Archive - Mar 2011

Radioactive Xenon 133 (5.243 day half life) has now reached the entire Eastern seaboard, and soon will likely cover the entire world.

Today the majority of the world was celebrating the fact that TEPCO managed to restore the power supply to the radioactive power plant. And in an attempt to present the next straw man nuclear experts the world over began to focus on such secondary aspects of the explosion as rain and sea water concentrations of radioactivity, ignoring on purpose the elephant in the room. In the same time, those whose attention span is just a little longer than the average headline, put two and two together and realized that the key problem at hand has not been fixed at all. Not even close. According to New York Daily News: "Cooling pumps at one of Japan's crippled nuclear reactors are damaged
beyond repair and will need to be replaced, officials learned Monday. The revelation dashed hopes for a quick resolution to the ongoing nuclear catastrophe at the leaking Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. An emergency order has been placed for new pumps for Unit 2 at the
plant, but it's unclear how quickly they would arrive, officials said." And as readers will recall, and as the below satellite photo will confirm, reactor 2 is the only one of the critical 4 which did not in fact suffer massive explosive damage. So if that one is beyond repair, what happens to the other three? And just what will this much praised power supply at Fukushima actually be connected to? We really urge some journalist to actually ask questions that have a semblance of relevance at the next TEPCO presser, instead of continuing to fill the air with the same kind of fluff that accompanies every single Obama press conference.

Why does our government and Dr. Bernanke fail to see the obvious: inflation is here and it's worse than you think. All the world is inflating right now and the flood of newly printed money is chasing assets worldwide. What does this mean to our economy? Think about this: what good will a cheap dollar be for exporters when the rest of the world combats their internal inflation? If cheap money fuels demand, then ...

Meanwhile, back in the Gulf ...

In a move to combat rising inflation, Norway's Government Pension Fund Global, valued at $548 billion at the end of last year, is slashing its bond holdings and shifting to real estate and infrastructure...

Since the apocalypse is obviously priced in the Russell 2000, the market should be able to digest the latest piece roasted glow in the dark swan with barely a hiccup.

• ISRAELI WARPLANES HIT HAMAS MILITARY SITE IN GAZA, XINHUA SAYS
• ISRAELI GAZA ATTACKS INJURE FIVE PEOPLE, AL-ARABIYA REPORTS
• ISRAELI WARPLANES FLYING OVER GAZA, AL-ARABIYA REPORTS

That said, courtesy of the biggest case of headline fatigue in history, at this point absent NASA announcing the imminent destruction of the earth by an asteroid, or a Proxima Centauri supernova (and even that will be bullish as there is precisely 4.2 years of stock market Zimbabwefication before the earth is annihilated), there appears to be nothing that can possibly prevent the Chairsatan from reverse exercising his Russell 2000 put at 36,000.

A week ago when we summarized the most recent round of inbound humiliation by one alleged bucket shop known as Global Hunter Securities, which basically has a buy recommendation on every single reverse merger ever to come to the US, even the acknowledged frauds such as in that particular case CCME, we said:"Oh well - at least we can be certain next week's non
seasonally adjusted initial claims number will be at a minimum one (The
Seasonally Adjusted can well be negative - it is from the BLS after
all)." We were referring of course to the imminent termination of the sellside analyst covering CCME Ping Luo. You can therefore pardon our lack of astonishment when we read, literally minutes ago, the following release from Global Hunter: "We are discontinuing coverage of the following companies: AMCN,CCME, CHLN, CRTP, CVVT, HRBN, and SDTH. We are discontinuing coverage of these companies due to the departure of our analyst and due to a shift in our resources to other areas in the China space." Well, since we predicted the former, it was more or less expected, but we wonder what "other areas" in the China space has Global Hunter morphed to: will they soon be covering an as yet untought of pyramid scheme with a Turbo Buy? Or do by other areas do they actually mean perform due diligence instead of stamping everything that promises a coverage fee with a Buy rating. Which brings us to the topic of this post. Since Gobal Hunter's advisory reputation is smoldering in the sewer, we believe it is time to voice our own unsolicited advice, and tell readers to short every single company on Global Hunter's buy list. If today's example of DEER is any indication, the profit will be at least 20% in the span of a few weeks.

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 21/03/11

To all the sophisticated technical and fundamental analysts out there, we have some simple time and money saving tips. When the volume in the market plunges like today, the market will surge. End of story, no more 'sophisticated' analysis needed. As the charts below show, after exploding in the beginning of last week, purely due to various mutual and hedge funds succumbing to the dreaded affliction known as "selling", volume has since plummeted allowing the HFTs to step right back in with the vapor melt up program on full tilt. Should volume spike again the robots will pull the fake bids and the market will plunge once again. And to all who continue to trade this exclusively headline driven market, where one wrong word can shut down the entire HFT churn/scalp crew, we once again express our condolences.

What are Japanese school kids learning about radiation poisoning?

Days of inflatiory rage come to the US: "Police say a San Antonio Taco Bell customer enraged that the seven burritos he ordered had gone up in price fired an air gun at an employee and later fired an assault rifle at officers before barricading himself into a hotel room. Brian Tillerson, a manager at the Taco Bell/KFC restaurant, told the San Antonio Express-News that the man was angry the Beefy Crunch Burrito had gone from 99 cents to $1.49 each."

The ongoing tragedy in Japan has unsurprisingly generated a great deal of commentary covering how - and if - the country will recover economically from difficulties that at least from the television screen, seem insurmountable. The happy news is that if history is any kind of indicator, Japan will rebound with great speed.

Thermal images from Fukushima have just been released. One is based on data from German Die Welt, the other one comes straight from NHK. THE picture from Die Welt, emphasizing Reactor 3 and confirming that previous lies that all temperatures at Reactors 1 through 4, were under 100 degrees Celsius, were nothing but. Note the area indicating 128 degrees Celsius. We would assume that is the reactor core area (which refutes the lie). If, instead, that is the spent fuel rod area, then we have some very big problems, even if TEPCO is telling the truth for once.

The Fed’s policies are pretty much the exact opposite of what our country needs to get back on it’s feet... Not surprisingly, the markets are flying on the doomed Dollar.

RANsquawk US Afternoon Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 21/03/11