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well the german news of the story says 17 people hurt and lots of nails found in the street, although they're not yet concluding whether the nails were in the bomb.
and its hard to tell if even that is correct: translation software really sucks. like this was an adjoining story that caught my eye. hello??
Men at the grill discover their urine-stunk
Freiburg (dpa) - men at the grill feel carried back for opinion of scientists to the role of the hunter and "cave human being". At the grill rust the male urine-stunk were waked, so Nina Degele, Professorin for sociology, and sex research at the University of Freiburg, in a discussiondiscussion discussion.
"the work with raw meat is felt as clearly male and archaisch", said it. Crickets is therefore particularly with the male sex likes. Women against it would feel by the majority little desire to stand at the grill rust.
"is busy at the grill with the booty, which is prepared with own hands in free nature", said Degele. Thematically go it around the wild man, who must work for the food intake hard and for the supply of the whole group is responsible to which. Besides at the grill the role in the society one decide. "who ignites fires, stands in the social hierarchy completely above", said the Professorin, which leads before three years the started research project "crickets and life-style" at the Freiburger university.
actually i haven't looked at that particular chart in a while. it seems to be saying that the spx, priced in euros, has been flat since october. now if i had been watching it, then i might have concluded that the sharp drop in march on the s&p should have been bought ...
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=USDEUR=X&t=1y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=^spx
here's a quicky, not the best. the correlation goes back to oct only.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=USDEUR=X&t=3m&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=^spx
actually, ya know, the market still seems not to have decoupled from the dollar: dollar up, market down has been the pattern for much of the last year ...
"my son USED to love him, now , doesnt really want to go see movie"
kids generally don't get nostalgiac about their childhoods the way adults do as they get older, they reject that stuff as "babyish". the perennial disney problem with kids over 7 ...
"Do you still value these King Report snippets?"
ABSOLUTELY! i hope its no trouble for you to repost ...
danke mucho!
interesting statistics:
believe all or most of the news from:
wall st. journal
2000 46% (republican), 40% (democrat)
2002 35%, 29%
2004 23%, 29%
most trustworthy is cnn 26%/45%, except for republicans who trust fox news a bit more (29%). overall, though, nobody believes anything anymoe it seems
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=215
intc volume improves slightly today but qqq volume looks like it'll check in very low (under 50% of average)?
what gives??
similar on dell ...
the little numbers on top of the bars in the barcharts are projections to end of day?
"as bush is forced to change embryonic stem cell policy"
gonna be hard in an election year, especially as the white house just came out two days ago and reaffirmed that its baby killing ....
re Yhoo:
my guess is that they're running it with retail stuff, which should all be a good short in rising rate environment. e.g. sbux has similar chart. of course, i'm always wrong on the bullish side of things and it could just be part of the party preparations for google ...
"Canny: Bring back the '60's!!!!"
that would be soooo cool. bring back the draft and give george and cheney and perle and wolfowitz another chance to serve! i like it. i'm writing my senatrix!
"I'm guessing you think the INTC pump is smoke screen?"
dunno about smoke screen. they've been working a long time to keep it moving up, on low volume and all. i look at island, where something like 1/3 of all shares are traded, and its been a huge stack of sell orders for weeks ...
but the thing that troubles me about intc is the volume. today it was about 1/2 of an average day. is that bullish? bearish? i dunno. just weird. maybe they just forgot to include it in the programs today. that would explain it
anyway, i'm just watching, cuz i have no idea what it means.
"Funny how both TXN & CYMI mid-qs got sold ahs"
of course, intc did the same last week, but then rallied the following day, and today, and probably forever ... on ever decreasing volume ...
"Whomever was in charge of the Ronnie rally must've thought he was the 42nd with that 42.00."
see, this is where the scientific method comes in useful. you're assuming its a ronnie rally, but facts tell you otherwise: 42 is clinton. clearly it was a clinton rally, in support of the kickoff for the release of his autobiography this week.
"... a feel-good factor boosted the market as Wall Street recalled the economic growth it saw under former president Bill Clinton."
no, me too. but its the fault of the news media: they play the same clips over and over, interview the same people.
have u ever looked at the "news" page over at google? its an eye opener. like, they'll have the top story, and 3000 links to versions of that story in 3000 different newspapers, and 99.44% of them all are word-for-word identical. (i.e. probably all from ap or reuters or whatever.) why we have 3000 different newspapers is beyond me. the wsj and pravda would be enuf.
yeah, so of course its students that get screwed, again ...
Proposal May End Fixed-Rate Student Loans
Sun Jun 6
By JUSTIN POPE, AP Education Writer
For students with loans to pay off, times have never been better. And they may never be this good again.
Rates on federal student loans have fallen to around 3 percent — a 35-year low. Even better, students can lock in those rates, potentially saving thousands of dollars by ensuring their payments won't increase even if interest rates do.
But a proposal in Congress could shut down the party. The measure would end the fixed-rate option, making all federal student loans issued after July 2006 subject to variable rates. Repayments would then rise and fall each year in sync with interest rates.
The change — just one part of the reauthorization of the mammoth Higher Education Act now wending through Congress — is intended to shift federal subsidies away from those who already have a degree, freeing up money for programs targeted at students who may be struggling to get to college at all.
The proposed change has split both Democrats and Republicans on the House Education and Workforce Committee. Chairman John Boehner, R.-Ohio, and Rep. Rob Andrews, D.-N.J., have introduced different versions, but others members oppose the proposal. Presumed Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), has also criticized it, saying variable rates would harm students and enrich lenders.
Education groups are also divided. The United States Student Association opposes the idea, but supporters include, along with lenders, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators and College Parents of America.
"This is the most visible and contentious issue in the reauthorization," said Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education.
His group supports variable rates but wants the rate capped at 6.8 percent. The current proposal would keep the existing cap of 8.25 percent.
The debate comes amid growing anxiety over college costs and student debt. Figures released last week by the Department of Education (news - web sites) show the share of full-time college students who borrowed to pay for college rose from 30 percent in 1990 to 45 percent in 2000.
An estimated 7 million Americans receive more than $50 billion in federally backed student loans each year. For the average undergraduate borrower graduating this year, a variable rate loan would cost an extra $3,000 over 10 years, the Congressional Research Service estimated...
yeah, its the infatuation with software stocks. rsas is prettier. symc is stronger, i think. i actually know a guy who works at symc in los angeles. just bought himself a condo and a red corvette.
sentiment: here ya go:
Bullish Advisors: 45.1% Bearish Advisors: 24.5%
COTs have small traders net long, with large and commercial slightly short.
http://www.vtoreport.com/sentiment/sentiment.htm
If were a longet term trader, I would be Very lonh RHAT.
long rhat long term??? heavens! forget the p/e and all that, but first, novl has recently bought suse, and novl has trust and a market overseas. (suse is another linux distribution, with the identical stuff.) and re long term: if you're projecting that linux will overtake windows and cause pain to msft, all msft needs to do is create or buy its own linux distribution (e.g. mandrake) and bundle lots of windows goodies with it (e.g. by buying mainsoft, say, which has already been preened and primpped, so that all msft has to do is compile all of their windows code against mainsoft libraries and voila - IE, media player, etc all running on linux ...
the race to commoditize the desktop won't have big winners, only big losers.
(by the way, suse - with the ximian desktop - is actually quite a bit nicer. its what i've been using for over a year after switching from rhat.)
"U.S. stocks climbed on Monday, buoyed by Friday's strong job numbers and steady oil prices, while traders said a feel-good factor boosted the market as Wall Street recalled the economic growth it saw under former president Ronald Reagan."
kinda ghoulish, if u ask me ...
yeah but look at intc, up >2% on HALF its average volume.
in contrast to many of the big cap techs, intc volume is horrible.
"What's it like to live in New Zealand?"
!!! its like being a hobbit, of course!
"the PPI/CPI is now, for our present time frame, the most important economic number in terms of moving the market"
aww, but nobody believes it ...
market has followed wli's very closely ... although there's a bit of non-independence there, since the dow is one of the components. but one of 10 or 14 ...
http://www.businesscycle.com/
"After Nixon died,Naz was up 1.14%...so 2000+ today."
yeah but nobody liked nixon.
here's a thought. everyone is wondering about the unusual options activity. yet night after night, out of the corner of my eye on the tv that's running in the corner, there are infomercials for options trading. someone must be buying these things - enough to make these infomercials cost effective ...
oddly these infomericals are no longer about stock trading systems: they'all about options trading.
hmm. so does this explain the activity in rimm??
Monday, June 7, 2004
Case may pluck BlackBerries from U.S.
Canadian computer company stands to lose biggest market if patent ruling upheld
By TERESA RIORDAN
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Is it really possible that Bill Gates, Pamela Anderson and phalanxes of stockbrokers, lawyers and congressional staff members will have to give up one of their most treasured possessions: their BlackBerries?
Today in Washington, judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit are scheduled to ponder whether Research in Motion, the Canadian maker of the much-coveted BlackBerry hand-held wireless e-mail device, should be barred from business in the United States. At issue is who has the patent for the BlackBerry's technology.
In August, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District, in Richmond, Va., dealt RIM a stunning blow, ordering the company to pay NTP, which sued RIM for patent infringement, $53.7 million in damages and granting an injunction to prevent RIM from making, selling or servicing the devices in the United States.
The injunction was stayed, pending RIM's appeal now before the Federal Circuit, the nation's highest patent court, which is supposed to hear arguments today.
RIM is "engaging in 'bet your company' litigation," said Jim Wallace, a lawyer representing NTP. "What's at stake is the entire company. If you look at their annual reports, their core business is BlackBerries in the United States."
Wallace contended that if the injunction were upheld, NTP would stand to gain royalties owed by RIM, even though it would not get future royalties for the simple reason that RIM would not be producing or servicing BlackBerries. Since interest and legal fees are folded in, he said, the award so far is worth upward of $100 million.
The district court ordered that the two sides meet and try to formulate a royalty arrangement, but no settlement has been reached.
"My guess is that rather than an injunction, NTP would rather have ongoing royalties," said Marc Kaufman, a patent lawyer with Nixon Peabody in Washington.
"The time you really want an injunction is when you have a competing business."
"I don't like the action."
could you clarify? (qualitatively)
"wasn't that a movie?"
eyes wide shut, kubrick.
"I think you have only begun to see the unwinding of the carry trade"
now there i agree with you .. in spite of what the pundits on cnbc say. um, i mean "pundits".
mlsoft, re m3: this is quoted elsewhere from bob carver:
"Several have emailed that the Fed is preparing for some kind of financial meltdown by pumping up the M3 money supply. First of all, the Fed may control short term measures of money, but has little control of M3. Secondly, the M3 rate of growth is simply regressing to the mean — returning to the growth trend it was on before the 2003 period of sideways-to-down movement that raised deflationary fears last year. Clearly, the long term chart of M3 from the FRED II site doesn't suggest anything out of the ordinary:
(solarbear note: Chart shows steady up since 2000 nothing parabolic)
The growth in M3 may simply represent a reliquification of the system as hedgers cash in their chips due to rising interest rates. As you can see from the bond chart, there has been a great deal of selling pressure in that market:
That "carry trade" allowed borrowing at rock-bottom rates to finance buying of longer term (and higher yielding) securities, thus locking in a profit due to the difference in rates — as long as rates were heading lower, that is. With rates moving rapidly higher, those carry trades are losing money and thus have generated almost panic selling in the bond market over the past few weeks. This unwinding could have even been the fundamental reason why gold and gold stocks have been tumbling in the face of rising commodity prices, including oil. If that is the case, we should have an absolutely fabulous buying opportunity coming up soon in the gold stocks."
dunno. though that scenario kinda sounds like wwii, except that the u.s. and britian are cast in the roles of germany and japan.
however, one thing about the story i will sort of buy, maybe; bill gross says this now on the pimco site:
we're now subtly approaching the point where the pie stops growing, and now we begin debating how to cut it up. (not specifically with respect to oil.)
However, if everything goes to plan, axis powers will finally be able to turn to the other major world trading blocs, such as Europe and China and India, with a broad smile and say “You want oil? – how much are you prepared to pay?”
that's what i like, brutal honesty. i always knew that lurking under those free-trader skins beat the hearts of gleeful monopolists ...
so lets see: we extort europe and chine and india, but then ship in the cheap stuff to the u.s.
hmm. isn't that consistent with the behavior of someone like hussman here, who is apparently still fully invested but also fully hedged?
----
[...]
The Market Climate for stocks remains characterized by unusually unfavorable valuations and unfavorable market action. The Strategic Growth Fund remains fully invested in a broadly diversified portfolio of stocks, with an offsetting hedge intended to remove the impact of overall market fluctuations from that portfolio.
After the deeply oversold status that the market achieved a few weeks ago, we've seen the standard “fast, furious, and prone to failure” rally to clear that. It's important to emphasize how dangerous it is to attempt “playing” these rallies. In a negative Climate like this, stocks can remain deeply oversold for some time, so oversold conditions in and of themselves make poor buy points. Similarly, the subsequent rallies tend to end without notice, and often without hitting “standard” resistance points such as moving averages, Bollinger bands, or prior resistance levels. It's possible, when interest rates are falling, to construct certain favorable “sub-Climates” within what would commonly be viewed as bear markets. But in decades of research, I've still not found a reliable means to capture brief “bear market rallies” that don't include falling yields as a requirement. We don't have that here, so all rallies in this Climate should be viewed as suspect.
In bonds, the recent rally in straight bonds provides a reasonable opportunity to reduce portfolio duration. In the Strategic Total Return Fund, our present duration of about 3.5 years is solidly in Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, which I continue to view as useful investments here. The Market Climate for precious metals also remains favorable, while the U.S. dollar continues to appear vulnerable. The markets continued to re-evaluate the risks of inflation last week (correctly, in my view), so we've seen a nice recovery in many inflation-linked assets. Overall, the Strategic Total Return Fund remains positioned primarily to benefit from downward pressure on real interest rates and the U.S. dollar, but our overall exposure to risk is relatively conservative in all of the asset classes we hold – TIPS, precious metals, utilities, U.S. agency notes, and foreign government securities.
and like last April (these "fooled" me then and I stayed bearish till mid June), that might simply signal a slowly evolving run which will accumulate momentum, if that is the case, and the floor for that run is without a major relapse before, the following run could indeed be awesome
although, as an additional data point here, john hussman was bullish then, when you were bearish, whereas hussman is now bearish when you are bullish ...
australian housing bubble popping? - the economist
Australia's housing market has weakened. According to official data, average house prices kept rising in the first quarter, leaving them 18% higher than a year before. However, figures collected by Australian Property Monitors, which are more timely because they are based on prices when contracts are signed rather than at settlement, suggest that home prices tumbled by an average of 8% in Sydney and by 13% in Melbourne in the first quarter. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the slide has continued since then. Last weekend in Sydney only one-third of properties put up for auction—the most common method of sale in Australia—were sold, signalling that prices have farther to fall.
The drop in house prices in Australian cities undermines a popular argument heard in Britain and America that even if house prices do look frothy, they are unlikely to fall unless there is a big rise in interest rates or a jump in unemployment. Neither has been needed in Australia. Interest rates have risen by only half a percentage point during the past year, to 5.25%—less than half the level during the previous housing downturn in 1990. Meanwhile, unemployment is close to a 20-year low.
Instead, the main reason for the falls in Sydney and Melbourne seems to be that first-time buyers have been priced out of the market, while demand from buy-to-let investors has dried up as net rental yields have fallen below mortgage rates. This holds lessons for Britain, where the number of first-timers has also slumped and buying-to-let is looking less profitable.
However, not all markets are slowing down. House prices in New Zealand surged by 22% in the year to the first quarter, the biggest increase in any of the countries we track. House prices have also risen at double-digit rates in France, Italy, Spain and Ireland in the past year.
http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2736477
australian cb warns ...
http://finance.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,9751611%255E462,00.html
House prices to fall further
By David Uren
June 5, 2004
HOUSING prices have a lot further to fall and investors should brace themselves for a hard landing, Reserve Bank governor Ian Macfarlane warned yesterday.
"We expect the housing market will continue to go through a much-needed cooling phase for some time yet," he said.
In his six-monthly appearance before a House of Representatives committee, Mr Macfarlane said he was comfortable with the state of the economy and inflation should present no problems for at least the next 12 months.
This suggests interest rates could stay at their present level until well into next year.
He welcomed the NSW Government's property tax changes, saying they made it easier for owner-occupiers to enter the market and a bit more difficult for investors.
"Hamilton, as usual, is trying desperately to make a bearish case out of an obviously bullish indicator (being primarily, a short-seller, I wish he were right, but I don't think he is)."
is he? clearly he *is* bearish, but he does say he doesn't know ....
now, on the other hand, shaeffer does interpret this bearishly ...
interesting. i was just reading hamilton yesterday on the 21-day pc. he examines both the bullish and bearish arguments.
but one thing that *is* different this time: reaching 1.0, he says, is exceptional and hasn't occurred in decades, if ever.
http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest_04/hamilton060404.html
"on Fox news now"
frankly, i'd rather eat dirt.