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>>> there are some pretty fat short positions out there- especially in the semi land
Actually, there aren't. INTC, TXN, ALTR, AMAT, KLAC, LLTC, the SMH itself (and I could go on) all have short interest ratios below 2. Put/call ratios look low too.
I myself have sold some ahead of the mid-quarter updates, and will reassess later.
Nothing, as far as INTC is concerned. Bad news coming on the mid-quarter update.
gottfried,
Overall, your chart suggests we are only in the middle of what is likely to be a prolonged cycle, whereas the stocks seem to discount something worse. However, I don't think the near-term news from the device companies (like INTC etc.) will be especially good.
Culmus, check your e-mail, and sorry for the delay.
Newly,
I'll give your question a try. Part of the answer is indeed population growth and inflation, as nominal GDP growth is a function of these two plus productivity growth.
Regarding productivity growth, it is natural that this should be continuously positive over long periods. The reason is that each generation leaves behind permanent "assets" - infrastructure and especially knowledge - upon which succeeding generations build. To take a simple example, advances in medicine have resulted in a permanent increase in the general level of health and therefore productivity. It is permanent, because the knowledge, once discovered, does not go away. This is why there is a natural tendency for real world GDP to grow over time, and why most poor people today live better than most rich people did 200 years ago, and why it will ever be thus (assuming we don't blow ourselves up in the meantime).
Check out UCI...similar story but a bit cheaper.
Minor breach of yesterday's LOD on the COMP.
AMZN showing relative strength here. Chart looks primed for a bounce, with bottoming candles, oversold RSI and ADX, positive divergences in RSI and Sto's. I have no position because I can't stand the fundamentals, but covered a good short a point lower...wouldn't be short here.
http://stockcharts.com/def/servlet/SC.web?c=AMZN,uu[r,a]dacayyay[pb50!b200][vc60][iUb14!Lp14,3,3!Ll1...
Sheesh. I think (hope) Newly was being sarcastic.
Have some backbone, Tantal! People have given their lives for the liberty we now enjoy. Why is it okay for someone in Washington to tell you or anyone else how you should behave or spend your own money???
We could easily exclude the first $40k or so of income - Nobody making under $40k pays any taxes at all.
The beauty of a flat tax is that it dispels the myth that somebody else is paying for all this government, and thus makes it nearly impossible to raise taxes. It is estimated that government controls about 50% of GDP, including federal, state, local, things like social security, and mandated spending....and this is surely headed higher. If you think that this is too high for a free society, the only way to stop it is to limit and then lower taxes - because our comrades in Washington have made it clear that they will spend whatever they can collect in taxes, plus whatever else they can borrow. This is why proponents of bigger government are terrified of a flat tax, and focus so much energy on reducing the deficit (of course, by raising taxes) - they rightly see the deficit as the only real constraint on their efforts to spend even more.
The Fed has been pretty clear about their intention to raise 1/4 point. Anything else would be a shocker, and I'm not sure good for the market. If they did nothing, investors would wonder if there was something seriously wrong with the economy. The best the bulls can hope for is 1/4 point, with some commentary about how the recovery remains on track but inflation is contained, so the Fed can can proceed at a measured pace, etc.
Virtually every local bottom since Oct. 2002 has been marked by a doji-like candle. Today was not one of these.
Total P/C at 1.57 the highest ever? Could that be right?
http://stockcharts.com/def/servlet/SC.web?c=$CPC,uu[r,a]dacayyay[d19900806,20040806][pb50!b200][vc60...
Dan,
Although I'm a fan of Russell, I've never understood this argument of the unwinding of the debt bubble being good for the dollar. If debtors have a synthetic short position in the dollar, why aren't creditors also long, and don't these positions have to be unwound together?
OTOH, when and if the debt begins to be repaid, it would be deflationary (since credit is money), which should theoretically be good for the dollar. But the dollar's reserve currency status guarantees that debt outside of the US would also decline, eliminating the positive effect on the dollar.
I'm still betting the dollar goes down and gold goes up...BWDIK.
Positive divergences with RSI and stochastics building on COMP, NDX, SPX, SOX etc. For example:
http://stockcharts.com/def/servlet/SC.web?c=$compq
MSFT probably had to announce it ASAP after it was approved by the board. On the other hand, if they wanted to manage the timing to pump up the stock in the face of weak earnings, wouldn't it have been better to announce the "good" news at the same time as an offset to the bad?
That's correct. Remember, though, that the stock price will adjust downward by the amount of the dividend when the stock goes ex-dividend.
Dan,
Do you have a link to Ron Paul's stuff? The link I have seems to stop with his June commentaries.
I've decided to continue reading him, even though it depresses me.
I assume you mean my remarks and not Roaches? Yes, you're right...sorry if I offended anyone. It was sort of a (bad) joke. I say "sort of", because I think the possibility that Roach will be "asked" to tone it down is a very real one.
Roach had better watch it, or he's going to mysteriously end up on some gruesome video broadcast over al-Jazeera. He's getting pretty fearless in his attacks on the Powers That Be. Seriously, I can't believe Morgan Stanley lets him publish this stuff.
I agree with you on OSIS, and own it. Stock looks cheap, good earnings mo, high short ratio, leverage from the recent opportunistic acquisition, and good position in a growing biz (med tech). Security is now a smaller part of their revenues, but could be a nice boost if it gets hot. Management and the chart scare me a little.
8:05 am ET M-Systems beats by $0.02, guides Q3 above consensus (FLSH) 15.22: Reports Q2 (Jun) earnings of $0.14 per share, $0.02 better than the Reuters Estimates consensus of $0.12; revenues rose 236.3% year/year to $86.1 mln vs the $69.5 mln consensus.
Should help flash stocks. Also, JP Morgan out with positive comments on OVTI this morning.
The Aden's take on gold (and interest rates):
http://news.goldseek.com/AdenResearch/1089826748.php
midway down the column.
http://dai.investor.reuters.com/ReadHTML.aspx?target=%2fopinion%2ffind%2fabout
Midway down the menu on the left.
Yes, I use the PowerScreener feature to create my own screens. Requires registration, but very easy to use, and I've been pleased with the results so far. Recent big winners have included IFIN, NFI, and OII, and no real clunckers so far. It doesn't have all the characteristics I would want to include in a screen, but all-in-all a pretty good tool...and it's free.
Earnings: not as bad as they seem, but not necessarily good news for stocks either.
(Sorry to have to paraphrase, but I can't provide a link and haven't figured out how to copy Adobe Acrobat documents.)
According to First Call, S&P earnings growth this quarter is estimated at 21%, up from 19.6% a week ago, despite what feels like a lot of negative pre-announcements. This will be the 4th consecutive quarter of over 20% growth, which has only happened twice in the past 25 years (3Q99-2Q00 and 4Q78-3Q79). The surprise factor so far this quarter is 4.1%, which is above the long term average of 3%. The S&P revisions index (# of estimates lowered to raised) is at 0.9, tying the record low of last quarter. Although it doesn't feel like it, the earnings environment is extremely strong.
However, a while back I did some work that shows that earnings strength (the revisions index index at least) has a strong inverse correlation with future stock prices (for the market overall, not for individual stocks). I speculate that this is because earnings growth for the market overall usually reverts to trendline, so periods of strong growth tend to be followed by periods of weak growth. I believe we are seeing that now. The strong move in the market since the lows of late 2002 discounted the strong earnings environment we are seeing now, and the weakness in the market now is predicting a sharp deceleration in growth next year as we revert to mean. If true (and I hope not), it means that investors should wait until the earnings backdrop becomes poor before becoming more aggressive on stocks.
Hearing that the biggest tech hedge fund Andor shutting down today.
OVTI, comments from Schwab Soundview:
We believe CMOS sensor pricing activity has turned into a full-scale price
war over the past few weeks, with Micron undercutting Omnivision's pricing.
1.3mp CMOS sensors now sell as low as $4.
* This is the result of recent lead time contraction following aggressive
capacity ramp from several suppliers including Omnivision, Micron, and
Agilent, in our view. Our checks point to inventory accumulation of CMOS
sensors in the channel leading to a recent curtailing of production
schedules for some of the CMOS sensor suppliers.
Q4 definitely stronger, but Intel is also guiding for 11% sequential growth in Q3, which is not too shabby.
IMO, conference call not great. They are now saying they are cutting back on wafer starts. The margin and inventory issues are linked, because some of the COGS from Q1 and Q2 are now sitting in inventory as an "asset". As inventory is worked off, these costs are released, and there is an under-absorbtion of costs over fewer wafer starts. So this is where the inventory becomes an issue.
Z,
The manufacturing excursion they were referring to was the problem they had with the Grantsdale chipset, which is well known.
I agree that the inventory build is not that big a deal heading into the seasonally stronger second half....despite what CNBC says.
The big problem here is the margins. Less than expected benefit from the 90 nm transition was one of the reasons they cited, but it's hard to see how margin expectations could decline so much, given the ramp of revenues. After all, this is a fixed cost business, and the cost of goods sold is mostly a function of depreciation (which is well known). So if you you know that revenues will be stronger than expected, how then do margins get weaker? INTC says it's mostly mix shift, but in my mind it implies some pricing pressure as well. This is not good news, and totally unexpected. Let's see what they say on the call.
Dan, OT
I'm sorry, I will have to stop reading your Ron Paul posts, because they are much too depressing. Let's just admit that the bad guys are winning and there is absolutely no hope. My objective in life is now to accumulate enough money to live decently, and to try to disappear to some freer place, like Poland or Romania. I love this country, but I'm afraid Thomas Jefferson wouldn't recognize the place.
When you say the router's address, I assume you mean the IP address? How would I find this? By the address bar, do you mean the address bar in my browser?
I did notice that my several computers on the network all show different IP addresses. This seems odd to me, as I thought all computers on the network used the router's IP address. Do you know if this is correct.
TIA, and thanks to all others who have suggested solutions. I hate networks.
Thanks for the response, Gottfried. I was aware of that, but it did not solve the problem.
There is a networking sub-menu that informs me that my network is not secure, but there is a little box that I can check that allows me to connect anyway. I check it, still can't connect, and when I return to the sub-menu, the box is unchecked again! My previous experience tells me this may be the problem, but I can't seem to select that box so that it remains checked.
Assistance needed.
My wireless network suddenly stopped working. My computers say the links are fine, signal strength excellent, and the network cards properly installed...but I can't connect to the internet (page unavailable, or something like that).
I can connect to the internet if I bypass the router and connect the modem directly to one computer, but then I can't use my other two computers.
I'm using Windows XP, a Netgear router, and cable broadband.
I've tried shutting things down, disconnecting and reconnecting everything etc. multiple times. Up until now, the network has been pretty reliable.
Any suggestions, anyone?
Earnings revisions data for Q2:
Despite some highly publicised negative preannouncements the past week or so, this is still shaping up as a very strong quarter for earnings. Remember, this week should be the peak for negative news. Also, there were a large number of positive preannouncements (upping guidance) earlier in the quarter, which the market seems to have forgotten.
According to First Call (sorry, I can't provide a link but I'll summarize), analysts have increased estimates by 5% since the start of the quarter, which is a record for any quarter and well above the 3% decrease for the average quarter. The ratio of negative to positive preannouncements is well below average, and is actually at a record low level of 0.8 for the S&P 500 (more positive than negative preannouncements).
Interesting arb opportunity, for those interested:
WLP selling at $2+ discount to fair value, based on 1 ATH share plus $23.80. Deal should close by the end of July. Long WLP / short ATH works out to over a 10% return over only a few weeks with minimal risk. Strange, don't often see those.
Newly,
I too hope your not disappointed, but gold not doing much of anything so far today. Base metals having a good day, however.
NFI. It is up so much because interest rates are down so much.
Are you listening to this? Everytime the man opens his mouth, I cringe.
Abby alert, just on CNBC...this screws up everything (g/ng)