Archive - 2009 - Blog entry

The Empire strikes back...

Calling politicians prostitutes is inaccurate...

This week's link fest has a common theme: the unintended consequences of government actions. I include the US Fed in the government category for obvious reasons. Between Greenspan’s beliefs in efficient markets, Bernanke’s Great Moderation, tax credits for housing and the Fed’s current unlimited money printing, it is amazing how much damage can be done by the wrong ideas and policies.

I'll admit it to everyone, I am absolutely disgusted with my investment performance over the past two quarters. I came into the second quarter up nearly 500% for the two years running thanks to top notch research across myriad sectors and loss about half of that profit fighting the bull rally that I easily saw coming but severely underestimated the length, depth and breadth of.

I don't get too excited when I see one day sell-offs. I was talking to a trader who told me he thinks hedge funds are unwinding risk trades going into year-end. Maybe they are or maybe this is another classic shakedown of nervous investors before they bring this market much higher.

The FDIC is auctioning off property that it has "acquired" from failed banks. This is going to kill the other owners of foreclosed homes. Who are those other owners? It's Fannie, Freddie and FHA. There is no winner in this policy. The losers live in Hampton Ga. Is Sheila Bair desperate for bucks or does she just not understand that she is cannibalizing the other D.C. lenders?

Well … the third time certainly proved to be the charm. After yesterday’s anticipated bounce filled an open gap at 1060.25 on the S&P futures (ESZ09) in response to an insanely oversold McClellan Oscillator reading of -381.49, the markets appear to be resuming their impulsively downward voyage back to reality; today’s internals registered even more bearish readings than Wednesday’s, which is an extremely negative omen for the future outlook of the markets. While the TICK did not register a reading that surpassed -1400 today (intra-day low of -1396), we did witness the VOLD relentlessly plunge to a new extreme closing low of -1,408,903, which now marks the lowest closing low since that of 9/02/09.

The GDP results for Q3 are a triumph of government stimulus, which is to say they are a mirage, destined to vanish when the money runs out. There is really very little good news from the BEA report when you consider most of the economic activity was the result of Cash for Clunkers, the $8,000 housing tax credit, and federal spending. But like everything else in life, it's a bit more complicated than that.

I guess that the lack of any volume in the market for the last 7 and a half months has finally made an impact on the financial performance of the market operator NYSE Euronext. Read more about it in this article.

"If leadership won’t add such language [reigning in the TBTFs], call your elected official and ask how much they actually receive when they agree to put on the kneepads."

The real source of America's angst is a sense that something is terribly wrong.

With the Fed’s $300 billion gift card to PD’s Treasure Island maxed out, one wonders who will support the vendors chomping at the bit to offload Uncle Timmy’s 3 to 7 year wares. But with the sun setting, the Japanese tourists trickling out, and the kids tired from a hard day of play on the S&P 500 Coaster and the SPY IOI Whack-a-Mole, it would be easy to settle into a semi-euphoric complacency, thinking ahead to a frolic-filled night on Pleasure Island...

These are some, of the more important, headlines coming from Europe

When it comes to the pension pie, the insurance industry wants a big piece of the action. Notice how the editorial sounds a lot like those fear-mongering campaigns from U.S. health insurance companies, warning us of the "dire fiscal consequences in the future". The only thing missing was "we don't want a public option for pensions".

→ Washington's Blog.

When a liberal labor leader and a conservative financial policy
analyst unite against something, you know that something is really bad (actually, I don't believe in the whole fake left-right dichotomy;  I think its Americans versus those trying to steal our wallets and our rights, but that's another story).