Archive - Mar 2011 - Blog entry

Just like the ole Stalinist show trials?

Do you know how they plan to solve the MERS conundrum/ClusterFUBAR?

"It does not get any clearer which way Wall Street is trying to take oil," says Stephen Schork. The Schork Report notes that speculators now own nearly six times as many barrels of oil... as can be stored at the WTI trading hub in Cushing, Okla.

Speculation in oil futures is absolutely rampant.

Microsoft effectively purchases Nokia's entire hardware platform from an economic perspective for just over a billion dollars, while Nokia solves the sinkhole that was OS R&D and the quandary over how to compete with the free OS that has taken over the world - Android. Now, the big question is, "Will it work?"

Hot money is good for the big US banks. But not so good for the folks in Libya. Congress wants to keep it that way.

The reasons the US hasn’t been gripped by riots are the following: 1) The security nets (food stamps, welfare, etc) continue to keep lower income Americans afloat… for now.
2) Food in the US is so processed that increases in agricultural prices don’t pass through as rapidly into higher food prices.

Neither of these will last much longer.

Investors will win the ETF price war, while the real victim will be an arthritic mutual fund industry. You can’t miss those glitzy, overproduced, big budget ads on TV for a multitude of mutual fund families. But they are about to be consigned to the dustbin of history.

EURUSD remains in its uptrend, however we are seeing a rather large sentiment shift in retail positioning with the EURUSD very close to Neutral territory after a spell in the strong long zone, GBPUSD is now also in the Neutral zone. Key news events that could have an impact on positioning are CAD Housing Starts released at 8:15 EST, and also tentatively timed is a speech by BOE Gov King.

The market sold off today as the Fed came out (not that there is anything wrong with that) and said...

Love the beaches, hold off on the bonds.

Nothing to see here... Keep moving along people... Your regularly scheduled programs will not be interrupted...

Funding for U.S. state pension plans improved marginally in 2010 as the economy recovered from the recession, a report from Wilshire Associates said. Will battered plans continue doing better?

"You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street," says a former congressional aide. "That's all it would take. Just once."

Where do the likes of Warren Buffet get off when he's all in favor of the death tax and allowing the government to redistribute your wealth yet he leaves his pile to Bill Gates's foundation, neatly avoiding the death tax.