I’m guessing as it’s only 7:30 but WOW! What an amazing economy this must be in the fantasy-land where they concoct these numbers. Let’s see, we have 138M working people so we must have added 8.6M jobs, right? NO??? Well, then the people who are working must be putting in a lot of overtime, right? No? I know, everybody must be making 6% more money than last year! No? Well, then it must be coming through in benefits, right? No? Hmm, this is a hard game isn’t it? I KNOW!!! Housing prices – with China-like GDP growth our housing market must be red hot and surely our homes are up 6% in value! No? Damn, I feel like I’m playing deal or no deal and I picked the case with the penny…
Just like our discussion about what total BS the CPI was – GDP is no different. GDP is the sum of Consumption, Investment, Government Spending and Net Exports which means a combination of inflation and government spending can boost our GDP even as real consumption falls and the rising dollar papers over export losses. In other words – I buy $100Bn worth of Toyotas (5M at $20,000 each) from Japan with the dollar at 85 Yen. Now the dollar rises to 93 Yen and I’m "only" buying $90Bn worth of Toyotas (5M at $18,000 each) and our GDP for that segment is up 10%. Wow – FANTASTIC!
Are we happy? Are more Americans working? Is there more shipping? Are there more sales at the Toyota dealership? No. Is Japan happy? Not at all, they are getting less money for the same cars. Another group that hasn’t been happy are the oil exporters, who shipped us an average of 10.5 Million barrels a day at an average price of $60 last year ($630M) and are now shipping us just 8.5Mbd at $80 last week ($680M). Sure they are still getting their $680M a day by choking off production and creating false supply shortages, but they miss the days when they were able to charge us $100 for 11Mbd.
As I said in my Weekly Wrap-Up, recessions are for wimps and kudos to the Fed for finally pulling out the stick after all the soft talking they’ve been doing. Meanwhile, I do not see what all the fuss is about – I did the math for Members last night and banks borrow about $89Bn at the discount window on a good day and 0.25% of $87Bn is a grand total of $22M – this is NOT going cause the fall of Western Civilization people! What it does do is stop making the Fed the lender of first resort, which was never supposed to be their function in the first place.
The MSM should be more concerned with the end of the TALF, which is where the Fed buys up toxic assets from the banks at face value (we’ll all be paying for that later) and they just announced that the Fed’s holding of Mortgage-Backed Securities went over the $1Tn mark yesterday, bringing the Fed’s Balance Sheet to $2.25Tn of very questionable assets that they’ve bought for us from the banksters.
Speaking of banksters – Kudos to Matt Taibbi for his excellent Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle. As I said to Members, if it wasn’t for Matt and Dylan Ratigan, I would have to be writing about this stuff instead of following the markets. Thank goodness there are a few top-notch people investigating this nonsense with the ability to communicate their findings in a way that makes it interesting:
The nation’s six largest banks — all committed to this balls-out, I drink your milkshake! strategy of flagrantly gorging themselves as America goes hungry — set aside a whopping $140 billion for executive compensation last year, a sum only slightly less than the $164 billion they paid themselves in the pre-crash year of 2007.
The question everyone should be asking, as one bailout recipient after another posts massive profits — Goldman reported $13.4 billion in profits last year, after paying out that $16.2 billion in bonuses and compensation — is this: In an economy as horrible as ours, with every factory town between New York and Los Angeles looking like those hollowed-out ghost ships we see on History Channel documentaries like Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes, where in the hell did Wall Street’s eye-popping profits come from, exactly? Did Goldman go from
Our theoretically conservative $100,000 Portfolio dropped 6% in one day as we had a farily bearish position into options expiration that I stubbornly refused to adjust this week. Surely, I thought, after running up 250 Dow points from Thursday, 10,000 would act as some kind of resistance? We’re also up a neat 500 points for the month of October so that’s our 5% rule and to not get a 1% pullback, even in the most bullish of markets, is very rare indeed.
So we stayed bearish yesterday and got crushed by the AMZN $90 calls we sold as well as UYG calls we sold and our PSQ calls we bought for protection got slaughtered as the Nasdaq flew up not 5% but 5.5% for the month and up 6.2% from it’s October 2nd low. While we are disappointed, we’re not terribly concerned as we’re only going to roll the calls to November anyway and I did promise the members that, if we hold our breakout levels for 2 closes, then I’ll be shifting more bullish. I’ve been trying to identify more bullish positions this week but our mix has still tended bearish as I’m just having so much trouble buying into this rally.
I do wish we were more bullish, this is a very smart group of people and we’re pretty bearish but so is the general investing public or there’d be volume to this rally. I have a hard time ignoring the fact that 600,000 more people lost their jobs this week and, even if it’s "only" 500,000, I still think that’s not really a sign of a healty economy. I think the REITs are off in fantasy land and I think so is the government, who cannot keep borrowing money at these low rates. The dollar has dropped 25% of it’s value since March so the market is only 25% ahead of the currency fall which means a flight back to the dollar, which could happen very suddenly if an EU nation like Spain collapses, could send our market down as fast a 9/11.
That being said, we have no choice but to follow the technicals and now that we can look at nice, easy support levels like Dow 10,000, S&P 1,100, NYSE 7.200, Nas, 2,200 and RUT 620 and simply call
Will today be funner? Is funner a word? As you know, I have been determined to get more bullish and our Watch List is growing every day as I add more and more undervalued companies that still have room to fly if we are truly going to run the S&P back over 1,100 this year. We remain skeptical but you can be skeptical and still make money, as you can see from Corey’s (Afraid to Trade) very nice S&P Chart, you can do very well in this market buying the dips OR selling the tops – we kind of like to do both…
Despite the low volumes, buyers are clearly in control of this market and, in Member Chat yesterday, I compared the situation to having a bet on the Raiders, who lost 44 to 7 on Sunday. You can start out with a bet on the Raiders (in this case, the Bears) but there’s a certain point, perhaps when the 3rd consecutive possession by the Giants (Bulls) ends in a TD, that you have tgo admit you aren’t going to win.
You have a few choices at that point: You can be a perma-Raider and keep betting more and more on your team (not smart); You can swallow your losses and leave the stadium; You can swallow your losses and stay on the sidelines and watch the game; Or you can switch sides and start betting on the Giants, maybe even recovering some of what you lost. You can keep some of your useless-looking Raiders bets, just in case a miracle occurs but what’s the sense of not betting on a clear winner when it’s right in front of you? Even if you are skeptical, that can be useful as it keeps you out of trouble as you should be wise enough to take your profits off the table.
I never understand the "fan" behavior of market players. If you see the market going up and up and up and up – perhaps it’s time to make a few up bets. Bears don’t earn loyalty rewards or get frequent-complainer points from the market so, if your "team" is getting trampled, it’s OK to switch sides – at least for a while – no one will think any less of you. In the case of our bull-market bets, we have a great opportunity to switch sides at a very significant…
In Bill Gross Bets On Deflation I posted some links on falling rent prices courtesy of Lansler on Real Estate. Here is a recap.
Rents Falling Everywhere
Given that the official measure of CPI is based on rents not housing prices, please consider the following collection of links courtesy of Lanser on Real Estate: Really? Rents fall almost everywhere.
A shrinking number of jobs and a growing supply of apartments will continue to push the Puget Sound region’s rents down next year as vacancy rates climb, industry experts predict.
Job losses killed our market, and development buried it," Mike Scott, of Dupre + Scott Apartment Advisors, told landlords at an industry conference Tuesday.
The average monthly rent across all apartment types in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties fell from $988 to $959 during the 12 months ending in September, and a continuing decline through 2011 will further cut that figure to $889, Dupre + Scott projects.
While demand for apartments is falling, the supply is rising.
So far, 4,100 new units have opened this year, and more than 2,000 others are expected to become available by year-end, according to Dupre + Scott.
The firm estimates that about 20 percent of the 6,000 condos completed in the past three years are also on the rental market now.
The combination of job losses and new units has upped the region’s vacancy rates from 6.6 percent last spring to 7.2 percent now, and heading toward 9 percent next year, the firm said.
Case-Shiller CPI is formulated by substituting the Case-Shiller housing index for Owner’s Equivalent Rent in the CPI. For a complete description of the reasons and methodology, please see What’s the Real CPI?
The chart and commentary below is courtesy of my friend "TC" who writes:
CS-CPI continues to fall albeit at a less rapid pace and measures -5.1% YOY. Meanwhile the government’s CPI-U also continues to fall at a slower pace and measures -1.5% YOY. The divergence is to due to the government’s housing metric of Owners’ Equivalent Rent (OER) continuing to show price increases (+1.7% YOY) vs. Case-Shiller data showing price decreases (-13.3% YOY).
click on chart for sharper image
Since the Case Shiller housing market peak in June 2006, OER is up +7.7%, while the Case-Shiller index is down -30.9% – an amazing 3860 basis point divergence!
CS-CPI YOY has now fallen for 11 consecutive months and 14 of the past 18. Meanwhile the government’s CPI-U YOY has fallen for 6 consecutive months.
Thanks "TC".
With rental prices and food prices starting to drop, I expect to see CPI-U (the official CPI) to continue to decline. Moreover, with the coming end of the $8,000 housing tax credits for new home buyers and a phase-out of treasury monetization by the Fed, a reversal in the housing index is likely.
It’s highly unlikely that home prices have bottomed in the bubble areas as well as most major cities, even though some select markets, especially Florida areas that have been hammered mercilessly, may be in a bottoming process now.
Dr. Housing Bubble outlines a solid case for "the bottom is not in" viewpoint in Shadow Inventory Case Study. Please take a look. It’s a good read.
Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., said he’s been buying longer maturity Treasuries in recent weeks as protection against deflation.
“There has been significant flattening on the long end of the curve,” Gross said in an interview from Newport Beach, California, with Bloomberg Radio. “This reflects the re- emergence of deflationary fears. The U.S. is at the center of de-levering as opposed to accelerating growth.”
Gross had said during the midst of the credit crunch that Treasuries offered little value as investors seeking a refuge from turmoil in global financial markets drove yields to record lows in December. He boosted the $177.5 billion Total Return Fund’s investment in government-related bonds to 44 percent of assets, the most since August 2004, from 25 percent in July, according data released earlier this month on Pimco’s Web site. The fund cut mortgage debt to 38 percent from 47 percent.
Yield Curve Flattening
click on chart for sharper image
I am very familiar with the yield curve flattening. The above chart is one I run constantly, in real time, on my computer. The curve represents weekly closes. The flattening from the actual peak is even greater. The intraday high in the 10-Year Treasury Note is just over 4%.
What’s The CPI?
Properly adjusted for housing, I have the real CPI as of July at -6.2%. That number is arrived at by substituting the Case-Shiller CPI for Owners Equivalent Rent (OER) in the CPI. Please see What’s the Real CPI? for details.
Inquiring minds might also be interested in Real Treasury Yields Highest In History. If real treasury yields are high, it should be no wonder that Bill Gross in interested in them.
Rents Falling Everywhere
Given that the official measure of CPI is based on rents not housing prices, please consider the following collection of links courtesy of Lanser on Real Estate: Really? Rents fall almost everywhere.
CPI came in in-line with expectations. The headline figure was 0.4% while the CPI less food and energy came in at 0.1%. These are relatively benign figures. There are no serious signs of deflation and inflation isn’t running wild. Not too hot and not too cold. A Goldilocks figure in case you’re a Kudlow fan. Unfortunately for those of us who are growing increasingly concerned about the perpetual boom bust cycle created by easy money, this only throws fuel on the fire. Bernanke is now in the exact position he wants to be – wait and see mode. That means the fire can rage while the Fed chief twiddles his thumbs. Much like he did when he kept rates too high in 2007 and much like Greenspan did in 2003 when he kept rates too low. If the global economy begins to take off as it did in 2003 we are almost certain to see a repeat of the boom portion of the cycle in the coming years. Of course, the likelihood of a following bust is high….Econoday has some thoughts on the data:
Several factors kept the core rate soft. The cash-for-clunkers tax credits helped push prices for new vehicles down by 1.3 percent. Apparel slipped 0.1 percent. Shelter costs were sluggish, including owners’ equivalent rent rising only 0.1 percent. The recession has kept rents soft which also impact owners’ equivalent rent which is based on actual rent for owner-type houses. On the upside, prescription drugs increased 0.6 percent and airline fares jumped 1.7 percent.
Year-on-year, headline inflation rose to minus 1.4 (seasonally adjusted) from down 1.9 percent in July. The core rate eased to up 1.5 percent in July from up 1.6 percent the previous month. On an unadjusted year-ago basis, the headline number was down 1.5 percent in August while the core was up 1.4 percent.
Outside of energy, consumer price inflation is subdued, leaving the Fed flexibility for when to start unwinding its balance sheet expansion. Given that the August numbers matched expectations, there should be little market reaction today. But the higher energy costs serve as a reminder that when recovery strengthens, oil prices and headline inflation are likely headed up. Bond traders should take note.
In other news. industrial production came in better than expected at 69.6%. This…
The output of the nation’s factories, mines and utilities rose 0.8% in August. Output was also much stronger in July than first estimated, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday. The August increase was just a bit better than expected by economists surveyed by MarketWatch. Analysts had been expecting a 0.7% gain. Capacity utilization – a gauge of slack in the economy — rose to 69.6% in August from a revised 69.0% in July. There were gains across the board in August. Manufacturing expanded 0.6% in August. Excluding autos and auto parts, manufacturing rose 0.4%.
An economic rebound is definitely under way, how fast and far that rebound is remains to be seen. That said, I am impressed by the strength in output outside of the manufacturing sector. As I detailed yesterday, capacity utilization has historically had a strong relationship with employment.
In addition, the increase in capacity utilization decreases the worry over deflation (though not out of the woods yet). The relationship between capacity utilization and inflation was detailed here and we may be seeing the beginning stages of what may be a reflationary period that the broader investment community had been worried about for some time.
One year to the day after Lehman Brothers collapsed and precipitated a financial crisis that reverberated across the globe, President Obama will deliver a major speech on the financial crisis at Federal Hall in New York City at midday on Monday. According to the White House: "He will discuss the aggressive steps the Administration has taken to bring the economy back from the brink, the commitment to winding down the government’s role in the financial sector and the actions the United States and the global community must take to prevent a crisis like this from ever happening again."
As I had mentioned in our Year One Review of the Stock Market Crash, Obama and Wall Street did not get off to a great start but, even after the March crash, we are still up 20% since he was sworn in in January as the President has been EXTREMELY accommodative to Wall Street’s needs (ie. free money) so far. That has been the carrot - perhaps now it is time for the stick…
The Treasury just released a document entitled: "The Next Phase of Government Financial Stabilization and Rehabilitation Policies" which, at 51 pages, is a pretty neat review of the crash as well but I still prefer mine as it saves you an hour and has much better pictures. There are many charts in the government’s documents and they are not all that encouraging. As the report concludes:
We must address the structural weaknesses in our financial system that this crisis revealed. The Administration is working to gain approval of a detailed set of proposals to reform our regulatory system to address these weaknesses and keep our financial markets and economy on track to a sustainable recovery.
In addition to Obama speaking at noon, we have 3 Fed Governors making speeches today. Duke speaks on Regulatory Reform at 8:30, Lacker talks about Financial Regulation at 12:30 (right after Obama) and Yellen gives an Economic Outlook at 3:50, just in time for a stick-save into the bell so we could have a wild ride this morning!
Speaking of the Fed, I just read a great book called "The Creature from Jekyll Island," which our man Ron Paul calls: "What every American needs to know about central bank power. A gripping adventure into the secret world of the international banking cartel." The book tears…
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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Wow, a 6% GDP!
Are we happy? Are more Americans working? Is there more shipping? Are there more sales at the Toyota dealership? No. Is Japan happy? Not at all, they are getting less money for the same cars. Another group that hasn’t been happy are the oil exporters, who shipped us an average of 10.5 Million barrels a day at an average price of $60 last year ($630M) and are now shipping us just 8.5Mbd at $80 last week ($680M). Sure they are still getting their $680M a day by choking off production and creating false supply shortages, but they miss the days when they were able to charge us $100 for 11Mbd. 
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The Fed raised the discount rate – Big Deal! 
The nation’s six largest banks — all committed to this balls-out, I drink your milkshake! strategy of flagrantly gorging themselves as America goes hungry — set aside a whopping $140 billion for executive compensation last year, a sum only slightly less than the $164 billion they paid themselves in the pre-crash year of 2007.
Yesterday was very hard for us.
You have a few choices at that point: You can be a perma-Raider and keep betting more and more on your team (not smart); You can swallow your losses and leave the stadium; You can swallow your losses and stay on the sidelines and watch the game; Or you can switch sides and start betting on the Giants, maybe even recovering some of what you lost. You can keep some of your useless-looking Raiders bets, just in case a miracle occurs but what’s the sense of not betting on a clear winner when it’s right in front of you? Even if you are skeptical, that can be useful as it keeps you out of trouble as you should be wise enough to take your profits off the table. Job losses killed our market, and development buried it," Mike Scott, of Dupre + Scott Apartment Advisors, told landlords at an industry conference Tuesday.
CPI came in in-line with expectations. The headline figure was 0.4% while the CPI less food and energy came in at 0.1%. These are relatively benign figures. There are no serious signs of deflation and inflation isn’t running wild. Not too hot and not too cold. A Goldilocks figure in case you’re a Kudlow fan. Unfortunately for those of 
Today should be very interesting!
In addition to Obama speaking at noon, we have 3 Fed Governors making speeches today. Duke speaks on Regulatory Reform at 8:30, Lacker talks about Financial Regulation at 12:30 (right after Obama) and Yellen gives an Economic Outlook at 3:50, just in time for a stick-save into the bell so we could have a wild ride this morning! 
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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
(