Grateful Dead on the international financial ruin.
Driving that train, high on cocaine, Casey Jones you better watch your speed.
Trouble ahead, trouble behind,
And you know that notion just crossed my mind.
Trouble with you is the trouble with me,
Got two good eyes but you still dont see.
Come round the bend, you know its the end,
The fireman screams and the engine just gleams…
This view from the City of London is interesting, given the devastation that permeates their own surrounding landscape. The Anglo-Americans seem to be throwing down the gauntlet. What now, Monsieur Trichet?
The European banking system is certainly a mess, and if there was a case to be made for pursuing the ‘Swedish option’ of nationalizing the banks in a crisis of their own making this is it.
One sentence in this was especially eye-catching.
"We are nearing the point where the IMF may have to print money for the world, using arcane powers to issue Special Drawing Rights."
Problem -> Reaction -> Solution.
There always seem to be some arcane powers ready to solve the unexpected crisis.
If mishandled by the world policy establishment, this debacle is big enough to shatter the fragile banking systems of Western Europe and set off round two of our financial Götterdämmerung.
Austria’s finance minister Josef Pröll made frantic efforts last week to put together a €150bn rescue for the ex-Soviet bloc. Well he might. His banks have lent €230bn to the region, equal to 70pc of Austria’s GDP.
"A failure rate of 10pc would lead to the collapse of the Austrian financial sector," reported Der Standard in Vienna. Unfortunately, that is about to happen.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) says bad debts will top 10pc and may reach 20pc. The Vienna press said Bank Austria and its Italian owner Unicredit face a "monetary
Bill Moyers has an interview with former IMF Chief Economist and MIT professor Simon Johnson that puts forth the notion that there is a small group of financial oligarchs essentially holding the country hostage.
Simon Johnson’s premise is that the big Wall Street banks represent an oligarchy that is exerting undue influence and control on our government and the economy. They are turning this crisis to their advantage, and circumventing the democratic process.
What we are seeing looks to Simon Johnson like a financial coup d’etat.
Now is the time to break up the big money center banks. Now is the time to reinstate Glass-Steagall. We must demand the reforms for which we elected the Obama Administration.
Watch this interview. Think about it. Let other people know. Write your congressmen.
And be prepared to act on a larger scale in a peaceful way to get the point across that we value our liberty and we will stand for justice. We are not optimistic that the government will do the right thing without more prodding and significant support from the public.
"I think I’m signaling something a little bit shocking to Americans, and to myself, actually. Which is the situation we find ourselves in at this moment, this week, is very strongly reminiscent of the situations we’ve seen many times in other places.
But they’re places we don’t like to think of ourselves as being similar to. They’re emerging markets. It’s Russia or Indonesia or a Thailand type situation, or Korea. That’s not comfortable. America is different. America is special. America is rich. And, yet, we’ve somehow find ourselves in the grip of the same sort of crisis and the same sort of oligarchs…
But, exactly what you said, it’s a small group with a lot of power. A lot of wealth. They don’t necessarily – they’re not necessarily always the names, the household names that spring to mind, in this kind of context. But they are the people who could pull the strings. Who have the influence. Who call the shots…
…the signs that I see this week, the body language, the
Once again it was only what we expected so no big deal as we went into last weekend ready for the bear if the stimulus plan failed to give us a boost. Even so, finishing back near the November lows is downright depressing. On Friday, the 6th I said the energy sector could be a drag on the markets and the dollar bouncing back could exert additional downward pressure and you can see from these charts, we got our dollar bounce AND the energy sector was a serious underperformer and, unfortunately, acting like a weight around the neck of the broader indexes. We’ve been discussing this for weeks – The XLE alone is now 14% of the S&P. Coupled with the OIH group makes over 20% of the market then energy sector, which dropped a combined 7% last week, accounting for over 1.5% of the total market drop.
The financials are still 10.23% of the S&P as of Friday but they started the week at 11.25% and knocked a full point off the markets in just 5 days as they fell 10% for the week. Healthcare (XLV, 16%), which we’ve been playing for a few weeks now, actually outperformed the indexes last week as has technology (XLK, 21%), which we play through the Qs and has quietly crept up to become the new leaser of the S&P by a pretty good gap. THIS, people, is the rotation we have been playing for. I did not sugar-coat it – I said it would be painful but it is what we wanted – the end of the endless moving about of shiny bits of metal and worthless pieces of paper that siphoned money away from the many to the very, very few and left us with nothing but a bubble economy, sucking jobs and capital out of real industries that we are supposed to build an economy on.
This is not the end of capitalism – this IS capitalism. Survival of the fittest, of the companies that actually provide goods and services people want, triumphing over the middlemen who seek to tack on commissions and fees to every possible step in the transactions which they add nothing to. Of course a fee is deserved for going to the great effort of taking a company public, but should it really be 10% of the offering? Commodities aren’t supposed…
The FDIC has a report called the Failed Bank List. Here is a partial listing that shows the most recent 20 bank failures.
click on chart for sharper image
"Fish Gone Bad" sent me the following chart showing cumulative bank failures over time.
While a logarithmic chart might be better, and perhaps will be necessary in a short period of time, the chart does depict what is happening.
Looking at the period of no bank failures in the above chart reminded me of something.
$VIX: The Calm Before The Storm
click on chart for sharper image
While not calling for the $VIX to do anything in particular other than not head back below 10 for years, it is a near certainty that bank failures are going to soar. There are easily hundreds banks that are insolvent right now. The only question is how long the FDIC continues to hide that fact.
What is the fair value of the market, and perhaps more importantly, does it matter? Random Roger shares his thoughts on Barry Ritholtz’s fair value argument.
Barry Ritholtz has a post up spelling out a simple argument for fair value for the S&P 500 being at 440. There has been a little bit of chatter about this in one or two other places as well.
Fair value is not a simple concept. The math is simple; whatever number you want to use for earnings and then whatever multiple you think is correct.
Where it gets a little more complicated is that fair value doesn’t usually end coinciding with any sort of stopping point in either direction nor is their any sort of indication of how long stocks might stay above or below fair value.
If Barry is right there is nothing to say that stocks go anywhere near that low or conversely that a massive decline would somehow stop at 440. Maybe I have this wrong but I can’t recall a time where a fair value number has been a primary factor for the market. There is utility in knowing whether the market is relatively expensive or inexpensive. Generically speaking if the market is expensive the risk of a decline might be a little higher.
The current state of the market however is not generic. The market has had a massive decline and has been stumbling along the bottom for several months now. Based on the market action thus far the days of massive declines could be behind us until the next cycle. Now factor in the fundamentals and the never ending bad news and uncertainty and going down a lot more is certainly possible.
I continue to believe the low is in, give or take a few percent, that there will be more ups and downs but no violation to the downside and I also think we still have a massive bear market rally in here soon as well. I’ve been whistling this tune for a while as some may know. But since I first piped up on this idea the news has continued to get worse yet the market is churning around the same range as opposed to following the news lower. This
This post first ran on January 29th on my mortgage blog. It got some traction there and a few mentions in the press so, lazy bastard that I am, I’m reproducing it here in a slightly improved form that corrects my own math error.
Take a look at this chart that someone sent to me a couple days ago. I’m making it big so you can see as much detail as possible. Have a look and then come back, okay?
Pretty scary, eh? It’s a chart showing the deterioration of major bank market caps since 2007. Prepared by someone at JP Morgan based on data from Bloomberg, this chart flashed across Wall Street and the financial world a few days ago, filling thousands of e-mail in boxes. Putting a face on the current banking crisis it really brought home to many people on Wall Street the critical position the financial industry finds itself in.
Too bad the chart is wrong.
It’s a simple error, really. The bubbles are two-dimensional so they imply that the way to see change is by comparing AREAS of the bubbles. But if you look at the numbers themselves you can see that’s not the case…
And who was that someone? Me! A nobody. Or at least someone unimportant enough not to be asking for a Federal bailout….
"The UAW stopped negotiations with GM last night, a person familiar with the talks said. A delay in the talks could risk the automakers missing a Feb. 17 deadline to show progress in a government-ordered plan to cut labor and debt costs. It’s not clear what that would mean."
Oh I disagree – the meaning of that is crystal-clear.
Any questions?
I don’t know what Gettlefinger and his pals over at the UAW think they’re going to accomplish with this. Let me point out a few things that the employees and union members that Gettlefinger allegedly works for don’t seem to understand:
If the company and thus its pension fund "booms", the PBGC [Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation] will be forced to step in and take it over. The PBGC has maximum benefits that it pays out to retirees. If you were getting more than that previously, too bad. Have a banana.
The VEBA [Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association], if unable to be funded, is unable to be funded. Pension funding under the PBGC does not include "all expenses paid" health insurance. Welcome to Medicare my friends, when you are old enough to qualify. Until then, good luck.
The guarantees are much more limited than your Pension was, especially if you’re not already retired. The cap is based on the law, not your contributions to date, and is invoked at the time the plan goes "boom". If you’re under 45 you will get exactly nothing, with the MAXIMUM amount set by law, disregarding (for the most part) your contributions to the system.
Now I’m not at all certain that Gettlefinger’s "members" are aware of this, but they damn well ought to be. And if you think that the government won’t force conversion to a Chapter 11 with the government providing DIP financing, you’re nuts. They both can and likely will with catastrophic consequences, especially for employees with significant tenure who currently are on the job.
The problem is really quite simple – there’s not a prayer in hell that the automakers can go back to Congress
Here’s a report from Michael Panzner at Financial Armageddon on our federal government’s obligations exceeding the world GDP. Jerome Corsi asks, paraphrasing, are you terrified yet?
There’s no question that we’re talking big numbers — with plenty of zeros — when it comes to efforts to "rescue" the U.S. economy. But it didn’t take the latest wave of profligacy to prove that Washington has a serious spending problem. That fact was obvious to anyone who was familiar with the all-in cost of the government’s retirement safety net. In "Federal Obligations Exceed World GDP," WorldNetDaily’s Jerome R. Corsi covers the issue in frightening detail.
Does $65.5 trillion terrify anyone yet?
As the Obama administration pushes through Congress its $800 billion deficit-spending economic stimulus plan, the American public is largely unaware that the true deficit of the federal government already is measured in trillions of dollars, and in fact its $65.5 trillion in total obligations exceeds the gross domestic product of the world.
The total U.S. obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits to be paid in the future, effectively have placed the U.S. government in bankruptcy, even before new continuing social welfare obligation embedded in the massive spending plan are taken into account.
The real 2008 federal budget deficit was $5.1 trillion, not the $455 billion previously reported by the Congressional Budget Office, according to the "2008 Financial Report of the United States Government" as released by the U.S. Department of Treasury.
The difference between the $455 billion "official" budget deficit numbers and the $5.1 trillion budget deficit cited by "2008 Financial Report of the United States Government" is that the official budget deficit is calculated on a cash basis, where all tax receipts, including Social Security tax receipts, are used to pay government liabilities as they occur.
But the numbers in the 2008 report are calculated on a GAAP basis ("Generally Accepted Accounting Practices") that include year-for-year changes in the net present value of unfunded liabilities in social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
Under cash accounting, the government makes no provision for future Social Security and Medicare benefits in the year in which those benefits
Staggering falls in exports across Asia have shocked economic analysts and ended all claims that the global slump may be nearing its bottom. The IMF’s growth forecast for Asia this year is just 2.7 percent—less than a third of the 9 percent growth rate of 2007. The prediction is a full percentage point less than during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
IMA Asia analyst Richard Martin commented in the Australian: "It’s a bit like watching a train wreck in slow motion. North Asia is suffering the biggest collapse in demand since World War II." Westpac bank’s Richard Franulovich said that the "speed of the decline embedded in the latest Asia data is on par with the collapse in the US during the 1930s Depression."
Asia Export Economy Details
Japanese exports fell 35 percent in December from a year earlier. Industrial production plunged a record 9.6 percent, month on month, in December.
Chinese exports declined for the third consecutive month in January, falling 17.5 percent from a year earlier, after a 2.8 percent decline in December. Imports plunged even further—43.1 percent, twice as much as December’s 21.3 percent year-on-year drop.
More than 20 million Chinese migrant workers have lost their jobs so far, with some analysts warning of 50 million more job losses if the economy deteriorates further.
India exports fell 24 percent in January. According to official data, one million Indian workers in the export sector have lost their jobs since September. Another half a million workers are expected to lose their jobs by March.
New Delhi’s public debt stands at 75 percent of its GDP, compared to just 18.5 percent in China, leaving less room for large stimulus packages.
South Korea’s exports, the main driving force of the economy, plunged 32.8 percent in January. Finance minister Yoon Jeung-hyun warned on Tuesday that the fourth largest economy in Asia would shrink by about 2 percent this year. Credit Suisse has projected as much as a 7 percent contraction.
Taiwan, the sixth largest Asian economy, saw its exports fall
Chad Brand takes issue with Barry Ritholtz’s valuation of the S&P 500. Both viewpoints appear to incorporate assumptions about the future which influence their present case argument.
Personally, I expect more from Barry given how strong much of his market and economic analysis has been over the years, but there are glaring flaws in this valuation methodology. First, I don’t know very many market strategists who believe fair value on the S&P 500 should be based on the earnings produced by the index’s components in the depths of a deep recession. Most people agree that fair value should be based on an estimate of normalized earnings, not trough (or near-trough) profit levels.
Imagine you owned a Burlington Coat Factory retail store. You are ready to retire and have a business person interested in buying your store. What would your reaction be if this person took your store’s profit for the month of June, multiplied it by 12, and based his offer price on that level of projected annual profits. Clearly that figure does not give an accurate representation of how much money your store earns in a year because June is probably one of your worst months of the year for selling coats!
The same flaw exists in valuing the stock market based on current earnings. Doing so implies that earnings today represent a typical economic climate, which is clearly not the case.
The second issue with Barry’s analysis is the use of “as-reported” GAAP earnings. The reason GAAP earnings have fallen so fast is that they include non-cash charges such as asset impairments. It is common these days for companies to report cash earnings of $1 billion but a GAAP loss of $5 billion due to a $6 billion asset impairment charge. In such a case GAAP earnings (which include the non-cash charge) are understated by a whopping $6 billion. Why should asset impairments be excluded? A stock’s value is based on the present value of future…
Lawmakers questioned Apple's CEO Tim Cook on tax matters yesterday. Felix Salmon explains (below) the details of the complicated tax scheme involving subsidiaries in Ireland and various contractual relationships that are legal but devised to lower the corporations' taxes.
And, why not? Since when do corporations live to maximize taxes and minimize profits? What CEO would survive that sort of behavior?
Apple's method of avoiding US taxes is a good argument for eliminating corporate taxes altogether. What do you think?
The last time the WSJ' Jon Hilsenrath was relevant was two weeks ago (in a flashback to those days before QEternity when infinite QE was not assured and Jon's input was actually relevant), when following an article of his, and due to his "proximity" with the New York Fed, many assumed that the Tapering suggested by Hilsenrath was being telegraphed by Bernanke to the market. Turns out it was nothing but yet another baffle with bullshit headfake by a central planning regime that is now merely engaged in observing market responses to indirect stimuli: if reduce monthly flow by $20 billion then X (-1%); if cut QE off entirely then Y (-50%?), and so on. Moments ago the same Hilsenrath just released ano...
One runs out of superlatives to describe the current market.
Every day or week a new record seems to be set. A few of the current – yesterday was the 19th Tuesday in a row that the DJIA was up; the DJIA is now guaranteed to go without a 3 day losing streak for 100 days, breaking the 95 day record in 1927, the NASDAQ has had 17 days in a row of a new higher high, the best since Nov 1999, etc etc. Meanwhile Japan is in the realm of 50% YTD gains as their currency is kicked in the teeth.
Definitely an era to keep in our memory banks as the action is abnormal.
Here is the latest look at the "Sweet Sixteen" Dow recoveries adjusted for inflation/deflation I've been illustrating from time to time over the past three years. The charts below compare the current Dow recovery since the March 2009 low with fifteen other major recoveries dating from the origin of this legendary index in 1896. (See the footnote for my selection criteria.)
At this point the Dow is 1058 market days beyond the 2009 low. The last time I checked, in early April, the index was in fourth place in our Sweet Sixteen competition and 11.5% below the recovery from the 1982 low over the equivalent time frame. Now, 30 sessions later, the current level has a nominal gain of 135.0% since the 2009 trough, and is currently at a new all-time high. However, since we're comparing such a diverse set of market eras with such a wide patterns of inflation/deflati...
Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU) released its fiscal third-quarter earnings after the closing bell on Tuesday.
The company reported revenues which were in-line with expectations and a profit which beat analysts' estimates. In late trade, shares were up a little less than one percent to $58.31.
The company reported net income of $822 million or $2.71 per share, compared to $734 million or $2.42 per share, in the year ago period.
On an adjusted basis, net income rose to $901 million or $2.97 per share, versus $763 million or $2.52 per share, in last year's third-quarter. This came in ahead of Wall S...
SKS - Saks, Inc. – High-end retailer, Saks, Inc., popped up on our ‘hot by options volume’ market scanner this morning on heavier than usual trading traffic in upside calls. Shares in Saks are up 10% on Tuesday morning at a new 52-week high of $13.54 after the company posted first-quarter earnings in line with analyst expectations on higher-than-expected quarterly revenue. Shares in Saks are up more than 30% since this time last year. Bullish positions initiated in SKS options ahead of the earnings release yester...
To learn more, sign up for David's free newsletter and receive the free report from All About Trends - "How To Outperform 90% Of Wall Street With Just $500 A Week." Tell David PSW sent you. - Ilene...
So, what did the market want today? Nothing it appears. It traded on weak volume and had very little movement. This morning the market hated commodities especially silver, but by days end, the market liked silver, gold and even oil but not the dollar. Why?
Last week the economic reports were tough, with bad misses on more than one occasion. But the market tended to ignore the bad news, probably because money continues to pour into equities from money market funds, long term fixed income, and many struggling foreign economies. On Thursday, investors finally caved to even more bad news from Initial Jobless Claims and weak Housing Starts. Then on Friday, when Michigan Sentiment and Leading Indicators posted large positive surprises, the money came pouring back to generate qui...
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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).
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By Craigzooka
I am going to share with you how I manage my IRA and the power of reducing your cost basis. My goal each year is a 20% return in my IRA. Sometimes I make it and sometimes I don't, but I believe that all of my success is due to reducing my cost basis. To illustrate the power of reducing your cost basis here are some trades we did last year. These trades are taken from an educational portfolio we ran in a paper-trading account for a little more than a year.
We bought RIG on 5/15/2012 for $44.13, sold it on 1/18/2013 for $46 but booked a profit of $1,154.
We bought MT on 1/4/2012 for $19.24, sold it on 12/21/2012 for $15 but booked a profit of $454.
We bought CHK on 1/27/2012 for $21.93, sold it on 10/19/2012 for $18 b...
Stock market posts another record setting week, but the big news came after Friday’s close.
Courtesy of NASA
The stock market put on another record setting show with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) closing at a record high 15,118 and the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) closing at 1633.70, another all time closing high.
For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) gained 1%, the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) climbed 1.2%, the Nasdaq Composite (NYSEARCA:...
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Well, well, well....it is good to know that there are others in the scientific arena who believed that YMI Bioscience's data (cough - Gilead) is a better drug than Incyte's Jakafi. Now, the definitive data are still unknown, but there was enough evidence from a Phase 2 trial to take a small risk for a huge reward. So, let's forget about Apple (AAPL), and do nothing but biotechs from now until Congress passes universal health care coverage for prescriptions....and drive the prices down so that research and development is no longer feasible to conduct in the US. Even Seattle Genetics (SGEN) has been on a tear as of late...
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Another disappointing week!
This is not the end of capitalism – this IS capitalism. Survival of the fittest, of the companies that actually provide goods and services people want, triumphing over the middlemen who seek to tack on commissions and fees to every possible step in the transactions which they add nothing to. Of course a fee is deserved for going to the great effort of taking a company public, but should it really be 10% of the offering? Commodities aren’t supposed…
The current state of the market however is not generic. The market has had a massive decline and has been stumbling along the bottom for several months now. Based on the market action thus far the days of massive declines could be behind us until the next cycle. Now factor in the fundamentals and the never ending bad news and uncertainty and going down a lot more is certainly possible.
Any questions?
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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
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