Donut Shop

[xe2dy]

$NYHL th'ks to TREND1



http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=33608484

[xe2dy]

Inverse TRINQ



"I inverted the TRINQ ($ONE:TRINQ) to keep it pointing in same direction as price. IE when the inverse goes up price goes up. You can see that in most of the instances the 50 day TRINQ led price. And it did on all lasting bottoms. Check out the divergence we have going on now. Suggest higher although in late 2000 it would have bit you in the butt." StillLearning

[xe2dy]

Current portfolio:









All subject to change at either stop loss or profit taking. :)

[frenchee]

$SPX Big-Picture Chart

[xe2dy]

TP's SPX "Wet Dream" :)



http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=33525073

[xe2dy]

Liquidity trap

In monetary economics, a liquidity trap occurs when the nominal interest rate is close or equal to zero, and the monetary authority is unable to stimulate the economy with traditional monetary policy tools. In this kind of situation, people do not expect high returns on physical or financial investments, so they keep assets in short-term cash bank accounts or hoards rather than making long-term investments. This makes a recession even more severe, and can contribute to deflation.

In normal times, the monetary authority (usually a central bank or finance ministry) can stimulate the economy by lowering interest rate targets or increasing the monetary base. Either action should increase borrowing and lending, consumption, and fixed investment. When the relevant interest rate is already at or near zero, the monetary authority cannot lower it to stimulate the economy. The monetary authority can increase the overall quantity of money available to the economy, but traditional monetary policy tools do not inject new money directly into the economy. Rather, the new liquidity created must be injected into the real economy by way of financial intermediaries such as banks. In a liquidity trap environment, banks are unwilling to lend, so the central bank's newly-created liquidity is trapped behind unwilling lenders.

The liquidity trap theory applies to monetary policy in non-inflationary depressions. The theory does not apply to fiscal policies that may be able to stimulate the economy.
Contents

Macroeconomic dynamic

Since at very low interest rate, the slope of the money demand function Pr tends to infinity at the limit, when we calculate the marginal effect on output Y with respect to R we will see that the slope tends to zero in the limit:

Pr → infinity, Ry = -Py / Pr → 0

Therefore, monetary policy (increasing the money supply) will be ineffective stimulating production. Instead, fiscal policy might be more effective since it will push the IS curve to higher levels of production.

Economists' perspectives

In the 1989 film Batman, the Joker drops millions of dollars upon the citizens of Gotham City, passing by the Gotham Central Bank as he does so, in a literal illustration of Friedman's perspective.

Milton Friedman suggested that a monetary authority can escape a liquidity trap by bypassing financial intermediaries to give money directly to consumers or businesses. This is referred to as a money gift or as helicopter money. The term helicopter money is meant to portray the image of a central banker dropping money on people from a helicopter. Political considerations make it difficult for a monetary authority to grant the money gift, because individuals and firms not receiving free money will exert political pressure. The monetary authority must act covertly to give gift money to specific individuals or firms without appearing to give money away. During the Great Depression in the United States, the Federal Reserve offered to buy any gold at a price well above current market prices. This was essentially a money gift to gold holders. In Japan in the 1980s, the Bank of Japan began buying newly-issued common stock and bonds as a hidden money gift to firms.

John Maynard Keynes is usually seen as the inventor of the liquidity-trap theory. In his view, financial actors fear the possibility of suffering capital losses on non-money assets and thus hold money (liquid assets) instead. For example, the fear of default on loans can inhibit lenders from lending except to extremely credit-worthy customers. These fears are most likely after a financial crisis such as that associated with the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Further, if nominal interest rates are extremely low, there is no place for them to go but up. That implies that bond prices will likely fall in the near future, causing capital losses.

Neoclassical schools of economics which hold that economic agents make decisions based on real rather than nominal values contend that monetary efforts to lower nominal risk-free rates have no significant impact on the nominal interest rates charged by banks. A bank will not lend unless it can charge a (nominal) interest rate which is at least equal to the rate of inflation during the loan period. In an environment where banks are prohibited or discouraged by law from charging high rates of interest on loans, banks will be more reluctant to lend, since doing so would result in receiving a low (and possibly negative) real rate of return on investment. Unlike Keynesian theory, which claims that "liquidity traps" arise from fear or a hoarding mentality among banks, neoclassical theories argue that liquidity traps of this form do not exist and that monetary efforts to lower rates will have little, if any, effect on the quantity of real goods produced.

Note that even if the expected inflation rate is zero, nominal interest rates charged for loans will never fall below zero. Negative interest rates would imply banks paying borrowers to take loans. Furthermore, the liquidity advantages of holding money in an uncertain environment will set a non-zero, positive lower bound on the rate at which any agent will be willing to lend.

Japan's liquidity trap

It has been suggested that the Japanese economy in the 1990s suffered from a "liquidity trap" scenario.[1] This diagnosis prompted increased government spending and large budget deficits as a remedy. The failure of these measures to help the economy recover, combined with an explosion in the Japanese public debt suggest that such a fiscal policy, may not have been adequate. (Much of the government spending followed a stop/go pattern and involved spending on unneeded infrastructure.) Nobel Prize winning American economist Paul Krugman suggests that what was needed was a central bank commitment to steady positive monetary growth, which would encourage inflationary expectations and lower expected real interest rates, which would stimulate spending.

Austrian Critique

Economists of the Austrian school challenge the idea that Japan experienced a liquidity trap, instead contending it suffered from the bust portion of a business cycle brought on by monetary inflation, which could only be cured by allowing the bust to liquidate the malinvestments made during the boom. Austrians contend that busts are necessary corrections to booms and that artificial credit expansion or other government interference will only make the bust longer or delay an even bigger bust. Thus, they blame Japan's rigorous government interference in the market for causing the bust to last throughout the decade.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidity_trap

http://www.traders-talk.com/mb2/index.php?showtopic=97034

[xe2dy]

$VIX by hiker at TT

[xe2dy]

TICK chart th'ks to traderpaul at TT



"In a bull market the tick stays above 400. In a bear market she stays below the 400 line.....Notice i did not use any trend lines to influence my chart reading.....You have to be a chartist to get the message of this chart." traderpaul


http://www.traders-talk.com/mb2/index.php?s=45252222f6e68f639e251bf299d48f91&showtopic=96449

and more tick ...

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=30583547

[xe2dy]

SPX monthly +

[xe2dy]

Nice chart from selecto...

"Time to drag this one out again. Targets depend on where one places the top of the pole.
They are targets off the formation, not necessarily reversal points."

http://www.traders-talk.com/mb2/index.php?showtopic=95111



Added these...

[xe2dy]

Long term FLS

[xe2dy]

Videos from Leavitt Brothers

http://leavittbrothers.blogspot.com/

[xe2dy]

John Mauldin

My Dad used to tell me there is no accounting for standards when looking at something that seemed odd. Today, we have faulty standards for accounting that are ripping apart the fabric of the world's economy. How can a security that has a high probability of full repayment be downgraded from AA to junk levels? What we will explore today tell us a lot about why we are in the crisis state of affairs. Since I wrote you last Friday, the financial landscape of the world has changed even more. And what will happen this weekend will change it even more. And our kids will be paying for it for a long, long time. At the end I offer a few thoughts on the events, and if there is time my thoughts on the new short covering rules. All in all, it should make for an instructive and interesting letter. We'll jump right in with no "but first."

I was invited to an invitation only presentation to a room of chief executives of a number of small Texas banks made by Rich Berg of Performance Trust Capital Partners this week (http://ptcp.performancetrust.com). He graciously gave me permission to go over the main points of his presentation. I think you will find it eye-opening to say the least. You probably have seen Rich, as he is all over the media lately.

Let's jump back 18 months. I spent several letters going over how subprime mortgages were sold and then securitized. Let's quickly review. Huge Investment Bank (HIB) would encourage mortgage banks all over the country to make home loans, often providing the capital, and then HIB would purchase these loans and package them into large securities called Residential Mortgage Backed Securities or RMBS. They would take loans from different mortgage banks and different regions. They generally grouped the loans together as to their initial quality as in prime mortgages, ALT-A and the now infamous subprime mortgages. They also grouped together second lien loans, which were the loans generally made to get 100% financing or cash-out financing as home owners borrowed against the equity in their homes.

Typically, a RMBS would be sliced into anywhere from 5 to 15 different pieces called tranches. They would go to the ratings agencies, who would give them a series of ratings on the various tranches, and who actually had a hand in saying what the size of each tranche could be. The top or senior level tranche had the rights to get paid back first in the event there was a problem with some of the underlying loans. That tranche was typically rated AAA. Then the next tranche would be rated AA and so on down to junk level. The lowest level was called the equity level, and this lowest level would take the first losses. For that risk, they also got any residual funds if everyone paid. The lower levels paid very high yields for the risk they took.

Then, since it was hard to sell some of the lower levels of these securities, HIB would take a lot of the lower level tranches and put them into another security called a Collateralized Debt Obligation or CDO. And yes, they sliced them up into tranches and went to the rating agencies and got them rated. The highest tranche was typically again AAA. Through the alchemy of finance, HIB took subprime mortgages and turned 96% (give or take a few points depending on the CDO) of them into AAA bonds. At the time, I compared it with taking nuclear waste and turning it into gold. Clever trick when you can do it, and everyone, from mortgage broker to investment bankers was paid handsomely to dance at the party.

Will we ever forget Charlie Prince's line, the CEO of Citigroup, saying that "As long as they are playing music, you have to get up and dance?" just a few weeks before the market imploded? Apart from having his rhythm being proven totally horrendous and overseeing an implosion which cost Citigroup tens of billions, it was a great statement of the zeitgeist of the financial world at the time.

The key word here is model. The ratings agencies used data supplied by the investment banks on what the likely default rates would be. It was something like taking an open book test where you get to write the questions. And since home values had only gone up, default rates were low. And of course, the data was from an ear when bankers lent money actually expecting to get paid back.

Inside a RMBS

Let's look at a RMBS. As Berg points out, when you are buying a mortgage backed security, there are really only three questions you need to know the answers to:

* How many mortgages will default?
* How much will I get back on a defaulted loan?
* How much credit enhancement is there in the security?

Let's set the table by looking at a few terms and definitions. Using his example, let's take a mortgage where the home was originally appraised for $400,000 and there is a $300,000 mortgage on the home. Let's assume a default and the bank takes back the home. If they sell the home and recover $240,000 that means they lose $60,000. This is called a 20% severity. If they sold and recovered $150,000 it would be said to have a 50% severity.

Next, let's look at how the rating agencies come up with the AAA rating. First they model the expected losses, with emphasis on the word model. If they figure that worst case that 8% of the loans default at a severity of 50%, then the security would lose 4% of its value. To get an AAA rating you have to have at least two times the coverage of the "modeled" loss. In this illustration, that means that 92% of the loans would be put into the AAA tranche. An A rating assumes a coverage of more than 1 times but less than 2. B means you expect to get your money back and if they model that you will get below 100% back then the rating would be at junk levels.

Now, this next fact is important. All ratings assume a par value of 100. The rating of these bonds has nothing to do with price. After the presentation, Rich sat down with me and pulled up an actual mortgage backed security that was being offered that day on his screen. It was once a AAA rated Alt-A security. If I remember correctly it was a 2006 vintage security.

As of the latest reporting, a little over 5% of the mortgages were over 60 days past due or in foreclosure. In this security, there are no toxic option ARMS. The numbers of mortgages in this security that are in trouble are rising. S&P has downgraded that AAA tranche to BBB, which of course means its value is going down.

And sure enough, the offered price of the security is 70 cents on the dollar, or 70% of the original par value. Now remember, this particular AAA bond will only start to lose money after the lower tranches take up the first 8% of losses. Thus, this bond can be said to have an 8% credit enhancement.

Pricing in Financial Armageddon

Now, let's stress test that loan. For the AAA portion of the loan to lose money, that would mean that 16% of the loans would have to default with a severity of 50% losses. Could that happen? Sure.

But let's look at what buying that loan at 70 cents on the dollar does for the new owner. First, you are getting a much higher yield (interest rate) because you are buying the security at a lower valuation. But something else even more interesting happens.

Even though the security sold at 70 cents, it still gets all of the first of the proceeds of the home owners who pay their mortgages, up to 92% of the original value in the security. How many loans would have to default in order to make the buyer at 70 cents lose money? Remember, we already had credit enhancement of 8%. But at 70 cents, we just "bought" or priced in another 30%. Let's think Armageddon and that 50% of the mortgages default and they only recover 50% of the loans. That would only be a total loss of 25% to the entire collateral of the deal, but it would mean that the new investor still get all of my 70 cents plus another 13% back! The proud new owner could get up to 92% of the monies paid. Even in a pretty bad scenario, you get more than you paid for the security.

Let's walk through the math. Let's say the original security was $100 million (which would be a very small RMBS). The AAA tranche would have cost $92 billion. If you have it at 70 cents on the dollar you paid approximately $64 billion. In my Armageddon scenario above, the security loses 25% or $250 million. The lower rated tranches are completely wiped out losing $8 billion. Your tranche loses the remaining $17 billion which means you get $75 billion and you only paid $64 billion.

So, how bad would things have to get to lose money on this security? If I am doing the math right, 72% of the loans would have to default with a severity of 50% before your investment of $64 billion was impaired by even so much as 1 dollar. If that happened, it would be Armageddon.

So, why is it rated BBB? Because the rating is over the entire tranche and it is made at a par price of 100. The rating is not affected by the current price. As of today, assuming that even double the number of mortgages currently delinquent default with a 50% severity, your returns over the life of the security would be well over 12%. You would get back $92 million for your $64 billion dollar investment along with interest payments.

The reason this presentation was being made to banks and institutions? Because if you are a bank, you can generally only get prime plus 2% on a loan you make. But if you buy this security with your capital, you can make prime plus 6%. That is a large difference to a bank. Performance Trust has sold billions of this type of paper to banks and institutions.

If this is such a good deal, then why isn't everyone hitting the bid? Because these securities are very difficult to analyze. It is time consuming. You need to analyze every loan and develop your own valuations. You simply can't trust the ratings, as they are measuring something completely different.

And the real truth is that many of the various RMBS securities will in fact be totally wiped out or lose a great deal. Many are seeing default rates of 30% or more. You have to be very careful when you walk through this minefield. And in a time of crisis, it is not clear what the new rules will be. What if the government forces lenders to re-set mortgages at some loss level? What if the housing crisis gets worse? On the other hand, what if the government comes in and buys up all the bad mortgages in an attempt to stop the erosion in the home markets. The level of uncertainty in these times makes people a lot more cautious.

There are Alt-A RMBS like the one mentioned above that are probably not worth even 70 cents on the dollar. These things are marked to a market that is frozen. Everything gets lumped into the same basket and it all has to be marked to market by the new accounting rules called FASB 157. The institution selling the above mentioned security is being forced to do so, either because they are in financial trouble or they are not allowed to hold BBB securities in their portfolios and by law are required to sell. And in times of crisis, the selling price is not that of normal times.

Ratings to Collateral to Ratings: A Vicious Cycle

What's a recipe for a perfect financial storm? Let's make a massive amount of bad loans and get them on the books of most of the major financial institutions because they are rated investment grade. Then let's have the loans start to go bad. Throw in some general panic as everyone tries to sell the loans. No one is buying.

Let's make a new rule that you have to mark your illiquid securities to the last price paid by someone desperate to sell. That means that many institutions now have to mark their capital down and that means those pesky rating agencies must by their own rules mark down the ratings of the institutions which of course means that it costs them more to raise capital at a time when they can't get it which means they get lower ratings and so on. It becomes a vicious cycle.

In the early 80's, every major US bank was bankrupt because they had loaned Latin American countries far more than their capital they had on their books. The Latin American countries defaulted. If the US banks had been forced to mark to market, they would have all gone down taking the US economy along with them. So, the Fed simply allowed them to carry the loans at book value, offering liquidity and allowing the banks to buy time to make enough money to eventually write off the loans.

The current mark to market rule, while nice in theory, works in normal times. But it has the unintended consequence of making things worse in crisis times. Why should an institution have to write down a security which over time is going to pay back the lion's share or more of its value just because a severely stressed institution was forced to sell that security at a very low price in a time of crisis?

Yes, there needs to be transparency and we as investors need to know what is on the books of the companies that we invest in. But it is somewhat like my bank asking me to mark to market my home and pricing my loan daily based on that new price. If my neighbor loses his job and sells his home at auction, does that mean my home is now worth less two years from now. Maybe an even better analogy, if I am renting that home to a very good tenant, does my neighbor's price impair my income?

I was, and am, a fan of mark to market pricing. But we need to think through what a market price is. Not all things can be easily marked to market. This is doubly true when "market price" is a nebulous index of mortgage securities which may or not have a fundamental relationship with an illiquid security on the books of an institution which has no intention of selling, especially in a time of credit crisis.

It is one thing to require that you mark your stocks or bonds to market values. It is another thing entirely to require all mortgage backed securities, which are extremely complex things, can be very different one from another and which require a lot of time and effort to value, to be priced as though they are all the same.

FASB 157 needs to be amended this week. If Congress can create a new Resolution Trust Corp in a week, the surely the accounting board, with the suggestion of Treasury, can figure out a better way to price illiquid securities.

This Too Shall Pass

I know that you probably are reeling from all that has happened the past few months and especially the past two weeks. Lehman and Mother Merrill gone? We the people own AIG? Fannie and Freddie? A new housing bailout which will cost hundreds of billions? The Fed creating whole new programs to provide liquidity? Did you notice they loaned some $250 billion this last week to banks all over the world? Stopping short selling?

Want to see in graph form how bad it got and what spooked Paulson, Bernanke and company to act so quickly? Look at these graphs from my friends at Casey Research (http://www.caseyresearch.com/crpmkt/crpSolo.php?id=119&ppref=JMD119ED0908A). 30 day commercial paper went to 5% from 3% a week ago. The market was literally freezing. And the amount of paper issued is in free fall. Commercial paper is the life blood of the financial and business world. Without it commerce will soon grind to a halt.

It simply takes your breathe away. As President Bush said today, it does not help to find who is at fault today, we have to figure out how to get out of this mess. It is going to cost the taxpayers a lot of money. While I think the losses on AIG will be rather minor in the grand scheme of things, if you add up Fannie and Freddie and a new RTC, coupled with the stimulus package, you can easily get to $500 billion, and that is probably a low number.

For such a price, we had better get a new regulatory scheme which requires reduced leverage. Want to get really mad? Up until 2003, all investment banks were allowed only 12 to 1 leverage. Then in 2004, the SEC basically gave five banks (and only five banks) the ability to lever up 30 or even 40 to 1. Bet you can guess the five banks. Bear, Lehman, Merrill, Morgan and Goldman. Three down.

As Barry Ritholtz wrote: "So while the SEC runs around reinstating short selling rules, and clueless pension fund managers mindlessly point to the wrong issue, we learn that it was the SEC who was in large part responsible for the reckless leverage that led to the current crisis." (Don't get me started on blaming the short sellers. Let's not blame the people who leveraged up their companies 40 to 1 with bad investments.)

We absolutely must move credit default swaps to a regulated exchange, no matter how much investment banks and hedge funds scream. Must be done. Do it now. Real rules about writing mortgages, although now that losses are in the hundreds of billions, underwriting rules are already becoming quite restrictive.

And while we are at it, a thorough revamping of the rating agencies and the rules they use should be at the top of someone's list.

John Mauldin
[e-mail]

[xe2dy]

Very Nice SPX by RD



http://www.traders-talk.com/mb2/index.php?showtopic=93414

[xe2dy]

Spielchkr's Bottom Spotter

[xe2dy]

Ten Commandments

Posted on Saturday, March 29, 2008 at 09:16PM by Registered Commenter Option Addict


Here is a compilation of my Ten Commandments of Trading. In my sole opinion, these are the "fundamentals" of becoming a successful trader. Look these over and feel free to comment at will. Keep in mind this took a couple hours to compile, so be nice.

1. Thou shalt have a trading plan

If you don't have a plan, get one. What is your approach? What are your rules? These are questions that you need to answer before you can title yourself a trader. Creating a plan gives you something to follow, an outline of where you want to be, and what is required in between.

2. Thou shalt not trade with emotion

This includes, fear, greed and lack of discipline. There is no room for it in this equation. Find a way to get a better handle on it, and/or walk away from it. I can tell you from experience that you will have an impossible time being successful at trading when making emotional decisions.

3. Thou shalt embrace losing

A trader has to fight a lot of expensive enemies within himself. It is inevitable, it is going to happen, therefore you should plan for it. If I know I am going to lose, I will try and make it easier on myself in anticipation. Please do not judge the success of a trader by the win loss percentage they have. It's not about winning or losing; it's about making money.

4. Thou shalt know how to control losses
As a trader, you will have many losing trades. The idea is that if you keep them small, you give your winners a chance to outpace them. If you can successfully do this, you will be a profitable trader. Identify places on a chart that you know prices should not go in order to take your loss (broken support/resistance for example).

5. Thou shalt not turn a trade into an investment

If you didn't chuckle after you read this rule, then perhaps you need to revisit rules 1,2,3 and 4 again. Have you turned a trade into something longer in duration than expected? Do you remember why you did this? Sure...it was because the stock went against me and I figured "It will come back." When you feel the need to stay in a trade until you are right, something is wrong. Know where you are getting out before you get in. STICK TO THE PLAN!

6. Thou shalt remember: Tips are for waiters

Jesse Livermore said it best..."The fruits of your success will be in direct ratio to the honesty and sincerity of your own effort in keeping your own records, doing your own thinking and reaching your own conclusions" He goes on to further state..."The average man doesn't wish to be told that it is a bull or a bear market. What he desires is to be told specifically which particular stock to buy or sell. He wants to get something for nothing. He does not wish to work. He doesn't even wish to have to think." Wouldn't you agree? It is so easy to take the stock pick from someone assuming they have done all the work for you. Truth is, they probably know less than you. This includes commentary you listen to on the television, something you've read on a website, or discovered on this crappy blog. My point is... do your own research, trade your own trades, and be original in your analysis and activities.

7. Thou shalt repeat after me "A gain is not a gain until you sell"

Kenny Rogers said "You never count your money when you're sitting at the table." That profit is not realized, so don't mentally take inventory of it until the trade is closed and you have realized that gain. This will create emotion, and you will stay in trades for the numbers rather than the logical reasons.

8. Thou shalt not know too little about too much

I guess it is hard not to in your position. You are learning to trade. But you need to try to differentiate what you know, and what you are learning. You also must remember that the basics are called basics for a reason. They are the foundation we stand on. Next time you overrule a trend because of a candle formation, or something silly like that, remember that discipline trumps conviction. No matter how strongly you feel that the "*Double Bottom Outside Inverted Triangle Reversal Pattern" will result in a failure of the beautiful uptrend the stock has been trading in, you must defer back to the principles of discipline when you trade. Discipline will allow you to trade tomorrow, whereas the gut feeling of a new trader will send you to the poor house later today.

*- This is not an actual pattern, so please don't e-mail me and ask where to learn more about it. Just think of it as an exaggeration of a funny role we have all played.

9. Thou shalt trade with the trend

It takes a trader a long time to learn all the lessons of all his mistakes. They say there are two sides to everything. But there is only one side to the stock market; and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side. Try to pick a style that you can easily adapt to a changing market. At times the "motion of the ocean" will differ and different approaches are warranted. It is at these times you need to be able to recognize the changes and adapt accordingly.

10. Thou shalt take the easy opportunities

You don't need to trade everything. There are opportunities that present themselves everywhere and everyday in this market. Just remember two things: Number 1: Its not necessary to play every move, its only necessary to have a high winning percentage on the trades you choose to make. Number 2: Don't go for the trades that don't totally jump out at you as an easy analysis. I call these the "Easy Trades." The trades where you are not 100% sold and convinced of what is going to happen, stay away from them.

http://www.optionaddict.net/blog/2008/3/30/my-ten-commandments.html

[xe2dy]

UNG charts ...

[xe2dy]

Opinion from Arbman ...

"I think the last pilar of strength, the tech, is also coming down, the recession is only beginning. In recessions the stocks decline 35% on the average apparently, I think I read that somewhere I can't remember. so far, the market only priced in a slow down until about 1250-1260 or so, then from 1440 top where the dismal Q3-Q4 outlook started to become evident.

We can probably say 35% down for the actual recession odds (2 qtrs contraction in GDP); or from the slow down highs, it would be 1065 minimum. Now, after the market goes down there and bounces well off to 1200s or so, it will become evident that a depression will follow (or 4qtrs of contraction in GDP), it essentially means another 35% from the bounce into the spring of 2009, say from the 1225 highs (15%), 900 or so some time in 2010...

This is how you would priced in $1.6T of projected losses in loans, the money has to come out of somewhere, either you pay them now or you sell as much Treasuries instead --rotation into the bonds eventually like in 2003. Somehow, a couple trillion dollars worth of paper will have to change hands to settle all of the accounts, then we begin all over again..." Arbman

http://www.traders-talk.com/mb2/index.php?s=71f8569a2add6df1205b0d13df68ac54&showtopic=93129

[xe2dy]

ACORE and Renewable Energy NEWS

http://www.acore.org/news/

Note: I noticed that UNG, TAN and FAN all moved down sharply last June or July. Apparently this was due to Congress' inability to resolve the question of extending alternative fuel tax breaks. December 31 st is when the current tax breaks expire and if that happens then there should be a better long term buy point for at least TAN and FAN in the near future.

Renewable Energy

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/home

[frenchee]

Hi Ed,

Noticed you like UNG too. Stop on by my UNG board when time permits. #board-9806

See ya,

[xe2dy]

UNG, TAN, FAN, FLS +

[xe2dy]

FLS, GE, ESLR +

[euterpe1]

XE,

Just went back to that gold chart...wow, talk about TA working. Right at support while busting through the lower BB. Too bad, I did not see it last Sunday.

[xe2dy]

Dow Jones World +

[xe2dy]

Th'ks FPJ 4 FIB. GLD / USD + here...












Links for SPOT GOLD quote

http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html

http://www.usagold.com/live.html

HEADLINES:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=GLD

[frenchee]

The Mathematical Magic of the Fibonacci Numbers

http://www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibmaths.html

[xe2dy]

Another fine SPX chart by Teaparty...

[xe2dy]

Nice SPX chart by vitaminm

[xe2dy]

Futures (2) + World Indices + Commodity Futures

Futures

http://www.cme.com/dta/del/globex.html

http://money.cnn.com/markets/afterhours/

--------------------------------------------------------------

World Indices ~ updates every 60sec.
Watch the dates! top click for US Market just above Japan

http://www.wwfn.com/commentary/oscharts.html

http://www.allstocks.com/markets/World_Charts/Asian_Stock_Markets/asian_stock_markets.html

World heat map

http://www.financemaps.com/map/day

--------------------------------------------------------------

Commodity Futures

http://sites.barchart.com/pl/pearce/default.asp?code=XPEARCE§ion=energies

[xe2dy]

Econ #'s

http://www.briefing.com/Silver/Calendars/EconomicCalendar.htm

http://cbs.marketwatch.com/tools/marketsummary/calendars/economic.asp?x=0&siteid=mktw

http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/economy/economic_calendar.asp?siteid=mktw

http://www.nasdaq.com/asp/econodayframe.asp?page=http://www.nasdaq.com/econoday/index.html

http://biz.yahoo.com/c/e.html

[xe2dy]

Alternative Energy Stocks Portfolio

I have chosen monthly charts since this is a long term investment. Look for the MACD positive crossover in conjunction with a rise in the Full STO, a constriction of the MACD and ADX black lines, and a positive up move of the ADX green directional line.

Please note, if the reader is serious about making money with stocks then by all means do yourself a BIG favor and get at least a BASIC subscription to stockcharts.com Many times charts will be posted with technical indicators that will not be available to non-subscribers.

Nuclear related:


GE is selling wind related turbines and is involved in Nuclear Reactors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A04EEDE1739F932A05750C0A9629C8B63


FLS builds industrial pumps and valves, both commercial and nuclear.


Provider of energy services with an electric and natural gas distribution and is the largest nuclear operator in the United States.


Integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production, retail distribution operations, energy marketing and trading.


Holding company for energy businesses focused on wholesale power marketing, merchant generation, and portfolio management.


Southern Company is one of America's largest generators of electricity.


Solar related:


ESLR is a play on solar energy.

[xe2dy]

The subject of this post by RD may prove to be a major opportunity to make money over the next bull market (I think it will begin in 2010). I will be adding investment ideas to this post as time goes on. If any readers have ideas regarding alternative energy sources then please feel free to add comments and/or ticker symbols.

"T. Boone Pickens, Jr.

From Wikipedia

Natural gas
Pickens has begun speaking out on the issue of peak oil, claiming that world oil production is about to enter a period of irrevocable decline. He has called for the construction of more nuclear power plants, the use of natural gas to power the country's transportation systems, and the promotion of alternative energy. Pickens' involvement with the natural gas fueling campaign is long-running. He formed Pickens Fuel Corp. in 1997 and began touting natural gas as the best vehicular fuel alternative because it's a domestic resource that, among many advantages, is clean (Natural Gas Vehicles or NGVs emit up to 95% less pollution than gasoline or diesel vehicles) and reduces foreign oil consumption. Reincorporated as Clean Energy in 2001, the company now owns and operates natural gas fueling stations from British Columbia to the Mexican border.

On September 19, 2007, Pickens told CNBC that the price of oil could rise to $100. "Demand is up and supply is flat, so it's got to go on up," said Pickens, whose company is betting on natural gas for vehicles. "I can give you an Oklahoma guarantee that natural gas will never sell above diesel and gasoline prices" as fuel for vehicles, Pickens added.[30]

Wind Power
In June 2007, Pickens announced that he intends to build the world's largest wind farm by installing large wind turbines in parts of four Panhandle counties. The project would produce up to four thousand megawatts of electricity. Pickens' Mesa Power LP will undertake the construction. If completed, the farm would generate more than five times the 735 megawatts produced at the present largest such farm near Abilene, according to Susan Williams Sloan, spokesman for the American Wind Energy Association.[31]

On August 16, 2007, Pickens' Mesa Power announced that it had filed documents with the state of Texas to add four thousand megawatts of electricity to the state grid. The filing with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) projected that the project would be completed in 2011 and would include up to 2,700 turbines on up to 200,000 acres (810 km²) in Roberts and adjacent counties in the Texas Panhandle. "We are now meeting with Panhandle landowners and negotiating wind lease and easement agreements," said Pickens. "We are excited at how quickly the pieces are falling into place." [32]

On January 30, 2008, The Oklahoman reported that Pickens is ready to start buying wind turbines for the project within a month, that he plans to buy between 1,700 and 2,000 turbines, and that they will cost from $200 million to $300 million.[33] Pickens added that he has been approached by twenty potential partners on the project but has not yet made a final decision.[33] "We have not picked any banker and we have not picked any partner," Pickens said.[33] "It is kind of nice ... I have decided I can get pretty far down the track" before having to make those choices."[33] Pickens predicted that similar wind farm projects could be built in the Texas Panhandle and the US-Canadian border in the future.[33]

On May 15, 2008, Pickens' Mesa Power announced that it had placed a first order for 667 1.5-megawatt turbines from General Electric.[34] The turbines will be delivered in 2010 and 2011.


The Pickens Plan
On July 8, 2008, Pickens announced a major energy policy proposal called "The Pickens Plan" (http://www.pickensplan.com/media/). The plan promotes alternatives to oil, including natural gas, wind, and solar.[35] A major feature of the plan is replacing the 22% of its electricity that the United States gets from natural gas with wind energy, which would then allow that natural gas to provide 38% of the States' fuel for transportation and reduce its dependence on foreign oil. The Pickens Plan calls for the United States to leverage its wind corridor in the middle of the country which stretches from Texas through the great plains to the Canadian border.

Pickens plans to spend $58 million on his multi-media effort to promote the Pickens Plan. Pickens multi-media campaign includes old media, such as newspaper and TV, and new media, such as YouTube and Facebook.[36]

As part of this effort, Pickens has appeared on ABC's Good Morning America, the CBS Evening News, CNN and Fox News.[37]

Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, has expressed support of the Pickens Plan.[38]

This post has been edited by Rogerdodger: Yesterday, 02:01 PM"

[frenchee]

thanks ed

[xe2dy]

FPJ, I found this info at stockcharts.com regarding 'red x':

"There are three reasons why this could be happening:

1.
You've lost your Internet connection,
2.
Your browser isn't displaying PNG format graphics correctly, or
3.
We are experiencing site difficulties.


If you are seeing red X's, first make sure that you can connect to other websites - if not, re-establish your Internet connection. Next, see if you can see the sample PNG image on http://stockcharts.com/PNGTest.html - if you can't, repair or upgrade your browser (more info). Finally, trace your connection using the PingPlotter program as described in the question "Why is your site so slow?"

Click Here if you found this answer helpful"

http://stockcharts.com/help/doku.php?id=support:sharpcharts

[xe2dy]

$SPX, $RUT, $NDX & FLS

[xe2dy]

RD's tick-o-meter & vix-o-meter

"It sure looked like a blast off from the bottom...until you looked at the indicators.
The Tickometer was outside the BB's:"


"The Mark Cook Clone was no where near a bottom:"


"And this morning's 5 minute Vixometer spelled trouble: (see red circle)"


http://www.traders-talk.com/mb2/index.php?showtopic=90825

[xe2dy]

Great post by deacon


"Quite unusual mcclellan reading, a narrow change at such an oversold level
http://www.mcoscillator.com/Data.html

narrow change reading in the OSC along with the nr4's are a trend day in the making again.

as usual, buying the monday low, perhaps after a weak ppi at 9:45am et, should be good for a scalp...then can the bulls do anything more remains to be seen


almanac shows INDU up 16-3 on july 1st last 19 years, and almanac also shows a bullish day monday 7/7

cxo shows thursday weak and monday up
http://www.cxoadvisory.com/calendar/July/

vtoreport holidays had thursday up 20-13 and monday down 13-20 range 1971-2004

we do seem oversold enough for the buy end of month trade, but we could have said the same oversold comments for the last 3 mondays:
"The SPX gained 753 points from January 1995 through the end of 2004 (10 years). But, had you purchased the SPX the day before the last trading day of the month, and exited on the opening of the fifth trading day of the month (and you stayed out of the market the rest of the month), the gains were 820 points. That's right. Those six trading days, on a net basis, led to all the market gains. The remaining 14-16 trading days of the month led nowhere. Sixty-four percent of the trades were successful."
http://tradingmarkets.com/.site/stocks/com...32005-42252.cfm

INDU normally does well in july
http://www.chartoftheday.com/20070608.htm?T

the election year chart does show a weak last 1/2 of june before a blast off
http://www.chartoftheday.com/20071228.htm?T

8th year of decade has been the 2nd best historically(after 5th), and the ballistic moves of 1968 and and 1978 did have a pull back in the month of june
http://www.stockindextiming.com/marketviews/mar08/

ike has a couple free interviews this weekend"
http://marketviews.tv/channels/central.htm

http://www.traders-talk.com/mb2/index.php?showtopic=90444

[xe2dy]

More from selecto..

"I see some hands drawing a declining wedge on the SPX. It is not being done correctly.

The base of a declining wedge should begin at the point where price moves up to the point which marks the beginning high of the top of the wedge. The base is not to start from a point further back where the end of the move upward does not begin the top of the wedge.

Volume across a declining wedge should decrease, not increase.

Proper ruler work applied here yields only down channels"

[xe2dy]

NASI thoughts by selecto...

"Last week I noted that the weekly 50 sma on the QQQQ has reliably acted as support on a rising NASI and has failed as support on a falling NASI. Then, we were testing the 50 and that NASI was falling.

Here is what has happened:"



And my NASI chart




http://www.traders-talk.com/mb2/index.php?showtopic=90162

[xe2dy]

$SPX

[xe2dy]

Link to a few charts by StillLearnin...

http://www.traders-talk.com/mb2/index.php?showtopic=89805

[xe2dy]

Nice SPX chart from Tea,



I added sso amd sds for reference.

[frenchee]

#board-12532

[xe2dy]

Double short bond ETF's ....

[xe2dy]

Need to keep an eye on Hurricanes and their effect on oil / gas this year.

NOAA Predicts Near Normal or Above Normal Atlantic Hurricane Season

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080522_hurricaneoutlook.html


NOAA’s Atlantic hurricane season outlook will be updated on August 7, just prior to what is historically the peak period for hurricane activity.

Adding Tea's USO +

[xe2dy]

Tea's $NDX weekly...

[xe2dy]

Tea's $OEX FF (Fearless Forecast),

[xe2dy]

Tea's USO chart ...



added DUG...



Link to TT conversation...

http://www.traders-talk.com/mb2/index.php?showtopic=88664

[xe2dy]

Words of Wisdom from 'swinger' at TT...

"I am not day trading today (which is why I have time to post). It is OpEx week and they are in the middle of the killing zone centering around 1403 that I mentioned earlier. I feel no particular need to trade in the VST if I don't feel the odds are right and I just don't see an attractive setup today.

As for whipsaws--it happens, and the way I deal with that is to set a maximum daily loss and when I hit it, then I go do something else rather than getting frustrated trying to fight it. If they saw it long enough across a line they can definitely shake me off--but it is usually possible to rejoin the new trend on a pullback (but with higher risk on the stops). The goons never allow a risk-free trade, so you just either have to play the pivot stop game (I don't) or pick a dynamic number to use as an absolute stop/reversal line.

I like to let them stop me in on momentum in the direction of the spike and then immediately set protection and reversal just on the other side of the line. The closer I can enter to my lines, the better for me as it limits the draw downs when I am wrong and let's me ride the wiggle for less money than a wider stop under/over a pivot (which is where almost everyone else is putting their stop and so often becomes a target for the goons).

I am not a 'pivot trader', as is evident by the use of trailing profit stops and trending strategies. Straight pivot traders can get killed on range breakouts (been there and done that, no fun). My thing is to combine trending and ranging strategy--so a little different way of doing things than what you may be supposing. Pivots are always important, of course--but only part of the formula."

http://www.traders-talk.com/mb2/index.php?showtopic=88492&st=10

[xe2dy]

Market insight th'ks to RD...

http://www.market-harmonics.com/tech_chart_descriptions.htm