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Performance Anxiety
Yet another day where underinvested fund managers were
forced to buy stocks or risk being fired on September 30. Cannot underestimate the panic of a manager
who has been reading Roubini, Schiff, Rosenberg about the sorry fundamentals
and has been sitting on the sidelines.
Oil service stocks were the first out of the gate today, and
the OIH and XLE immediately grabbed the holeshot over the 200-day setting up
yet another buy signal for all the Program Robots. How many times have we seen this? One
group of greyhounds take off and everybody and their grandmother start chasing them in earnest.
Clunker stocks were also in fire, like Dana, American Axle,
Modine, etc. getting squeezed on the back of all the car sales hysteria.
Performance anxiety is also infecting the anchorettes at
CNBC, now that ratings are going up with the stock market. Hot, young, new undergrads will be flocking
to the network to get jobs, so the pressure is mounting for the incumbents.
Exhibit A is Erin “B-Cups” Burnett, wearing a tantalizing
blouse today, unbuttoned just enough, but at the same time, not enough:
More at risk are the overweight cows, soon to be pushed
aside by stick-armed 24-year olds coming up the ranks. Here’s a screen shot of Michelle
Caruso-Cabrera casting an unforgiving glance at Sue Herera. Wonder what she is thinking? Let me guess:
“You better lose some weight, you cow, or your are going to lose
your job!!”
In the meantime, the Prop Desks continue to wreak havoc on
individual stocks. Check out Tyson this
morning, gapping up on earnings and promptly pole-axed to close near the lows
of the day. Classic PigMen shank job by the
technical traders Goldman.
Ane one more thing....
Who is this Christian Baha character pushing these "Superfund" futures service who can't even pronounce "investor"? He looks like the son of a deposed Latin American dictator, who has suddenly decided to move to the U.S. to start pushing financial speculation on the hapless North American consumer.
I mean, really, would you trade in your clunker and buy a new car from this guy?
Gimme a break!!
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Magnificent Robo!!
I think MCC may also have been upset that Sue was copying her by wearing red today or she was picking up on the Direct Edge "flashing" scroll on the screen shot.
BTW, I told you the gunners would be all over KEY today; a break was needed from RF, FITH, HBAN ad infinitum nauseum.....
from Larry Kudlow today:
"The new bull market continues to rally today, with stocks surging across-the-board.
The Dow is up over 100 points at this writing, moving toward 9,300.
The NASDAQ has pushed through the 2,000 level and the broad-based S&P 500 has run past the 1,000 mark with a 1.5 percent gain.
This powerful summer rally adds to the early March rally, and it provides powerful new proof that we are in a genuine new bull market."
Robo, not to intrude on your busy chartmaking, but how bout them BX boyz. 21.14% spike and they didn't get past FDA stage III trials. Last I heard, they were shitty landlords who topticked the market. This is a slow replay of the nightmare from 2008. You are in the land of the remake, so you will appreciate the life leeching repetition of a derived idea that was imitating another similacrum. While I did notice the faux peasant get up of Lickle Ones, or as you say B-cups, I simply can no longer watch when Tits Cabrera gives us the rictus of a smile ten seconds after the missed fade out by the non union CNBC camera crew.
Not to hog up your space, but I like you. Maybe we can set up a bra exchange for the futures.
Lord Voldamort
By James Howard Kunstler
on August 3, 2009 7:36 AM
Whenever the herd mentality lines up along a compass point leading to "permanent prosperity," or a yellow brick road lined with green shoots, or something like that, I tend to see the edge of a cliff up ahead. We are now completely in the grips of the deadly diminishing returns of information technology. The more information comes to us about How Things Are, especially from TV, the more confused or wrong the conventional view gets it.
A broad consensus has formed in the news media and among government mouthpieces and even some "bearish" investors on the street that "the worst is behind us" in this tortured economy. This view is completely crazy. It will only lead to massive disappointment a few weeks or months from now, and that disappointment might easily transmute to political trouble. One even might call the situation tragic, except a closer look at the sordid spectacle of what American culture has become -- a non-stop circus of the seven deadly sins -- suggests that we deserve to be punished by history.
The reason behind this mass delusion is not hard to find: it's based on wishing, especially the wish to retain all the comforts, conveniences, luxuries, and leisure that had become normal in American life. These are now ebbing away in big gobs for most of the population -- while a tiny fraction of the well-connected pile on ever larger heaps of swag, enjoying ever more privilege. Those in the broad bottom 95 percent were content as long as there was a chance that they, too, could become members of the top 5 percent -- by dint of car-dealing, or house-building, or mortgage-selling, or some other venture enabled by easy credit and a smile. Those days and those ways are now gone. The bottom 95 percent are now left with de-laminating houses they can't make payments on, no prospects for gainful work, re-po men hiding in the bushes to snatch the PT Cruiser, cut-off cable service, Kraft mac-and-cheese (if they're lucky), and Larry Summers telling them their troubles are over. (If I were Larry, I'd start thinking about a move to some place like the Canary Islands.)
Too many disastrous things are lined up in the months ahead to insure that we're entering a new phase of history: The Long Emergency.
Government at every level is worse than broke.
Our currency, the US dollar, is hemmorrhaging legitimacy.
Inability to service old debt at all levels or incur new debt.
Bad (toxic) debt lurking off balance sheets everywhere.
The housing bubble fiasco is far from over.
Unemployment rising implaccably.
So-called "consumers" unable to consume consumables.
Crucial energy import supply lines fragile.
Food supply subject to energy problems and climate abnormalities.
A world full of other societies who would enjoy watching us fail and suffer.
When The Long Emergency was published in 2005, I said then that the greatest danger this society faced would be its inclination to gear up a campaign to sustain the unsustainable at all costs -- rather than face the need to make new arrangements for daily life. That appears to be exactly what has happened, and it didn't happen under the rule of some backward-facing, right-wing, Jesus-haunted crypto-fascist, but rather a "progressive" party led by a dynamically affable young man unburdened by deep cultural allegiance to Wall Street. Barack Obama has been sucked in and suckered. "Change you can believe in" has morphed into "a status quo you will bend heaven and earth to hold onto."
Whatever else you might think or feel about Mr. Obama's performance so far, this strategy on the broader question of where we go as a nation pulses with tragedy. What's remarkable to me, to go a step further, is the absence of comprehensive vision -- not just in the president, but in all the supposedly able and intelligent people around him, and even those leaders not in government but in business and education and science and the professions.
History is clearly presenting us with a new set of mandates: get local, get finer, downscale, and get going on it right away. Prepare for it now or nature will whack you upside the head with it not too long from now. Attempting to maintain anything on the gigantic scale will turn out to be a losing proposition, whether it is military control of people in Central Asia, or colossal bureaucracies run in the USA, or huge factory farms, or national chain store retail, or hypertrophied state universities, or global energy supply networks.
These imperatives are so outside-the-box of ordinary experience right now, that to drag them into the arena of politics can only evoke blank stares or nervous giggling. But whether we like it or not, these are the things that will really matter in the years ahead -- not whether General Motors can ever make a profit again, or what Target Store's sales figures are next quarter, or whether the latest high-rise condo-and-gambling complex in Las Vegas will be successfully marketed.
Here, in the dog days of summer, it seems to me that the situation in the USA is so fundamentally bad, so unpromising, so booby-trapped for failure, that I wonder if there has ever been a society so badly deluded as ours. We're prisoners of our wishes, living in a strange dream-time, oblivious to the forces gathering at the margins of our vision, lost in a wilderness of our own making.
Anything can happen now. I certainly wouldn't rule out international mischief as we arc around into fall. The air is so full of black swans that the white swan now seems like the exceptional thing. Whatever else happens, it sure will be interesting to see the public's reaction to Wall Street's announcement of Christmas bonuses. The folks at Rockefeller Center better be thinking about getting a fireproof tree.
Thanks. This is the clearest summary of our delusion I've seen yet.
This site is fun for whistling past the graveyard, but I'm afraid even the reasonably informed readers here don't (at least I don't) have a sense of just how profound and prolonged the changes from the wealth destruction we're witnessing are going to be.
This might help:
http://ferfal.blogspot.com/
He's a bit gung-ho, but it seems pretty solid. He still works a job, but it sounds like the whole of Buenos Aires has essentially turned into the 'hood.
Loss of income, home invasion, surviving power cuts, water shortages, car jacking. I've experienced all these within the last two years in Texas, but not at the constant high level this guy deals with every day.
Great post!
Thanks for sharing James Kunstler... he is like Dawn detergent on a greasy plate... you can see yourself again when he is done washing. LOL... "The folks at Rockefeller Center better be thinking about getting a fireproof tree."
And thanks Robo... you are easy to read, funny, and insightful.
I love it when Kuntsler comes out with a new article...it's the highlight of my day, a serious dose of reality!
Right to the point, you ether obey or ELSE. In the end whoever finds the best excuse, wins the top position.
Bank stocks were gunned today:
Hedge Fund Crash
it's wndysrf.
Even up to their ears in Las Vegas insolvent shit casinos DB. This after Ackermann conferenced all and sundry that the future is 'challenging.' Free money. B-cups, if you only knew.
http://img16.imagevenue.com/aAfkjfp01fo1i-2477/loc430/23826_vlcsnap-0001...
The on air virtual fellating of Blankfein's HAL9000. Sexy. That is all.
robot, thats some funny shit man..
Classic stuff; goes back to the old CS days. ZH put a feather in their cap with "wndysrf" providing some entertaining end of day market commentary.
Gladly surprised, excellent post.
Robot, you are the best. I love my end of the day market wrap commentary provided by you.
Superfund is the laughingstock of managed futures... then again, we're all jealous at how much they get with charging fees. Read the prospectus.
Zuperfund 2009 ist nicht gut. Was ist los?
Oh oh, Ich bin nicht ein roboter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-003rK1vt8
Roboter müß sterben.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Baazv0nx2mw
I did buy some GAZ today.
I think the short natty, long crude trade has gone on long enough.
The XNG has been outperforming the XOI lately, so something is up.
GAZ and UNG busted the 50-day today, so might as well take a crack at it. Won't give it much, if we take out today's low, then I'm out.
GAZ - one of the best symbols out there. I got oil going to the 76 to 86 range.
http://stockcharts.com/def/servlet/Favorites.CServlet?obj=ID3186525&cmd=show[s171380322]&disp=P
UNG has a falling wedge top line to deal with but looks bullish on daily and weekly. I believe UNG is a sentiment trade right now finally coming around for no good reason. IMO of course.
I have a pretty substaintial position in UNG. However, I am getting a little worried about Gensler and the CFTC pulling a boner and causing UNG (et. al.) to liquidate under new regs they may impose.
Austrian Ex Policeman, living in Monaco, Polish wife, Grenada based introducing broker LLC where he collects all his kickbacks....works fine for him...
Robo you are awesome.
The question, though, is when does the game of musical chairs end??
Well done ROBO. XLF powering thru the double top. What a bullish sight. I think I need to get ine here. how bout you? Super entry point for a LT hold I think. (LOL). Thanks.
I got lucky and bought KRE the day it turned off the low. I'll continue to hold it as long as the 200-day holds on the XLF.
Who knows how high they will jack that thing? I can imagine that a lot of shorts are still hiding out in KRE and RKH, since they were slow to turn up with the market.
>More at risk are the overweight cows...<
Yes, I think she might have been the one I saw at the beach.
RT turns the ads into wall to wall tits when he posts...
First on CNBC: Michelle Was The First To Start 'Flashing' Customers When Ordered
I can only hope they hire Antonio Villaraigosa to scout new young reporters. His top candidates:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHrr7fuLg_Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGt_kNNN8hk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF5--1KLsu4
I could watch this all day, no idea what she's saying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M8bHiCQ6D4
Wow.
It's inwestor not investor.
No I mean it's twader not trader.
Aye carumba.
Pedro
do you think government will just shoot us or put in the FEMA camps??? hey a better solution we can be china's sharecroppers when we destroy all the worthless commerical real estate condos, buildings, etc. because there is no money to pay the loans with....
Tyler, dude, go after their analytical rigor, the the country's personality worship etc. Please don't make it personal.
In fact, I'll take the b-cups over your man-boobs any day!