Archive - Sep 2010 - Blog entry

This story won't quit.

Hewlett-Packard Co. slapped Mark Hurd, the CEO it ousted last month, with a law suit soon after rival Oracle Corp. named Hurd as Co-president and Director. HP claims that Hurd cannot perform his job at Oracle without violating a confidentiality agreement.

But they're still spraying it ...

The Structure of Crude Oil,including Contango and Options Skew, provides options and futures traders unique opportunities to limit risk and initiate positions with excellent value.

Cover your ears. There are a lot of "I told you so's" coming down the Irish banking pike

Last week, the municipal bond Crisis began in earnest when the capital of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, dropped $3.3 million worth of municipal bond payments for the month of September.

This is just the beginning. Collectively US states continue to face massive budget short-falls in spite of massive Federal Aid. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, US states are expected to run deficits of $144 billion and $119 billion in FYs 2011 and 2012 respectively, unless they can cut spending further or raise taxes dramatically to close these gaps.

Hard to make up....

An historically hard currency culture suddenly has money to spend. To get China’s gold investment up to American levels on a GDP basis, it needs to buy 25 million ounces worth $31 billion. That amounts to 34% of the 2009 global annual production of $110 billion. The Chinese aren’t going to provide the next spike in gold prices, but they are building a floor higher than anyone expects.

A number of different chemists are finding elevated levels of toxic hydrocarbons in the bloodstream of Gulf coast residents who don't even work on the water ...

Reality is the great antidote of hope. Whenever my colleagues and friends ask me for my global economic outlook, by the time I’m done, they always provide a cheeky response about the depressing nature of my outlook. However, the outlook doesn't have to be depressing at all for those willing to face reality and take a proactive stance.

"Sometimes the cheapest situations are the ones that everyone agrees are cheap, but there's no catalyst. We think cheapness is its own catalyst and if you can be patient, sometimes for a year or two, you'll be rewarded. Our patience and the investor base we built that allows us to be patient is a big advantage."

Last week I forecast that stocks would either re-test 1,040 and breakdown or rally to 1,100. Stocks once again opted to accomplish both of my forecasts falling to test 1,040 on Tuesday before starting the mother of all ramp jobs Tuesday afternoon into Friday.

All in all, stocks rallied over 5% in the span of 72 hours. The move started off as the most obvious manipulation in history, with stocks exploding higher in the final 15 minutes of trading in August to insure that the Dow closed the month above 10,000, which appears to be the proverbial “line in the sand” that the PPT has drawn (more on this in a moment):