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"TJ..would you buy here for a LT hold?"
lol. is that a joke?
no, i'm not the type that chases something that's up 80% in 2 days, and then buys for a long term hold
actually, as far as "long term" goes, i've been mostly out of equities since january. (okay, some excursions into and out of gold miners, but i'm out ...)
"CYBX is prime for a correction after all that fast running. If the cash starts to exit ..."
the float has traded 5x over ... some cash must have exited ...
PIMCO Gross:Most Uncertainty In Global Econ In Decades-FT
06/16/2004
Dow Jones News Services
(Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--William Gross, portfolio manager at the world's largest bond fund, PIMCO, said the outlook for the global economy is the most uncertain for 20 or 30 years, according to an interview published on the FT.com Web site Wednesday.
Gross said, "Too much debt, geopolitical risk and several bubbles have created a very unstable environment which can turn any minute.
"More than any point in the past 20 or 30 years, there's potential for a reversal," he added in the interview.
Gross also told FT.com, "We have become a levered global economy, specifically in Japan and the U.S.
"With all this consumer debt, business debt, government debt, smaller movements in interest rates have a magnified effect ... a small movement can tip the boat."
In the interview, Gross also warned that the greenback is overvalued against Asian currencies.
"The U.S. dollar is being supported by the kindness of strangers - Japan and China," he was quoted as saying.
"It should be 20% lower than it is. Japan and China will change their stance, we don't know when but we know they will. The dollar isn't overvalued against the euro, but it is against Asian currencies."
There have been some extensive work with PET scans of the brain, I have seen comparative results between schizophrenic and normal patients, not seen any with "depression" but I am sure these exists (Google with either Pet Scan and Depression" or " Biomagnetic and depression", another method attempting to map actual in vivo processes in the brain).
well if you look for depression, you'll find lots of studies dealing with bipolar disorder ... and probably a better case can be made for organic causes there. but really, pet scans don't answer any of the questions raised earlier: e.g. pet scans are used also to map things like 'what happens in the brain when this grad student is solving a math problem?' in other words, there's no evidence that the brain activity is cause and not just a symptom or concrete manifestation of the problem.
d00dz, you have to respect the skepticism, cuz doctors are just too willing to prescribe anti-depressants. my aunt, who works in QA, notes that every single person on her little bit of hallway (7 offices) is on one anti-depressant or another. now sure, maybe QA attracts depressive types or aggrvates the condition, but really -- i'm highly skeptical. (of course, its LA, so that may say something.)
wow, i haven't looked at that in a while. and its still at it! i used to find it funny that stocks like extr and pmcs would trade their entire float within 3 weeks of trading, and here we get a whole bunch that do that daily every couple hours.
maybe it just means that all the traders are playing at the same tables.
IPIX
Average Volume (3 month): 13.55M
Average Volume (10 day): 28.35M
Shares Outstanding: 15.71M
Float: 8.90M
nevertheless, if 3x the float trades in 1 day, most of today's buyers are not still owners ...
"So the idea behind this CYBX technology is it shocks someone?"
well it traded 3x its float and 2x all outstanding shares today. but then nothing shocks me anymore ... not after mama and ipix.
well, from debka:
DEBKAfile reports exclusively: Stubborn rumors that Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has died are coming from Washington – but not confirmed in Cairo. CIA chief Tenet is reported to have met Mubarak Wednesday.
hostage release: ppi tomorrow at 8:30am
market will go up as dollar gets stronger
so you're saying you think that this behavior will reverse now?
i remember back in oct of last year, i asked that question to LG -- well either oct or during the summer -- he said he thought that would be the pattern: rally on falling dollar, and then later rally in rising dollar. but we haven't seen that yet ... so far the correlation is still: falling dollar, rising market (as in the case of yesterday and today, on the short time scale, for example).
but, on the other hand, marc faber sees that indicator in particular as a big sell signal. to me -- since he was the guy who said 'buy dollars' in january, and in my own case, got me out of gold then, which i'd been in since 12/01 -- that's a good caution signal.
http://www.ameinfo.com/news/Detailed/41068.html
Sunday, June 13 - 2004 at 11:19
The Fed's monetary policy dilemma
US corporate insiders are selling off their shares as the equity market rebounds. Dr. Faber sees this as a sell indicator for all investors, and reflects on what Mr. Greenspan will do next.
We have pointed out before that the year 2003 was unusual in the sense that every asset class including bonds, stocks, real estate, and commodities went up in price.
Then, we had after February/March of this year all asset classes – except for real estate – declining in price and, now, since mid May, we have all asset classes including stocks, real estate and commodities, but excluding bonds and the US dollar, moving up in price again - this largely as a result of a massive monetary expansion engineered by Mr. Greenspan.
I am mentioning this because it is for the American Federal Reserve possible to increase the money supply exponentially (in the last four weeks at an annual rate of more than 20%) and keep US interest rates significantly below the rate of inflation. But by 'printing' too much money the Fed pushes also the US dollar down and creates eventually higher inflation rates, which will one day in future also drive interest rates much higher.
In fact, whereas, as can be seen from the above figure, the Fed fund rate is currently at 1%, it should be today - based on nominal GDP growth and recent inflation - at least at 3% to 4% (fed watchers say the Fed is 'way beyond the curve'). In fact, if you look at the spread between the T-Bill Rate and the 30-Year T-Bond Yield, the spread is at its widest level in the last 70 years indicating that short-term rates are far too low at this point of the business cycle, and also given the housing and energy price induced inflation we have at present.
Therefore, Mr. Greenspan has come to a dead end street with his monetary policy. Despite ultra easy monetary policies the bond market has tumbled since March of this year with the result that the housing refinancing index has also collapsed to the lowest level since May 2002.
This by itself may have some negative implications for US consumption in the next few months, as refinancing activity allowed homeowners to withdraw equity from their homes, which was then largely spent on consumer goods and equity purchases. In fact, it will be interesting to see whether the recent strong employment gains (at least statistically and superficially interpreted) will be able to offset lower home equity withdrawals by homeowners.
My opinion is that this is unlikely to be the case, and that consumption will slow down in the next few months – also because financial market investors have failed so far this year to make any money and are already likely to sit on some losses, as they positioned themselves in asset inflation plays such as copper, steel, shipping and housing stocks, all of which are already down from their March highs by 30% or more.
Now, Mr. Greenspan has two options. Either he does pursue his policy of keeping short-term interest rates artificially low, or increases them in baby steps of just 0.25% increments and at a slow pace, or he takes some more drastic tightening moves action and increases short-term rates in 0.50% increments right away.
In the first case, the bond market will continue to drift lower, as inflation will suddenly accelerate meaningfully and in the process also drive down the dollar.
Alternatively, he drives interest rates up significantly, but then stocks, and home prices will ease and have a negative impact on consumption, while bond prices and the dollar should be in a position to rebound. In short, I am mentioning this because unlike what we experienced in 2003, when all asset classes including stocks, commodities, real estate and bonds rose in concert, we are beginning to see, in 2004, diverging performances of asset markets.
Either bonds and the dollar will continue to tank while stocks, commodities and hard assets perform better – at least relatively - or the US dollar and bonds will hold and even strengthen temporary, while stocks and commodities perform relatively poorly.
My bet is that the Fed will move up interest rates very slowly for fear to deflate the various bubbles it itself created and encouraged with its ultra easy monetary policy.
In particular, the US housing market would seem to be vulnerable to a sudden sharp Fed Fund rise since more and more homes were purchased this year with adjustable-rate mortgages, which carry lower interest rates (at least now) than fixed rate mortgages and led to home price increases in California of between 17% and 33% year-on-year depending on the counties surveyed.
Still, with interest rates as low as they are today, it is unlikely that even a massive injection of liquidity into the system by the Fed will be able to generate new highs for the year in the various stock and commodity markets around the world, as the markets have begun to have second thoughts about the long term consequences of Mr. Greenspan's irresponsible monetary policy, which will, as just indicated, certainly lead to more inflation and higher interest rates later in 2004 and in 2005.
There are two more reasons to be cautious about equity markets. Mutual fund cash positions are at a historically low level. So, if mutual fund inflows slow down or if mutual funds are faced with net redemptions the demand/supply situation of the stock market would not be as favorable as it was over the last 18 months.
I may add that the home equity withdrawal phenomenon, I referred to above, led not only to higher consumer spending but also to purchases of equities by the household sector, since not all the money individuals extracted from their homes - as a result of the refinancing activity - was spent.
Therefore, if home equity withdrawal shrinks it could also affect the demand side of equities negatively, which might explain the recent sudden decline in inflows into equity mutual funds! Moreover, if there were at some point net redemptions in equity mutual funds, these redemptions could only be met by mutual funds selling equities. Also note how high cash positions were at the onset of the bull markets after 1974, 1982 and 1990.
Lastly, one group of people, who is usually relatively well informed – the corporate insiders – have turned decisively less optimistic. In the first four months of this year, US insiders have sold $14 billion worth of stocks compared to just $4 billion in the comparable period in 2003.
According to a study this is the highest insider selling on record since 1971 when these insider sales statistics began to be compiled. One must, therefore, wonder who will be right - the largely uninformed American public who has piled in into equity mutual funds at the highest rate since January and February of 2000, shortly before the stock market in the US peaked out (but failed in 2004 to move the market much higher), or the relatively well informed insiders who have been dumping shares!
I for one, I am betting on the insiders and would, therefore, use the current rebound in share prices around the world as a selling opportunity.
re cybx: well they only said its safe, not that it works.
hmm. so now rhat preannounces earnings (beat by 0.01) to stem the bleeding, but that doesn't seem to help ... in fact it looks perilously close to breaching zeev's 22 ... or is that just a test? hmmmm ....
someone pointed out that today's volume is better than yesterday's. but, although that's true (still in a rather anemic way), all of that "excess" is already made up by the extra volume in msft. (aren't these the same kind of rumors that drove msft back in september? i remember that one about the $1 special distribution that goosed the futures overnight ... and led nowhere ...)
so why would msft accumulate all this money for all these years, and then just hand it out? doesn't that go against bill gates' reasoning for so many years (that he wants to have a 1-year supply)? or is this perhaps part of that deal involving the sale of all those msft options?
the return of reaganomics:
well, if ketchup is a vegetable, how about those greasy french fries? usda comes to terms with reality as american kids' favorite foods become part of a well-rounded meal:
Rules Of Commerce Classify French Fries As Veggies
http://www.local6.com/health/3420861/detail.html
yah, okay, that's what i thought. so what the heck is stealthy about today's rally???
i'll go one further: after yesterday, who wouldn't have expected a "turnaround tuesday" of one form or another ...
"stealth RALLY"
hrm. what's the meaning of "stealth" in this context?
drooling for rhat!? ick.
maybe its a technical thing, but lets face it dood, its selling at 35x sales (yes, no decimal point in there) and 325 times earnings, and heck - they don't even MAKE anything.
yeah yeah, linux this and linux that. i'm a bigger linux fan than any of u guys, i'm sure, and i'm running rhat 9 right now, and have used linux since jr high ... but c'mon, they don't even write the software, they don't actually own much at all, when it comes to copyright and ip.
and worst of all, novell recently bought s.u.s.e., which is probably the most popular linux distribution in the world - at least where europe is concerned - and put that together with the trust that novl has built up over the years and its a pretty potent punch.
of course, novl is also up some 700% so ... no bargains out there in linuxville.
ah. apparently something to do with timing, since its just 4 days before they announce earnings:
Red Hat Tumbles on CFO Resignation
By Bill Snyder
TheStreet.com Staff Reporter
6/14/2004 6:19 PM EDT
Shares of Red Hat (RHAT:Nasdaq - commentary - research) plummeted after hours Monday on news that the company's CFO has resigned "to pursue other interests."
In recent postclose trading, shares of the Linux software vendor were off $2.86, or 11.8%, to $21.44; the stock lost $1.36, or 5%, to close at $24.30 during the regular session.
The abrupt resignation, coming just three days before the company is scheduled to report fiscal 2005 first-quarter earnings, puzzled Wall Street. "Everyone hates uncertainty. Why wouldn't they wait until earnings? This puts even more of a spotlight on Thursday's report," one analyst said during an informal conversation.
In a prepared statement, the company said: "Kevin Thompson, is resigning from the company to pursue other interests. Thompson is expected to continue in his role as CFO, while the search for his successor is completed, to help provide for a smooth transition."
well i've been bearish like you, and i'm watching and waiting. i have just a couple tiny short positions that i'm sitting on ... udder than that, i'm just sittin' around waiting 'til the bulls come home ... moo.
oh - i'm not sure about chasing things down in this market. but who knows with rhat. personally, i've been watching it cuz it popped before (and then more right after) they resold their convertible debt. and because of a past success i had in a similar situation (huge dump in extr in '02 from 10 to under 3) i've been keeping an eye on it.
re MSFT: is there something substantial here? or is it the talk from the kudlow and lamer comedy hour that they'll "likely" do a $30B buyback ... or borrow $30B and buy back 1/3 of the float?
(is that even realistic??)
i was wondering about that ... is it because they expect that he'll exercise his options sometime soon? (i know "regular" employees generally have a time limit ....)
but then, looking at insider sales -- jeez, these guys have been dumping since it was $10 ...
"It may take a while though."
i agree. when russell says 'be in the dollar with a small safety net in gold', i don't bet the farm ...
"Every technical indicator I see points to down"
well, that's a warning sign, right? i mean, when sentiment indicators all point down, maybe that's different, but ...
the one thing about gold all the way since dec '01 has been that it has always been moving inversely to the dollar. its not clear to me how much the price has moved because of real increased demand, but the price has been pretty flat all that time in euros. right now, its inflation fears, i suppose, that's driving everything. but that's pushing the dollar up (because of anticipated fed reaction) and that seems to be overriding any flight to gold. that plus all the speculative money seems to have pulled out.
anyway, if i go back to dec 01, and the rising support of that whole move, hui clearly broke that on the 3-crows in april, and on the XAU it looks absolutely clear that it looks like it at least hit its rising support, which would be around 70 ...
oh, and one thing i've found over the last 2.5 years with gold is that it doesn't pay to play the contrarian against the sentiment of gold bulls.
re gold: i still say those 3 black crows on the weekly of the ^hui during april are ominous, and they seem to be playing out in textbook fashion ...
and if this is negativity on gold, u don't remember december '01
the greatest invention is compaound interest.
wow! did u attend that graduation ceremony that karl rove addressed?!?! you stole his line!
Rather, our economic future is inextricably linked to our ability to come up with more technological breakthroughs that equal the Internet in magnitude.
wow, that's a tall order. the internet was under development and proliferating during some 20 years before anyone even started to think of it as something that could drive an economic boom (in the early/mid 90's).
something of this magnitude is not going to spring fully formed from zeus's head ... and is there anything like this under development now? (and, of course, the internet and its growth goes hand in hand with semiconductors, moore's law, pc's and so forth ... since, if not for them, the internet would still be what it was in 1994).
"Why are Al Qaeda targeting westerners in Saudi Arabia, but aren't blowing up the oil lines?"
actually, from an npr report a few weeks ago: blowing up oil pipelines would be easy, since there are so many and they're mostly unprotected; but its rather ineffective, because they're also very easy to fix. i.e. except for the scare, its not gonna send prices soaring. the target they'd want is ... something along the lines of "pumping stations", i forget what they called them.
terrorizing americans is most likely a whole lot easier. you can do it at your leisure, in a time and place of your choosing; you need a minimal # of targets to get them all running; and you lose a good chunk of expertise all at once. it would be the better tactic to reduce productivity over the long term.
"Gold has intrinsic value, and if you look at past periods of hyper-inflation, or destabilization of a currency through deflation, I believe you will find people abandoned their debased paper currencies in favor of gold and other assets with intrinsic value."
a family friend (russian emigre) was telling me that this in fact happened in russia not that long ago (the 90s). it didn't require that anyone establish gold as a universal currency, etc, just that the gold market be a more stable repository of value than the popular currency in particular country at a particular time.
NYSE Program Trading Sets Second Straight Weekly Record
06/10/2004
Dow Jones News Services
(Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)
By Jed Horowitz
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Program trading, the simultaneous purchase or sale of stocks in a single transaction, made up 54.9% of average daily shares traded in the first week of June, surpassing a record 54.1% in the previous week.
The numbers are a discouraging sign for market-makers and brokers on the exchange who rely on individual stock trades for higher commissions and volatility that they can exploit. Charges for executing program trades range from 1.3 to 1.5 cents a share compared with 3 to 4 cents for trades of individual stocks, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Brad Hintz has estimated.
The rise in program trades parallels a decline in overall trading volume on U.S. stock exchanges in recent weeks. That's because firms that use program-trading strategies to mimic the movement of stock indexes remain active, trading-firm officials say. That hurts online brokers such as Ameritrade Holding Corp. (AMTD), which on Wednesday said its average daily trading volume fell 8.3% in April, and market-making firms such as exchange specialists.
"Volumes are lower than where I would like them to be, and as volumes go down program trading rises," Michael LaBranche, chief executive of LaBranche & Co., the largest specialist firm on the NYSE, told investors at a meeting sponsored by Sandler O'Neill & Partners L.P. on Wednesday.
The average daily number of shares traded on the NYSE this year was 1.53 billion shares through the end of May but has dipped to around 1.2 billion in recent sessions.
"I don't know any sell-side desks that are busy right now," LaBranche said, using the terminology for Wall Street firms that buy and sell stocks on behalf of investors, who are known as "the buy side."
Richard Repetto, an analyst at Sandler O'Neill, said last Friday that high program-trading numbers "could dampen results" at market-making firms like LaBranche and its cohorts in Nasdaq Stock Market stocks such as Knight Trading Group Inc. (NITE). Shares of LaBranche fell 20 cents, or 2.3%, to $8.63 in NYSE trading Thursday and Knight fell 27 cents, or 2.3%, to $11.22 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
Program trading has grown from about 10% of total NYSE volume in 1998 to more than 45% this year through the end of May as more mutual funds and hedge funds adopt the technique.
The NYSE defines the strategy as the purchase or sale of a basket of at least 15 stocks with a total value of $1 million or more, under the NYSE's calculations. Last week 677.9 million of the Big Board's average daily volume of 1.2 billion shares were program trades. To derive the percentage, the NYSE takes the sum of all shares bought, sold and sold short in portfolio-trading strategies and divides by total volume.
The percentage would diminish under alternative measurements that count trades rather than share volume or that isolate buy programs as a percentage of total purchases or sell programs as a percentage of total sales, the NYSE said in a news release.
The five most active NYSE member firms in program trading from June 1 through June 4 were UBS AG's (UBS) UBS Securities, Deutsche Bank AG's (DBK) Deutsche Banc Alex Brown, Morgan Stanley (MS), Goldman Sachs Group (GS) and Lehman Brothers (LEH), the NYSE said. UBS was the leader in trading the portfolios as principal for its own accounts and Deutsche Banc as agent on behalf of customers, the NYSE said.
-By Jed Horowitz, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-4047; jed.horowitz@dowjones.com
hmmm. my favorite little short-piggie, kopn, had rather extreme volume today on no news ... scox also revisiting the depths ...
russell at his most bearish
RUSSELL ON GREENSPAN
June 9, 2004 -- Today's site may be one of the most important that I write this year. Please read it carefully.
Here Are the Hopes -- The UN says OK to the US's sovereignty plan for Iraq. The "hope" -- the administration hopes that the US can get the hell out of Iraq by election time -- and hopefully before.
Greenspan babbles that he's ready to hike interest rates at a faster than expected rate if inflation flares up. As usual, Greenspan talks the talk -- but he "hopes" he doesn't have to walk the walk, which would mean doing any rapid boosting of interest rates. In fact, Greenspan hopes that he won't have to boost rates at all (however, the market's forcing his hand).
Nevertheless, the market isn't listening to Greenie. It's upping short rates on its own, as shown in this chart of the 91-day T-bill. Ah well, markets will be markets, and they go where they want -- without the permission of the Fed or anyone else.
At this point, I view the world economy as an inflated balloon that is slowly losing air. This is dangerously deflationary. Every central bank in the world is fighting the deflationary forces. They're fighting deflation through the wholesale production of paper money.
The Question is -- can corporations and individuals work off their debt, can they get their "balance sheets" in order while the world economies are still is good shape -- or is the air going to "whoosh" out of the global balloon too fast for the central banks to control -- and is the world going to sink into recession?
Personally, I think we are a few to several years away from deflation. It will come only after hyper-inflation. The last thing any politician wants is another Great Depression and will fight it tooth and nail.
This is the question which the stock market is now struggling with. The widely-followed S&P recovered exactly 50 percent of its bear market losses, and now the S&P is perched literally "on the edge." Can the S&P move up above the 50% level -- or is this "it," is this the best that the S&P can do? If so, after an extended period of wiggling and waffling (which has been the case so far in 2004) is the S&P and the rest of the market going to head down again?
No doubt about, everything about this market says crash but it hasn't happened. I look for a big correction, next year.
Probably everything I write for the rest of this year will, one way or another, deal with this question. Are the forces of world deflation going to win out? Or can the central banks keep the balloon inflated -- or at least deflating slowly?
The economies of India and China, and even Japan is growing and should continue to grow. Add the money oil countries are making and I'd say the majority of the world is doing pretty well. The U.S. has the biggest problem now and it should continue being problematic.
OK --I'm going to give it to you straight in big black letters -- and I doubt that you're going to read this anywhere else.
The global situation is very deflationary. There's too much debt -- and too much global production at viciously competitive prices.
The Kondratief Winter will come soon and create the deflation/depression but only after the fed continues to desperately prevent it by creating as much "money" as possible.
Any time the Fed eases up on its inflationary operations, deflation begins to take over. We can see it most clearly in the action of gold. The fact is that the Fed is actually not inflating enough -- and that's exactly what the action of gold is telling us.
Next, why the strength in the dollar, when everyone is saying that the dollar should be heading down (including, I might add, Warren Buffett)?
I just checked a three year chart of the yen, euro, and bp and they are clearly in an uptrend with the usd in a downtrend. A rally in the usd is good to prevent it from collapsing.
I've said this before, and I'll repeat it -- the HUGE debt position in all areas in the US economy amounts to a "synthetic" short position against the dollar. The dollar's strength is telling us that. Contrary to what everybody seems to believe, there is not enough liquidity in the system. Any time the Fed eases up on the money supply or any time the Fed does not create enough liquidity, the dollar surges (as it's doing today) and gold drops.
Sounds like the fed needs to continue providing even greater liquidity, they should be able to do that. I understand the purpose of the K-Winter is to purge debt, consumers and corporations can work off debt, or file bankruptcy. But what does the government do about it's enormous and growing debt? Think Baby-Boomers starting in 2008, how can the guv work of this debt "safely"?
Greenspan has a huge problem -- the price of goods is rising (price inflation) and Greenspan is being pressured to raise rates. But the larger global background is deflationary, and I have to believe that Greenspan's knows it.
For Asia, the problem is inflation, not deflation I believe. That's a lot of people.
What's Greenspan to do? He'll talk about the Fed raising rates in to the hopes that talk will forestall inflation, but he'll ACT as if the real problem is potential deflation, and he'll be very reluctant to actually raise rates.
So the great irony which nobody understands -- THE FED IS NOT INFLATING ENOUGH. GOLD IS TELLING US THAT! EVEN COMMODITIES INCLUDING COPPER ARE TELLING US THAT!
CONCLUSION -- What can I say that I haven't already said? I don't like the economic picture, I don't like the deflationary implications of today's' market action, I don't like the fact that all of America is positioned for inflation, and again I repeat that I didn't like today's market action.
Your biggest position should be in US dollars now, with gold basically owned for insurance purposes. In the end, if we do get "out-of-control" deflation the very validity of the dollar and all paper money may come into question, at which point gold would be the only place to be.
I'd say the exit of paper currencies will come after hyper-inflation.
But right now, judging (my judgment, of course) the main place to be is in US dollars. If we get deflation, rates will ultimately go down and T-bonds will be the place to be, but the timing of that kind of action is very difficult -- particularly since the "carry trade" is just beginning to unwind. Everybody was doing it big time -- but now with long rates rising the carry trade is starting to produce losses. (The carry trade = borrowing short at low rates and putting the borrowed money into higher yielding securities).
Safety first at this time means US dollars.
So much for Wednesday -
Market takes Greenspan Seriously
by Stirling Newberry
Currently the CBOT fed funds futures is predicting something very interesting:
Jul: 1.29 - or that there is an almost certainty of a 25 basis point hike.
Aug 1.63 - another 25 basis point hike
Sep 1.71 - or a 30% chance of yet another hike on top of those two.
Oct 1.85 - or a 50% chance of another 25 basis point hike if there isn't one in September
Nov 2.09 - or a belief that by november there will be 100 basis points of hikes, plus a 1/3 chance of 125 basis points.
The farther out, the larger the drops in these contracts today - which indicates that the market believes that there has been a significant acceleration in the Fed's time table to raise rates. The Fed raised raises brutally quickly in 2000 in response to energy inflation, but is not doing so now in response to an equally sharp rise. But the market believes the party is over and that by March of next year the fed funds rate will be 2.75% - or 175 basis points higher than it is now.
i think i know what hell is like.
500 channels, all showing the same clips of reagan's funeral.
whatever happened to 'productivity miracle'?
'What’s the matter with these young e”con”omiser jokers at the BLS, can’t they handle a simple job like this?'
the difficult part, of course, is tweaking the numbers so that they look both plausible and hit the mark that they've been ordered to hit.
actually, my own guess is that its just so much more likely that the delay is there to give time to the banks to prepare for the numbers, as in jan and feb and march. when they were switching to new computers. lol. yeah, like i believe that: you switch to new computers, takes you two months to rewrite your software and -- oops! -- old computers are offline! that's how IT was done before i was born; and, although it *is* the federal gov, i still can't believe that they're that incompetent.
hey, did ya notice how the bush economy commercials, starting on the day of the last bls jobs numbers, already had the correct count of jobs gained? so either they were editing that up until the last minute, or it was already known in advance ... or they just told the bls, hey, the commercial says this, so don't make us liars ...
"I will remember to use you as a contrarian indicator."
ah, but he's very good with the qqq's!
so lee, why was it again that you liked rhat at 28??
oddly, though, gold seems to be reacting only to the rise in the dollar and not an inflation threat ... or is it just more of the flight of the speculators?