Archive - May 2010

Call your Congress Critters before Ben and Timmeh have a chance to take them out to another really fancy dinner with perks ...

It wouldn't be if the U.S. and other governments hadn't done ALL OF THE WRONG THINGS ...

Computerized trading platforms and various algos are entering the biggest frenzy over assorted technological gimmicks since the October 1987 crash. And the public demands their blood. Or as the case may be, Lithium Hydride. Alas, the agency that is supposed to protect investors from abuses of HFT and various other newfangled technologies is woefully stupid to be able to deal with this great issue. Nonetheless, Senators Ted Kaufman (D-DE) and Mark Warner (D-VA) on Friday proposed an addition to the Senate’s Wall Street reform bill that would direct the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to report to Congress on several key issues surrounding the May 6, 2010 market meltdown, which sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbling dramatically in minutes. High-frequency-trading algorithms have been the initial focus of questions concerning the collapse. We hope Kaufman is successful. On the other hand, the most likely product of the SEC's work product will be a 1 million page printout of all the jpegs in www.underagetransvestitesforregulators.com, better known in SEC circles as due diligence output. As usual, we hope we are wrong. As usual, we suspect we aren't.

The only trend that seems unlikely to abate at this point is Gold's bullish trend. We seem to be set to take out the highs and further accelerate from here. The only danger to the trend is a wave of defaults which would be massively deflationary in theory, but at this points it is unlikely politicians will let that happen. They will only make everyone wait painfully to come up to the obvious conclusion that they will bend and provide the liquidity needed and thereby cause damage to the system. - Nic Lenoir

One of the smarter people out there, yet one who constantly confuses his hopium kool-aid for other more alcoholically infused beverages, Credit Research's Tim Backshall, provides our temporally challenged viewer a 3 minutes crystal summary on the next steps for Greece (sorry, no Hollywood ending here), what record negative basis spreads mean (ref: Hollywood ending), on why idiots who say Greece is irrelevant with its mere 3% of European GDP are idiots (ref: Bear Stearns), what the contagion will look like, and how a Greek restructuring will be effectuated (will, not may).

The one main benefit to the financial reform effort so far is that it helps further do away with the false paradigms of "left" or "right" and "Democrat" or "Republican" - fewer and fewer people are falling for those lies anymore. Try to get an ideological conservative to explain why Republicans love spending and so eagerly give welfare to banks. Try to get your local liberal to explain why it was a good idea to make backroom deals with abhorrent corporations and drill, baby, drill. Heck, even try to get a Tea Partier to explain choosing bailout-lover Sarah Palin to keynote their convention, especially when that movement once had at least some pre-astroturf roots in protesting government giveaways. - Dylan Ratigan

Thanks to Leo for pointing out that the WSJ's Jon Hilsenrath has reported that the Fed is considering reopening swap lines with central banks, likely in conjunction with the rumored rescue package. This is the news that shot the market up in the last 10 minutes of trading as the Fed would never allow the market to close at the days lows, as it was preparing to do. "Apparently New York Fed President Dudley and Vice Chair Don Kohn are in Basel this weekend for an already scheduled meeting with European central bankers. A Sunday announcement seems like a growing possibility." Lehman weekends are back baby. And with that, we are paging Alan Grayson, who personally had a thing or two to tell the Fed lunatic about bailing out the world ever again without getting prior approval first.

This article is for all those bull market geniuses, who buy the hype and who have been fooled into believing, yet again, that "this time is different".

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 07/05/10

Crossing the wires. GGP down 10% today. When all is said and done Hovde will have been called an optimist in his valuation of the bankrupt mall operator.

When we disclosed that the Fed was getting crammed down last week on Red Roof Inn foreclosures, little did we know that Alan Grayson was going to take the material and make pure comedic poetry out of it. One more reason to applaud the brilliance of our corrupt and moronic Senators for preventing the much needed and long-overdue audit of the Fed.Enjoy.

In addition to having said many things about HFT in general in the last year, over the past 12 months Zero Hedge has focused a lot of attention specifically on Goldman's dominance of the NYSE's Program Trading platform, where in addition to recent entrant GETCO, it has been to date an explicit monopolist of the so-called Supplementary Liquidity Provider program, a role which affords the company greater liquidity rebates for, well providing liquidity (more on this below), and generating who knows what other possible front market-looking, flow-prop integration (presumably legal) benefits. Yesterday, Goldman's SLP function was non-existent. One wonders - was the Goldman SLP team in fact liquidity taking, or to put it bluntly, among the main reasons for the market collapse. We are confident the SEC will aggressively pursue this line of questioning as they attempt to justify their $1 billion porn download budget. We are also confident, that should the SEC truly take its role of protectors of investor interest seriously for once, it will uncover such criminality and corruption at the level of trading integration of open exchange and ATS venues (and the "but it's so complicated - let's just leave it untouched because nobody understands it" excuse is not flying any more), that it will make Goldman's CDO criminal and civil case seems like a dimestore misdemeanor. We have written about 1,000 posts about this. Readers are welcome to go back through our archives and acquaint themselves with the NYSE's SLP program, with Goldman's domination of program trading, with Goldman's domination of dark trading venues via the Sigma X suite, with Goldman's domination of flow trading via Redi X, and with Goldman's domination of virtually every vertical of the capital markets, which would be terrific if monopolies were encouraged in the US. Alas (last time we checked with the DOJ), they are not. Which is why we ask, for the n^th time, when will the anti-trust division of the DOJ finally dismantle the biggest market monopolist in the history of capital markets.

Yesterday, the Fed disclosed that liquidity swaps have remained at 0 for the eleventh week in a row. This is not unexpected, as it is in line with the Fed's statement of eliminating emergency liquidity facilities (and the CB liquidity swap lines are among these). Of course, there is no way to truly verify whether or not the Fed is syphoning off US money to once again bail out foreign central banks as the Fed is shrouded in secrecy, and while we have to figure out just what exchange Bernie Sanders concluded with Chris Dodd, on the surface we are disappointed that the socialist is not sticking with his initial much stronger language for Fed transparency. Furthermore, we know all too well that the Fed would never lie to the US population, right - just look at the chart below, which discloses the Fed-determined values of Maiden Lane I-III. Somehow, the combined value of these three Bear/AIG rescue facilities have surged to one year highs in the last week. This is somewhat stunning as we reported a week ago that the Fed is about to be crammed down on its Red Roof portfolio holdings due to initiatied foreclosure proceedings. We have no figured out why REITs have been defying gravity for the past year - according to the Fed and the FASB, foreclosures are now a valuation enhancing process. How could we be so blind not to realize this.

CME Group has issued a statement following rumors that erroneous or irregular trades by Citigroup Global Markets Inc may have been the cause for a more than 900 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average during mid-day trading on Thursday:

“While our policy is not to comment on individual participation in our markets, in light of volatile market conditions, CME Group confirmed that activity by Citigroup Global Markets Inc. in CME Group stock index futures markets does not appear to be irregular or unusual in light of market activity today.”

RANsquawk US Afternoon Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 07/05/10