Archive - 2010 - Blog entry

The G-20 meeting in Seoul was not a good one for the Obama Administration and President Obama in particular. Mr. Obama was unable to conclude a free trade agreement with South Korea, and China told him to stop meddling in their internal affairs and put his own house in order first. China is right.

Away!!!!

There is just under two hours left in today's trading session and the AUD.JPY to ES correlation has decoupled. Since we all know it is impossible to finish red on POMO days, it is time to put on the convergence arb and rake in the free money as the late afternoon parabolic ramp up is bound to happen.

On Apple and Heebner cleaning house, whether he did it for liquidity reasons or not, the writing is on the Wall for Apple and the days of no competition high margin iPhone sales are over. Android is in town and has already taken over the lead. Add to that the fact that the equity markets are rather iffy to begin with, people are still heavily indebted and Apple caters to those who pay premiums, and the Apple sale was a no-brainer. Of course, I explained this in detail a month ago, but I guess it took time for the filings to come to light.

Can silver bullets stop a monster from terrorizing us further?

Why should this time be different as the current conference broke up with NOTHING accomplished other than to promise to get right on these issues at next year's meeting. REALLY?

The approval of a massive 2.8 megawatt plant in California is a game changer for the solar industry. Entering the big time. It’s all part of a rush to start alternative energy projects before Federal subsidies from Obama’s 2009 stimulus package expire at the end of this year. This one plant will provide about 15% of the total residential power in California. Will the Golden States become the first to free itself of hated foreign oil imports?

"Once they get their hooks into you, you're a dead pigeon"--Bud Abbott

Retail traders are notoriously wrong at picking market direction/tops and bottoms. Most retail traders very naturally seem to adopt a counter-trend stance and this offers very accurate signals for individuals looking to trade against this group. This daily report is designed to help traders focus their efforts on higher probability pairs.

The market slid today as Cisco spooked investors with a bad Q as they are still struggling to come up with a hit after the Thong Song, the G20 meetings proved to be less positive than a Helen Thomas pregnancy test, and macro news was more non-existent than dark matter (for now), as...

No increase in taxes sounds good. But nothing is free.

In fact, just yesterday we had a TERRIBLE 30-year note auction on just $16Bn worth of notes. Already Ben is pretty much the only buyer of Tim’s trash paper and, as that bid to cover ratio drops below 2:1, you’ll see rates begin to tick up dramatically, despite the Fed’s best efforts to contain them and that will put pressure on houses, corporate debt, government debt, municipal debt etc and suddenly we’re Greece.

According to the C.D. Howe Institute, Canadian government pensions are grossly underestimating their pension shortfalls and so are European and US governments. Will pension shortfalls trigger the next sovereign debt crisis?

Pixilating the News...

So here were are in 2010 and the US and China are now butting heads in a major way. The US (debtor, consumer, declining empire) wants to devalue the Dollar and export inflation to China. China (creditor, producer, rising empire) doesn’t care for this arrangement as its hurts profit margins at Chinese companies, increases food inflation (food is a higher percentage of income for the average China compared to the average American), which in turn means civil unrest.