Archive - Mar 2010 - Blog entry

Former Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge is adding his voice to the debate over pension reform, calling for a voluntary component to the Canada Pension Plan. “Let’s not kid ourselves, middle and upper middle Canadians now in their prime earning years are going to have to save more and expect to retire later in life than they hoped to do,” said Mr. Dodge.

What an idiot. It's like saying greed caused the crisis. Ack! Where do they get these people.

A very extensive look at investor sentiment.

Before delving into an ECB speech chock full of insight, a deflationist rant 'Through the Looking-Glass' of social mood as per:

[1] the management of inflation expectations;

[2] the implications within central bank (CB) exit strategery; and

[3] 'what Alice is likely to find' in Mr. Market's immediate future. If you think Bernanke an idiot and see hyperinflation-a-coming, you probably don't wanna read this.

The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan's £389 million deal for Britain's lottery company is a sign that private equity firms should watch out, The Wall Street Journal says. Noting that Teachers won out in a race against Europe's CVC Capital Partners, the newspaper's Heard on the Street column says it could be the beginning of a broader trend. I have my doubts...

Housing is still in trouble, CRE is in worse shape, low inflation is the result of deflationary factors, and at the ground level where most loans are made, credit is still stuck. It's pretty hard to spin the data into a positive.

Taleb, FTW...

This might mean something. I think so.

But the technicals have me rethinking these relationships. Is it possible that we could have higher yields and lower equities?

Germany, Canada, Latin America, Asia ...

D'oh!

Program trading as a percentage of total NYSE volume exploded last week with quadruple-witching. Index Arbitrage activity across the 20 most active member firms increased 1,190% ... with RBC and JP Morgan accounting for 53.55% of all reporting member firm activity. Crossing Session II volumes jumped 146% ... with Barclays, Goldman and Morgan Stanley accounting for 91.61% of all reporting member firm activity. Principal activity rose 71.39%, from just over a billion shares traded to 1.7619 billion ... with significantly escalated volumes for everyone but Goldman.

More than two years ago, in October, 2008 I sent CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton very compelling circumstantial evidence that massive manipulation was occurring in gold futures markets based upon my understanding of how massive shorts were initiated in the gold futures markets and bids sometimes pulled, creating a collapse in momentum, at precise times in the NY markets, to create waterfall declines in the gold futures market. Below is the correspondence I had with Mr. Chilton more than two years ago.

The Fed's affirmation that it still needs to keep the fed funds rate low is an admission that things aren't working and they don't know what to do. Ben maybe a bit premature with his talk about an exit strategy.

Despite the fact that a high was established for most major markets at precisely 12:48 (EST), the real fireworks didn't occur until 15:28 (3:28 EST), where Volume of NYSE Declining Issues proceeded to more than double its daily tally in the session's final half-hour ... an extremely rare and impressive feat. This intense EOD sell-off tops any form of bearish activity in recent weeks' memory. A technical look under the hood of the NYSE Composite, NYSE VOLD (Up Volume / Down Volume Difference) and 7 Primary US Equity Markets with one of our proprietary Advance/Decline indicators.