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My opinion, based on what I see on daily charts (NDX/INDU) is that there's still more upside ahead. Which seems logical to me because it's the end of the quarter. My opinion will be bolstered if the indexes close slightly red today. We'll see... Two
youaretheone, McHugh sort of agrees with you. If what he says is correct, we could be heading into a big correction. Any additional thoughts? Two
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"Prices have been rising on declining volume for several months now and Monday's rise on declining volume is likely an early warning that a top of significance is approaching. The big question Monday night is, has the final wave of this rally from March, wave (E) up of C-up of (B) up started Monday? If so, it means (D) down bottomed precisely on our latest scheduled phi mate turn date, Friday, September 25th. Except for volume, Monday was a strong up day, so there is a good chance (E) up has started. Here is the problem: There is no way to know if (E) up will take prices to the upside targets that various patterns suggest, or whether it will truncate. We are now in a high risk zone for long positions. Wave (C ) down c an start at any time, or delay for several weeks while (B) up finishes."
Thanks, Lindy, good analysis, as usual. Two
OT: Need a good belly-laugh this a.m.? Denninger has two great (short) videos worth watching. ("F..k the Fed" is a true classic.) Two
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/
spdpro, AG Edwards "managed" my portfolio right after I retired in 1998 and during the next three years managed to lose 40 percent. Never again, I said to myself, and took control of my portfolio and my destiny. Edwards and its "account managers" are a sham. Two
You could be right, Fox. But fund managers might also be telling their clients that by holding their longs they are "wise and prudent." I know there's a lot of insider selling going on, but many times the insiders are wrong. We'll see....Two
Fox, I think the indexes will bottom soon. If not today, then perhaps Monday? "Sell Rosh Hashanah, buy Yom Kippur." Two
You may want to check out the excellent charts and market analysis at ZeroHedge this a.m. Two
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/key-price-levels-mission-accomplished
Unless, of course, Government Sachs decides to buy RIMM and jams the futures tomorrow a.m. (lol). Seen it happen. Two
Hey, DoubleTop, I'm just the messenger and can't make a claim either way as I never participated in the program. Can anyone else validate? Two
LOL...that's right, John, your government is here to help. Here's another example of how they're doing it (from the Daily Bell). They can't regulate the banks...but they sure can regulate garage sales. Two
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New government policy imposes strict standards on garage sales nationwide
Americans who slap $1 price tags on their used possessions at garage sales or bazaar events risk being slapped with fines of up to $15 million, thanks to a new government campaign. The "Resale Round-up," launched by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, enforces new limits on lead in children's products and makes it illegal to sell any items that don't meet those limits or have been recalled for any other reason. The strict standards were set in the 2008 Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act after a series of high-profile recalls of Chinese-made toys. The standards were originally interpreted to apply only to new products, but now the CPSC says they apply to used items as well. "Those who resell recalled children's products are not only breaking the law, they are putting children's lives at risk," said CPSC Chairman Inez Tenenbaum (pictured left). "Resale stores should make safety their business and check for recalled products and hazards to child." - Foxnews
Dominant Social Theme: For the good of the children?
Free-Market Analysis: We understand that the Nanny state is concerned about the children, but now the concern has reached new heights. Not only will the American federal government regulate businesses that sell toys deemed dangerous to health, they will also monitor individual sales to ensure that children are not exposed to undue risk.
Why not take this to its logical conclusion? The FDA needs to inspect individually cooked meals, OSHA ought to examine individual houses to ensure they are safe working environments, the EPA ought to authorize individual environmental inspections to ensure that domestic carbon footprints remain within acceptable limits (whatever they are deemed to be).
We have no doubt that all of the above will proposed and perhaps even enacted (and more) if current trends continue. The democratic form of government is based on the brutal rule of the majority and thus a substantial minority are always being forced to do something they don't wish to do. Given the difficulties of maintaining such a system, those in government have a powerful incentive to present themselves as ineffably moral and caring. It is obviously hoped that the moral authority derived from such actions will palliate citizens who will then resign themselves to the other facets of the system, including egregiously fallacious monetary and fiscal policies.
Conclusion: One waits in vain for enough citizens to shout "stop." We have a feeling that the swelling support for US Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex) will eventually manifest itself in just this sort of statement. But it will not happen quickly nor easily. In the meantime, the federal government will grind on, loading regulation after regulation onto the fragile shoulders of working people who cannot afford them and have no way of following them to begin with. Thus, from a thousand cuts, Western civilization dies and authoritarianism rises.
OT: Cash For Clunkers reality check...Two
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SO...you took FEDZILLA up on its offer of $4500. dollars to trade in your old "Clunker" (interesting choice of words)? Well, let's see who got the best of that "deal"...
If you traded in a clunker worth $3500, you got $4500 off for an apparent "savings" of $1000. You could have gotten $3,500 if you had just traded the car in. So you really are $1,000 ahead (depending on your clunker's value) at this point. Not too bad...
However, you WILL have to pay taxes on the $4500 come April 15th (something that no auto dealer will tell you). If you are in the 30% tax bracket, you will pay $1350 on that $4500.
So, rather than save $1000, you will actually pay an extra $350. to the feds. In addition, you traded in a car that was most likely paid for. Now you have 4 or 5 years of payments on a car that you did not need, trading in a "clunker" that was costing you less to run than the payments that you will now be making. Even if you save $1,000. dollars a year in gas due to better mileage, you're still gonna be in the red for five years....hello?
But wait, it gets even better: you also got ripped off by the dealer. For example, the month before the "cash for clunkers" program started, every dealer in LA was selling the Ford Focus with all the goodies including A/C, auto transmission, power windows, etc for $12,500. because competition was stiff due to poor sales from the stalled economy.
When "cash for clunkers" came along, they stopped discounting them and instead sold them at the list price of $15,500. So, you paid $3000 more than you would have the month before. Honda, Toyota , and Kia played the same list price game that Ford and Chevy did. Now let's do the math...
You traded in a car worth: $3500
You got a discount of: $4500
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Net so far +$1000
But you have to pay: $1350 in taxes on the $4500
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Net so far: -$350 (that's minus...in the red)
And you paid: $3000 more than the car was selling for the month before
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Net Loss: -$3350
We could also add in the additional taxes (sales tax, state tax, dealer prep, etc.) on the extra $3000 that you paid for the car, along with the Five years of interest on the car loan; but let's just stop here while you kick yourself. Suffice it to say that those costs will be much higher than any savings you get from "better mileage".
So who actually made out on the deal? FEDZILLA collected taxes on the car along with taxes on the $4500 they "gave" you. The car dealers made an extra $3000 or more on every car they sold along with the kickbacks from the manufacturers and the loan companies. Manufacturers got to dump lots of cars they could not give away the month before. Lots of good or repairable used cars got taken off the market, crushed and sold as scrap metal to (ready for this?) CHINA! (Look it up...) And the poor consumer got saddled with even more debt that they cannot afford.
FEDZILLA'S merry men (who promised that people making less than $250,000. would pay "not one red cent more in taxes") will make millions in new tax revenues after convincing Joe Consumer that he was getting $4500 in "free" money from the "government" In fact, Joe was giving away his $3500 car and paying an additional $3350 for the privilege. Chicago politics gone global...with an agenda.
Good strategy. I stage my positions, or simply jettison bad ones if mental stops are hit. Two
Took a DDM position at 10:20. I think we've hit bottom or are very close. Up she goes into end of month? Two
Hey, spdpro, I had buy signals on both my daily and 5-min INDU and NDX charts at yesterday's close. You're right, Da Boyz created yesterday's sell off, which started promptly at 2:35. So up we go today after some spits and spurts. And probably more upside right into next week, which closes out the month. It's all manipulated. Two
Many thanks, my friend, and good trade! Two
Gleno, there must be a bitter after-taste in the flash trading program computers? Indexes have been selling off since 2:35. I don't see them closing in the red, but it's possible? Two
You're welcome, Fox. Just wish these facts would surface in the mainstream media so all Americans could read, hear and see the truth. Two
blasher, I noticed on another site that you posted your trade for today. Was 11:14 a.m. your exit? And what time did you enter that trade? TIA. Two
blasher, was 11:14 your exit; what time was your entry, please? TIA. Two
Hey, fish, can you imagine that? Karl Denninger called Obama a "hypocrite of the highest order"? LOL. Two
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Wednesday, September 23. 2009
Posted by Karl Denninger in Editorial at 12:51
President Obama, Hypocrite In Chief
From the UN speech today (which, incidentally, got lots of press coverage while Geithner's dissembling in front of Congress got none):
Developing nations must root out the corruption that is an obstacle to progress – for opportunity cannot thrive where individuals are oppressed and business have to pay bribes. That's why we will support honest police and independent judges; civil society and a vibrant private sector.
How about developed nations? Let's run a short list right here:
Congressfolk who got "Friends of Angelo" mortgages - even the name of the program was a statement of special privilege - while Countrywide Financial literally looted the hopes and dreams of millions of Americans through intentional and willful blindness to anything that could reasonably be called a credit standard. Countrywide was subsequently forcibly merged into Bank of America and the homeowners involved lost their homes - and dreams.
Our former Treasury Secretary who came to the SEC in 2004 to ask (for a second time) for leverage limits to be removed from investment banks - backed by literal millions in campaign donations and lobbying over the previous years - and got it. The consequence? Detonation of both Lehman and Bear Stearns, neither of which would have blown up but for the leverage that they were legally forbidden to take on prior to 2004.
A banking system that has Congress so far in its pocket that it persuaded Congress to threaten FASB in open Congressional hearings this spring if they did not change accounting standards to effectively legalize accounting fraud through "mark to make-believe." This scam that Congress shoved down everyone's throat at the behest of the banking lobby continues to this day.
A banking system that has Congress, The SEC, OTS and OCC so far in its pocket that despite over eighty examples of hard proof of falsely-inflated asset valuations and willful misfeasance by OTS and OCC in seizing insolvent banks before they result in FDIC loss the willful blindness continues to this day, causing the FDIC to teeter on the edge of running out of cash and begging the obvious question: Are all the large banks as far beyond insolvent as these regional and local banks have been proved to be once seized?
A blatantly-corrupt OTS (banking regulatory body) that was caught conspiring with IndyMac to "backdate" deposits so as to falsely present a better financial picture than really existed at the time. The person at OTS involved had previously been caught doing the same thing during the S&L crisis BUT WAS NOT FIRED AND BARRED FROM FUTURE BANKING REGULATORY WORK! Nobody has been indicted in connection with this outrageous "in your face" fraud. Worse, the OIG's office said there were other examples - but refused to name them; are those institutions still operating?
A Federal Reserve that has openly threatened Congress with the destruction of the economy and the dollar, under oath, in open Congressional Hearings, should Congress pass and enforce an audit of The Fed's activities, and yet The Fed continues to enjoy authorization to run monetary policy.
A Federal Reserve Chair who denied under oath that The Fed would monetize the nation's debt - while it had and was doing exactly that. Isn't that the definition of perjury?
An SEC and Congress that is so embedded in the financial system via its revolving door policies that despite multiple reports both Stanford Financial and Bernie Madoff were permitted to continue to operate even after multiple reports of suspicions that they were outright frauds. Investors lost billions as a consequence of the purchased willful blindness of our regulators.
An international bank that was caught advising customers to smuggle diamonds in toothpaste tubes to illegally evade taxes, and was permitted to keep their banking charter even after this became known.
Over a dozen "in your face" examples of clearly illegal insider trading over the last two and a half years, including August 2007, the "shorting ban", Bear Stearns collapse and more. All are trivially visible in price and volume action before the announcements were made. None have been investigated or resulted in indictments.
The government's CPI and other statistics are intentional lies promoted by the banking, finance and credit industries to support their issuance of debt which they know cannot be paid back.
ALL OF THIS and much more (there are well north of 1,000 posts here documenting it all) has been undertaken for one singular purpose - to intentionally misrepresent to consumers, businesses and investors worldwide that the level of debt in the economy was supportable when in fact it was not.
This in turn allowed these financial entities to issue credit that they knew full well could never be paid back by the debtors, syndicate it, slice it, dice it, and sell it to suckers worldwide, extracting their fees from the process and guaranteeing that those who bought this garbage would suffer enormous losses.
Our government conspired with these people in allowing and enabling this fraud, and when it started to unravel government was then bribed (or was it blackmailed?) into attempting to offload all of the remaining undistributed trash to the US Taxpayer via transferring it to "sovereign credit" - that is, Federal Debt. This attempt is still ongoing, with Ben Bernanke buying hundreds of billions of dollars of likely-impaired (if not worthless) mortgage-backed paper from two companies that in fact went bankrupt (and were "taken into conservatorship") last year - Fannie and Freddie. But for the nearly $100 billion dollars that Taxpayers have forked over thus far to prevent their collapse this paper would have been discounted and sold into the market at its recovery value - a process that has been intentionally hidden from view by the actions of The Fed and Treasury.
President Obama, you're a hypocrite of the highest order and have absolutely no right to lecture any third-world banana republic while your administration practices every form of public and private corruption seen in such back waters of humanity - plus dozens they aren't sophisticated enough to figure out.
Hi, Fox. T/A and wave studies only work a portion of the time in this crazy, manipulated market, in my opinion. When big trading houses such as Goldman can front-run stock transactions by fractions of a second, you know something is fundamentally wrong and crooked. The overarching goal of the market manipulators, as I see it, is to keep the indexes rising until the majority of the sideline and commercial money is in the game once again. Then they can return to their "looting" mode as in the past. Two
I get the feeling you've played this game before (lol). Agree completely. We're getting fakeout sell signals this morning, which makes me think it's going up into the close (after the usual headfakes). But the daily charts suggest strongly that, as you say, we're at nosebleed levels already. Two
Yes...but the memo has to go out before today's close to allow the "select few" to complete their trades after hours. How else can they fool the "unwashed" such as ourselves (lol)? Two
What's your guess, Gleno? I think it's coming tomorrow (down). Two
Thanks, blasher, for posting your free market summary. Question: To what extent do you see market manipulation, rather than economic reports/news, being the dominant theme in determining each day's outcome? I've almost gotten to the point where I believe economic news is just a smokescreen. The real market action may be entirely predetermined(?). Two
Of course, seeing that tomorrow is Fed annct. day, the indexes may pump a little higher into Wednesday's close. Seen it happen before, and I know you have, as well. Thanks. Two
POKERSAM, McHugh seems to think we have one more push upward. Your thoughts? Two
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Stocks are up mildly Tuesday mid-day, working their way through corrective wave (D) down, likely finishing the middle wave of this three-wave (D) move. Once (D) completes, there should be one more sharp rally, wave (E) up to finish the rally from March 2009. Short-term, the 15 and 30 minute Full Stochastics are in overbought territory.
you, Ty Durden at ZeroHedge takes a look at what happened today. (Sorry that his chart doesn't appear, but you can go there and see it.) Two
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Noon is the new 1:30pm, is the new 2:30pm is the new 3:30pm. Pretty soon algorithms will gun the market starting before the market even opens. Smells suspiciously like desperation.
Below you can see the spike in VXV and equities at exactly noon, which despite a strengthening dollar was fed by the significant drop in Treasuries, ahead of today's auction. The Fed's liquidity refuses to sit still.
Amazing, isn't it, that this stuff goes on all the time...and the SEC is totally oblivious? Two
LOL...here's another big laugh from Ty Durden (at ZH) re. the SEC and today's purchase of Perot Systems by Dell. What a g-d joke! Two
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Dearest SEC, since we know you are infrastructurally and intellectually challenged (in the broadest sense of the word), we have decided to make your life easier. As you likely are not aware, Dell today acquired Perot Systems (we imagine the companies used the attorney-client privilege to avoid disclosing any transaction details to you). All fine and good: here is the link to the 8K should you wish to familiarize yourself with the EDGAR filing system.
Yet something that you may want to consider in your 8 hour daily coffee breaks is the following. We present the option activity in Perot calls last week. Over 2,500 Oct $20 calls were purchased at about $1. The same option is now worth $9.60. The result: an approximately $2.2 million profit in the four days since the accumulation of the options started on September 15 by whoever the party(ies) that were tipped off about this deal. (We are ignoring the $17.50 strikes which also showed suspicious volume early in the month).
You're right, john. Ever play the game of "musical chairs?" Who's going to be the last one to go long? Two
OK, look at your charts. At what time did this morning's rampo begin? Right around 10:15 a.m.? Two
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From ZeroHedge: Today's POMO was announced at 10:15 am, roughly around the time the market started moving higher, closing at 11 am, in which $4.050 billion of mostly 5 Year notes were repurchased. The bulk, or 86% of these notes, were 5 Year notes issued in 2009, lead by CUSIPs LC2, KN9, KY5 and KV1. There is now $10.9 billion left in the government's Liquidity For The Stock Market fund (via Treasuries).
Fox, lol, my sell signals have been wrong so many times during the past week or so that I'm rather gun-shy, if you know what I mean? But so far, this one is holding. As Gleno would say, "We'll see." Two
OT: Remember a few months ago when Italian police stopped two Japanese businessmen and confiscated $137 billion in bonds? Well, here we go again. Two
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U.S. Authorities Probing $100 Billion of Bonds Seized in Italy
By Sonia Sirletti and Elisa Martinuzzi
Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Secret Service is examining more than $100 billion of U.S. government bonds confiscated in northern Italy in August, just two months after $134 billion of allegedly fake securities were seized in a nearby town.
The Secret Service is analyzing whether the bonds taken in August may be counterfeit, said a spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy in Rome. Italy’s financial police in Varese, north of Milan, arrested two individuals carrying the securities in a briefcase, according to a person involved in the case.
The two men currently are in custody as prosecutors in the town of Busto Arsizio carry out their investigation, the person said. The seized notes include securities with face values of $500 million and $1 billion, Italian daily MF reported today, without saying where it got the information.
“There must be a well-organized group behind these alleged crimes,” Fabio Polimeni, a Milan lawyer specializing in counterfeiting cases, said.
Italian authorities seized U.S. treasuries on June 4 with a face value of more than $134 billion from two Japanese travelers attempting to cross into Switzerland. The two men later disappeared and the case is still under investigation. The U.S. government bonds found in the false bottom of a suitcase carried by the men were fake, a U.S. Treasury spokesman said June 18.
“As financial markets become more sophisticated, creative and bigger, we can expect criminal activity to go with it and it’s happening everywhere,” Livia Oglio, a Milan lawyer, said. “The amount seized is phenomenal.”
Since the beginning of the year the police at border stations in Italy have seized 1.7 million euros of genuine money and bonds, and have confiscated more than 100 million euros of bonds that have been determined to be false, according to an Italian finance police statement in July.
To contact the reporter on this story: Sonia Sirletti in Milan at ssirletti@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: September 18, 2009 07:02 EDT
You're right there. By the way, I got a serious NDX sell signal at 11:40. This morning's ramp may have been a big fakeout? Two
Gleno, you "didn't know what to do?" Join the legions of traders who are baffled by what their indicators tell them and what the market is actually doing (lol). Glad you're back! Two
Hey, Foot, I guess you've found it true in your business dealings that folks with good credit ratings are the ones most likely to default on their homes? Two
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LA Times - Strategic Defaults
Who is more likely to walk away from a house and a mortgage -- a person with super-prime credit scores or someone with lower scores?
Research using a massive sample of 24 million individual credit files has found that homeowners with high scores when they apply for a loan are 50% more likely to "strategically default" -- abruptly and intentionally pull the plug and abandon the mortgage -- compared with lower-scoring borrowers.
* The number of strategic defaults is far beyond most industry estimates -- 588,000 nationwide during 2008, more than double the total in 2007. They represented 18% of all serious delinquencies that extended for more than 60 days in last year's fourth quarter.
* Strategic defaulters often go straight from perfect payment histories to no mortgage payments at all. This is in stark contrast with most financially distressed borrowers, who try to keep paying on their mortgage even after they've fallen behind on other accounts.
Thanks, gloe, and everyone else who replied to my question on Friday re. a possible rate increase. Two
Anyone get the feeling the Fed, during next Wednesday's meeting (9/23), may do a surprise rate increase or, at a minimum, hint that a rate increase is coming soon? And, as a result, the indexes make their expected correction? Two