Archive - Feb 18, 2010

The outperformance will continue. A recovering auto industry needs a lot of catalytic converters. 80% of the world’s production comes from Russia and South Africa, dubious sources on the best of days. A free call on political instability. Meet the “poor man’s platinum.”

The question of the day, "Does the Mainstream Media Take the Blogoshpere Seriously as a Credible Distribution Outlet for News and Opinion?" While the answer should be a resounding yes, the reality of the situation is probably "no". The media probably does consider blogs a threat to revenue and eyeballs, though. This is an interesting story presented to me from Aaron Krowne from Implode-a-Meter...

Nothing really new, just the most searing and comprehensive evisceration of the vampire squid's "profitability tactics" to date, packaged in a box of exquisite semantic brilliance that only Matt Taibbi can provide, and comprehensible enough for anyone to understand. Taibbi points out: "the fact that we haven't done much of anything to change the rules and behavior of Wall Street shows that we still don't get it. Instituting a bailout policy that stressed recapitalizing bad banks was like the addict coming back to the con man to get his lost money back. Ask yourself how well that ever works out. And then get ready for the reload." It is time to break up the market monopolizing force known as Goldman Sachs.

• Greece bail out cost: $441 billion (Bloomberg)
• Dollar rally drives euro near nine month lows as metals retreat (Bloomberg)
• Greece or California: who would you rather be? (LA Times)
• Germany's Merkel she's got the whole euro in her hands (BusinessWeek)
• States must fill $1 trillion pension gap (NPR)
• Bernanke chooses to exit through the eye of a needle (Green Faucet)
• Weil: BofA's new settlement with SEC smells even worse (Bloomberg)

• Asian stocks drop, Yen rises on Greece, concern Fed may withdraw stimulus.
• Bank of Japan leaves policy unchanged, resisting pressure to ease further.
• Fed sets goal of 'eventual' exit from housing finance to protect autonomy.
• Gold declines for second day on IMF's plans for open-market bullion sales.
• Leading Economic Index in US probably increased for 10th straight month.
• Michigan state public retirement funds is $50B short
• Oil falls below $77 as US distillate supplies rise

RANsquawk 18th February Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc.

RANsquawk 18th February Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc.

5 charts of S&P 500 Futures (ES E-mini) ... [1] Kase Bar 3 Point Range ... [2] Kase Bar 8 Point Range ... [3] Daily, 610 Simple Moving Average (SMA) ... [4] Monthly, Simple Moving Averages (SMA) ... [5] Monthly, Exponential Moving Averages (EMA)

The recently announced IMF sale of 191.3 tonnes of their gold reserves, though it caused an immediate sharp knee-jerk reaction in gold futures markets, will have a negligible effect on the long-term price of gold. There will come a time when the prices for real physical gold and real physical silver completely sever the already tenuous umbilical cord they maintain to the suppressed prices of gold and silver established by the agent bullion banks of the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England in futures markets.