Will We Hold It Wednesday – Nasdaq 2,603 Edition
by Phil - December 28th, 2011 6:53 am
Watch the Nasdaq.
That’s the index we need to catch up to the Dow now that the S&P is halfway to goal at 1,297 (from our Must Hold line at 1,235). The Dow is in La La Land, led by MCD (up 31%), IBM (up 26%), PFE (up 24%), HD (up 20%) and KFT (up 20%) while this year’s Dogs of the Dow are BAC (down 59%), AA (down 43%), HPQ (down 39%) and JPM (down 22%).
While the losers may seem to outweigh the winners, that’s not how it works as the Dow is price-weighted so BAC dropping from $14 to $5.50 "only" costs the Dow about 68 points (roughly 8 points for each Dollar), IBMs rise from $145 to $185 added a whopping 320 points.
So a 26% rise in one component and a 59% drop in another nets out to a gain of 252 points! At the beginning of the year, they had roughly the same market cap ($150Bn) but IBM has gained $70Bn and BAC has lost $100Bn which, of course, translates into a net gain of 2% on the entire Dow – BECAUSE IT IS THE STUPIDEST INDEX ON EARTH!
Our Members, of course, know this. I wrote "DJIA: The Most Useless, Overused Tool on the Planet" back in 2006, when GM was still part of the Dow so no need to rehash it all here other than to mention the fact that a 30-component index has made 5 substitutions in the 5 years since I wrote that article only serve to highlight how ridiculous it is to use the Dow to draw long-term conclusions. The Dow is manipulated because it’s easy to and Uncle Rupert sits with the other Masters of the Universe to decide how to use this headline tool to make things look as good as possible in the US markets.
That’s why CSCO and TRV replaced C and GM in June of 2009. C was at $28.80 and is down a bit, GM went BK from $45 (which would have been a 360-point loss in the Dow) while CSCO was disappointing but essentially flat and TRV is up $20, adding another 160 points so a 520-point swing (5%) on those substitutions alone. In September of 2008, AIG ($135 at the time) was swapped for KFT ($32). KFT is just $37.70 but AIG was…
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DiggStraddle-Seller Takes To AIG
by Option Review - November 7th, 2011 1:03 pm
Today’s tickers: AIG, PHM, TKLC & CECO
AIG - American International Group, Inc. – The insurer’s shares, which fell 2.5% to trade at $23.31 this afternoon, may remain range-bound through year-end, according to one options position established in the December contract. AIG was cut to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ with a 12-month share price target of $26.00 at Sandler O’Neill today. It looks like one investor sold a 5,000-lot straddle at the Dec. $24 strike for a gross premium of $3.45 per contract. The straddle-seller keeps the full amount of premium received on the transaction as long as shares in AIG settle at $24.00 at expiration day next month. Some amount of premium is safe in the investor’s wallet as long as shares trade within the $20.55 to $27.45 range implied by the position. But, the investor risks uncapped losses to the upside above the upper breakeven price of $27.45, and losses to the downside in the event that shares slip beneath the lower breakeven point at $20.55, at expiration in December. The position was not tied to stock.
PHM - PulteGroup, Inc. – The homebuilding company popped up on our scanners this morning after one investor initiated a large bullish position that may be profitable if PulteGroup’s shares realize double-digit gains by expiration next month. Shares in PHM are currently up 1.8% at $5.58 as of 11:50 am in New York, perhaps on a positive note about the sector from an analyst at Wells Fargo. It looks like one trader purchased a block of 12,000 call options at the Dec. $6.0 strike for a premium of $0.35 each, in the first hour of the trading week. The investor stands ready to profit should shares in PulteGroup rally another 13.8% over the current price of $5.58 to surpass the effective breakeven point on the upside at $6.35 by expiration. Shares in PHM last traded above $6.35 at the beginning of August.
TKLC - Tekelec – Shares in the provider of communication network software and systems surged 11.8% to a six-month high of $11.07 this morning on news investors led by private-equity firm, Siris Capital Group LLC, agreed to buy Tekelec for $780 million. Shareholders in the Morrisville, North Carolina-based Company will reportedly receive $11.00 a share in cash in the deal. Relatively large call open interest in the November contract suggests some strategists saw the value of previously established bullish positions on Tekelec sky-rocket on the move…
Geithner’s Crimes Through AIG – Will The Truth Come Out
by ilene - February 24th, 2011 11:29 pm
Courtesy of The Daily Bail
Geithner’s Crimes Through AIG – Will The Truth Come Out
Video – Max Keiser & Stacy Herbert
At issue is Tim Geithner’s criminal behavior in orchestrating the AIG bailout to favor Goldman Sachs through counterparty payouts at par, and then the massive cover-up.
Further reading…
- Who Is Dan Jester And Why Did Tim Geithner Call Him 103 Times During The Financial Meltdown Of 2008?
Call Options Fly Off the Shelves at AIG
by Option Review - December 27th, 2010 4:23 pm
Today’s tickers: AIG, CAT, DTV, WPI, PBR, DNR, V & M
AIG - American International Group, Inc. – The insurer’s shares rallied as much as 12.2% today to touch an intraday- and new 2-year high of $60.96 on news the firm secured $4.3 billion in bank credit lines. Mounting confidence in the insurance company along with the rising value of AIG shares inspired bullish options traders to purchase in- and out-of-the-money calls today. Weeklies were popular with options traders expecting to see shares end the year on a high note. Investors picked up more than 2,900 now in-the-money calls at the December ’31 $57.5 strike for an average premium of $0.93 each, and coveted upwards of 2,900 in-the-money call options at the higher December ’31 $60 strike at an average premium of $0.51 a-pop. Optimistic individuals also purchased some 1,300 call options at the December ’31 $65 strike for an average premium of $0.27 apiece. Options strategists looked to the January 2011 contract to place bullish bets, as well. Notable in-the-money call buying was observed here, as well as fresh interest in calls at the January 2011 $62.5 strike where more than 1,700 contracts were purchased for an average premium of $1.46 each. The sharp increase in demand for American International Group calls pushed the overall reading of options implied volatility on the stock higher by 25.2% to 50.30% in the final 15 minutes of the trading day.
CAT - Caterpillar, Inc. – It looks like some options investors expect the machinery maker’s shares to trend higher at the start of 2011. CAT-bulls are buying call options in the January 2011 contract this afternoon despite the 0.45% decline in the price of the underlying stock to $94.04. Options traders exchanged more than 7,200 calls at the January 2011 $95 strike by 3:10pm in New York trade. It looks like the majority, or approximately 5,300 of the call options, were purchased for an average premium of $1.58 a-pop. Call buyers make money if CAT’s shares rally more…
Banzai7 Periodic Table of Wall St. Criminal Elements
by ilene - November 17th, 2010 3:12 am
Here’s another hilarious piece of artwork by William Banzai7. It was previously reprinted at Zero Hedge, but I somehow missed it. Click on the table to enlarge. – Ilene
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Contrarian Player Constructs Three-Legged Bullish Spread on Sprint Nextel Corp.
by Option Review - November 4th, 2010 5:55 am
Today’s tickers: S, WFC, LAMR, MGM, AMR, CASY & AIG
S - Sprint Nextel Corp. – A sizeable long-term bullish transaction involving 30,000 option contracts on Sprint Nextel Corp. indicates one optimistic player expects shares in the telecommunications company to rebound ahead of February 2011 expiration. Since reporting third-quarter earnings the morning of October 27, 2010, Sprint’s shares have fallen as much as 20.4% from a high of $4.85 on October 26 to today’s lowest value of $3.86. It looks like the 20% correction in the price of the underlying stock has made conditions favorable enough for this contrarian strategist to establish a relatively cheap bullish stance on Sprint. The trader enacted a three-legged bullish position, selling a chunk of put options in order to partially finance the purchase of a debit call spread. Sprint’s shares have recovered off their intraday low of $3.86 and are currently down 2.2% to stance at $4.01 as of 2:55 pm. The investor sold 10,000 puts at the February 2011 $3.5 strike for a premium of $0.21 each, purchased 10,000 now in-the-money calls at the February 2011 $4.0 strike at a premium of $0.43 per contract, and sold 10,000 calls at the February 2011 $5.0 strike for a premium of $0.16 apiece. Net premium paid to initiate the three-legged spread amounts to $0.06 per contract. The investor responsible for the transaction makes money if Sprint’s shares rally 1.25% over the current price of $4.01 to surpass the effective breakeven point at $4.06 by expiration day in February. The bullish trader will walk away with maximum potential profits of $0.94 per contract if Sprint’s shares surge 24.7% and trade above $5.00 ahead of expiration next year. The short stance in Feb. 2011 $3.5 strike puts implies the investor sees shares trading above $3.50, but also indicates his willingness to have 1 million shares of the underlying put to him at that price if the puts should land in-the-money by expiration. Interestingly, Sprint is scheduled to report fourth-quarter earnings…
SIGTARP Calls Out Tim Geithner On Various Violations Including Data Manipulation, Lack Of Transparency, “Cruel” Cynicism, And Gross Incompetence
by ilene - October 26th, 2010 1:53 am
SIGTARP Calls Out Tim Geithner On Various Violations Including Data Manipulation, Lack Of Transparency, "Cruel" Cynicism, And Gross Incompetence
Courtesy of Tyler Durden
SigTarp Neil Barofsky has just released the most scathing critique of all the idiots in the administration, with a particular soft spot for Tim Geithner.
On the failure of TARP to increase lending:
As these quarterly reports to congress have well chronicled and as Treasury itself recently conceded in its acknowledgement that "banks continue to report falling loan balances," TARP has failed to "increase lending" with small businesses in particular unable to secured badly needed credit. Indeed, even now, overall lending continues to contract, despite the hundreds of billions of TARP dollars provided to banks with the express purpose to increase lending.
On TARP’s sole success of boosting Wall Street bonuses:
While large bonuses are returning to Wall Street, the nation’s poverty rate increased from 13.2% in 2008 to 14.3% in 2009, and for far too many, the recession has ended in name only.
On TARP’s failure in general:
Finally, the most specific of TARP’s Main Street goals, "preserving homeownership" has so far fallen woefully short, with TARP’s portion of the Administration’s mortgage modification program yielding only approximately 207,000 ongoing permanent modifications since TARP’s inception, a number that stands in stark contrast to the 5.5 million homes receiving foreclosure filings and more than 1.7 million homes that have been lost to foreclosure since January 2009.
On the Treasury’s scam in minimizing publicized AIG losses, and on Geithner as a Wall Street puppet whose actions are increasingly destroying public faith in the government:
While SIGTARP offers no opinion on the appropriateness or accuracy of the valuation contained in the Retrospective, we believe that the Retrospective fails to meet basic transparency standards by failing to disclose: (1) that the new lower estimate followed a change in the methodology that Treasury previously used to calculate expected losses on its AIG investment; and (2) that Treasury would be required by its auditors to use the older, and presumably less favorable, methodology in the official audited financials statements. To avoid potential confusion, Treasury should have disclosed that it had changed its valuation methodology and should have published a side-by-side comparison of its new numbers with what the projected losses would be under the auditor-approved methodology that Treasury had used previously and will
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Which Way Wednesday – So Long Summers!
by Phil - September 22nd, 2010 8:06 am
Larry Summers is out!
Hopefully this portends a shake-up of the Administration’s economic policy but that will very much depend on who is appointed to replace him. It is, once again, the economy stupid and Larry’s stint as Director of the National Economics Council has given us far too much of the same at a time where we really needed — change. As Barry Rhitholtz points out:
He was one of the chief architects of the crisis. In addition to believing all of the usual foolishness about efficient markets, he bought into the radical deregulation arguments pushed by the free market absolutists.
Summers was Treasury Secretary when Glass Steagall was repealed. Instead of speaking out against the irresponsible Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999), he actively supported it. Instead of explaining to the public how Glass Steagall prevented Wall Street crises from spilling over into Main Street for 65 years, he rolled over for Citibank. The repeal of Glass Steagall was not a cause of the crisis, but it allowed the net damage to be far, far worse than it would have otherwise been. And it was emblematic of the corporate takeover of the legislative process. For a fee (campaign donation) you could write your own regulations. How could that ever go wrong?
Even more ruinously, Summers oversaw the passage of Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 that exempted financial derivatives from all regulatory oversight. The CFMA made the AIG collapse not only possible, but likely. It helped to set up both Lehman and Bear Stearns. CFMA allowed AIG FP to write over $3 trillion in derivatives, reserving precisely zero dollars in case an underwritten derivative needed to be paid.
Conservatives should not be celebrating the departure of Larry Summers, he was a guy who "played ball" with Big Business and it is very likely that his replacement will have a less friendly stance towards our Corporate Citizens, who made 60% of the income in this country in 2009 but paid just 6% of the taxes ($138Bn).
Larry has to get out of town before the Administration goes after his meal-ticket and begins asking Big Business to pay their fair share, an issue that is very likely to shape the next election cycle. The chart on the left is a measure of taxes paid in relation to GDP and you’ll notice that corporations…
Goldman Sachs: Bullies on the Block
by ilene - September 14th, 2010 3:25 pm
Goldman Sachs: Bullies on the Block
Courtesy of Janet Tavakoli, President, Tavakoli Structured Finance
Originally published in Huffington Post
Arianna Huffington’s new book, Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream
For most Americans, the Great Recession never ended, and for many of the 14.9 million unemployed Americans, it’s a 21st century Depression. Yet in December 2009, Larry Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council, told ABC news: "Today, everybody agrees that the recession is over, and the question is what the pace of the expansion is going to be."
The recession was over for bailed-out banks paying billions in bonuses. Taxpayers fund Wall Street with nearly zero-cost loans, and Congress changed accounting rules in April 2009 so that Wall Street firms could hide losses to create the illusion of "big profits," as they try to fill the gaping holes in their balance sheets.
Money Cartel’s Yes Men
The money cartel is as dangerous as the Mexican drug cartel. Its weapons of choice are taxpayer subsidized funds for swarms of Washington lobbyists, "money jobs" for politically connected yes men, and lucrative positions for former regulators and the law firms that hire them. Wall Street is winning the class war, and taxpayers supplied the arms.
[White House Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel famously declared, "Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go
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SOME BAILOUT QUESTIONS FED CZAR ‘BERNANKE THE MAGNIFICENT’ STILL HASN’T ANSWERED (BEATDOWN)
by ilene - September 12th, 2010 3:23 pm
MUST READ: Some Bailout Questions FED Czar ‘Bernanke The Magnificent’ STILL Hasn’t Answered (Beatdown)
Courtesy of The Daily Bail
Why were bank bondholders made whole, while taxpayers got shafted? That’s the most important question of all, yet no one has ever asked him.
—
Two exceptional editorials from the WSJ earlier this week. Reprinted with permission.
On the key facts behind the bailouts of 2008, regulators have stonewalled the public, the press and even the inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. On Wednesday, we’ll find out if they can also stonewall the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
Chairman Phil Angelides and his panel will begin two days of hearings on the subject of "Too Big to Fail," featuring testimony from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Sheila Bair. Across bailouts from Bear Stearns to AIG, the government has refused to release its analysis of the "systemic risks" that compelled it to mount unprecedented interventions into the financial system with taxpayer money. Two years after the crisis, Mr. Angelides and his colleagues should finally let the sun shine on this critical period of our economic history.
A year ago we told you about former FDIC official Vern McKinley, who has made a series of Freedom of Information Act requests. He wanted to know what Fed governors meant when they said a Bear Stearns failure would cause a "contagion." This term was used in the minutes of the Fed meeting at which the central bank discussed plans by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to finance Bear’s sale to J.P. Morgan Chase. The minutes contained no detail on how exactly the fall of Bear would destroy America.
He also requested minutes of the FDIC board meeting at which regulators approved financing for a Citigroup takeover of Wachovia. To provide this assistance, the board had to invoke the "systemic risk" exception in the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, and it therefore had to assert that such assistance was necessary for the health of the financial system. Yet days later, Wachovia cut a better deal to sell itself to Wells Fargo, instead of Citi. So how necessary was the assistance?
The regulators have been giving Mr. McKinley the Heisman, but two weeks ago federal Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle made the FDIC show her the Wachovia documents. She is still…
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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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