Archive - Feb 7, 2011 - Blog entry

Global institutional pension fund assets in the 13 major markets increased by 12% during 2010 to reach a new high of US$ 26 trillion according to Towers Watson’s Global Pension Assets Study. Despite the impressive rise in assets, the global asset/liability ratio is still well down from its 1998 level, highlighting the fact that global pensions remain vulnerable...

Most of U.S. corn-ethanol producers are barely profitable at present, some are already losing money. With rising corn prices, could there be an ethanol bailout? Cool infographic summarizes pros and cons.

Imagine if a grizzly bear got up and tried to attack you after you already brought it down with repeated gunfire. What would you do? You’d blow its head off and then walk up to the body and shoot it until you ran out of bullets to make sure the thing didn’t get up again. Bernanke would do the same thing to deflation today.

Call TODAY if you want your freedom back ...

Rummy sticks his foot in it again ...

That's GROUP-OM, not Groupon (or "Group-Moron").

Believe it or not, all of the officials at the Fed are not quite as blind as Bubble Blowing Ben. The Dallas Fed, run by our hands-down favorite Fed President Richard Fisher, publishes a regular Economic Letter that is always insightful and lacks the bias of certain other elected officials whose Helicopters will remain nameless. We’d recommend those expecting a strong rebound in housing anytime soon take a look at the December 2010 issue titled The Fallacy of a Pain-Free Path to a Healthy Housing Market. Mean reversion is a powerful force in finance and a picture is worth a thousand words.

As the United States of Zimbabwe barrels forward on Ben Bernanke's hyper-inflationary crazy train - we will go along for the ride...

Bernanke tells the public and Congress that the reason we need low interest rates is to support housing prices. He doesn’t mention that $188 TRILLION of the $223 TRILLION in notional value of derivatives sitting on the Big Banks’ balance sheets is related to interest rates. Yes, $188 TRILLION. That’s thirteen times the US’s entire GDP and nearly four times WORLD GDP. If even 4% of this money is “at risk” and 10% of that 4% goes wrong, you’ve wiped out ALL of the equity at the top five bank

The title says it all... Except for a few metric blips borne from .gov bubble blowing, the housing market has been on a continuous nosedive since 2nd half of 2006. Anyone unfortunate enough to buy into the nonsense mis/dis/information styled propaganda of "This is the best time to buy" or the government's incentives to catch a falling knife with your bare hands (ex. tax incentives) have already been cut...

Though fundamentals may drive behavior in the long-term, fundamentals have had, at times, zero effect on the price discovery of assets in the short-term. At a time when everyone but the most naïve of the naïve understand how grossly distorted capital prices are both to the upside (in global stock markets) and to the downside (in gold and silver markets) due to massive manipulation schemes executed through collusive bullion-bank and government efforts, it makes zero sense to continue to put faith in technical analysis in a vacuum as well.

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.