Technical Tuesday – Charting our Future
by Phil - February 1st, 2011 6:58 am
Fundamentals don’t matter so let’s look at the technicals.
As you can see from David Fry’s chart, there’s a good reason that XLF was my Trade of the Year in December 25th’s "Secret Santa’s Inflation Hedges." The full force of the US Government is backstopping this play, in which we took the Jan $12/13 bull call spread at .80 and sold the Jan $11 puts for .40 for net .40 on the $1 spread. I said, just 37 days ago, that this could be the easiest 150% you ever make.
Just 5 weeks later, the bull call spread is .90 and the short puts are .30 for a net .60 – up 50% in 5 weeks. That SHOULD help keep us ahead of inflation, right? Keep in mind this was a trade, among others, that I published for free to the General Public on both our subscription site as well as Seeking Alpha and then it was syndicated on Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, MarketWatch, AOL, etc. I’m told that about 250,000 people read my free public posts when I make them available, so it’s not like these trades were so secret.
Yet, however many people decided these were good trade ideas and followed them – it didn’t matter because our counter-party wants to lose! Yes, that’s right, we are riding on the coat-tails of the Banksters, who are taking our future tax dollars from the Federal Reserve and betting them on rising commodity prices and monetary inflation. In order for us to bet on that, we need some idiotic counter-party to take the other side of that bet – one that assumes falling commodity prices and no inflation.
Even in under-educated America, who would be foolish enough to take such a bet? Why it’s us, of course! Well, it’s the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America who are spending $100Bn a month buying Treasury Bills at the lowest rates every (assuming no inflation) while trying to justify their misuse of our money with BS statistics that we’ve stripped away in "How the US Government Manipulates Inflation Data" along with this helpful video:
The Fed is using YOUR money, through debt, taxation and devaluation, to buy notes that a rational investor wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole and the ONLY way you can prevent yourself from getting screwed…
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Thrilling Thursday – US Companies Create 1.4M Jobs! (Overseas)
by Phil - December 30th, 2010 8:28 am
US Corporations are hiring – they are just not hiring you!
The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, says American companies have created 1.4 million jobs overseas this year, compared with less than 1 million in the U.S. The additional 1.4 million jobs would have lowered the U.S. unemployment rate to 8.9 percent, says Robert Scott, the institute’s senior international economist. "There’s a huge difference between what is good for American companies versus what is good for the American economy," says Scott.
American jobs have been moving overseas for more than two decades. In recent years, though, those jobs have become more sophisticated — think semiconductors and software, not toys and clothes. And now many of the products being made overseas aren’t coming back to the United States. Demand has grown dramatically this year in emerging markets like India, China and Brazil. Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent often points out that a billion consumers will enter the middle class during the coming decade, mostly in Africa, China and India. He is aggressively targeting those markets. Of Coke’s 93,000 global employees, less than 13 percent were in the U.S. in 2009, down from 19 percent five years ago. (see my interview with Kent here).
We’re anticipating the usual 400,000 jobs lost for the week at 8:30 this morning and I sure didn’t see too many "Help Wanted" signs at the malls this year, or anywhere else now that I think about it. We also have the Chicago PMI at 9:45, Pending Home Sales at 10:00, Natural Gas Inventories at 10:30 followed by both Oil Inventories at 11 along with the Kansas City Fed’s Manufacturing Index. Later today (3pm) we get the very inflationary USDA Agriculture Prices where we can short FCOJ like this as the panic that drove prices up this week seems a bit overdone.
Of course, I’ve been saying the entire commodity rally is overdone as I don’t see how firing 1.4M Americans who made $35,000 and replacing them with 1.4M Chinese workers who make $2,500 means the price of oil should go up. Only the fact that the US Government is going deeper and deeper into debt to help those 1.4M laid off Americans buy their next tank of gas is keeping demand level – without that support, buses would be MUCH more popular in the US, as they already are in China…
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Thank G20 It’s Friday – Yet Another Global Cluster F*ck
by Phil - November 12th, 2010 8:09 am
Why should we be surprised?
The last G20 meeting ended in chaos, the same nonsense that triggered a flight into commodities in Q3 as Global investors lost faith in ALL of the World leaders to be able to solve ANY of the many problems that face the Global Economy. Why should this time be different as the current conference broke up with NOTHING accomplished other than to promise to get right on these issues at next year’s meeting. REALLY? Do we look like a planet that has another 6 months to wait for you to do something???
The delay by the Group of 20 industrial and developing powers in defining the external imbalances they had vowed to address represents a blurring of what at first had appeared to be clear goals designed to counter the growing threat of trade and currency wars, in which countries seek competitive advantage by weakening their currencies. The U.S. and G-20 host South Korea ran into strong opposition from such exporting powers as China and Germany to a proposal to quantify limits on current-account surpluses and deficits. Without cooperation, the IMF warns, not only will the G-20 fail to achieve a much-needed boost to growth, but it could tip the scales on the European sovereign-debt crisis and fuel capital flows into emerging countries that overheats their economies.
China is already overheating, with a 4.4% inflation rate but that’s much worse when you consider that Food Inflation was 10.1% in October from the previous year. With average family incomes of less than $2,000 – food is pretty much all these poor people can afford! The other thing people MUST buy in China (because they can do without furniture, manufactured clothing and power) is housing, and that rose 4.9% in the past year despite the BOC’s aggressive tightening measures. A lot of this is due to the Yuan’s peg to the dollar as Bernanke’s mad plan to devalue the Dollar is dropping China’s currency as well and that’s good for the manufacturers, who benefit from competitive export prices, but bad for their workers, who need to eat.
"Dollar issuance by the United States is out of control, leading to an inflation assault on China," the Chinese commerce minister said in comments reported on Tuesday. Chen Deming, speaking at a trade fair in southern China, said that exporters…
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Monday Market Movement – More Monetary Madness
by Phil - November 1st, 2010 12:45 am
Get ready for a crazy week!
We have data this week, we have the Fed and we have elections and yes, we have a worthless currency that’s worth less and less every day. This morning, China’s PMI hit 54.7 for October, up from September’s 53.8 and indicating that China’s decision to raise rates had no impact on growth. India found this thrilling and went up 1.4% (as of midnight) but the Nikkei flatlined because China’s gains are Japan’s losses at the moment as the Dollar failed to maintain an early pop to just 81.2 and fell back more than half a point in Asian trading.
The yen’s moves have been "excessive" recently, a Japanese government official said Monday, but he declined to comment on whether Tokyo authorities intervened in the foreign exchange market earlier in the day to knock the currency lower. Exporters remained under selling pressure, with Canon off 0.6% and Toyota Motor down 1.1%. Honda Motor lost 3.4% despite reporting solid second-quarter earnings as the automaker cut its fiscal second-half net profit outlook. Sony shares fell 2.2% as news that the electronics giant had returned a net profit in the July-September was offset by concerns over pressure on earnings at its television division.
"The soft U.S. dollar suggests that the market is still gearing up for a sizeable QE this week," said Greg Gibbs, currency strategist at RBS in Sydney. In Seoul, the market was modestly higher but investors were cautious ahead of the Fed meeting this week. Net selling by foreigners also tempered demand. "Some investors appear concerned that the Fed’s meeting this week may not take enough quantitative easing measures to satisfy market demands," said Lee Kyoung-min at Woori Investment & Securities in Seoul.
QE2, QE2 and more QE2 – this is the basis for the global rally. How much QE2 will be enough to satisfy a global market that is now counting on AT LEAST $1Tn to be handed out by the Fed in 2011? It’s not just QE2, of course, the Fed continues to hand out money to Wall Street on an almost daily basis through their Permanent Open Market Operations or "POMO" and that trade has become as reliable as our "3am Trade" on the Yen as we at PSW have now begun to follow the POMO schedule (as Goldman Sachs has been advising their own clients) to give…
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Thirty-Five Trillion Yen Tuesday
by Phil - October 5th, 2010 8:24 am
Go go BOJ!!!
Acting under pressure from the Government to DO SOMETHING, the Bank of Japan announce a 35,000,000,000,000 Yen ($418Bn) monetary easing program this morning, finally taking that last step and cutting rates to ZERO. That’s right, the BOJ will literally give you money for nothing (no word yet on whether the chicks will also be free). Ironically enough, though, the logic of giving out free money now is the same as it was in the early 80′s – the BOJ is well aware that:
"We got to install microwave ovens
Custom kitchen deliveries
We got to move these refrigerators
We got to move these colour T.V.’s"
Of course, even with an economy one quarter the size of the US ($4.1Tn), $418Bn doesn’t buy what it used to so the BOJ is coming up with ANOTHER 5 TRILLION YEN in a program to buy private and public assets – let the shopping spree begin! You might think such incredibly reckless spending by the BOJ would devalue their currency somewhat BUT Noooooooooooo – the Yen ROSE back to 83.2 to the dollar (and we caught that move last night in Member Chat!) as currency traders realized that $500Bn of QE from the BOJ was only a drop in the bucket of the ocean of irresponsibility that is our own Federal Reserve.
As I had said to Members last Wednesday (and we had lots of cool currency charts): "I am seeing A LOT of money lining up on the short side of the Dollar trade. I’m very concerned that BOJ will do something to squeeze the bears and THEN I think it’s a better entry." Of course, currency manipulation was the theme of the week last week and you can get a quick review by downloading a FREE SAMPLE of our new Weekly Newsletter HERE.
"The surprise invited some yen selling, but I don’t think the BOJ’s move will be enough to produce any sustained yen weakening," said Masanobu Ishikawa, general manager of spot foreign exchange trading at Tokyo Forex & Ueda Harlow. Hirokata Kusaba, senior economist at Mizuho Research Institute echoed this view, saying "there will be no substantive effect from going from the already ultra-low 0.1% to this range. The only effect on markets will be from the surprise…
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TGIF – The Tale of the Asian Tiger
by Phil - October 1st, 2010 8:10 am
What a morning already!
The Hang Seng rose 179 points in today’s trading and finished down 20 for the day – THAT’S how bad the open was! The Nikkei finished an up and down 100-point swing up 34 points at 9,404 but dove into the close along with the dollar (our 3am trade), which now can be bought with just 83 Yen. The Shanghai, on the other hand, was feeling hot, hot, hot and gained 1.7% just behind the BSE, which flew up 1.9% to take back the position of Global Leader.
Strong data boosted the Asian indexes overall with China’s PMI rising to 53.8 from 51.7 in August while India’s PMI pulled back slightly from 57.2 to 55.1 but that’s good as over 50 is expansion and 57.2 is running a little hot. Korean exports rose 17.2% in September, also a little too hot as their CPI topped 3.6% but mainly driven by food prices, which seems temporary. China’s upbeat PMI reading indicates that the negative impact of government measures to control the property market is probably waning, ING’s Mr. Condon said. This means China’s slowdown will probably be less abrupt than expected, especially in the fourth quarter.
The effect, he said, should be especially positive on North Asian economies closely tied to China’s demand, such as Korea and Taiwan. Fears of lower Chinese demand have had a particularly pronounced effect on Taiwan’s business outlook. The island’s September PMI ticked down to 49.0 from 49.2. "Sturdy domestic demand" should keep Taiwan’s economy on target to grow 7.3% this year, "provided employment conditions continue improving," said HSBC economist Donna Kwok.
![[YUAN_1]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/AI-BF617_YUAN_1_NS_20100930134401.jpg)
On our side of the planet, the US markets, especially commodities, got a huge boost as China’s government gave a muted response to House legislation aimed at forcing the Yuan to be valued higher. Aside from China knowing that they already own enough Senators to Filibuster any legislation aimed at protecting American jobs, the bill was watered down in that it PERMITS, but does not REQUIRE, the US to levy tariffs on goods produced by countries found to have undervalued currencies.
Sharp retaliation by China is unlikely in the short term, analysts said, since the bill hasn’t become law and wouldn’t immediately produce restrictions on Chinese goods even if it did. In an apparent gesture to U.S. concerns, China has pushed the yuan up steadily in recent weeks; it…
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Weak Dollar Wednesday – Which Way Now?
by Phil - September 29th, 2010 8:24 am
Everything is proceeding exactly as I have foreseen – Emperor Palpatine
In Monday’s post I said: "we really would like to see a little volume consolidation before we make another run at the 1,150 line on the S&P" and we zigged and we zagged until yesterday’s close where "THEY" punched it up to EXACTLY the 1,150 line (see Dave Fry’s chart) where we, of course, failed – because it’s all a load of BS end-of-quarter window dressing but HEY – 1,150, how about that!?! 1,150 is the 7.5% line on the S&P (see Monday’s chart) and that goes hand in hand with Dow 10,965 (not there yet), Nasdaq 2,365, NYSE 7,280 and Russell 672.
As I mentioned yesterday, our betting is still all over the place as we may go up on a technical breakout or we may go down and the fulcrum for the markets is currently the dollar, whose devaluation relative to the exchange value for a stock certificate is responsible for the vast majority of our recent market. We’re positioned bearish in that we have 10:1 bets made to the downside on some ultra hedges so we will be thrilled with a pullback but, on the whole, we’re still really just protecting our bullish bets – even our review of the September Dozen this weekend couldn’t find too many reasons to take the money and run as we just didn’t look weak enough to quit on our most bullish trade ideas.
Our overriding concern is that Japan makes good with their promise to intervene on the Yen, which will boost the buck, knock down commodities and tank the markets. Why is that not happening? Well our own Government is doing everything they can to de-value the dollar. We talked out quantitative easing yesterday and GS issued a report yesterday saying there was NO CHANCE that the Fed would raise rates and, in fact, they may even lower rates to ZERO.
Now, I don’t know about you but I’m holding out for when the government PAYS ME to borrow money. Maybe then I’ll be willing to let them lend me $1Bn as long as they pay me $2.5M a year to hold onto it. Our greedy little IBanksters couldn’t wait though, and they rushed out and borrowed another $500M from the Fed yesterday (POMO) at the outrageous rate of 0.25%.…
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The Road to World War III – The Global Banking Cartel Has One Card Left to Play
by ilene - September 28th, 2010 2:19 am
The Road to World War III – The Global Banking Cartel Has One Card Left to Play
By David DeGraw (h/t ZH)
The following is Part I to David DeGraw’s new book, “The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III.” This is the second installment to a new seven-part series that we will be posting throughout the next few weeks. You can read the introduction to the book here. To be notified via email of new postings from this series, subscribe here.
******
Editor’s Note: The following is Part I to David DeGraw’s new book, “The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III.” This is the second installment to a new seven-part series that we will be posting throughout the next few weeks. You can read the introduction to the book here. To be notified via email of new postings from this series, subscribe here.
I: Economic Imperial Operations
When we analyze our current crisis, focusing on the past few years of economic activity blinds us to the history and context that are vital to understanding the root cause. What we have been experiencing is not the result of an unforeseen economic crash that appeared out of the blue with the collapse of the housing market. It was certainly not brought on by people who bought homes they couldn’t afford. To frame this crisis around a debate on economic theory misses the point entirely. To even blame it on greedy bankers,…
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M&A Monday – Goldman’s Golden Goose
by Phil - September 27th, 2010 7:18 am
Hope springs eternal at Goldman Sachs.
This morning our favorite Banksters goosed the EU markets by upping targets on international mining operators Kazakhmys, Lonmin and BHP and that got the European markets off to a flying start out of the gate, despite the fact that UBS had just DOWNgraded the same sector on Friday. UBS said on Friday that the sector is facing difficult times concerning potential growth with government rulings on mineral leases and the proposed supertax on mining profits in Australia set to hinder metal-based stocks.
We also have a lot of M&A activity, also courtesy of GS, who are leading the resurgence this year with 225 deals to date worth $401.6Bn, accounting for about 20% of all activity going through Goldman’s sticky fingers. In a sign of the times, however, GS only generated $961M in revenues as an M&A advisor as they cut a lot of discounts in order to land the top spot in dealmaking. Although outdealt by GS, MS, Rothchild, JPM and DB all made more in fees than the Uncle Lloyd show.
In a sign of the end of times, GS’s London Headquarters has been taken over by lenders after the owner fell into receivership. GS’s landlord, Antedon, is an offshore real estate firm that bought the building for $500M at the top of the market in 2007 and GS has locked up the building through 2026 at what seems to be not enough money to keep Antedon liquid – it would be very interesting to trace the web of deals that led to this massive default.
Meanwhile, the consortium of Irish investors that own GS’s other London building are also bailing out, this action is coinciding with what Ireland’s Independent says is a campaign by Wall Street Hedge Funds to short sell Irish Government Bonds. US hedge funds Groveland Capital and Corrientes Advisors are thought to have taken major positions against Irish debt. Giant €60bn asset-manager Pictet also revealed that it had earlier bet against Irish government bonds. JP Morgan is also thought to have taken a bearish position on Irish debt. The International Monetary Fund estimated that up to €3bn of Ireland’s debt was being targeted by speculators through the uses of derivatives.
So, plenty of reasons to be cautious this week although it will be hard to cut through the fluff as our hedge fund heroes…
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Thursday – Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble!
by Phil - September 23rd, 2010 7:51 am
"I’m forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air,
They fly so high, nearly reach the sky,
Then like my dreams they fade and die.
Fortune’s always hiding,
I’ve looked everywhere,
I’m forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air."
Gold, Treasuries, Junk Bonds, Netflix (we shorted them yesterday), PCLN (we shorted them Monday), Credit Default Swaps – take your pick of what is going to be the next bubble to burst.
We shorted TLT again yesterday ($105) as I sure wouldn’t lend the US money at those rates and neither, it seems, will the "smart money" guys anymore. The cost to hedge against losses on U.S. government debt rose to the most in six weeks as investors bet the Federal Reserve will put more cash into the economy. Credit-default swaps on U.S. Treasuries climbed 1.7 basis points, the biggest increase in more than three weeks, to 49.4, according to data provider CMA. The Fed said Tuesday that slowing inflation and sluggish growth may require further action. The statement positioned the central bank to expand its near-record $2.3 trillion balance sheet as soon as their November meeting – just in time for a Santa Clause boost for the markets.
So why does this not make us bullish? Well, as I said to Members on Tuesday, it was an anticipated statement with no immediate action and we’re at the top of a 10% run for September so, as I said in yesterday’s post, we anticipate a pullback of 2%, back to our 4% line (see post). Also in yesterday’s post, I mentioned our IWM 9/30 $67 puts ($1.10) and the DIA Oct $105 puts (.89) both of which were good for a reload on yesterday’s silly spike, where I said to Members in the 9:56 Alert:
I like the same IWM and DIA puts as yesterday as we test 10,800 on the Dow – I don’t think it’s going to last. Tomorrow we lose the usual 450,000 jobs for the week and we have Existing Home Sales at 10, which can now disappoint as Building Permits were a big upside surprise yesterday. We also get Leading Economic Indicators at 10 but they are expected up just 0.1% and I doubt they go negative. Friday we have Durable Goods, which should be down 2% and New Home Sales at 10, also now set up to disappoint even
…
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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
(