Archive - 2010 - Blog entry

Even if some politicians tried to stand up to Wall Street - or even if we "throw out all of the bums" currently in political roles - the U.S. would still be locked into the WTO's scheme for helping the financial giants to grow ever bigger and to take ever-bigger and ever-riskier gambles.
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I take issue with some of Hank Paulson's tell all book "On The Brink". I don't think he told all the story. Parts of the story he told do not jibe with the facts. It was still an interesting book.

It's very hard to tell if this increase in employment is real, a temporary bump from stimulus, or a fiction arising from incorrect assumptions used by the BLS. Here's how to read the numbers.

Ever go drinking on Thursday and awake CSIQ on Saturday ... the unbeknownst shareholder of some Chinese micro / small-cap spec-crap ? If it occurred between February and December of 2006, you may have been a victim; you may have been electronically raped. Since CSIQ' IPO wasn't until 11.09.06, below is: (1) a daily & weekly snapshot (spanning 2006) of one of my all-time favorite-st pieces of Chinagra crap ~ the shell holding company known as SEED, whose accounting extraordinaire is matched only by the protectionism afforded its sector by Beijing bureaucrats; (2) the DoJ press release (2.5.10) in toto.

While it was another freaky Friday on Wall Street, I'd say the US jobs report was encouraging as was the price action in the stock market. Things are slowly getting better, but the pace of job growth is painfully slow. However, as the recovery gains steam, job growth will follow. It's only a matter of time now.

Please ignore this story. It is not important, and not relevant to anything you care about ...

TheStreet.com has dug up a very interesting email that shows what goes behind closed doors when the heads of two of the largest US and Spanish banks get together and talk. Not all of it appears to be legal – there may be collusion and an agreement not to compete for acquisitions.

At the rate things were going in mid-January, the 30 Year yield was set to blast through the June 09 highs. Amazing what a little equities downturn will get you, as...

If you’ve hear of peak oil, peak gold will be much worse. Investors are so scared from the events of the financial crisis that it will influence their investment decisions for decades. Did I mention there is an emerging market central bank bidding was for the barbaric relic? Buy when there’s blood on the street, preferably not your own. $2,300, here we come. (GOLD), (GLD), (ABX)

Bloomberg has an excellent interactive analysis on the potential for a near one million count revision upwards of the unemployment numbers. This combined with the work my team and I have put together should lead subscribers to believe that medium term, unemployment can (and probably will) exacerbate the global equity market decline.

7 technical profiles / daily charts of the S&P 500 Futures (ES), DJIA Futures (YM), NASDAQ-100 Futures (NQ), VIX (CBOE Volatility Index), US Bank Index (BKX), Gold Futures (GC) & Silver Futures (SI). Get your TA on & start mapping out a strategy / plan of attack for Friday's trading session.

Consensus is expecting US payrolls to rise by 15,000 in January. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual print comes in at ten times that amount...

The five pics below (5-minute, daily & weekly) illustrate [1] a near perfect, positive correlation (R-squared ~ 1) between Gold Futures (GC), Silver Futures (SI) and Crude Oil Futures (CL), [2] a nearly perfect, inverse correlation between precious metals & the US Dollar Index (DXY), and [3] an interesting relationship between the S&P 500 (INX) & the VIX (CBOE Volatility Index). (1) 5-minute Gold Futures (GC) v. Silver Futures (SI), (2) 5-minute Gold Futures (GC) v. Crude Oil Futures (CL), (3) 5-minute Gold Futures (GC) v. US Dollar Index (DXY), (4) daily S&P 500 Cash (INX) v. VIX (CBOE Volatility Index) daily chart & (5) Weekly S&P 500 Cash (INX) v. VIX

Today's price action registered extremely bearish readings across the NYSE TICK and NYSE VOLD (Up-Down Volume Difference). In our oh-so-very-humble opinion ~ equity markets are about to enter the Temple of Doom.

The first covered bond deal of 2010 is very simple in its terms and still, alas, a 144A deal. Notice four ratings firms were retained to provide ratings.