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Manipulated Monday – New Year Starts with a Bang
Manipulated Monday – New Year Starts with a Bang
The futures are so bright, we have to wear shades this morning.
Those shades would be blinders, like we put on horses to keep them from being distracted by reality while they race forward as we left 3 of our jockeys - Japan, China and the UK back at the paddock as they are all closed today, making this a very thinly traded open to 2011 and causing us to take all the early-morning exuberance with a Lot's wife-sized grain of salt.
Oh we're ready to get bullish! Ready in much the same way a fraternity pledge is ready to eat the worm at the bottom of the tequila bottle - it's disgusting and we'll probably be sick tomorrow but, for tonight - we get to hang out with the party boys and, if nothing else - we'll always have our memories to look back on.
The Republicans have already put Obama on Double Secret Probation, threatening to "go nuclear" and shut down government by refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless Obama agrees to "a range of painful cuts." According to White House Economic Adviser, Austan Goolsbee, the Republicans are "playing chicken with the Nation's financial credibility."
This is not a game. You know, the debt ceiling ... is not something to toy with. If we hit the debt ceiling, that's ... essentially defaulting on our obligations, which is totally unprecedented in American history. The impact on the economy would be catastrophic. I mean, that would be a worse financial economic crisis than anything we saw in 2008.
"To not raise the debt ceiling could be a default of the United States on bond and Treasury obligations," said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. "That would be very bad for the position of the United States in the world at large," Graham said. "But this is an opportunity to make sure the government is changing its spending ways." Graham, speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press," said he would not vote to raise the debt ceiling unless spending is cut back to 2008 levels.
So happy 2011 to you, we're really starting the year off with a bang!
Investors should, of course, thank the Republicans for their convoluted stance as this latest round of idiocy is already undermining faith in the dollar and that has already sent oil prices up $3.20 off Friday's close - all the way to $92.20 in pre-market trading and that's worth an extra $300M a day for the various oil cartels that will be removed from consumers pockets (and put into the pockets of friendly politicians, of course).
The good news is though, that that will also make Billions of more dollars available to terrorist and that will give us a great justifications to keep spending $1,000,000,000,000 per year on the military without any cutbacks at all while we strip-mine all those horrible social safety-net programs that dare to give downtrodden Americans hope. Of course the stock market futures are loving this and the Dow, at 7:45, looks like it will open up 100 points as the combination of a weak dollar and a weak President is the investing class's fondest wish for the New Year.
It's not entirely too late to go back and read Christmas Weekend's "Secret Santa Inflation Hedges for 2011" or even some of our Breakout Defense plays from earlier in the month. As I pointed out in this weekend's "Reviewing the Reviews" article, our GE play from the Dec 11th breakout set is "only" up .35 out of $2.65 of potential gains so far as these hedges are designed to return that steady 10-20% per month while we're on target. My review of the 2010 reviews is mainly backwards looking as I have little different to add to my "2010 Outlook - A Tale of Two Economies," which is an ongoing story and was very nicely updated by our friend Robert Reich just last week, which Washington's Blog did a nice job of coloring in as well.
When I have something new to say about 2011, I'll write it up but, for now, I defer to Republican Abraham Lincoln who warned: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other." Something to look forward to in the 2012 elections, I guess.
Although he was talking about slavery, Lincoln could just as well have been talking about the gap between the rich and the poor which is now wider than the records set in the roaring 20's, the year before the great collapse of 1929. Even a 1920's sharecropper was closer economically to his plantation owner than a secretary at Goldman Sachs is to Lloyd Blankfein today. How long will modern Americans keep accepting the premise that the rich are just better and more deserving than they are - even as the standard of living for that other 99% sinks lower and lower with each celebratory tick of the indexes for the investing class?
As I pointed out to Members in this morning's Alert, we had a very nice up day last Jan 4th - the first day of the new year, when the Dow popped 200 points early on and settled in for the day up 155 points at 10,583. We topped out on Jan19th (options expiration day) at 10,725 before beginning a pretty relentless pullback that took us back to 9,900 (down 7.5%).
7.5% would bring us back to S&P 1,165 and Dow 10,700 but let's assume we get that extra 2.5% between Friday's close and expiration day - that's going to take us to Dow 11,850 and S&P 1,285 and then pullbacks to 10,900 and 1,188 both of which should be rising 200-day moving averages by the time we pull back to them so I guess that means we'll be looking for failed tests of the Dow's 50 dma at 11,350 and the S&Ps 1,225 line this week. To round our the rest of our index family - it's Nasdaq 2,600, NYSE 7,750 and Russell 750 that will need to hold between now and the month's end to crush our crash premise. As long as those levels hold - we can ride our bull plays along and even pick up a few new ones along the way.
I like JWT Intelligene's "100 Things to Watch in 2011," it's good to exercise your brain by thinking of things you don't normally look at:
Presentations like this do remind me why its OK to be optimistic about our future. We still live in a World that is filled with millions of bright, innovative people and you can't stop them all from innovating and creating. Real solutions to our problems may never come from Corporate America but, clearly from the above presentation, they haven't quite strangled the life out of small business innovators, despite the 2-year cut-off of funding as Big Business and Banksters alike hoard their cash and send more and more jobs overseas in the hopes of eliminating all possible competition on their home turf.
It doesn't work that way. Ideas are like weeds, they will grow up around you unless you are constantly vigilant in trying to stomp them out. Big Business in America does it's very best to kill new ideas and, when they have to, they buy them and change them until they look just like all the tired, old ideas people are used to. Facebook seems to have raised $500M from GS and some Russian investor at a valuation that puts Facebook at $50Bn - not bad for a company that's still private! AMZN is in talks to buy out UK's LoveFilm, looking to go up against NFLX with the British DVD by mail leader because, it seems, Amazon couldn't figure out how to do this from scratch???
Also boosting the Dow this morning is JPM's timely upgrade of BA with a $83 target. Fellow Gang of 12 Member DB upgraded fellow Dow component AA with a $22 target (maybe they read my picks this weekend!) while Bloomberg helps out by citing INTC, HPQ, IBM and CSCO's huge piles of cash as very bullish signs for 2011.
So we will join the market for today and accentuate the positive as we try to eliminate the negatives like the Euro bond nightmare, Howard Davidowitz's take on the retail sector, worrying about our CINNs catching up to us (California, Illinois, New York and New Jersey) or Steve Harney's Doomsday prediction for housing. If we ignore all that, everything will be fine because the best thing to do about a problem is to ignore it until the next Administration takes over - who says politicians have nothing to teach us?
2011 is off to an amazing market start, at this pace we'll be at Dow 30,000 by the end of the year so let's sit back and enjoy the ride while it lasts!
- Phil
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Make's me think about the one about the group of young colored guys coon hunting (shortcut for raccoon) one night with dogs. When the dogs treed a coon one of the braver young men climbs the tree to extricate the coon. Not long after ascending he was heard calling to the crowd on the ground below, " some of yall just shot up here amongst us. Some of us needs some relief".
by his own definition, as lincoln stated to the young crowd at the lyceum school, he turned out to be a corrupt, power seeking and selfish demagogue; indeed, he became what he warned about in that speech, please stop quoting him as some end-all-be-all of American morality because, inter alia ( I love using latin!makes me feel smart, thank god for google and wikipedia! instant expert sans school loan phd debt; awesome!), lincoln, by the standards of the declaration of independence, and perhaps even the constitution [ i say perhaps, but i really believe the power of the executive was a given, i.e. hamiltonian(asshole!) and by now folks are talking about the "imperial" pres (for a good beginning see richard neustadt), all i know, and you know this too, is that the elite didn't... wouldn't give their levers... whatever form that takes], was a tyrant and a fascist. I say that with some left leaning tendencies (you want a convenient but authentic quote, cite jefferson, everyone wins unless you're from south of the equator, I would barely make it). make of it what you will....which ain't much...but here are a couple more links, the first one being the primary source.
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm
http://www.iahushua.com/hist/lincoln.html
I wish I remembered where I read an interview on a book written using lincoln's letters throughout the war and it speaks volumes to a side of him that I certainly was never taught; quite revealing as a look into the man and as to what it says about American myth culture and why I had to come across this and look for it, if I was ever going to find it and learn from it in context. so whatever, make it your own, everything is subjective anyway.
I'm deeply disappointed that barry ended up GB3, what a bait and switch jip, i wanted nothing else but some color in that office, but this fraud (see john pilger re obama at service international and barry's own book, and service int is 100% by its own ceo's admission, in a "relationship", with the central intelligence agency, couple that with ob's mom and peter geithner, over at what was it usaid asia? and when barry was at columbia and sevice int, who was direktor cia? correkkkt, daddy bush fighter pilot shot down for real) is part-n-parcel of the same dirty junta likudnik-MIITCC (military industrial IT congressional complex, see carrol quigley, and cwright mills) anti-jewish and zionist cabal that "won" in 2000 and is still in power (thanks bubba! you traitor, ball-less pathetic low-life thief asswipe! stop watching the color of money you coke fiend, you aint eddy! rhodes scholar indeed!!!); and barry is one of their boys...which explains why NOTHING has changed. this, not only fooked up my vote for him, but I can guarantee you that no other minority will make it to the wh for another century, thanks a lot asshole! hurts me to say that until i realize what a complete neo-liberal sellout and tool you are. you definitely aint a commie barry old boy, for sure: a dirty stinking bitch fascist corporatist sell out. Pulling a paulson with goolsbee? you fuck! i was about to give you credit for firing jabba larry, maybe you didnt know , maybe rahm was fighting proxy for you(buy a bridge much?), see how stoopid and gullible we are out here? but no more, you stick that hope up your skinny fellating ass bro, i'm done wicha! youre an empty fucking joke barry, this week is reagan, last week was truman, the week before was johnson, and fdr and lincoln, you fucking dumbass.....you need some new shit man, fucking arbusto, pathetic one-termer....
I hate to be such a troll, but #1 the tequila worm tastes good, #2 the tea partiers want to ruin the government's credit rating. It will make it impossible to borrow and then savage cuts will be inevitable. We tea partiers are not bluffing and this is not a game of chicken. We want to kill the credibility of the bond market. #3 I get kinda sick of all this "rich bashing because 250,000 per year is not rich. That's just a hard working person who resents losers thinking he owes them something, #4 if you invest based on headline risk then you will never make it into the top 1% but that won't be because the rich are plotting against you. It will be because you are not a good investor. #5 where was I. Oh yeah. I like your columns!
Dow - 30000 - woohoo, I'm rich again!.......now wheres that darn channel changer so I get DWTS on.........
If I could render myself unconscious while this bubble reaches it's elastic limit - however protracted, to save myself from doing something really stupid to blow myself up, I know I would be richly rewarded. Stay not not so thirsty and more still, my friends.
And Lindsay Lohan has been nominated for the Nobel Piece Prize.
Walking on the ice and hearing it crack. It's the middle of the arctic night and the cold wind blows the wolves howl.
What are they saying? "$96 Brent crude!" "$92 WTI!"
It's just a matter of time, now. Once the ice breaks it's frozen death while the wolves howl ...
Watch the video “Economy Stage 4 Cancer Patient ~ Stocks Rigged” at (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrXcpWKRDf8).
Anonymous –
It’s unbelievable that it has gotten to the stage where we actually know without a shadow of a doubt that the U.S. economy is RIGGED! I can’t wait for the PONZI scheme to continue!!
Great Vid Greenewave! Just tone down the shrill a tad and you will hold viewers attention better. Great work again.
Dow 13,000 just around the black box ..err, I mean corner!
I wonder why no mention of the PM manipulation today; 2 times; quite obvious; look at the kitco charts.
Good bounceback though.
Which manipulation? You mean those unsubstantiated rumors from unnamed sources regarding Carlos Slim? That was even more obvious.
DOW 30,000 - I'm actually expecting to see exactly that. The charts and policy are lining up for a crack-up boom followed by a final and very long ultimate decline. DOW1929 and NASDAQ2000 her we come.
Anything is possible with this game underfoot...at an increase of 5 points a day the S&P 500 will be at 3,000 in about 350 trading days or the end of September 2012.
I knew, last night after the NFL games, that they were setting it up today for a triple digit ramp job. You can simply watch the futures sham and see the same patterns over and over and over.
The same suspects had massive and unexplainable moves today. Financials and REITs massively outperformed. BAC just had a lovely day in the sun for no reason.
It's all a pile of shit. Really, it is. It's degenerated into a total propoganda tool (perhaps it always was and not it's just much more obvious).
The fact that we've hit this kind of low is, frankly, scary as hell to me.
MSM will be all over the headlines, of course. Moreover, most dipshits will embrace it. You know...it's a 'new year' and all which, evidently, makes BAC worth 5% more today than 72 hours ago.
We're hitting bedrock now.
dp
I will know the top is in when you quit being angry and give up in hopeless despair, but for now there are too many angry and scared people on the sidelines. I like to watch zero hedge not just for good data but for sentiment.When all of you are too depressed to post then I'm calling a top, but for now SPY to da moon!
+++
'into a total propoganda tool .. ' should be 'propaganda tool'. Otherwise I agree
I've soiled my family name. I'm ruined.
Just read the Steve Harney article. I would not call it a doomsday article. This is though:
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2011/01/january-1-2011-us-housing-...
And after reading some of the comments (Steve Harney), those people don't have a
clue what's going on, and where we are headed.
I've read the article and the fix is already in. Fannie and Freddie settled for two billion dollars. The rules will be changed so that MERS can functionally, if not actually, foreclose. Fraudulent documents will be routinely accepted in courts and laws will be changed so that the documents are no longer fraudulent. The article by automatic earth is so yesterday. The system will not go under due to MBS and CDO because the rules will be changed to prevent that from happening. Yes we are in for a long slow decline in real housing values, hopefully hidden by nominally stable values, but MBS and CDO will not kill BOA and any such thinking is DOA as I LFMAO at people who think the authorities will allow rules and laws to get in the way of a reflation and banker subsidy.
Given all that we know (meaning those who read ZH, Max, Nicole Foss, CH, and others),
today feels very eerie to me. And I'm not superstitious.
"Manipulated"
So anyone who bought stocks a thousand DOW points or maybe several thousand DOW points lower a year ago and sold into todays stregnth and took long term capital gains was "manipulated" ???
Brings to mind the $1,000 hooker I picked up in a London casino who manipulated the situation by applying a condom on me with her mouth without my knowledge or consent.
I forgot to complain because I was busy stuffing a pillow in my mouth to muffle my screams.
Manipulate me; while youre at it, whip me beat me make me feel cheap.
There's nothing wrong with being on the right side of a scam, as long as you can't rationalize with yourself that it is, indeed, a scam.
Happy New Year, and may we hit an all time high in consumer bankruptcies, so that stocks can continue to rally into....fraud!
U.S. Consumer Bankruptcies Hit 5 - Year High In 2010The Father,son and the holy spirit,may the lord save us all from the apocalypse that is to rein upon us