The people at the Council on Foreign Relations speculate that US interest rates on Treasury debt will be increasing around the end of the first quarter if the Fed discountinues its monetization of mortgage debt.
As the Fed has essentially purchased ALL new US Treasury issuance since 2009, that seems to be a reasonable bet.
"The Federal Reserve plans to stop buying securities issued by government housing loan agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the end of the first quarter.
This is not only likely to push up mortgage rates; Treasury rates should rise as well. Throughout 2009, the private sector sold a portion of their agency holdings to the Fed and used those funds to buy Treasurys.
Once the Fed’s agency purchases stop, this private sector portfolio shift will end, removing a major source of demand in the Treasury market.
As the chart shows, since the start of 2009 the Fed has bought or financed the entire increase in Treasury issuance. As Fed purchases slow and Treasury issuance continues at a high level, interest rates will have to move up to attract new buyers."
The futures were drifting along until 3 am and the Shanghai Composite had closed down 2.3% at 2,897. At 3:23 the Hang Seng was looking to close down as well but then Gordon Brown, the UK Prime Minister, on his way to the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh this week said:
The stimulus that we have still got to give the world economy is greater than the stimulus we have already had. What we want to do is safeguard a recovery from a recession we feared would develop into a depression… By meeting at Pittsburgh, we are looking at how we can put in place for the future the mechanism or path that can lead us to either making decisions about better ways of creating growth that is sustainable in the future, a better early warning system for the world economy about potential crises, a better way of resolving difficulties or imbalances around the world.. I have been talking to many countries in Asia as well as in Europe, and I have been talking to President Obama and others, and I believe that there is support for that framework.
WooEee! More free money!!! No sooner did the words come out of Mr. Brown’s mouth than the Hang Seng began to climb, reversing a down day to finish up 228 points, right at the 21,700 line they have been struggling to hold since last Thursday. Gold flew up to $1,020 and oil jumped to $71 worthless-looking dollars and, as usual, once Asia closed, the dollar was free once again to drift down to 91 Yen (Japanese markets were closed today). But, despite his performance, Gordon Brown may not win today’s Globey Award for blatant market manipulation.
Brown’s performance was great – make a bold statement that indicates another $13Tn or more may be dumped on the Global economy and insinuate the the whole G20 is behind him before jumping on a plane, leaving the British tabloids (owned by Gang of 12 member Rupert Murdoch) to boost the market for 2 days in a row – BRILLIANT!
But, he does have serious competition this morning by not one, not two but THREE Gang of 12 members as UBS, GS and JPM triple teamed up and all issued reports saying "Russian stocks are poised to surge, extending an 88 percent rally this year, as the economy’s recovery spurs profits." "Earnings growth is set to be…
One of the key questions is, "Can the Fed ever unwind all of the positions it has taken on from failed banks and Wall Street firms?"
This is an important question, because if the answer is "No, at least not precisely when they wish to do it," then it raises the risk that all that hot money will prove immune to efforts to recall it and it will whiz around creating all sorts of monetary trouble.
Now that the Fed has declared that the recession has ended and green shoots are everywhere, the next obvious part of this journey will have to be the unwinding of the massive amounts of stimulus and thin-air money that has been injected into the system.
Certainly after watching the risk-money out-chasing junker stocks well up off their lows, we can surmise that the speculative animal juices are flowing again and that the Fed might want to consider taking away the punchbowl.
Instead, today the Fed bought another $18.8 billion net ($32.4 billion gross) in agency mortgage-backed securities, which represents the exchange of thin-air money for GSE MBS paper.
So far, all that we know about is that the Fed is talking about how to take the punchbowl away but that bankers are warning the Fed to "go slow."
Sept. 3 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve is trying to prepare investors for an end to its housing-debt purchases, while keeping interest rates near zero, reflecting an economy pulling out of a recession with little momentum.
Federal Open Market Committee members discussed extending the end date of the agency and mortgage-backed bond programs, minutes of the group’s Aug. 11-12 meeting showed yesterday. The move would be aimed at avoiding disruptions in housing credit at a time when recovery prospects are clouded by rising unemployment and slowing wage gains, analysts said.
While the economy is projected to expand this quarter, central bankers had “particular” concern about the job market, signaling that the FOMC may need to see a peak in the unemployment rate before it begins withdrawing monetary stimulus. Some policy makers saw dangers of “substantial” declines in the inflation rate, yesterday’s report showed.
“They need to see labor markets improve and inflation stabilize, and not fall,
The Federal Reserve and the federal government are attempting to "plug the gap" caused by a slowdown of private credit/debt creation.
Non-US demand for the dollar must remain high, or the dollar will fall.
Demand for US assets is in negative territory for 2009
The TIC report and Federal Reserve Custody Account are reviewed and compared
The Federal Reserve has effectively been monetizing US government debt by cleverly enabling foreign central banks to swap their Agency debt for Treasury debt.
The shell game that the Fed is currently playing obscures the fact that money is being printed out of thin air and used to buy US government debt.
The Federal Reserve is monetizing US Treasury debt and is doing so openly, both through its $300 billion commitment to buy Treasuries and by engaging in a sleight of hand maneuver that would make a street hustler from Brooklyn blush.
This report will wade through some technical details in order to illuminate a complicated issue, but you should take the time to learn about this because it is essential to understanding what the future may hold.
One of the most important questions of the day concerns how the dollar will fare in the coming months and years. If you are working for a wage, it is essential to know whether you should save or spend that money. If you have assets to protect, where you place those monies is vitally important and could make the difference between a relatively pleasant future and a difficult one. If you have any interest at all in where interest rates are headed, you’ll want to understand this story.
There are three major tripwires strung across our landscape, any of which could rather suddenly change the game, if triggered. One is a sudden rush into material goods and commodities, that might occur if (or when) the truly wealthy ever catch on that paper wealth is a doomed concept. A second would occur if (or when) the largest
Although it’s just the minutes and not a policy decision, often the minutes of the Fed meeting move the market more than the decision itself. Sure a cynic may say that the reason for this is that the minutes are less meaningful and they are just an excuse for manipulators to create whatever market reaction suits their needs but we are no cynics here are we? On the last Fed Minutes Day (April 8th) the market opened up 1%, then fell 1% on a poor oil report at 10:30, then rose 1.5% by 1pm, then dropped 1.5% through the minutes until 3pm when it amazingly recovered and we finished the day up about .75%. Isn’t that exciting?!?
It sure was exciting for us as we had grabbed the DIA $78 puts at 1:10 as the market rallied for no particular reason and we caught the dead top of a 150-point drop for a huge win. We’ll be looking for opportunities like that today but we’re not going to force it – that opportunity came because the markets were up irrationally so it was easy to play. My quick notes (at 2:03) from the last Fed release were: "Credit not easing. Concern over assets they are buying under TALF. Serious downward GDP forecast to -1.3% for 2009 AND 2010 Continuing deflation risk. Economic activity fell sharply and should continue to contract. Uptick in housing starts was a glitch, not a trend. Energy and Ags now being affected by slowdown where they were not before." As I concluded at the time "Not exactly rally fuel."
Nonetheless, the next day we jumped 250 points to 8,083 as "green shoots" were seen in the Fed’s language. That was April 9th and we spent the rest of the month struggling below the 8,100 mark but punched over at the end and here we are, up 10% from the last minutes and looking for even greener shoots to break us over our 40% lines. What gave us a boost on April 29th was the FOMC non-decision where the Fed said: "Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in March indicates that the economy has continued to contract, though the pace of contraction appears to be somewhat slower." I know – don’t you just get goosebumps? Exciting as a statement like that may be to investors…
"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `to be master -- that's all.'"
Lewis Carroll
I thought it was interesting that Narayan Kocherlakota, president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, decided to print a recovery assertion now. This seems almost like a followup to the Recession Myth Claim put forward a few years ago by Deregulator in Chief Phil Gramm: ...
The S&P 500 got off to weak start and, after retracing a modest morning rally, spent most of the day in the shallow red with an intraday low of 0.63%. But in the last seven minutes of trading, the index recovered enough to a make a small gain of 0.14%. This is the fourth advance, the first was Monday's 1.60 surge, but the last three have ranged from 0.05% to 0.17% with today's close near the high of the miserly three-day series.
The index is now up 5.02% for 2012, which is 6.93% off the interim closing high.
From an intermediate perspective, the S&P 500 is 95.2% above the March 2009 closing low and 15.6% below the nominal all-time high of October 2007.
Below are two charts of the index, with and without the 50 and 200-day moving averages.
And it was shaping up to be such a good year. According to the latest just released HSBC hedge fund performance update, increasingly more funds are starting to lose it, certainly for the month, but increasingly more for the year. How many LPs will be eager to keep on paying 2% management fees (forget performance) to funds who at best are long AAPL (at least 226 of them), and at worst have underperformed the S&P, for the second year in a row, by anywhere from 5 to 15%?
TIF - Tiffany & Co., Inc. – A surprise earnings miss and a reduced full-year profit and sales forecast from luxury jewelry retailer, Tiffany & Co., took some of the luster out of its shares today, with the stock trading down 8.5% at $56.55 as of 11:50 a.m. in New York. Options activity on Tiffany this morning suggests mixed sentiment on the st...
RealNetworks, Inc. (NASDAQ: RNWK) today announced that it has reached an agreement with the Washington State Attorney General over discontinued e-commerce practices. In accordance with the settlement agreement, RealNetworks has committed to:
Discontinuing the use of pre-checked boxes for purchases of RealNetworks subscription products; Spelling out more clearly the material terms of RealNetworks product offerings; Offering online cancellation of subscription offerings; Enhancing RealNetworks customer support guidelines regarding cancellation. Statement from Thomas Nielsen, President & CEO of RealNetworks:
"About two years ago, the Washington State Attorney General's Office contacted us regarding concerns they had with some of our e-commerce practices.
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...
First we'll go to the technicals. Back in mid April I had opined a 'bear flag' formation was being created. [Apr 17, 2012: Potential Bear Flag Forming] But the market being the difficult beast it is, head faked everyone and rather than a break down from said flag it first went UP and nearly touched yearly highs. This caused everyone to think the bear flag had failed…. only to lead to a horrid May in the market. Generally a bear flag will resolve relatively quickly but the longer...
Despite the fact that U.S. equities are well-positioned and well-supported to go up, once again it is the headlines out of Europe—especially Greece—that are scaring off investors. Some are saying that it is now likely (and even desirable) that Greece will default on all its sovereign debt, withdraw from the euro, and severely devalue its domestic currency (Drachma?). This will allow them to operate a balanced budget while pumping cash into growth initiatives, rather than suffer the ravages of Germany-mandated austerity.
Some say, so what? Greece makes up only about 2% of the Eurozone’s overall economy. Nevertheless, you might say that t...
Markets died and then rallied to flat again as European leaders “prepared contingencies” for a possible Grexit
Markets died hard and fast earlier today as major indexes registered as much as 1.5% of losses after news that Euro zone officials were unofficially “preparing contingencies” for a Greek exit from the Euro. Unofficial statements were not enough to keep markets down however, as major indexes rallied back to flat levels by the end of the day.
So the world continues to wait on Europe, as the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEACA:SPY) gained .05%, the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (NYSEARCA:...
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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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In this article, please revisit an article written two years ago titled, "The Calm Before the Storm." This article focused on the patent cliff that was looming in the pharmaceutical industry, that was later picked up by the New York Times and several other bloggers! Subsequent articles were written about big pharma company's revenue streams, and the pros and cons of of their later stage pipelines. Other articles have also attempted to identify smaller biotechs with the potential to reap big reward...
My last weekend update is dated from January 30 so after a long hiatus, here is an update of our virtual portfolio. Since the last update, we have closed the AA Money portfolio due to a lack of enthusiasm (and activity) and I have stopped tracking the FAS strangle as the low VIX makes it hard to get rewarded for the risk! But we have added a small $5KP virtual portfolio which does not use any margin.
FAS Money
We have had to recover from a big move up by FAS and a low VIX which keeps option prices low. But the portfolio has gaine about 10% since the last update.
Last update P&L - $5499.00
IWM Money
Not a lot of activity in this portfolio where the main focus is on the large IWM BCS. But the portfolio has grown over 20% since the last update.
Last update P&L - $1998.00
$5KP Portfolio
This is the virtual portfolio that replaced the AA Money portfolio. It does not use margin and we will keep holdings under $5K.
AAPL $50K P...
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What a morning already!
WooEee! More free money!!! No sooner did the words come out of Mr. Brown’s mouth than the Hang Seng began to climb, reversing a down day to finish up 228 points, 
Courtesy of 
Now that the Fed has declared that the recession has ended and green shoots are everywhere, the next obvious part of this journey will have to be the unwinding of the massive amounts of stimulus and thin-air money that has been injected into the system.
Fed days are always great fun.
Nonetheless, the next day we jumped 250 points to 8,083 as "green shoots" were seen in the Fed’s language. That was April 9th and 
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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
(
