Lastly, some good late day thoughts from BTIG’s Mike O’Rourke
“One great problem that we have before us is to preserve the rights of property; and these can only be preserved if we remember that they are in less jeopardy from the Socialist and the anarchist then from the predatory man of wealth. It has become evident that to refuse to invoke the power of the nation to restrain the wrongs committed by the man of great wealth who does evil is not only to neglect the interest of the public, but is to neglect the interests of the men of means who acts honorably by his fellows."
Teddy Roosevelt, May 30, 1907
While Roosevelt’s comments made in the months preceding the panic of 1907, were not responsible for the panic itself, they fueled investor fears in the midst of a bear market a century ago. Today, following six months of vilification of the banking industry it appears there may be a new target for the Administration’s populist ire “While many stakeholders made sacrifices and worked constructively, I have to tell you, some did not. In particular a group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout.” Apparently, the talks between the Administration and Chrysler’s lenders were acrimonious and unsuccessful. From the moment the news [hit] the wire that Chrysler would be filing for bankruptcy, the Administration immediately directed the blame at the hedge funds who were senior creditors.
At least in the case of banks a large degree of the Presidents statements were simply rhetoric. As we’ve seen several times in recent months the problem is that once the President commences a populist campaign Congress begins stampeding out
Looks like Bloomberg is treating the Swine Flu… pardon, the H1N1 issue a little more seriously than our green shooting friends at CNBC. For your convenience, presenting the H1N1TOTC (and H1N1TOTD) index – your friendly tracker of global infections as disclosed by the WHO.
As the chart below shows, quant funds attempted to leverage five times in the month of April only to fail every single time. In the meantime the higher trading volume on both the leveraging and deleveraging phase was welcome to brokers like JPM and UBS (and maybe MS?). Net result, the quant performance numbers will be horrendous, as they did not succeed to catch up with their losses as the market went against every single quant factor in existence except for momo high frequency traders who played the simplest of all possible reversion patterns while the market squeezed progressively higher. As ZH reported, the pain at RIEF last week was already likely beyond fixing: this week’s update will only make for some low calorie cake icing.
(for new readers, I recommend you read up on the attached labels to get a sense of the problem)
In a replay of yesterday, Morgan Stanley advertised 30 million SPY shares traded at 6:42 pm. Curiously UBS also posted a significant accumulation block, larger than yesterday’s, and indicative of some serious Prime Broker activity.
Whether this was merely ETF creation by the good folks at MS or some much more serious ongoing problems at PDT it is still unclear… Or at least until M/N and L/S quant desks have to report month end numbers. Not surprisingly DB is nowhere to be found: maybe that has something to do with the fact that their quants will soon be following in the quiet footsteps of Boaz Weinstein.
In what is becoming a daily anti-Wall Street litany from the administration, there was more blasting of banks, this time courtesy of Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse who called banks "greedy, stubborn and unreasonable." His Obamaesque remarks came on the heels of the defeat of the cramdown amendment in the senate after a 51-45 vote, which curiously had 12 Democrats voting against the proposal.
The Cramdown measure would have allowed bankruptcy judges to cut mortgage terms and help underwater borrowers avoid foreclosure. As such the vote down is a victory for banks and credit unions who said a passage of the amendment would have led to an increase in loan costs.
And, not surprisingly, another Democrat took the liberty to promote the upcoming Main Street – Wall Street heavyweight title match just that little bit further. Senator Richard Durbin, Illinois Democrat, sponsor of the original legislation and the chamber’s second-ranking Democrat said "These bankers who brought us into this crisis are literally shunning and stiff-arming the people who are facing foreclosure."
Apparently in addition to TurboTax, the current administration needs a refresher course on contract law.
Bet regardless, the defeat of the cramdown bill is a defeat to the Obama administration, which has now lost the battle of chicken every single time it has pushed a creditor to the brink and is looking weaker and weaker. Durbin, however would not let it go – the bank who would have been impacted the most from the Cramdown passage are JPM, Wells Fargo and Bank of America who "are surviving today because of taxpayers’ dollars." Quid pro quo Clarice?
Of course nobody cares about the other side of the argument. “The cram-down measure would have increased the cost of buying a home for all Americans, and that is the exact opposite
result that everyone is working towards right now,” said Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs at the Financial Services Roundtable.
But than again what is wrong in having the entire nation pay for the ridiculous greed of a few million fiscally irresponsible potential voters, living way beyond their means, buying vacation homes in Florida and Lake Tahoe, and maxing out their credit cards to buy that 3rd 50 inch plasma TV screen for the second bathroom.
This post is an update of Extreme Home Makeover Depression Edition where banks acquired brand new homes in foreclosure processes, the homes were not quite finished and the banks razed these homes rather than fix code violations.
Extreme Home Makeover Depression Edition Part 3
A peek inside the homes before they were demolished
Extreme Home Makeover Depression Edition Part 5
Part 4 is not yet available
Home Demolition
There you have it. Brand new nearly completed homes have a negative value because of regulations and are therefore destroyed.
From "Vision Victory" …
The homes were once owned by developer Mathews Homes and picked up by Guaranty Bank in Irvine via foreclosure. Guaranty Bank in Irvine is paying for the destruction of them. 4 model homes and 12 almost finished homes are being demolished. The person running the machine in the video says there are another 20 homes in Temecula California to demolish, about an hour away.
NEW HOMES DEMOLISHED
By Patrick Thatcher, staff writer for, Daily Press
Victorville- The housing collapse is taking a literal form for one bankrupt housing development. Four model homes and 12 nearly finished spec homes at Bear Valley Road and Highway 395 are being demolished.
The developer filed bankruptcy about 18 months ago and the foreclosed property went to Guaranty Bank in Irvine.
A Guaranty Bank official, Real Estate Officer Dean Smith, said they were facing daily fines from the city of Victorville if they didnt do something with the homes and property that not up to code. He said it was a choice of pumping their own money into property site improvements and additional money to bring the home up to code or tear down the 16 homes.
Smith said the bank is not in the building or land development business and because of the current housing market does not see anything happening with the property for at least five years.
Our only option is to either proceed with putting more than a million bucks into the land, which we’ve already taken a huge hit on and lost a lot of money, or, we tear down the houses, Smith
There is no end to spin coming from Washington no matter the speaker or party. That’s surely what you can believe in.
Markets closed with whimper today after being up substantially earlier in the day. What’s good about bankruptcy? Or, what’s good about more government aid to a crummy company building crummy cars? Sure we must save jobs but you can rest assured many layoffs will still result.
Volume? Well, it’s confusing. Most sources report volume being heavy; however, looking at many ETFs there wasn’t much volume at all. So, I’m suspicious of these reports. Breadth wasn’t anything special one way or the other.
Now let’s not have the Obama acolytes descend upon us for finding his words regarding Chrysler Orwellian. The headlines will read that April 2009 was the best market month by performance since March 2000. That seems ominous to me since the following month that bear market began in earnest.
This commentary is brief since we have house movers on the scene and I’ve lost (sigh) my big PC with multiple screens.
Have a great weekend!
Disclaimer: Among other issues the ETF Digest maintains positions in: SPY, MDY, IWM, QQQQ, XLF, XLI, XLB, XLY, IYR, DBC, USL, XLE, DBA, MOO, DBB, EFA, EEM, EWJ, IFN, EWH and FXI.
The charts and comments are only the author’s view of market activity and aren’t recommendations to buy or sell any security. Market sectors and related ETFs are selected based on his opinion as to their importance in providing the viewer a comprehensive summary of market conditions for the featured period. Chart annotations aren’t predictive of any future market action rather they only demonstrate the author’s opinion as to a range of possibilities going forward. More detailed information, including actionable alerts, are available to subscribers at www.etfdigest.com.
By Martin Hutchinson
Contributing Editor, Money Morning
Money Morning’s Bank Stress Test Says These Three Banks Are the Strongest
Why wait for the U.S. Treasury Department’s bank stress test when Money Morning can highlight the four secrets that will let you separate the winners from the losers in the U.S. banking system?
Call it the "Money Morning Bank Stress Test."
Back in February, I looked at the Top 12 U.S. banks, to determine whether it was really necessary – as U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was proposing at the time – to devote the enormous sum of $1.5 trillion of our money to bail them out. I came to the conclusion that such a huge bailout was unnecessary, and that only a few of the Top 12 banks seemed in any danger of collapse. Fortunately, policymakers and the market have now come to agree with me.
With banks’ first-quarter figures now out, it seems a good time to take another look. Since, at reader request, I had added Fifth Third Bancorp (Nasdaq: FITB) to the Top 12 (I have written on Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), now technically banks, separately), meaning that we now, here, have a "Top 13" list of banks – a bit smaller than the list of 19 the government has stress-tested.
[I'm aware of the hang-ups and superstitions involving the number "13." But I'll brave the bad luck, as I can't believe that number will stay at 13 for more than a few months; at the bottom end of the quality spectrum, there are clearly a few banks that need to be put out of their misery.]
All of the financial institutions discussed here have been subjected to Treasury Secretary Geithner’s "bank stress tests" and we are told they have all passed, with one exception (more information is due to be released Monday). That is hardly compatible with the government stance – of just two months ago – that another $1.5 trillion would be needed. I would suggest that the truth is somewhere in between the two extremes: Most of these banks are in reasonable shape and can be expected to recover on their own, but a few need to be put out of their misery.
Some 3rd derivative fun – as the chart below shows, the differential between those who see "Jobs Not So Plentiful" and "Jobs As Plentiful" is not only consistently high, but has demonstrated the first rise since October 2008: quite a bearish signal for jobs. Put this in your 2nd derivative green shoot pipe CNBC.
SQNM Sequenom, Inc. – Shares of the diagnostic testing and genetics analysis company have plummeted by more than 75%, crashing through the 52-week low for the stock of $6.19, to arrive at the current price of $3.68. The catastrophic decline stems from SQNM’s announcement that the launch of its SEQureDx test for Down syndrome is now delayed due to findings that employees of the company had mishandled crucial test data supporting the product’s validity. The news of the test’s delay does nothing to help the fact that the firm’s first-quarter loss widened to 29 cents per share, and Sequenom received a number of downgrades today including a rating of ‘underperform’ from ‘market perform’ by an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Option investors reacted to the bearish move on the stock by picking up 1,500 protective puts at June 2.5 strike price for an average premium of 41 cents apiece. In the near-term May contract, traders shed more than 4,200 calls at the May 5.0 strike for 39 cents each. Investors who were long put options at higher strikes were able to make a killing today by selling the protection. For example, it appears that one trader originally purchased about 3,500 puts for 2.00 apiece on April 1, 2009, and today sold the lots for 6.80 each. The profits garnered on such a trade amount to 4.80 per put option sold. On the flip side, investors who appear to have held a short put position at higher strikes were faced with deep in-the-money premiums. One investor who looks to have sold 3,500 puts at the May 12.5 strike for about 1.20 apiece back on April 1, 2009, today was forced to close out the short position by paying a premium of 9.00 each for the put options. This transaction results in a loss of 7.80. Option implied volatility on the stock sky-rocketed as high as 239% up from yesterday’s reading of 91%, but has since tapered off to the current value of 195.5%.
YHOO Yahoo! Inc. – The global internet brand has experienced a modest 1.5% rise in shares today to stand at $14.27. Options activity was slightly more bullish today with more than 3 call options traded to every put in play on the stock. Optimistic investors targeted the June contract where more than 11,100 calls were purchased…
Jobless claims improve while leading indicators decline in today’s economic report card
by Wall Street Sector Selector Staff
Weekly jobless claims declined to 424,000 from last week’s 432, 000 but stubbornly stayed above the all important 400,000 level for another week.
August Leading Indicators came in at +0.3% compared to 0.5% for July, as the economy continues registering weakness.
Good news came from July Home Prices which rose to +0.8% from the previously reported +0.7%.
But the biggest economic news of the week came yesterday when the Federal Reserve said it saw “significant downside risks to the economic outlook, including strains in global financial markets.”
Global stock markets responded negatively yesterday an...
Shares of Priceline.com Incorporated (NASDAQ: PCLN) are trading higher in the after-hours following the release of its Q1 earnings results. Currently, shares are up 2.74%, trading at $548.60; they closed the regular session down 0.67 %, at $533.97.
The company said that its Q1 EPS came in at $2.66 on revenues of $809.3 million; this compares to the Street's estimate of $2.46 per share on revenues of $779.5 million. Revenues rose 38.6% year over year.
"In the 1st quarter, the Group benefited from strong growth in our global hotel business, particularly at Booking.com and Agoda," said Jeffery H. Boyd, Priceline President and Chief Executive Officer.
He added, "Room nights booked grew by 55.8% and our international gross bookings grew by 79% compared to prior year...
The damage control to the Fukushima explosion reported earlier is coming fast and furious. According to CNN, "the explosion at an earthquake-damaged nuclear plant was not caused by damage to the nuclear reactor but by a pumping system that failed as crews tried to bring the reactor's temperature down, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Saturday. The next step for workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant will be to flood the reactor containment structure with sea water to bring the reactor's temperature down to safe levels, he said. The effort is expected to take two days." While the government is trying to play down the threat from the explosion, it has nonetheless double the evacuation zone radius from 10 to 20 kilometers: "Radiation levels have fallen since the explosion and there is no immediate danger, Edano said. But authorities were nevertheless expanding the evacuation ...
Note from dshort: I retired this chart series last summer in deference to my prefered inflation-adjusted series that aligns the S&P 500 2000 high with the Nikkei peak in 1989. However, I continue to receive requests for this version, despite the "V" shape of the the recovery since the March 2009 low. This chart series overlays the current S&P 500 with the L-shaped "recoveries" after the Dow Crash of 1929, the Nikkei 225 after Japan's 1989 bubble, and the post Tech Bubble NASDAQ. Click the chart below for a larger version and use the links to see various comparisons.
Top 5 RisersStockRatingAnalysisVLOSTRONGBUYAn increasingly positive growth rate of past earnings, along with improving expectations for long term growth, make Valero a good prospect for high returns.KROSTRONGBUYKronos Worldwide has been gaining recognition from analysts as a good canditate for achieving higher than expected earnings along with higher overall projected valuation.SFIBUYiStar is one of the top candidates projected to achieve both higher than previously projected earnings in the short run and a higher earnings growth rate in the long run.AMATSTRONGBUYApplied Materials has been...
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February is now past, and the Biotech Porfolio is loaded with winners and a miss (PLX). MRK is down a bit, but I expect that trade to recover, and one could be more agressive and double down on it, or play another round at the Jan13 $30 options for roughly the same price. Below is the summary, and note the grey boxes are ones that did not fill. I am still a fan of BMRN, and like DEPO as well. Now let's look at a few others.
Table 1. PSW Biotech Plays Since January 2011
 
Our newest play is Momenta Pharmaceuticals (MNTA), who is pursuing a three-part business model which includes complex generic equivalents in partnership with the Sandoz division of Novartis, proprietary compounds, and follow-on- biologics (FOB). It seems that this company is tied up in competition/litigation wit...
Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(