Here’s another great gem we just found in the big SEC document dump on Madoff [below]. It concerns the independent fraud investigator Harry Markopolos, who tried for years and years and years to blow the whistle but tno avail. How were his efforts viewed in the SEC? Basically, they dismissed him as an anti-Bush crank.
The SEC just made a MASSIVE document dump related to its failure to catch Madoff. Of course, it’s all embarrassing, so it’s on a Friday afternoon, when everyone’s too lazy to go through it. There are 536 documents in total. Joe Weisenthal
In what could have been the biggest piece of news today, yet making little headway into the media, the Fed announced that it is adopting a policy statement supporting “prudent commercial real estate loan workouts.” And even though in traditional Fed fashion, the statement says a lot but is even more vague, some of the implications from a more nuanced read have very serious adverse implications for commercial real estate. The section:
Financial institutions that implement prudent loan workout arrangements after performing comprehensive reviews of borrowers’ financial conditions will not be subject to criticism for engaging in these efforts, even if the restructured loans have weaknesses that result in adverse credit classifications. In addition, performing loans, including those renewed or restructured on reasonable modified terms, made to creditworthy borrowers, will not be subject to adverse classification solely because the value of the underlying collateral declined.
seems to imply that the Fed is now encouraging active loan workouts as a matter of policy. The other implication is that firms with CRE exposure can no longer rely on the Fed as a perpetual guarantor of risky exposure. Not only that, but in adopting a new policy strategy, the Fed is acknowledging the major problem that CRE writedowns will represent for banks, yet is telling banks to resolve problems on their own, while subsequently they will “not be subject to criticism for engaging in these efforts.”
The implications of this Fed action for the economy could be staggering as the $3.5 billion CRE market will likely not receive the same largesse that residential real estate has been the recipient of ever since the conservatorship of the GSEs. And the biggest loser in all of this will be banks that still have not used the massive risk rally to offload whole loan and CMBS CRE holdings, and moreover, still have these marked at par or close thereby.
As Wilbur Ross and George Soros pointed out earlier, the trouble for CRE is just starting. If the Fed is unwilling to recreate QE for CRE, in the same way that it continues to bail out residential exposure, then look for a major double dip in the economy. The only wild card is why the Fed is letting this happen, although if the political backlash against just QE 1…
Amgen has responded to the charges of corruption and fraud related to its big anemia drug, Aranesp, made by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo today along with 14 other states.
Amgen spokesman David Polk told us "We believe that the allegations are without merit, and we look forward to the opportunity to examine these matters with the states before the Court."
Polk adds: "Because this lawsuit is now in litigation, we are limited in our remarks," and that "Amgen has a solid compliance program and Code of Conduct called “Do The Right Thing,” and we expect that all of our employees follow it at all times."
Breaking from the New York Attorney General’s Office:
NEW YORK, NY (October 30, 2009) – Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that New York and 14 other states are filing a lawsuit against Biotech giant Amgen following an investigation spearheaded by
his office into a nationwide kickback scheme to boost drug sales.
In a lawsuit filed today in federal court the states charge drug manufacturer Amgen, International Nephrology Network (INN), a specialty group purchasing organization, and ASD Healthcare, a wholesaler, with offering kickbacks to medical providers to increase sales of Amgen’s anemia drug, Aranesp.
“Drugs should be prescribed to patients on the basis of need, effectiveness, and safety, not on a corporate giant’s promise of an all-expense paid vacation,” said Attorney General Cuomo. “In an egregious violation of the law, Amgen allegedly bribed medical providers and left taxpayers footing the bill for free drug samples. My office’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit will continue to work with our partners in other states to uncover these kinds of abuses.”
According to the multi-state complaint, the companies would encourage medical providers to bill third party payers such as Medicaid for free Aranesp that were provided at no cost. Amgen is further alleged to have conspired with INN and ASD Healthcare to offer illegal kickbacks to medical providers, such as sham consultancy agreements, weekend retreats, or other services to induce them to purchase and prescribe Aranesp with the intention and effect of increasing sales of Aranesp and converting new providers from competitor drugs to Aranesp.
Well…the third time certainly proved to be the charm. After yesterday’s anticipated bounce that filled an open gap at 1060.25 on the futures (ESZ09) in response to an insanely oversold McClellan Oscillator reading of -381.49, the markets appear to be resuming their impulsively downward voyage back to reality; today’s internals registered even more bearish readings Wednesday’s, which is extremely negative omen for the future outlook of the markets. While the TICK did not register a reading that surpassed -1400 today (intra-day low of -1396), we did witness the VOLD relentlessly plunge to a new extreme closing low of -1,408,903, which now marks the lowest closing low since that of 9/02/09.
The importance of the VOLD reaching new intraday as well as closing lows is very straightforward; significant changes in volume typically precede significant changes within the underlying character of price action. And while this concept is debatable when it comes to specific equities, it is simply cut and dry when referring to the entire NYSE Exchange. Such a low VOLD reading, which signifies an extreme desire to sell on the behalf of institutions and investors alike, is a definite warning sign that effectively poleaxes any remaining bullish intent.
“While 12 separate TICK readings exceeded -1000 plotted over the course of today’s impulsive price action, the VOLD also spiraled towards its lowest value since approximately 10/01/09 and 9/01/09; finding exact support at the trendline that connects the two. And while that may sound interesting in and of itself, the most noteworthy item here is that both 9/01/09 and 10/01/09 marked days that directly preceded temporary bottoms, each igniting bullish reversals to new Primary wave 2 (circle) double zigzag highs. By connecting a trendline on the $INX (S&P 500) from the bottoms established on 9/02/09 and 10/02/09, it is clear that today’s close decisively broke that support and now approaches the next trendline near 1036, rising approximately 1 point per day. And while the DJIA remains above its up-sloping trendline from March, the DJ-20, Russell 2K, Value Line and XBD indices have each already broken their respective 10/02/09 lows after absorbing increasingly impulsive bouts…
ACL – Alcon, Inc. – Medical supplies producer, Alcon, attracted long-term bullish option traders to the May 2010 contract. Shares slipped slightly lower by 0.5% to $144.02 by noontime (EDT). It looks as though one investor financed the purchase of a call spread by selling put options. The three-legged trade involved the sale of 4,200 puts at the May 120 strike for about 4.20 apiece. Next, the investor purchased the same number of call options at the May 155 strike for 7.25 each, spread against the sale of 4,200 calls at the higher May 165 strike for 4.50 per contract. The trader receives a credit of 1.45 each on the strategy. The full credit is retained by the investor as long as shares of ACL remain higher than $120.00 through expiration in May. Additional profits accumulate if the stock surges 7.5% to surpass the breakeven point at $155.00. Maximum additional profits available to the investor amount to 10.00 per contract, attainable if shares add 15% to $165.00 ahead of expiration in May.
VIX – CBOE Vix index – With equity prices sadly wilting by noon on Friday, investors were threatening to completely reverse Thursday’s giddy 2% advance. Traders were despondent after a 0.5% drop in consumer spending last month, which soured the tone following Thursday’s stimulus-stuffed GDP gain. The fear-gauge expanded by 8% to 26.70 as a result and one large options player appears to have placed a trade suggesting that volatility will be omnipresent – at least through year-end. The investor sold 10,000 December expiration puts at the 25 strike for a 1.75 premium, while buying half as many puts in the January expiration at the same strike. If the underlying Vix index settles at expiration above a value of the 25 strike price, the puts would expire worthless. This suggests this investor sees a rocky close to the year with volatility remaining elevated. The purchase of 5,000 puts for a 1.95 premium expiring 30 days later suggests the investor sees a calmer start to next year.
FEED – AgFeed Industries, Inc. – Shares of the Chinese feed and commercial hog producing company are trading 2.5% higher today to stand at $4.73. The firm received a ‘buy’ recommendation at EVA Dimensions yesterday. Option traders took to the May 2010 contract to initiate bullish positions on the stock. It…
Thanksgiving came early this year. It was yesterday, Thursday October 29, 2009. The reason we know this is the after Thanksgiving shopfest known as Black Friday started today.
No doubt some of you who forgot to stuff yourselves with turkey and pumpkin pie yesterday are demanding proof of this occurrence. I can certainly oblige.
Every week between now and Black Friday, Sears.com will have several doorbusters from their Black Friday ad available only for just a few hours. This week’s sale runs from 5pm this afternoon until noon tomorrow (central time). Here are the doorbusters available this week:
Once again, these items will be on sale starting at 5pm CT today. You can also save $5 off a $50 purchase with coupon code SEARS5OFF50.
BlackFriday.Org has the following leaks.
Sears Black Friday Ad Leaked
October 27th 2009
The first major black Friday ad of 2009 has arrived and it’s from Sears. This year Sears is having an incredible black Friday sale with over 599 doorbusters! Some of the doorbuster deals include a Panasonic Blu-ray Home Theater System for $399.99, a Kenmore 3.5-cu ft. High Efficiency Washer/Dryer Pair for $579.98, and a Kodak CD-80 10.2 MegaPixel Digital Camera (3x zoom, 2.4" LCD) for just $79.99.
Harbor Freight Black Friday Ad Released
October 26th 2009
Our third black Friday ad for 2009 has arrived and it’s from Harbor Freight. We only received the few couple of pages of the advertisement but we expect to have the rest of it within a few days. Also, we should be posting the Ace Hardware, Sears, and Kmart ads within the next week or two, so be sure to check back or join our email list for the latest updates.
Thanksgiving Holiday Schedule Canada vs. US
Inquiring minds just might be interested in Canadian Thanksgiving calendar dates.
Is it any wonder the Canadian economy is in so much better shape than ours? Look at how many extra shopping days they get. This is outrageous. I propose we move Thanksgiving up to August 1 to rectify this anomaly and make up for some of the past lost shopping days
Today’s PMI data was very strong. There are experts in econometrics much more knowledgeable than I will ever be calling for further strength in production numbers that will lead to a turn in unemployment into Q1 2010. I don’t dispute their models or the indicators they look at. However I can’t come to terms with it. I think this is in great part because the business cycle which is supposed to lead us out of this recession is at odds with a much longer and bigger cycle: the debt cycle. I know this flies in the face of 50 years of econometrics that has made people a lot of money trading, but this is mainly due to the fact that the debt cycle is so long and stretched over time that we don’t really have data to measure its impact on previous cycles. It coincides in a sense with the Kondratieff cycle, but transposed into today’s financial markets, the burst of the debt bubble is a lot more pronounced. Basically modern technology and financial engineering has made it very easy to securitize credit and source funding or financing globally, so that the extent of the debt bubble has been allowed to grow far beyond what could have happened 50 years ago. There is also obviously the global aspect of it. Because financial markets are more and more global, so is the crisis.
Albert Edwards had a great piece the other day discussing the renewed importance in a post-bubble environment of the business cycle. This line of thought has also been outlined by the Global Macro Investor in the past. It relies a lot on the example given by Japan, or the 70s. One could argue that unlike the case of Japan which benefitted of the strong economy of the 90s to have a more robust business cycle due to exports, our current global economy will lack an engine to drive the cycle. The risk is that the consumer has retrenched enough in the US and in Europe that the business cycles becomes a restocking of shelves carrying products there is not necessarily much demand for. I will not even entertain the argument regarding China and the rest of Asia becoming the leading engine of growth for the rest of the world. China has about 40% over-capacity. While…
The chart below present the change in reported and projected corporate Revenues and EPS (excluding financial companies), and highlights the dramatic improvement in the economy expected by analysts over the next 2-3 quarters. In the next quarter things for companies get dicey with both revenue and EPS expected to be flat with Q4 of 2008. Whether or not this is attainable will be seen shortly. Yet where it does get just a little amusing, is 2 and 3 quarters in the future, when EPS are projected to increase by 23% and 20% respectively, while everyone hopes sales can wave a magic wand, and with skeleton crews of employees and no growth capex investments, are assumed to grow by 11.2% and 9.5%. Additionally, analysts are now forced to actually really ramp up their expectations in order for stocks to grow incrementally from here. If readers believe that corporate revenues in Q1 of 2010 can grow sales by more than 10% from Q1 2009 (while continuing to fire people), then by all means, buy stocks.
The Commerce Department announced Thursday that GDP grew 3.5% in Q3 2009. This is the “Third Quarter Bump” I had been expecting.
Economists and the news media are jumping on the “It’s Over!” bandwagon. Their conclusion is based on the premise that government spending (“stimulus”) will actually create real economic growth. It won’t and never has.
The numbers on their face look pretty good. “Real GDP” (i.e., adjusted for inflation) grew for the first time in 4 quarters. Here’s how the government played the news in the BEA release:
Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter of 2009, (that is, from the second quarter to the third quarter), according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the second quarter, real GDP decreased 0.7 percent. …
The increase in real GDP in the third quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), exports, private inventory investment, federal government spending, and residential fixed investment. …
(Emphasis added)
There are some significant “buts” in their report.
The Clunkers program was responsible for most of the increase in PCE:
… vehicle output added 1.66 percentage points to the third-quarter change in real GDP after adding 0.19 percentage point to the second-quarter change. … Real personal consumption expenditures increased 3.4 percent in the third quarter, in contrast to a decrease of 0.9 percent in the second. Durable goods increased 22.3 percent, in contrast to a decrease of 5.6 percent. The third-quarter increase largely reflected motor vehicle purchases under the Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act of 2009 (popularly called, “Cash for Clunkers” Program).
This is not real economic growth. As many observers have pointed out, Cash for Clunkers just borrowed sales from the future, so that we can expect that Q4 will show a substantial decline in car sales unless the government renews the Clunker program. Without auto related activity, GDP was up only 1.9%. The Clunker program increased sales from $306 billion in Q2 to $342 billion in Q3, I would assume some…
I could not help noticing that China’s imports from Japan fell 16.2pc in December. Imports from Taiwan fell 6.2pc. The strong yen strikes again: Honda decides to build a high-performance hybrid Acura in Ohio – instead of its home nation of Japan. The firm’s continued shift in p...
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The Weekly Leading Index (WLI) growth indicator of the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) posted -6.5 in its latest reading, data through January 20. The latest public data point is a reduced contraction from last week's -7.6 (a slight downward revision from -7.5). This is the highest level (i.e., least negative) since early September. However, the underlying WLI declined fractionally from an adjusted 123.3 to 122.8 (see the third chart below).
Early last December Lakshman Achuthan, the Co-founder of ECRI, spoke with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television's Surveillance Midday. You can watch the video on the ECRI website here, with bold heading Recession Update. The eight-minute video is well worth watching in its...
Some combination of better made cars, and less Americans able to pay new car prices has conspired to push up the average age of U.S. vehicles to a new record high. Reflecting this sea change, one of the best investment g...
Shares of battered tech company Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) are seeing much strength during Friday's trading session.
Fairfax Financial Holdings released a 13G filing with the SEC this morning, in which they disclosed a 5.12% stake in Research in Motion.
Currently, shares of Research in motion are up over 4% at $16.85. Over the last year, Research in Motion is down over 72%.
Research In Motion Limited is a designer, manufacturer and marketer of wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. RIM provides platforms and solutions for access to information, including e-mail, voice, instant messaging, short message service.
Top 5 RisersStockRatingAnalysisASBCBUYMany analysts are expecting higher than previously expected long term growth from Associated Bancorp, and its near-term earnings outlook is also improving.CZZSTRONGBUYThe recent earnings history for Cosan Ltd shows significant improvement while projected valuation continues to rise.STLDBUYProjected value continues to rise for Steel Dynamics while long term increases in earnings growth are also becoming more widely expected.PSESTRONGBUYAn increasingly attractive expected long term growth rate and a significantly higher projected valuation from just a fe...
Major markets and major index ETFs corrected slightly today after the stock market’s euphoric party yesterday
Major markets suffered a slight hangover today, as the S&P 500 dropped .57%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped .18%, the NASDAQ dropped .46% and the Russell 2000 Index dropped .34%, after yesterday’s crazy Fed and Tech Sector induced Wall Street Party. The NASDAQ, in particular, partied very hard, so hard in fact that the NASDAQ reached its 11 year record high.
The major market index ETFs were hungover too as the SPDR S&P 500 ETF lowered .51%, the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial ...
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This post is for all our live virtual trade ideas and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).
We also indicate our stop, which is most of the time the "5 day moving average". All trades, unless indicated, are front-month ATM options.
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Here is the virtual portfolio weekend update. Basically a recap of the positions and some notes about the trades. As usual, I'll post the previous week's P&L for comparison. Not the greatest of week in general!
AA Money
Only transaction last week as we bought back the AA Feb 9 puts on Tuesday for close to a 70% profit. The idea is to sell another set of put as soon as we get a chance.
Previous week P&L - $400.00
We lost some ground this week, but we'll keep on selling premium!
FAS Money
We also lost some ground in this virtual portfolio, but we have sold plenty of premium for the coming week. A little correction would go a long way to help! On Wednesday we sold the FAS Feb 72 puts (already good for 50%), on Thursday we added the Jan4 78 calls and on Friday we had to roll the Jan 78 puts to the Jan 80 puts. We were hoping for these ones to expire worthless on Friday, but a late stick killed that hope.
Previous week P&L - $4372.00...
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Here's the latest Stock World Weekly. We discuss the Fed's next move, and it's new policy for more QE-cating. Brief review of Sabrient's trade ideas for 2012 (already doing well) and a few new buy-writes from Phil and Pharmboy. Enjoy! (Feedback appreciated - give some life to the comment section below.)
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Finding new and exciting Biotech companies that target novel mechanisms is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Sure there are many companies working on cutting edge science, but investing in those companies to reap the rewards of their work is a very dangerous game. More often than not, companies fail because the mechanism does not pan out, the compound(s) do not have pharmacokinetics (get into the body or last very long in the body), or an adverse event happens that knocks years off a development timeline. In addition, the stock can be manipulated by market makers so investors don't know which way is up. I approach investing in biotechs as a long term prospect. I continue to like our current portfolio of biotech companies (join in chat for many of those plays), and we continually add/subtract shares and sell/buy options on ...
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(