Archive - Jan 2011 - Blog entry

Strength in Canadian equities have helped Canadian pension plans surge ahead of their pre-financial crisis levels of 2008...

I've written on this subject before, and my bottom line is that its a net positive for society for people who know what they're talking about to do so in a public forum, even if in order to do so they must use a pseudonym. I want to take a survey here and see what you all think, but before that, I want to clarify a few things:

Treasury yields are "blinking red", but the Fed keeps acting like nothing's wrong. What's the deal?

Now, $1 trillion is a tough number to get your head around. Here’s a little visualization to help you…Imagine you had a stack of $1,000 bills. $1 million would be a stack eight inches high. $1 billion would be over 800 feet high (think of the Washington Monument). And $1 trillion would be a stack 142 MILES high.

Crude oil spiked on the news of the uprising in Eqygp with the North Sea Brent at almost $12 premium to the U.S. WTI. Read about why and outlook here.

So, why do we make bullish bets when it looks like the New World Order is hanging by a thread?

What could the ruler of Egypt’s turmoils possible have to do with the
need to takeover even more banks in western Europe and the potential
default of several members of the PIIGS group? Read on, my dear friend…

It’s not so much that we should ignore what President Obama or congressional leaders have to say, as much as what they say and do shouldn’t concern us that much. Limited by a very clear document, their actions shouldn’t impact how we live to a very high degree.

For months now I’ve been warning of a serious correction hitting the markets. Looking at last week’s action it looks as though it’s begun. And it may very well prove to be far greater than just a mere correction. For starters, the Emerging Markets (which have lead US stocks since the 2008 Crash) have collapsed, breaking below the trendline that sustained them from their 2008 lows…

Sam The Scam and the Pharoahs singing your Monday morning wake up tune...Watch it now, watch it now

Could this be the third consecutive “sell in May and go away” year? While traders pile on their longs with reckless abandon, and retail flows into equity mutual funds turn positive for the first time in two years, I am hearing a rising tide of negativity from the jungle telegraph. There are “black swans” circling out there everywhere, and the risk is that they alight upon us in great unexpected flocks, like a scene out of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film, The Birds.

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.

Readers will recall that three months ago I had reported that "something was happening" in the economy. After several years of ultra-bearish reporting, I said that at the very least the economy was not declining further. The GDP report tends to support this, but in final analysis it is much ado about not much. Here's why.

Wrapping up last week, and what we're looking at next week.

The effort in Washington State draws heavily on the success of the 92-year-old Bank of North Dakota (BND), currently the only state-wide publicly-owned U.S. bank.