Tumultuous Tuesday – Funds Tend to Short Ten-Year Treasuries
by Phil - May 4th, 2010 7:55 am
Societe Generale is out with the latest edition of their hedge fund watch and in it we see that they’ve found hedge funds to have the "shortest position EVER on bonds."
Well, ever is since 2005 but still, hedge funds now have more than 270,000 short contracts on the 10-year Treasury Bond and that’s not even counting PSW Members and their TBT positions (ultra-short the 20-year) so we are either twice as smart as hedge funds or twice as dumb – either way, it looks like it’s coming to a head!
SocGen also reports large short positions in 30-year TBills too with a net short there of about 100,000 contracts and the Bank concludes that funds are also "strong net sellers of the Yen (50K net short) and buyers of US Dollars." Short positions in the Euro are being reduced now that we’re near my $1.30 target but this is a critical line for the Euro and we could still break 10% lower if it doesn’t hold, I mentioned our Euro play in the Weekend Wrap-Up so I won’t get into it here but what a day we had yesterday already!
According to Market Folly, hedge funds are also now net sellers of equities with long/short equity funds are now around 25% net long, which is definitely below their historical average of 35-40% net long. Folly also sees that, according to CFTC data, many hedgies have been adding to shorts in S&P futures. Whether they are simply selling longs to lock in some profit or making a market timing call, one thing is clear: hedge funds are definitely cautious in this market. Following the funds has been profitable this year as they are up 13% year-to-date after the Hedge Fund Generals Index was up 69% last year.
PSW members did their best to avoid temptation yesterday despite the "rally" (that failed to make it back to Thursday’s highs on low volume) and despite the "fabulous" auto numbers that CNBC et al could not stop fawning over. Indeed the statistics were so good they were – RIDICULOUS – Chrysler up 25%, DIA up 18.8%, F up 24.7%, GM up 6.4%, HMC up 12.5%, Hyundai up 30%, Kia up 17.3% and TM up 24.4%. This caused me to comment to Members:
OK, now I may be an old fuddy-duddy but I’m counting less than 1M cars sold in a month in this group and it seems to
…
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Welcome To The Banana Republic: GM In Hot Water With FTC Over Misleading “Repaid Bailout” Ad When All Just TARP Shuffle
by ilene - April 23rd, 2010 6:33 pm
See also the post two posts ago "How is that Bailout Coming Along?" with articles by Mish and Op-Toons Review.
Welcome To The Banana Republic: GM In Hot Water With FTC Over Misleading "Repaid Bailout" Ad When All Just TARP Shuffle
Courtesy of We are too busy maxing out our credit cards buying AAPL shares after hours into the parabolic blow out (using Sigma X of course, how else could we subpenny front run our own orders?), stacks of Kindles, 7th vacation homes with negative equity, and LBOing zero EBITDA companies to comment on this, suffice to say that if you ever needed confirmation that America is a banana republic in which fraud, corruption and lies are now the norm, here you go: Government Motors is now blatantly lying to its existing and future buyers, and everyone in the administration is complicit.
From Fox News:
General Motors is running ads on all the major networks this week claiming it has repaid its bailout from the taxpayers "in full." But the claim isn’t standing up to scrutiny from lawmakers and government watchdogs who have found that the automaker was able to repay the bailout money only by dipping into a separate pot of bailout funds.
Uhm, what’s wrong with that? That’s precisely the reason why the market is now on for an 8th straight up week. In order to make the rich infinitely rich (before there is revolution, hyperinflation or dollar devaluation), the Obama people must resort to anything and everything.
General Motors is running ads on all the major networks this week claiming it has repaid its bailout from the taxpayers "in full." But the claim isn’t standing up to scrutiny from lawmakers and government watchdogs who have found that the automaker was able to repay the bailout money only by dipping into a separate pot of bailout funds.The TV spot may land GM in hot water with the Federal Trade Commission over its truth-in-advertising laws, which prohibit ads that are "likely to mislead consumers."
"We have repaid our government loans in full — with interest — five years ahead of the original schedule," says Ed Whitacre, chairman and CEO of General Motors Company, asking Americans to give the bankrupt company another look.
But a top Senate Republican has accused GM
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Toppy Tuesday – Happy Anniversary Bull Market!
by Phil - March 9th, 2010 8:26 am
It’s hard to believe that just one year ago today investors thought the world was ending!
Well, not all investors – we were BUYBUYBUYing at the time, as I recapped back in September whan we did our "Market Crash – Year One Review." Click on Cramer’s picture for the Daily Show’s March 4th, 2009 review of the magical moments that led us down to the bottom and here’s another great video from the evening broadcast on March 9th and, of course, there is my own legendary appearance on LiveStock from March 6th, but that’s summarized in the crash link, so save yourself 3 hours, although the first 10 minutes are worth it for people who want to learn about our buy/write strategy as I explained the logic of it as I recommended FAS at $2.41 using those hedges.
And what a wild year it has been as we’ve made an epic recovery. The only question is – have we come too far too fast? Should we be up 75% from our March 9th lows? We are still down 25% from our highs but let’s keep in mind that we made those highs thinking AIG was MAKING money, that FNM and FRE were great stocks for your retirement portfolio, that Kirk Kirkorean was going to rescue GM, that BZH wasn’t some kind of scam, that BSC, LEH et al were "the smartest guys in the room." I urge you to click on Cramer and listen to the idiocy of the analysts who would tell you everything is all right even as it was all falling apart around them – why does everyone suddenly trust them again?
How could we not love this market? Markets do this sort of thing all the time don’t they? It’s all part of the "efficient pricing model" that always lets you know what a stock is truly worth like when GE was "worth" $30 in 2008 and "worth" $6 in 2009 and is now "worth" $16. This is not some biotech folks – this is GE, they’ve been around for 100 years and they have $170Bn in global sales. Did they really drop 80% in value in 2009? No. That’s why it was easy to pick a bottom – the valuations got ridiculous and, as fundamentalists, we siezed on the opportunity to BUYBUYBUY despite the negative sentiment.
Now, we are in a very different situation. Now we…
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You Can’t Keep a Good Brand Down… But You Can Try
by ilene - March 6th, 2010 9:28 am
You Can’t Keep a Good Brand Down… But You Can Try
Courtesy of Travis at Zero Hedge
GM today reported that they will reinstate over half, 600 of the 1,100 dealership franchises they told to get lost last year- in an effort to keep the other some 5,000 dealerships "healthy and profitable." The lucky 600 will be getting letters asking to stay with the automaker, that’s if they haven’t already closed their doors forever due to the fact that 1) car sales suck despite an upbeat report earlier in the week 2) some people would argue that GM cars suck and finally 3) the GM brand may be discontinued forever a la Pontiac, Saturn, and Hummer.
A consortion of dealerships have been fighting the Detroit giant, citing they’ve been treated unfairly and that GM was vague in their decisions and thoughts on what dealers are actually profitable, and which ones are not.
Chrysler too, which slashed almost 800 of it’s franchises is also reconsidering the cuts; according to the Associated Press "the decision was a compromise meant to avoid federal legislation that would require that the showrooms be kept open."
Under the revised cutting procedures, dealers would "get face-to-face reviews, binding arbitration and faster payments to help dealers slated for shutdown."
As published by the Associated Press on Yahoo!:
"Congress-brokered talks between dealer groups and the automakers began in September. But those talks stalled over disputes about the review process for targeted dealerships and other issues. Looming over the fight has been the threat of federal legislation to deal with the closures. Lawmakers warned that if a deal wasn’t reached, that legislation would move forward.
The White House has opposed the legislation over concerns that it could hurt GM’s and Chrysler’s efforts to rebound from their government-led bankruptcies."
I guess Congress figures, they’re not done launching torpedos at Toyota- better keep some of these domestic dealerships open to sop-up the overage from Toyota’s once ivory, and now bloodied domestic tower of safety and reliability.
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Testy Tuesday – Faber Says US Treasuries Are Junk
by Phil - February 9th, 2010 8:24 am
"If the US were a corporation, it would have bonds that are junk rated."
That’s the word from Marc Faber but, then again, his column is called the "Gloom, Boom, Doom Report" so he is very much talking his book. Faber makes the case that our unfunded liabilities make the US a toxic investment, much the way GM health and pension obligations. The US ended up bailing out GM but who can bail out the US? Faber argues that additional debt growth no longer has the ability to add to GDP growth, meaning we have passed a tipping point where we have no choice but to pay off existing debt (most likely through inflation) or default.
Pragmatic Capitalist has a great article discussing total debt to GDP and, yes, we all need to be very concerned but our debt to GDP is up at levels we hit in the Great Depression – that was 80 years ago and the US is still standing! While I don’t advocate dismissing these issues, I do want to point out that these issues are always with us and the MSM has gone from completely ignoring them (our Meatball Market of January) to focusing on nothing but. Suddenly Faber, Roubini and various bond pimps have center stage and the gold bugs are trying to pull the last group of suckers into that tent with scary stories about the imminent collapse of the USA, as if having a share of an ETF that says it holds some gold somewhere is going to do you any good when your broker goes dark in the predicted economic catastrophe.
The reason gold has been a valuable alternative to currency throughout human history is that it has a high value to weight ratio – Try loading up the SUV with a pound of gold ($17,088) or 235, 42-gallon barrels of oil and you’ll see what I mean. Gold’s value as a currency hedge is that it’s readily exchangeable anywhere in the world for cash. While it may make some sense for the bomb-shelter crowd to store some bullion along with the beans – what edge do you think you’re getting with a certificate that says you own a share of an ETF that stores some gold somewhere?
If the US economy implodes and the market collapses – where exactly will you be going to claim your gold? In 2008, when the economy WAS collapsing, gold fell from $936…
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Merry Monday Morning
by Phil - December 21st, 2009 8:06 am
Mondays never let us down, do they?
Thank goodness too or we would have regretted flipping more bullish on Friday but the combination of thin trading and a short week with no data on Monday was just too much for the pump-monkeys to resist and they are out in force this morning, sending the Dow futures 40 points higher, over 100 points above Friday’s low, where our lower levels held and we made some upside bets (see Weekend Wrap-Up for details). We are mainly in cash for the duration of the year but we’ll be keeping our eyes open for some nice opportunities, like shorting oil again as they cross below $75 (now $75.08 at 7:30) on the last day of January contract trading, using $75 as the stop line to the upside – that play should be an easy way to scalp a few quarters.
Gold popped back to $1,118 overnight but not too impressive as silver is laying around at $17.35 while copper was rejected at $3.16 and couldn’t hold $3.15 either so we’re probably heading back to test $3.10 this week once the dollar reasserts itself after losing ground to the Euro ($1.435) and the Yen (90.50) in overnight trading (after the Nikkei closed up, of course). None of that matters, of course, in the final 8 trading days of the first decade of the 21st century as it’s VERY unlikely the Dow will match it’s Dec 27th, 1999 finish of 11,497 or the S&P 1,469 or especially the Nasdaq, which is not even at 1/2 it’s 1999 finish of 4,069.
The NYSE, oddly enough, has been a small winner over the past decade, having finished 1999 at just 6,876 and the Russell has been the best performing index, now at 610 and up over 20% from the decade’s start at 504. This is GOOD – this makes me feel good about America and about our prospects for the future. Of course our big industrials had a rough decade – we shipped our manufacturing overseas and there’s little left there. Of course tech can’t compete with the idiotic bubble of 1999 and the S&P also fell victim to globalization and performed poorly against increasing foreign competition.
But at home, our broader and generally smaller companies – the ones that employ 70% of all American workers, have found a way to survive and thrive through difficult economic circumstances and that, my friends,…
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Thrill-Ride Thursday: Jobs, What Jobs?
by Phil - October 15th, 2009 8:12 am
Yesterday was very hard for us.
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.
In yesterday’s Member Chat, my comments on the current situation was:
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
…
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Stock Market Crash – Year One Review II – The Next 30% Down
by Phil - September 7th, 2009 5:39 pm
The nice thing about decimation is it’s a fractional way to die.
The word decimation is derived from Latin and means "removal of a tenth." The Romans would "decimate" their deserters as well as soldiers who performed poorly in battle by dividing the men up into groups of 10 and having them draw lots. The losing group was then killed by the winners, who were still punished only they felt like winners by virtue of still being alive. As I said, the system has it’s advantages as a General who has to decimate 1,000 men must put 100 to death but a General with less to work with, say 100 men, only needs to mark 10 to die.
Does this system leave the remaining 90% healthier? Well, it certainly means there’s more food left, more medicine, more weapons, more supplies for the remainder. Decimation is exactly what happened to the Financial Sector as 119 Financial Institutions have failed and dozens of others merged out of existence since NetBank kicked off our current crisis on Sept 28th, 2007. There are currently another 416 "troubled" banks as of Aug 27th and that number was revised up from a count of 305 given in May. Sill, there are over 8,246 Financial Institutions remaining with $13.5Tn in cash assets and the FDIC has a $500Bn line of credit to draw on should the need arise. So, to put things in perspective – we haven’t even lost one in 10 and almost all that we’ve lost has been absorbed by another functioning institution. I wanted to put this up front on this section because this is the fulcrum of the misconception that started this crisis.
$1,000,000,000,000 is a lot of money. It’s very hard for a person who has worked their whole lives to save $100,000 to wrap their heads around a number that is 10,000,000 times bigger than that and seeing our government talk about bailouts that START at $700Bn and grow to, arguably, $7,000,000,0000,000 in a matter of months is certain to push some emotional buttons. As a fundamentalist, I try to give our members perspective on the markets and perhaps the best way to view what happened to the economy is to think about an accident victim.
The GDP of the United States is roughly $14Tn a year. Usually, that money cycles around through the body of the…
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Bankrupt Auto Parts Suppliers Seek $100 Million In Executive Bonuses
by ilene - August 27th, 2009 10:31 am
This is the kind of thing that makes me disgusted with whatever our politico-economic system has become, whatever you want to call it. – Ilene
Bankrupt Auto Parts Suppliers Seek $100 Million In Executive Bonuses
Courtesy of Mish
In every corner, greed continues to amaze. Please consider Bankrupt suppliers seek exec bonuses.
A growing number of bankrupt auto suppliers are seeking court approval to pay tens of millions of dollars in bonuses to key executives, as they shed employees and cut costs.
Some of the bonuses have come under sharp criticism from General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co., as well as the trustees named by the Justice Department to monitor bankruptcy cases.
"Considering the condition of the automotive industry and the adverse effect on auto suppliers, it is unclear why payments are even needed to retain employees who may have limited options to find employment elsewhere," said Diana G. Adams, the U.S. trustee in objecting to a plan by Lear Corp.
Southfield-based Lear, which is in the process of cutting costs by $350 million, won approval Tuesday to pay $20.6 million in bonuses to 29 execs.
Congress rewrote the bankruptcy code in 2005 in an attempt to prevent executives from rewarding themselves during bankruptcy, while rank-and-file workers make significant sacrifices.
Yet Visteon, which sought bankruptcy protection on May 28, wants to give bonuses of up to $80.1 million to top execs — as much as 250 percent of base pay, for some of them.
Ford, in court documents, said it "cannot see how, in a market with mass layoffs, salary reductions and bonus program curtailments occurring daily, anyone can justify a bonus program of $80.1 million when job retention should be enough."
And Northville-based wheel producer Hayes Lemmerz International Inc. wants permission to pay more than $10 million in bonuses, including as much as $6.7 million to its top five execs.
Just Friday, however, Hayes proposed canceling its retiree health and life insurance coverage for households covering 2,200 families.
Hayes has proposed creating a Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association, which would allow retirees who are ineligible for Medicare to keep coverage at a cost of $900 to $2,100 a month. Hayes would contribute as much as $4.8 million over four years to cancel its accrued liability of $147.5 million.
That last paragraph takes the cake. Hayes would "allow" retirees to keep medical coverage…
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Will They Hold It Wednesday?
by Phil - August 26th, 2009 8:25 am
This is getting very interesting!
As we expected in yesterday’s morning post, the morning pump was a great selling opportunity and we had a very good time riding the gentle dip we got in intra-day trading. The Dow hit it’s high for the day at 10:03 and by 10:09 I had an alert out to members to ignore the consumer confidence number and go more bearish on the Dow, buying back the Sept $95 puts we sold Monday for a quick 20% profit. We also grabbed the OIH $105 puts for $2.30 that made a nice buck during the day (43%) and we entered a couple of spreads on ERY at 10:57, well ahead of oil falling off a cliff in the afternoon.
Great call by David at the Oxen Group on making DUG his long of the day yesterday with a perfect buy in at $15.10 and hitting the 4% goal for that day trade. It was David’s call that inspired us to pick up the very profitable (and much riskier) ERY trades, which were also an idea of his from an earlier trade so mega Kudos to the Oxen Group!
We got a second rally on low volume around noon and my 12:09 comment to Members was: "Still a very good time to look at some of those long put plays we discussed in yesterday’s morning post" so I guess you can say we were still pretty bearish at that 9,600 line on the Dow. Keep in mind that the top of our prior trading range was 9,100 on the Dow so the 5% rule off that mark takes us to 9,555, which was where I predicted we’d close. We had a good chance to press our long DIA covers higher but we feared the overnight stick and we went with a 1/2 cover on our long puts, selling the DIA $95 puts for $1.75 just in case we have another crazy pre-market pump.
As you can see from David Fry’s S&P charts, we are "outside the box," very much as we were in June but note that we held that level (S&P 950) for quite a while before getting a 10% correction into early July. I’m not getting the feeling that we have enough energy to sustain us up here that long but, the way things have been going, we kept all of Monday’s bear covers in longer time-frames because as Chantale…
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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
(