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Fido quotes are down for me, anyone else?
Got 2nd serving of LOGI - bid filled at 25.84 (.02 above the lod!) woo-hoo!
ALKS - bid of $16.25 filled. em
How's this for a "worry" warning? A school teacher friend of mine informed me this morning that several of her co-workers were retiring from teaching to daytrade full time. They've been paper trading for a couple of months, and are convinced it's a cakewalk to make big money trading. Whoa...
How 'bout... Paulson plus Cramer plus PPT = manipulated bull.
HAGWE.
QQQQ and QID meet today? Dunno about those jobs numbers... Service and Government jobs up, other sectors down. Service and Gubmint aren't exactly the foundation of a healthy economy.
EPCT up 20% pre-market on presentation of new data.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/070503/nyth029.html?.v=87
In LOGI @ 26.44, badfinger. em
Dumped both chunks of F @ $7.89 for a nickel. em
Got a 2nd chunk EPCT @ $3.20. em
In EPCT @3.55 em
ASTI - sell order got filled @ $10.55 for .35 Added another serving of F at 7.80.
Also in ASTI, bid @ 10.20 filled. em
F looking a bit oversold, gonna try for a scalp here @ 7.89
STEC is one I've been watching. Down on expectations that revenues will drop from 114m last Q to 45m this Q, plus bad press over the concentration of ownership in the hands of one family. A 24% short ratio... might be a good squeeze candidate.
I think it's dangerous to bet against him. He's been right over the years with big calls on the market, the dollar, commodities, and emerging markets. His calls always sound outrageous and alarmist at the time, but they always come true.
I remember when he got mocked and ridiculed on CNBC during an interview back during the tech run up for insisting that the Naz was about to fall over 50% and that INTC was a 20 dollar stock (it was 70 something at the time). We all know what happened after that....
Wow, Jim Rogers is really sounding the alarm!
Top investor sees U.S. property crash
Wed Mar 14, 2007 6:56 PM GMT
By Elif Kaban
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Commodities investment guru Jim Rogers stepped into the U.S. subprime fray on Wednesday, predicting a real estate crash that would trigger defaults and spread contagion to emerging markets.
"You can't believe how bad it's going to get before it gets any better," the prominent U.S. fund manager told Reuters by telephone from New York.
"It's going to be a disaster for many people who don't have a clue about what happens when a real estate bubble pops.
"It is going to be a huge mess," said Rogers, who has put his $15 million belle epoque mansion on Manhattan's Upper West Side on the market and is planning to move to Asia.
Worries about losses in the U.S. mortgage market have sent stock prices falling in Asia and Europe, with shares in financial services companies falling the most.
Some investors fear the problems of lenders who make subprime loans to people with weak credit histories are spreading to mainstream financial firms and will worsen the U.S. housing slowdown.
"Real estate prices will go down 40-50 percent in bubble areas. There will be massive defaults. This time it'll be worse because we haven't had this kind of speculative buying in U.S. history," Rogers said.
"When markets turn from bubble to reality, a lot of people get burnt."
The fund manager, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with billionaire investor George Soros in the 1970s and has focused on commodities since 1998, said the crisis would spread to emerging markets which he said now faced a prolonged bear run.
"When you have a financial crisis, it reverberates in other financial markets, especially in those with speculative excess," he said.
"Right now, there is huge speculative excess in emerging markets around the world. There will be a lot of money coming out of emerging markets.
"I've sold out of emerging markets except for China," said Rogers, long a prominent China bull.
Even in China, the world's fastest expanding economy, Rogers said stocks were overvalued and could go down 30-40 percent.
But he added: "China is one of the few countries in the world where I'm willing to sit out a 30-40 percent decline."
The last stock market bubble to burst was the dot-com craze which sparked a crash from March 2000 to October 2002.
When the last bubble burst in Japan, said Rogers, stock prices went down 85 percent despite the country's high savings rate and huge balance of bayment surplus.
"This is the end of the liquidity party," said Rogers. "Some emerging markets will go down 80 percent, some will go down 50 percent. Some will most probably collapse."
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© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.
I think his position is that demand for commodities will remain high, commodities markets will be quite volatile in the short term, but even if the growth rates of China, India, and other commodity-hungry economies moderate somewhat, the long term commodity story is bullish.
Jim Rogers on Bloomberg said that the U.S. is probably in a recession now, and certainly will be in one at some point this year. He says it's time for the markets to go down.
<<< I trade extreme oversold/overbot levels >>>
That's my game as well, but I've been net short since late November (the Q's) and very confounded by the refusal of the market to correct.
Bernanke says inflation is under control because oil prices have come down. Oil prices are controlled by the oil futures market. So, oil future traders control Bernanke's perception of inflation. That bothers me.
Still, an overbought market with high bullish optimism/sentiment that it's going much higher is usually a pretty good top. A 3 year/weekly chart of the Q's says top.
But, is it ever going to come?
EPC flashing high bullishness among small/retail players, IPC flashing extreme bearishness among big/smart money?? If low EPC is a contrarian indicator, and high IPC is not, aren't we in dangerous territory?
EPC at .54, but Index PC at 2.17! Seems unusual...
Cue the twilight zone music - GOOG up 8, NAZ down 4, QQQQ flat....
Still looks more like a replay of 2004 to me. That market topped in late November.
This market also may have topped in late November, but as Jim says, We Will Know In The ...... well, you know..
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EPC closed at .45, anyone concerned?
A chart of the QQQQ since its breakout in August. RSI has been above 50 the entire time, but is now probing a new low. The oscillator has also been 50ish or above the entire time, but it too is now at a new low. Same with the Money Flow Index.
When these indicators stay in one range and give one reading for an extended time, a move out of that range/reading may signal a major reversal.
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Some perspective for shorts - 3 year weekly chart of the QQQQ says patience will be rewarded....
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CNBS's Steve Liesman explains that manufacturing and productivity may be weak, but hey, hair cuts and manicures are doing great!
Edit P.S. - He summed up the "great news" of a marginally improved Services ISM by saying the Fed is "probably wrong"....
Can I say it ... the "R" word? Do we actually need confirming data of a recession to panic the markets, or will the fear of that data be sufficient?
Inverted yield curve and slowing economy says rates should come down. Imploding dollar and a Fed that says inflation is still a concern means rates shouldn't come down.
The market is in soft landing euphoria mode, yet every upcoming data point poses a risk to the goldilocks interest rate scenario.
I wonder which data point will be the one that puts a whiff of recession panic into the air?
I wonder how far the fear spike will go?
Two years ago the market went on a very similar 4 month joyride. Everyone was dead sure the run would go through January, but the market actually rolled over in late November - early December. The QQQQ's went from 40ish to 34ish (a 6 point haircut!) over the next 4 months....
Mr. Market has gone almost straight up for 4 months. The last few sessions have it now going parabolic on decreasing volume. The bull/bear ratio is the highest it's been since January, and the VIX is at its yearly low. The toppy charts, the weak indicators and the squealing optimism all say blow-off top to me. IMHO...
About time for the market to panic over recession fears?
MARKETWATCH FORECASTER OF THE MONTH says he is agnostic on the question of whether the economy will fall into a recession. "The risk of a more severe slowdown is not fully appreciated," he said.
STORY;
Shepherdson wins with independent views
High Frequency economist says U.S. will be 'barely growing'
By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch
Last Update: 12:01 AM ET Nov 14, 2006
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics, proved in October that you don't have to have a big staff to produce great forecasts. In October, several out-of-the-mainstream predictions earned Shepherdson his first Forecaster of the Month award from MarketWatch after several close calls in previous contests.
Shepherdson was one of just three forecasters who predicted the 0.5% drop in the consumer price index in October, and his forecasts for the trade deficit, nonfarm payrolls and durable-goods orders also showed his independence of mind from the run-of-the-mill consensus.
After half dozen years with British financial giant HSBC, Shepherdson joined up in 1998 with Carl Weinberg at High Frequency Economics, based in Valhalla, N.Y. Shepherdson handles the United States, while Weinberg follows the rest of the world. They provide independent macroeconomic research for a variety of money managers, investment banks, hedge fund and wealthy individuals.
Shepherdson beat 41 of his peers to win the October contest. The runners up in October were Jan Hatzius' team at Goldman Sachs, three-time winner Brian Jones at Citigroup Global Markets, Dean Maki at Barclays Capital, and Neal Soss and Jay Feldman of Credit Suisse.
MarketWatch instituted the contest to recognize those forecasters who do the best job of predicting the monthly data that move the markets the most. "We try to pick up the turning points" by noticing the changes in the data that signal a new trend, Shepherdson said in an interview.
'Bearish' means 'barely growing'
Right now, Shepherdson ranks as one of the most bearish forecasters. While most other economists are predicting a soft landing next year, with economic growth of about 2.5%, Shepherdson says the economy will be "barely growing at all" by spring.
Shepherdson says he's "agnostic" on the question of whether the economy will fall into a recession. "The risk of a more severe slowdown is not fully appreciated," he said.
While everybody and his dog knows about the risks stemming from the housing sector, Shepherdson is one of the few warning about a general slowing in the industrial sector, not just a slump in auto and housing-related production.
The softening in the Institute for Supply Management index "is very noteworthy," he said, and it's come faster than he thought it would based on the historical relationship between rising interest rates and weaker factory output.
He expects the ISM will fall below 50% in the next few months, which will trigger, as it always has, a rate cut by the Federal Reserve. The story is simple: "When rates go up, less gets done," he said. "Sometimes the textbook explanations are right."
Some projects designed to make money with interest rates at 5% don't make sense at 6%. And so corporations shelve ideas, waiting for rates to fall enough to make those projects profitable. Capital spending falls, and factories see falling demand.
Some economists say a slump in capital spending is impossible with corporations sitting on hundreds of billions in retained earnings.
Shepherdson disagrees. It doesn't matter how fat the balance sheet is; "it's a cash-flow issue." "The proof is in the pudding," he said. Capital spending, which was increasing at a 9.4% rate a year ago, has slowed to a 5.7% growth rate in the third quarter. He sees the federal funds rate falling to 3.75% by next September from 5.25% now.
As for housing, "we are nowhere near the bottom," he said. "I can't see it improving until the excess inventory is worked off."
Falling mortgage rates won't save the housing market, he said. "People are looking at buying a depreciating asset with borrowed money." Real rates - the real return of the investment in housing minus the borrowing cost - have soared.
Inflation is no longer a worry, he said. "It's peaked."
Shepherdson said he and Weinberg are pragmatists, not ideologues. "We say what we think will happen, not what we think should happen."
Short another serving QQQQ @ 43.45 - now have 4 positions.
Sold IWOV @ 13.85 for 6.48 - Held this issue a long time, touted it here as it proved itself as a solid recovery play, but now must let it go. It's currently priced at its expected takeover premium, so any additional upside is speculative - time to cash out.
IWOV up another .39 to $13.00 on takeover speculation. STEL just got taken out by ORCL. DCTM and FILE have already been bought by EMC and IBM. Last prize player is IWOV, being eyed by HPQ....
IWOV up again today on big volume. Motley Fool has an article describing IWOV's strong performance and its attractiveness as a buyout candidate. I'm in from 7.37, waiting for mid 13's, getting close....
http://biz.yahoo.com/fool/061030/116222663423.html?.v=2
IWOV - solid earnings, new 52 wk high. em
Sold my old first serving of TINY @ 13.07 for .31 - Now net short the market.