers of America, which include among them such hedge funds as Goldman Sachs, such mortgage frauds as Bank of America, such insolvent foreign banks as Deutsche, RBS, UBS and RBS, and such middle-market excuses for banks as Jefferies, are now in control of US monetary, and as we explain below fiscal, policy.

Today, the most fascinating fuck up in the stock market was not the flash dash in Renaissance Learning after hours, after the company announced it was handing out a $2 special dividend which based on some Keynesian version of mathematics resulted in a $9 surge in the stock price, but what is almost certainly a world record set in the churn of one of the most actively traded ETFs: the SPDR Select Sector Fund - Financials, better known as the XLF. As the linked Nanex data demonstrates, between the times of 14:25:18 and 14:27:20, someone sent out a total of 2,793,000 quotes on the Nasdaq exchange, an average of 23,275 quotes per second, and 23.3 quotes per millisecond! While we have not followed individual churn rates before, we assign today's quote bombardment in the XLF the world record (for the time being) in churning empty quotes. All joking aside, the SEC should immediately figure out who the offending party in this flagrant example of quote stuffing was, and politely ask just how it is that the entity could possibly expect that someone, anyone, could possibly trade on these 2.8 million quotes in 2 minutes, and if the intention was not to actually trade based on the massive quote packet (which is the only legal option, but that's a story for a parallel universe in which the SEC actually cares about the rulez), just what the actual intention of this world record in churn was?

Do you know what's happening right now?

It appears that increasingly more people are realizing that comedy is the only solution to the criminality, chaos and outright banality of daily American existence. In that vein, we introduce Charles Hugh Smith's Foreclosure Crisis Weekly.

"The Court requires an affidavit from Erica A. Johnson-Seck, a conflicted "robosigner," explaining her employment status. A "robo-signer" is a person who quickly signs hundreds or thousands of foreclosure documents in a month, despite swearing that he or she has personally reviewed the mortgage documents and has not done so."

Can Ireland avoid another potato famine? Not if they listen to senior advisers who are urging the government to use state pension monies to shore up their fledgling debt markets..

Appropriately, tonight's guest piece comes from Casey Research discussing silver