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tickettoride, I've never traded Forex...but I'm interested. Is it leveraged? Looking at my charts, I like what I see. It may be something to consider. Do you trade Forex? TIA. Two
Thanks, skidstreet, I couldn't find any 2x dollar-tracking ETFs, either(?). As I chart UUP on a 5-min basis, it's sure easy to see how the dollar's rise/fall affects the major indexes. We be going up today, judging from what happened to UUP in pre-market trading. Two
Hey, skidstreet, is there a 2x dollar ETF? TIA. Two
I think you're right, 2bit. NDX turned up around 3:40 EST. But I have a very solid sell signal from 10 this morning. We may once again test NDX-1792/Q-40.12? Then down? They don't make it easy, do they? Two
OT: The next time you complain about high gasoline prices, thank Goldman Sucks. Aren't you glad the company is doing "God's work"? Two
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Guest Post: Goldman’s Global Oil Scam Passes the 50 Madoff Mark
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/12/2009 09:54 -0500
Submitted by Phil at Phil's Stock World
$2.5 Trillion - That’s the size of of the global oil scam.
It’s a number so large that, to put it in perspective, we will now begin measuring the damage done to the global economy in "Madoff Units" ($50Bn rip-offs). That’s right - $2.5Tn is 50 TIMES the amount of money that Bernie Madoff scammed from investors in his lifetime, yet it is also LESS than the MONTHLY EXCESS price the global population is being manipulated into paying for a barrel of oil.
Where is the outrage? Where are the investigations?
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BP, TOT, Shell, DB and Societe General founded the Intercontinental Exchange in 2000. ICE is an online commodities and futures marketplace. It is outside the US and operates free from the constraints of US laws. The exchange was set up to facilitate "dark pool" trading in the commodities markets. Billions of dollars are being placed on oil futures contracts at the ICE and the beauty of this scam is that they NEVER take delivery, per se. They just ratchet up the price with leveraged speculation using your TARP money. This year alone they ratcheted up the global cost of oil from $40 to $80 per barrel.
A Congressional investigation into energy trading in 2003 discovered that ICE was being used to facilitate "round-trip" trades. Round-trip” trades occur when one firm sells energy to another and then the second firm simultaneously sells the same amount of energy back to the first company at exactly the same price. No commodity ever changes hands. But when done on an exchange, these transactions send a price signal to the market and they artificially boost revenue for the company. This is nothing more than a massive fraud, pure and simple.
Third--and final--laugh of the day (courtesy of Goldman Sucks employees). Two
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THE LLOYD's Prayer
Our Chairman,
Who Art At Goldman,
Blankfein Be Thy Name.
The Rally's Come. God's Work Be Done
On Earth As There's No Fear Of Correction.
Give Us This Day Our Daily Gains,
And Bankrupt Our Competitors
As You Taught Lehman and Bear Their Lessons.
And Bring Us Not Under Indictment.
For Thine Is The Treasury,
The House And The Senate
Forever and Ever.
Goldman.
Undoubtedly (lol). One way not to run an efficient government is to have two critical executives (Geithner and Barr) who unabashedly hate each other. One or both of these officials needs to be fired...immediately. We the people suffer as a result of their "little" and costly games. Two
Second laugh of the day (courtesy of Mr. Timothy Geithner). Two
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WASHINGTON, D.C. (TheStreet) -- The Treasury Department, not the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., should be held responsible for a public relations gaffe last month in which the FDIC closed a Chicago bank just hours after it received an award from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, according to FDIC spokesman David Barr.
Park National Bank of Chicago received $50 million in tax credits to encourage investment in poor communities at an Oct. 30 ceremony attended by Geithner. Hours later, though, it was seized along with eight other banks around the country that formed part of a holding company called FBOP Corp. and sold to U.S. Bancorp (USB Quote).
One financial services executive, who did not want to be on the record for fear of running afoul of regulators, accused the FDIC of timing the closure as it did in a deliberate effort to embarrass Geithner.
FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair has tangled with Geithner before over issues such as her approval of Wells Fargo (WFC Quote)'s acquisition of Wachovia after the failed bank had initially struck a deal with Citigroup (C Quote), according to a Bloomberg News report last year. The report said Geithner tried to push Bair out of office.
FDIC Spokesman Barr says questions over the issue should be directed to John Dugan, the Comptroller of the Currency, which is a bureau within the Treasury Department. Barr says Dugan sits on the FDIC's board and could have warned Geithner of the impending closure, since the FDIC took bids on FBOP Bank October 20 -- 10 days before the bank was closed.
I agree. We're bound to have a pretty sizable pullback soon. But it may be only short-lived(?). Two
Very interesting, Fox. You're amazing. Two
Fox, I got a big NDX sell signal around 10:30 (same as yesterday), but a buy signal around 11:10? They're playing games again. Two
Laugh of the day (courtesy of Mr. Timothy Geithner). Two
"I believe deeply that it's very important for the U.S. and the economic health of the U.S. that we maintain a strong dollar," he said at a roundtable discussion with Japanese reporters. "We bear special responsibility for trying to make sure that we are implementing policy in the U.S. that will sustain confidence not just among American investors and .. savers but investors around the world" that the U.S. will fix its budgetary problems as its economy improves."
Thanks, Fox. It looks "too perfect" on your chart, doesn't it? Like it was staged. (And it was.) Perhaps Da Boyz aren't as "patriotic" as I think they are. So maybe we drop a little today. But the Fat Lady hasn't sung her song yet, in my opinion. Two
Well, they sure won't let it drop today. Being Veterans Day, and with all the pain we're feeling over the Ft. Hood situation and Afghanistan, Da Boyz will do their patriotic best to keep things positive. Now tomorrow's a different story. Could be a dip to get the bears interested? JMHO. Two
That sounds about right, you. Perhaps we finally see a dip tomorrow, then one more day to the upside on Friday...and then a correction next week? But my guess is that it will only be a modest correction before another rally. Two
I'm not saying my rationale is correct. Rather, I think there is a high probability we won't see a major correction this year. The stakes are simply too high for Obama, Bernanke, Geithner and the turds at Goldman. Sure, there will be corrections...and my charts, like many others, display signs that it could happen any day now. But look back at all the corrections we've had since March. They have always been stopped and bought at similar levels. I know because I make physical copies each day of my charts...and I can see the similarities reflected by each rally and decline. This puppy has been managed and controlled since the day in March when Obama told everyone to "buy stocks." Why should it stop now, I ask rhetorically? Two
McHugh and other ewavers have been calling tops for how many months? McHugh this morning thinks we're now seeing "the same pattern and price action that occurred at the 2007 top." Perhaps? But my guess is that the Fed, although it will "allow" brief sell-offs, as we've seen repeatedly during the rally from last March, won't allow a major decline.
The reason is simple. The economy, being very fragile, is most vulnerable during the upcoming holiday buying periods. If consumers see a market crash they won't come out and buy, and retailers will fall on their faces during the most important time of the year. It's crunch time for Obama and his team.
Goldman's CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, recently announced to the world that his company and bankers in general were doing "God's work." It was his way of saying, I think, that his company isn't going to allow an economic melt-down. If Goldman controls the stock market, as I believe it does, then his wishes will be carried out. If you're feeling bearish, you just can't assume that an extreme sell-off is going to occur. Keep an open mind. JMHO. Two
Sounds about right. They're stretching the elastic band as far as it will go. Two
you, that's very interesting. You could be right. I now see us going up tomorrow, especially since it's Veterans Day. Perhaps a little drop off in the a.m.? I'm also guessing they will possibly extend the rally through Friday before taking it down. Isn't next week OE week? A good time to draw in the shorts? Then ramp it up at the end of next week for Thanksgiving? Two
I think it's a pull-back day, but that's what I thought would happen today...and didn't (lol). Two
Not a good sell signal, was it, Fox? NERS rules prevailed. Out and safe for now. Still long in my IRA from NDX 1667. Two
LOL, Fox, they deserve each other. Two
OT: Ladies and gentlemen, meet the "man behind the curtain" (and he isn't the Wizard of Oz). From today's ZeroHedge. Two
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The World's Most Important Trading Desk Is Not At Goldman, But Is On The 9th Floor Of 33 Liberty Street
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/10/2009 10:25 -0500
Even though our good Samaritan friends at One New York Plaza may take offense to this designation, the trading desk that controls the formerly free world is not located anywhere on the premises of Goldman Sachs, but is instead situated on the 9th floor of 33 Liberty Street, also known as the home New York Fed. From a trading desk cluster at this location, 39 year old Brian Sack controls the uber-secretive money flows that determine the daily fate of credit, equity and virtually all other markets, that have now been subsumed by the government's central planning ambitions and aspirations to determine each and every uptick in the increasingly more irrelevant S&P 500.
Reports the WSJ:
Mr. Sack, 39 years old, is an economist who runs the markets group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The group runs the Fed's trading, making it the bridge between the marble corridors of the Federal Reserve in Washington and the bustling trading floors of Wall Street.
The center of life in the markets group is a glass-enclosed conference room situated next to a small cluster of trading desks on the ninth floor of the New York Fed. It overflows with people for a daily 9:20 a.m. meeting run by Mr. Sack. A few stray pictures of Alan Greenspan, the former Fed chairman, still hang on pillars nearby.
The markets group grew enormously during the crisis, from about 225 employees to 400 people who monitor the markets for the Fed, manage its portfolio and run the many new trading programs it has started. The Fed holds more than 20,000 individual securities.
It appears, that aside from buying and selling Treasuries, and buying (not selling - need another buyer when selling something) MBS and Agencies, as well as the occasional stock (we jest, the Fed would merely allow banks to buy stocks, at no cost, courtesy of money it lent them from the Discount Window and the PDCF), Mr. Sack is the person responsible for the recent failed reverse repo test, which Zero Hedge documented extensively first (here and here).
Under one program called "reverse repos," the Fed will put a large and growing portfolio of Treasury bonds, mortgage-backed securities and debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the market as collateral for loans, taking in cash in return.
"I am confident that we will be able to drain large amounts of reserves if needed," he said in an interview early last week.
That's interesting: I am confident, that based on your actions, you will not. Unless, of course, you i) acquiesce to the latest extortion demand from banks for capital ratio appeasement, and ii) go instead to money markets instead of taking money from reserves. Speaking of, Mr. Sack: please tell us why a $200 billion reverse repo test was failed when banks have excess reserves of over $1 trillion? Please write us at the usual address - we will be happy to post your observations to the general public.
The Fed has been testing out its ability to operate such a program, which has made the market jumpy. Some investors worry that the tests are a signal that interest-rate increases are approaching. In a statement earlier this month, the New York Fed reassured investors it was still in a testing stage. The tightening signal is most likely to come from Mr. Bernanke and the FOMC, not the markets group.
And here's why even the WSJ think the Fed's claims that they have the situation under control are a joke:
The markets group and the FOMC are still sorting out many issues about how to pull reserves from the financial system. One is who should be on the other side of the market group's reverse-repo trading. The Fed traditionally trades with 18 securities firms called primary dealers. But officials aren't sure that these dealers have the capacity to funnel potentially hundreds of billions of dollars of operations through the market.
Back to the beginning, the reason why we claim that even Goldman (which some claim is merely HoldCo to the Fed's OpCo) can not hold a candle to the Federal Reserve when it comes to trading prowess is that the Fed is a "prime broker" for a client roster that even an "information arbitrageur" like Goldman would die to have access to:
The central bank is casting its net more widely. It could conduct operations with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, money-market funds, or even corporations, hedge funds or securities lenders like State Street Global Advisers and Northern Trust.
Odd - the biggest custodians of stock loans portfolios (and those most happy to incite a massive short squeeze) having a direct line to the Federal Reserve. Where have we seen this before?
No buy signal yet. The NDX on my 5-min chart went short (for the final time) at 10:30 Eastern and, as you know, has been dropping slowly. I got a fairly significant sell signal at that time...but not the "final" sell signal, so to speak. My guess is that the drop will pick up speed until the final hour of trading...at which time it will be bought and up we go into Veterans Day. Seen it before. Two
It's only a speedbump. Drop a little today, up tomorrow(?). The rally isn't over, in my opinion. Two
I'll second what blasher said (about you "mellowing out nicely"). What I'd like to see more of, however, is the old POKERSAM who used T/A very successfully, like you did in the 2004-2005 period, for instance. That was before you seemed to become completely married to ewave analysis. I'm not discrediting ewave analysis. I just think it works better when it's combined with good T/A. Two
My fearless prediction for tomorrow's NDX action: down until about 12:30 and then a gradual climb which results in a big up day on Wednesday (Veterans Day). My hunting instincts are telling me that may be the Bradley top and turn down. But we'll see.... Two
Hey, Foot. On a few occasions during the past 4-6 months, the Bradley turn dates have been upward extensions of the rally, not declines. Two
I always look on the 5-min NDX chart for the price to drop and puncture the EMA-34/50. Those EMA lines are still going up and there's been no "puncture" today. Which suggests this is a strong move. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if Da Boyz take down the price tomorrow morning to lure the shorts and get more bulls to buy. Two
Are you long, Gleno? With Veterans Day coming up on Wednesday, I don't think they'll let it drop. At least Da Boyz are patriotic, right? Two
Thanks, Fox. My daily charts suggest more upside for the indexes. Perhaps not today, but straight ahead. Two
OT: FYI...Gates is among the insiders who are selling (from Ty Durden at ZeroHedge). Two
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Top Insider Transactions Update: $108 Million In Purchases On $706 Million In Sales, Gates Unloads Over $300 MM In MSFT
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/09/2009 11:25 -0500
Courtesy of Finviz, the latest top insider transactions indicate that the increasingly artificial equity market still provides a very good opportunity for insiders who are looking for overeager momentum chasers and those managing idiot money for the likes of Fidelity, Putnam et al who read and do whatever reports by Goldmand and Bernstein tell them to do, to gobble up insider shares at ridiculous market valuations. Case in point: Mr. Bill Gates, who is so thrilled about the early sales performance of Windows 7 he can't wait to offload that equity exposure on unwitting non-insiders.
LOL...they always win. Two
OT: A little dose of reality re. insider trading from Denninger. Good thing the SEC is working hard to investigate these abuses and prosecute the perps (lol). Two
======================
Is it ok if you perform your insider trading in plain sight?
I am of course referring to (among other outrages):
•The blatant and outrageous buying of stocks, options and futures contracts the day before Options Expiration in August of 2007 - the afternoon before Ben Bernanke made his "unannounced" discount rate cut. The market was down huge in the morning before reversing in an "unexplained" fashion that later proved prescient. What are the odds that was a "lucky guess?" A few hundred million to one?
•A similar "magical" reversal right in front of the financial stock shorting ban - announced the next morning.
•The put buying on Bear Stearns - front month with roughly a week left and dramatically out of the money, not to mention the request to open up strikes all the way down to $2.50 - with the stock trading at $60. There is no possibility that was a "lucky bet" either.
•Ditto on Lehman Brothers, although somewhat (and only somewhat!) less-dramatic.
•The incessant rumor-mongering and "pump and dump" played during the entirety of the summer and early fall of 2008 with MBI, Ambac and other mortgage insurance companies, which were the recipient of daily "leaks" promulgated through CNBC and elsewhere on "imminent" rescues (that never materialized.) Who fed Charlie Gasparino that (later proved false) information and did they trade on it, knowing that it would (and did) produce a huge pop in the market every time he came on the air?
•The documented example of UBS employees sending emails stating that a security they were peddling was "Vomit" - yet they were peddling it to customers. They still have a banking license, despite this coming from a judge in that case:
◦“Pursuit has established probable cause to sustain the validity of a claim that the UBS defendants were in possession of material nonpublic information regarding imminent ratings downgrades on the notes it sold to the plaintiffs, information UBS withheld from the plaintiffs,” Superior Court Judge John Blawie wrote in a Sept. 8 opinion in Stamford, Connecticut.
•The incessant "Buffett is buying the world" garbage rumors of the same timeframe - also promulgated by CNBC and other media outlets. Again, the rumors were proved false but the question remains - who fed them to the media and did they trade on it?
•Barofsky is said to have 35 active criminal investigations related to insider trading, among other sins, related to the bailout. Will we see those turn into criminal complaints - or indictments?
•How about Dick Durbin (yes, the Senator) who disclosed trades on the back of information related to the bailouts?
•The two-day-ago outrage with front-month UUP calls, 300,000 of them, that were bought (two weeks left!) for 15 cents and more than doubled yesterday (the next day) after a news release about a temporary liquidity freeze on the fund (thereby generating a massive squeeze.) Those were bought in 10,000 lots - that's clearly institutional activity. Did someone KNOW there was to be a squeeze? It sure looks that way!
Or how about a bit of statistical analysis? What are the odds of a large firm having only three losing days in about 120, and only one in 60? Who's that? Goldman Sachs and their proprietary trading. Again, quite simply: what are the odds?
Interesting, blasher. Despite the lack of relative strength of the S&P during these many months, Goldman is able to make $100 million in a day and $15 billion in a quarter by manipulating this and the other indexes. At the same time, the Fed and Obama administration are able to take credit for the "rally" that never ends. It's a self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating game that's fueled by our tax dollars and the Treasury's printing presses. Bottom line: it's all about impressions and trying to convince consumers that everything is OK and to continue borrowing and spending. Where the e-wavers have gone wrong in their analyses is that they don't accept that the market can be manipulated to fool their charts. Despite the fact that this happens day in and day out and month by month. Denial? Two
LOL, Fox. I never liked the "color purple." Two
Interesting, Fox. I'm long from NDX 1667 and holding. I'm thinking you're right about the Bradley date. Two
Dan could be very right, and I suspect he is. As I've written before, I don't think the Fed will allow a big market correction as we enter important retail buying periods (Thanksgiving/Christmas). If consumer are worried about a stock market crash, or see one in progress, they won't buy anything. Can you imagine how many retailers would go under? Scary. So Ben prints even more and Goldman Sucks keeps "managing up" the indexes. Two
OT: I always enjoy Ty Durden's view of things (lol). Here he talks about gold. Two
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Melt Up On Their Own, Hits Record $1,100
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/06/2009 10:10 -0500
The melt up in stocks on no volume was fully expected after the worst possible employment news to come in over 20 years: the market-economy disconnect is now complete, and all stocks are freeriding purely on Bernanke's printing press. At least gold vigilantes are beginning to whisper in Bernanke's ear he can go fornicate himself and his dollar destruction deathwish: let's see what happens when gold melts up ala the S&P to 1,200, 1,300 and maybe 1,500 in a few weeks. Look for some old-fashioned massive panic at the Federal Reserve.
Anyone get the feeling that they're not going to let the indexes drop too far today, if at all? Two