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Biggest Weekly Stock Outflow Of 2012 Proves Retail Is No Longer Dumb Money; And Nobody Listens To Goldman
For the 7th consecutive week retail investors not only refuse to chase the bouncing ball, but to listen to former titans of finance, such as Goldman Sachs who on March 21 told everyone to get out of bonds and into stocks (a trade which has since been unwound for all practical aspects). Since then, as well as before then, we have seen relentless outflows from equities to the tune of $10 billion, while allocating cash precisely to bonds, as taxable bond funds saw $20 billion in inflows over the same time period. What is more notable is that despite the liquidity driven rally, one which everyone now understands is 100% fake and central bank driven, retail never got fooled and refused to be the dumb money for the duration of the "rally" - and now that the rally topped, and stocks are sliding back down, retail investors pulled out the biggest one week amount, or $4.3 billion, in the week ended April 4, from domestic equity funds per ICI. And now with every passing day, Primary Dealers - facing the prospect of no dumb money coming in to buy up the hot grenades in inventory, and with the Fed waiting until later in the year before re-entering the market in an election year, may have no choice but to sell. As usual, the first to sell, wins.
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The last people out of the building need to be turning the lights off.
Why no one can afford to pay the bill anyway, add it to the bankrupcy filing
No worries, the bots run the lights too.
A relatively tight circle of institutions are now sitting around holding reams of massively overvalued 'certificates of equity' that they've been trading back and forth with each other for 3 years now, whilst the retail crowd that would formerly come in and merrily & naively buy the top actually is aware of the scam.
How would a scam like this unwind?
I can imagine someone kicking in the door and turning the machines off, but that isn't going to happen, is it?
401ks and pension funds - or some new instrument shat outta blythes ass
"...You didn't know how rock and roll looked,
Until you caught your sister with the guys from the group.
Half way home in the parking lot,
By the look in her eye she was giving what she got
My, my, my, I'm once bitten, twice shy, baby
My, my, my, I'm once bitten, twice shy, baby
My, my, my, I'm once bitten, twice shy, baby..." -- Ian Hunter
or planning their tax loss carry forward strategy
Exactly - there is a huge cash need right now for tax filing season. No really...
2, 4, 6, 8,
be the first to liquidate
:)))))
Belly laughing!
Haha. It's true. We adjusted the money trapped in our 401K this week. Sold off some of our mid-cap and small-cap stocks (don't have any large-cap) and bought some treasuries (TIPS!) to go along with whatever the fuck Bill Gross has in his PTTRX monstrosity, which comprises 30% of our tenuous account. These are the games we play with monopoly money trapped in a zombie market. Huzzah!
Oh yeah, and 5% cash-like-substance in case the Euro collapses. Nothing wrong with a few USD!
Funny. I did the same thing a couple of weeks ago.
Gee, I stopped contributing 2 years ago. After taking out two loans and converting them to pms....
You have been on Zerohedge almost two years and you still have money in. 401k?
Do you also bank at the morgue, BoA etc?
How does anyone here still play the game? For one, if you do you are part of the problem. Second do you still not understand counterparty risk?
I understand penalties suck, but better to have 60% of something then 100% of nothing.
401K is useful. Basically, put the cash there and take out loans against it. Especially if you get a corporate match you end up far ahead.
When you accept the benifit you take the poison. These things were set up to automatically funnel the wealth of the middle and upper class into the hands of the Govt. As well they were designed to keep the stock markets rising with the little guys money while covering the big guys selling. When the final conversion happens and 401Ks and IRAs are converted to Govt. script, TPTB will be seeking the withdrawn (borrowed) wealth in whatever form that you now keep it.
Beware knocking on the Federal door for trick-or-treating because while it appears you get candy in your bag, you end up in their bag. Get out now and take the hit.
The candy = deferred taxes and whatever degree of matching funds. The poisons = what are the taxes going to be when you withdraw your funds, also you lose control over the spending of your own money, also you are keeping your funds in paper and promulgating the ponsi, also you are depositing your wealth into the hands of the most spendthrift entity the planet has ever seen. Personally, I can't even see the candy under all the poison.
While borrowing from your accounts and paying yourself back with interest and apparantly doing what you want with the borrowed funds may sound slick, you have to wonder why would the Govt. be allowing you to do that. Again, when you accept the benifit you take the poison.
I can't withdraw my 401k until I quit my job. Maxed out a loan two days ago and plan to buy pms. Pay myself back at four and something percent.
Inflation-adjusted and ME turmoil (WWIII) considered,
I think I'm coming out on top here.
Edit: max loan amount= 50% current value. Can only remove one loan per calendar year, cannot have more than one active. SSSUUUXXXXXXXX.
Yer boobs contain much wisdom... :>D
The sheeple do learn.
There's a weird smell about all this. I think all the big players are looking at their watches, glancing at each other, wondering who's going to be the first to break for the door. The credit house gazelle can smell the lion of horrible reality wafting on the air, but nobody wants to get the lion's attention by being the first to run.
Stocks, bonds, like it matters. Nothing but clownbux any way you slice it.
Lies. Apple is going to $1000. After all, like Cramer always says, the big boys have to buy SOMETHING...oh wait...they already did?...And they all bought Apple?
Fuck.
Or instagram or WTF it's called; a company that sold for a billion FRNs (I realize that number has lost the ability to impress in the wake of the Bernankified New Normal), and not only has no earnings or profits, but has no revenue.
Or Apple having a market cap worth more than all publicly traded companies in Spain, Portugal & Greece, combined.
Or Facef*ck having casual market cap valuations tossed around in the range of 100 billion even though there's not really a revenue model that's transparent, consistent, reliable or easy to quantify; no one knows how it would even monetize its services to even approach a market cap valuation approaching a billion, let alone 100 billion.
This bubble is even more batshit crazy than Cramer's Winners of the New World infamy.
Mariner Eccles....we have a problem...
Not only are the retail muppets not showing up to buy our splendiferous print and pump fest off our hands, but theyre actually cashing in their chips and leaving the casino.
Good thing the Muppets went into bonds that have a real return which is negative, or are holding cash, if they are using their cash to invest at all, considering UE is 22% (Shadowstats), inflation is 10% (Shadowstats), houing continues to fall unabated (Case-Schillar), and student loans have topped $1T, they may be trying frantically to pay down their debts while the government subsidizes, or rather, hypothecates, what they can to maintain the illusion of a financial and economic system.
This yet somehow the Muppets either don't realize, or likely, ignore, that fiat has no intrinsic value and the system they are using is more akin to the Maddoff scheme than anything considered to be real finance. Unfortunately the Muppets would rather hide their heads in the sand than face the fact that economics is not a science, and that science is maluable to begin with, for if we truely examined such science as medicine, string theory, the big bang, etc, we would find that what we believe we understand is miniscule compared to what we don't.
But anyway, carry on, Muppets, and enjoy the strings while your boat slips into the freezing cold, radiated ocean that is today's culture and society.
Ding, Ding, Ding.... we have a dealer!!!
That is a problem right there. The people are trying to do that and shooting themselves in both feet. Debt is money to the 1%. Our debt is their income. We need to blow it up so they cannot collect anymore.
I think you are wrong. The more you pay down your debt it has the effect of taking money out of the system. The paid off debt goes back to the creator and reduces the interest they are receiving on 0 capital.
I have been paying down my debt as fast as possible. That way I am not a slave to the Banks. I also am taking money out of the Bank on a regular basis just to keep on hand. That also robs them of lending that money out 10 or 20 to one.
Passive agressive is always the best defense against tyrany.
A 100 year old Idaho lady on the Jay Leno show says the greatest invention of her lifetime was the microwave.....the worst : CREDIT CARDS !!
http://www.lolbucket.com/video/KN5K8Y4S1AMA/100-year-old-Idaho-woman-on-Jay-Leno-show
Passive Aggressive --> Civil disobedience.
Waterfallsparkles, you nailed it.
The entire foundation of our economy is built on the fraud that is full fractional reserve banking chicanery.
Our Ponzified system, aka fractional reserve banking reliant economy, relies entirely on the growth of both 1) the absolute amount of debt issuance (debt equals money, money equals debt) over time, with each new batch having to be remarkably larger than the last batch of debt issued, and 2) the absolute number of debt slaves (not exactly like the slaves of the really old days, but we have been backsliding again, with debtors' prisons being tolerated in Amerika lately - one of the many things our founders would be turning over in their graves about).
Since the creation of full fiat economic systems, and especially since Greenspan's era, the U.S. and its lender/dope dealer/master, the Federal Reserve, has become increasingly reliant on blowing big bubbles and getting the herd to chase them, in order to keep the scam alive (dot.coms, housing/real estate, etc.).
The moment the absolute amount of new debt issuance stagnates, or worse yet, declines, over any significant stretch of time, and the moment the people are no longer willing to conscript themselves into perpetual debt slavery, the Ponzi implodes, and there's nothing in the Federal Reserve's toolbox to deal with such a seismic shift in psychology and behavior.
If enough people opted out of financing their lifestyle via debt (versus present earnings and/or savings), it would slay the Ponzi economy built on a Pyramid of illusions we now have (and it's not that high of a percentage of people opting out of debt relative to the total population that would induce the collapse of the system).
Has anyone/everyone noticed how car dealerships, home builders, mortgage companies, credit card companies and other entities are dishing debt dope to even the deadbeats again?
The central banksters of Ponzinomics have to enable this in order for the Ponzi of an economic structure that is our full fractional reserve banking (with bailed out, and soon to be bailed out again, wards of the state - sucking on the taxpayer teat - at the center of the scam) to Ponzi onward, let alone not implode.
Here's just one example of how rotten to the core the Ponzi has become:
FHA Reconsiders New Rule on Lending to Those With Debt
If you read that article, are you surprised that the FHA, which is essentially a taxpayer backed guarantor of mortgage debt, and the world's largest mortgage guarantor (guaranteeing 36 million mortgages), is now under pressure to loan money to people with terrible credit scores, who not only have a wretched history of paying back past loans, but who currently (i.e. at the time they're applying for a mortgage) are in default in loans they had agreed to repay?
This is how the system eats itself. Fractional reserve banking can't perpetuate itself if larger batches of debt aren't issued and devoured by successive waves of greater numbers of people taking on greater amounts of debt (with already net negative worth taxpayers being put on the hook for the default risks - and the risk is more akin to an inevitability).
The refusal to take on greater amounts of debt on the part of larger participants in the economy is how the fractional reserve banking Ponzi system is killed.
Bring it on. The sooner we get back to true supply/demand economics, true price discovery and equilibrium, the sooner we can shake off the fractional reserve banking charlatans and the parasites who they enable.
[quote] Has anyone/everyone noticed how car dealerships, home builders, mortgage companies, credit card companies and other entities are dishing debt dope to even the deadbeats again? [/quote]
Yes, I have -- sometimes, I catch some Ponzi-debt commercial on my way downstairs...
You talk as if we have a choice. We are playing with electronic paper money but it is our paper.
Why don't you do something constructive, like suggest what is a reasonable thing for people with trapped 401ks and IRAs to do?
Look Mr. Conventional, we've been saying for a long, long time now what to do with "trapped" 401ks and IRAs.
Liquidate them. Immediately. Take whatever penalty you have to.
If you choose not to do this, if you want to continue to believe there's another way out, then fine, be a coward. Just don't come here for advice that you should have followed through on 3 years ago.
Bills need to get paid. Stocks will get liquidated. How many Americans have been living off their savings for the last 4 years? How many are substituting their incomes with their savings?
The "middle class" is chasing the dream. They're nearly wiped out in 2008 but they aren't making the transition to poverty level unless all their chips are cashed in. Incomes have declined across the board but the urge to keep up with the Jones' hasn't. Propaganda and false statements about an improving economy might have added to the perception.
You haven't seen the bottom falling out. It will fall out like never before. The middle class has much more to cut and much more to give up. We're just scratching the surface of what will be remembered as the Greatest Depression. Simply the greatest, because the bubble was the biggest.
3. clothing optional*
*only if you look good in no clothing, please
Who's gonna buy that AAPL @ 600+? This will be fun to watch...eventually.
I keep wondering if I should buy some AAPL puts at 600+. I can't see it lasting above 600 another year but if I don't get the timing right its sucks to be me.
I can see Apple lasting above 600, sure no problemo. How long? Who knows? How long will Ben and company print?
It's not likely the Fed will allow the market to deflate. Even if some steam is let off, Apple may be able to battle the tide for a bit. When more printing happens, it's likely the money will swarm into Apple. So even though it's parabolic, and history teaches us parabolic prices always collapse, it also teaches us stock prices go up when they kill a currency. So far, there's been enough printing to keep stocks climbing, and that need to print is becoming more urgent not less. So I've come full circle with no answer. Apple may benefit from the printing and fail to pop (for now).
Retail tries to pick tops and bottoms, and they always lose, so don't try to short it now. Hang off shore with the seals and wait for the penguins to come to you. There will be plenty of trend when it fails, so why try to anticipate the move??? The money from $400 to $300 is just as green as from $600 to $500, but with a lot less risk.
Use Stops to limit losses, Johnny
Buy the underlying and sell covered calls. Make the premium, and if it breaks out to the upside then the worst you do is break even. Of course, if it plummets like a stone, ur screwed. You could buy some out-of-the-money puts to limit your downside, or just manage it carefully. The problem is that an algo can sell it down to 10 bucks in 2 minutes flat. The safest play is not to participate.
While Ben has said he's taking his foot off the gas, if there is some "black swan-like" event he may have the pedal back down to the metal in a flash. We all know AAPL is grossly overvalued along with many other names but this market is not driven by fundamentals.
Fuck cash or T-Bills id rather have gold, silver or a high dividend paying stock for some income.
With their current record, you can make a lot of money by doing the complete opposite of what they suggest...
The Captain always goes down with the ship. Sayonara Obuma.
Yeah, FUN IS COMING TO TOWN!
Who honestly thinks the dealers would get stuck with this bloated stock if they didn't want it and retail wasn't buying.
"Sold to you, Ben / Tim."
"Thank you Lloyd / Jamie. Could we have some more?"
Though really, if they can keep floating it higher making their balance sheets look pretty, why do they need to sell at all?
1 more 'if'....if $6 gas wouldnt blow the country to shreds, the FED would have no problem at all here. I bet theyre pining for good-old 2008, when gas was only $1.60 and they had plenty of wiggle room. Now theyre mashed between a rock and a hard place.
Buy Natural gas.
Lots of natural gas spewing forth from FED central banksters and govt to power the whole country for free.
Retail locking in marginally negative real rates of return is gonna look brilliant when the "smart" money starts unloading their excess inventory...
The [ aud/jpy } had a slightly bullish inside daily close today. We know the BoJ /MoF is in a loose policy mode.
That move could drag aud/usd higher with it. aud/jpy above the 83.97 break last week, would spark my intrest.
It would imply flows moving into Europe are stablizing. The euro is overbought! As Sheep Dog said. It's "dead cat bounce", season.
If dumb money is going to bonds, it means that bonds will crash and equities will go further up.
Because dumb money is always dumb ;)
If bonds crash, it's all over.
If bond's crash IT is End of Days! We saw what helicoptor Ben did to the bond markets 2 weeks ago!
- "If bonds crash, it's all over."
Precisely why bond markets have and always will rule over any time frame approaching intermediate or longer, and why equity markets will inevitably be allowed to crash, ala Nikkei 1989 through present.
Dude if bonds crash...equity markets will be the last thing on anyones mind.
Seems like more and more people are asking themselves "Am I a Man or a Muppet?"
I erased my original reply and now am only going to say "hmm"
If the VIX stays under 20, I'll trade the range. 1400-1175. The risk reward is buy the dips. I'll place some protection in the 1180 area if it get's ugly.
Just Walk Away Rene
Nice post! Slewie. I'll run that link a bit later. Get a little short Europe/Asia. you won't regret it!
i'm short one 11-mile bike ride, Y/C
and i'm gonna go cover
l8r, g8r
From retail to the Primary Dealers - SWALK:
"Now you say you're lonely
You cry the whole night through
Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river
I cried a river over you
Now you say you're sorry
For bein' so untrue
Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river
I cried a river over you"
Au Revoir!
Keep posting these Great Poems! I love em! Don't forget lack of liquidity/river of tears next time!
It's a song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXg6UB9Qk0o
Phyzz or die. Everything paper is rigged and HFT computers can destroy your retirement inside of a nanosecond. Quote stuffing, mini flash crashes, investment banks buttfucking their own clients. People are fed up after being financially raped. Thats what I hear more and more from many ex-muppets I know.
LOL, I'm going to be laughing all the way to the bank. I missed all of the first quarter manipulated grind up because I knew it was FED rigged and didn't want any part of it. Waited for a volatility play and then shorted UVXY from $25 down to $14, and now I'm gonna kill it on the long side with TVIX in at $6.34. Time to take some more money from the people rigging the game. I've got God and my guns, I just need some more fiat paper to convert to gold. :-D
Or it means that people are tapping their investments to cover expenses.
Bulls-ear, Catnip!
OK, what about the miners? Are they gonna swoon with the market on top(down?) of all the manipulated short-selling driven low prices they are already trading at, or are some of the herd of investors who have nowhere else to go finally going to rotate into them?
but isnt 1360-1370 support?
No retailer.
All algos.
Every banker's wet dream.
Every algo trader's nightmare - stiffer competition.