NASDAQ

This is very likely the time to be fearful when others are greedy.

UPDATE: As an observation, QQQ Short-Interest is at 11 year lows (January 2001), down 43% into year-end

Curious what has provoked a vicious year end (and 2012 year beginning) Santa Rally, which until today had seen the S&P trade higher on 12 out of 15 consecutive days? Wonder no more: the reason is the same it has always been - year end short covering, which in turn has spilt over into the new year's momentum chasing HFT brigade and the occasional retail momo who still has some cash left after covering commission costs. According to the latest NYSE biweekly update, the short interest as of the end of 2011 was a modest 12.8 billion shares, a sharp drop from the 13.4 billion and 14.2 billion 2 and 4 weeks prior, and certainly a very far cry from the over 16 billion shares short which market the market bottom in late September. Also, for anyone wondering why so far 2012 is an identical replica of 2011, decoupling and all, look no further than the SI data as of early 2011 - SSDD. Short covered, and only as the year unwound did they dare to challenge the central banks and to increase their shorting activity.

Writing as someone who was strongly stock-oriented for most of a long investing career, I can assert that at today's low dividend yields, it is difficult to see stocks as strong trees on which to rely. The Smithers parameters provide cautionary evidence for the bulls who point to current "low" price-earnings ratios and "sunny skies almost forever" views of corporate profits and predict stock market returns well above bond yields for years to come.

While we’re not bubbling over with optimism, we believe the New Year will be anything but boring. 

If Sino Forest is any indication, the $3 billion market cap company is about to have a B -> M market cap transition. The reason: Muddy Waters just said FMCN could be the next Olympus: "FMCN has been fraudulently overstating the number of screens in its LCD network by approximately 50%. This is similar to China MediaExpress Holdings, Inc. (OTC: CCME), which we reported is a fraud on February 3, 2011. We therefore question whether FMCN’s core LCD business is viable."  From the report: "Muddy Waters rates Focus Media Holding Ltd. (NASDAQ: FMCN) shares a Strong Sell because of significant overstatement of the number of screens in its LCD network and its Olympus-style acquisition overpayments. The $1.1 billion in write-downs from its acquisitions exceed one-third of FMCN’s enterprise value, making FMCN’s acquisitive behavior more destructive than Olympus’s to shareholder value. FMCN insiders have sold at least $1.7 billion worth of stock (two-thirds of FMCN’s enterprise value) since FMCN’s IPO. At the same time, the insiders and their business associates further enrich themselves by trading in FMCN assets, while costing FMCN shareholders substantial sums of money."

The SEC, along with the major U.S. stock exchanges, have "fixed" the problems with the reverse-merger industry.  By "fixed" I mean they've essentially done nothing at all...

A new proposal by Nasdaq has the market purists such as our friends at Nanex and all those (very few) who still care about how broken the market is and demand something be done about it, writhing in disgust, particularly this section:

\5\ The Exchange is also changing its policies and procedures under Regulation NMS governing the data feeds used by its execution system and routing engine. Current policies state that those systems use data provided by the network processors. In the future, those systems will use data provided either by the network processors or by proprietary feeds offered by certain exchanges directly to vendors.

Nasdaq's proposal admits that exchanges are supposed to use the SIP (CQS/UQDF) data for their execution system and routing engine! They want to formally change things to match what they've been doing all along so they can avoid fines and more! Why would you submit a proposal to change something you've already been doing? In other words, what the exchange is proposing, is already common practice. If exchanges are granted this proposal, Reg NMS, for all practical purposes, is no longer relevant, and there is no point in having the SIP calculate the NBBO, because it will have no meaning. Translated: the market will be, for all intents and purposes, officially two-tiered and terminally broken.

Harbin Electric is no stranger to controversy, and its stockholders over the past two years can be forgiven if they believe that jumping on a Six Flags rollercoaster may have been a little more fun, and potentially far more profitable. Well, to keep it interesting, here comes famed Chinese fraudcap hunter Alfred Little with its latest piece, this time alleging that not only long-time target DEER, but also HRBN, "committed multi-million dollar land fraud." Specifically, "In the case of HRBN, management claims they paid $23 million cash as of June 30th, 2011 as a deposit on $38 million of land use rights priced at 500,000 RMB per Mu, double the government’s offering price." Little continues: "Our report today provides concrete evidence consisting of multiple recorded phone calls, on site visits and emails with government officials proving beyond any doubt that HRBN and DEER are both guilty of conducting very similar fraudulent land use rights purchase schemes to steal money from their shareholders. HRBN’s auditor, Frazer Frost, failed to respond to our attempt to share our findings last week." And now is the time for the porn addicts to finally stand up and do something proactive instead of letting to blogosphere do their work for them: "This morning we handed over all our evidence to officials at NASDAQ and the SEC prior to publishing this report. We are hopeful regulators will halt HRBN and DEER until their financials are restated to reflect reality, in the same manner as PUDA and CTE were immediately halted after we published our findings (here) and (here)." The final nail: "In this report we prove that HRBN and DEER’s land frauds are just as brazen as the fraud conducted by PUDA and CTE and thus deserve the same fate." Longs have been warned.

After a brief lull, Alfred Little, whose track record in slaying Chinese fraudcaps is comparable to that of Muddy Waters (just recall the DEER in headlights), has released a report on what he believes is the latest Chinese publicly traded fraud: Sinotech Energy Limited (Nasdaq: CTE), where the catalyst is that its "largest customers and suppliers are likely nothing more than empty shells with little or no sales or income." Notably, this company breaks the mold of the surefire reverse merger frauds, and was actually taken public in an IPO by UBS, Citi and Lazard. Little's price target: somewhere between $0.00 and $0.63, a notable discount from the current price in the mid $3s. Below are the key highlights from the just released report as well as the full 30 page research report in its entirety.

It has been a while since we have presented Chinese fraudcap candidates. Today, courtesy of Glaucus Research we bring you the latest entrant to the alleged reverse merger fraudcap group: L&L Energy, Inc, (Nasdaq: LLEN). Is this company nothing but yet another Chinese fraud and poised to plunge by over 75%? Read the full report (Price Target <$1.00) and find out.

Equities up, gold down. Are we up for a false break out on the upside? by www.thetrader.se

There was a time when markets looked to pre-discredited titans such as John Paulson new position announcements and surged appropriately on any kind of news. Now, it is small, actually due diligencing outfits, such as Muddy Waters, which move stocks by up to 50% on mere position initiations. To wit, MW has just reported that is has started a short position in Spreadtrum Communications, (SPRD). "Muddy Waters, LLC has begun researching Spreadtrum, Communications Inc. (NASDAQ: SPRD), and we have taken a short position in it. (Please see our disclaimer below.) We have identified a number of issues in SPRD's filings, and we believe that there is a high risk of material misstatement in the reported financials. Our concerns are gravest regarding 2010 and 2011 numbers. The below link is to an open letter we have written to SPRD chairman Li regarding our concerns." Next up: stock implosion.

Tepper giveth (the escalator), Tepper taketh away (the elevator)

Utilizing The Applied Finance Group’s backtest system, we ran a strategy of investing only in companies with a market capitalization of greater than US$ 1 Billion and a dividend yield above 3%. The strategy has worked fairly well with the annualized returns over the last 12 years beating the overall universe. While the dividend paying strategy worked well, a strategy based on AFG’s valuation metric performed better.

As expected, the world's most grotesquely disguised LBO in the form of the debt-financed acquisition of the NYSE by Nasdaq and ICE, has been pulled, formally on grounds of regulatory approval concerns, realistically but due to "market conditions" manifesting in the form of a market downtick. This could very well be the market top.