You will find many intriguing Q&As at EWI’s Message Board. We offer it as a free way for our Club EWI members and subscribers to interact with EWI and the Socionomics Institute’s experts. We strive to answer every Message Board reader, and publicly post the best Q&As.
By far, the most frequent question we’ve been asked recently is:
"What is your take on the persistent internet chatter that the Federal Reserve is holding up the stock market via QE2, POMO, etc.? How can stocks ever decline again if the Fed is in control?"
We have several active Message Board posts that touch on "market manipulation." But here is an eye-opening chart that will help shed more light on this issue.
EWI President Robert Prechter published this chart in his October 2008 Elliott Wave Theorist. Review this chart carefully. For too many investors, the crash of 2007-2009 is becoming a hazy memory. And almost no one in the mainstream financial media talks about the utter panic in the markets in September-October 2008, the worst part of the crash.
If you think back to that time, you may remember that the Federal Reserve and U.S. government took many aggressive steps to help stop the collapse. Every time they would announce a new intervention, the market would cheer. Result? Prechter’s chart gives an unequivocal answer:
As you can see, announcements of bailouts, unlimited credit, bans on short sales, etc., were powerless against the biggest stock market collapse in 76 years. The DJIA kept sliding. It didn’t stop until March 6, 2009 — after it had slipped below 6,500.
So: Is the Fed and the "Plunge Protection Team" engaged in market manipulation? You can browse EWI’s Message Board for some answers, but one thing is clear: When stocks were crashing two years ago, few dared to suggest that the Fed was in the saddle. Bob Prechter puts it best:
"When markets go up, the Fed seems to be in control; when they go down, it seems out of control. But the control aspect is an illusion."
You will find many intriguing Q&As at EWI’s Message Board. We offer it as a free way for our Club EWI members and subscribers to interact with EWI and the Socionomics Institute’s experts. We strive to answer every Message Board reader, and publicly post the best Q&As.
By far, the most frequent question we’ve been asked recently is:
"What is your take on the persistent internet chatter that the Federal Reserve is holding up the stock market via QE2, POMO, etc.? How can stocks ever decline again if the Fed is in control?"
We have several active Message Board posts that touch on "market manipulation." But here is an eye-opening chart that will help shed more light on this issue.
EWI President Robert Prechter published this chart in his October 2008 Elliott Wave Theorist. Review this chart carefully. For too many investors, the crash of 2007-2009 is becoming a hazy memory. And almost no one in the mainstream financial media talks about the utter panic in the markets in September-October 2008, the worst part of the crash.
If you think back to that time, you may remember that the Federal Reserve and U.S. government took many aggressive steps to help stop the collapse. Every time they would announce a new intervention, the market would cheer. Result? Prechter’s chart gives an unequivocal answer:
As you can see, announcements of bailouts, unlimited credit, bans on short sales, etc., were powerless against the biggest stock market collapse in 76 years. The DJIA kept sliding. It didn’t stop until March 6, 2009 — after it had slipped below 6,500.
So: Is the Fed and the "Plunge Protection Team" engaged in market manipulation? You can browse EWI’s Message Board for some answers, but one thing is clear: When stocks were crashing two years ago, few dared to suggest that the Fed was in the saddle. Bob Prechter puts it best:
"When markets go up, the Fed seems to be in control; when they go down, it seems out of control. But the control aspect is an illusion."
The long-debated topic of whether the ECB intervenes on behalf of the euro can now be put to rest. 120 pip move in a minute is not a short cover. It is, and always has been, forced central bank intervention. Bernanke is so happy Trichet is doing his work for him for the time being. Be very wary of buying stocks on this intervention, as Central Bank involvement now at best leads to a 12 hour temporary "fix" to the market that Bernanke et al want to sustain.
There has been a lot of chatter over the last year about the government’s involvement in the equity markets. Yesterday’s market action was certainly odd. Several large institutions were active buyers of enormous blocks of the S&P on no news. The volume shot through the roof from out of nowhere. It was not an unusual occurrence. We have seen it repeatedly over the course of the last 12 months (see here for more). Of course, this whole discussion has a very conspiratorial aspect to it, but I think it’s less nefarious than many presume (depending on your definition of nefarious when it come to pseudo-government intervention in markets).
The usual argument with regards to government intervention in the equity markets is pretty simple. The government, or the “President’s Working Group” (aka, the Plunge Protection Team) purchases securities in big blocks and jams prices higher. Jamming, gunning, carpet bombing (whatever you want to call it) is quite simple. In any market there are down times in terms of volume. If you have the firepower (the capital) and the desire you can knock out just about every asking price on the board. Have a look at just about any Russell 2,000 stock at around noon as the volume slows to a drizzle and ask yourself what you could do with $10,000,000? Of course, the same goes for the downside. You can hit the bids and literally knock them off the board in an illiquid market (exactly what we saw in Fall of 2008 with fund redemptions).
Anyone who has ever traded in size has seen this in action. It’s like taking a machine gun to a medieval battle or sending the U.S. Army to Baghdad (not that anyone would ever do such a thing). The point is, you can slice through prices like a hot knife through butter, create a certain sentiment in the market that actually generates attention (liquidity) and then get out on the other side of the trade by selling (or covering) to the crowd you’ve attracted. Of course, if you’re someone who has a longer time horizon than a few minutes…
Is the Fed manipulating the stock market? TrimTabs CEO Charles Biderman seems to think so, and he makes a strong case for his theory in an article at zerohedge.com.
Biderman focuses his attention on the mystery surrounding the stock market’s 9-month rally and asks, "Where is the money coming from?" After all, the market cap has increased by more than $6 trillion since March 9. That amount of money should be fairly easy to trace; right?
Wrong.
Biderman: "The most positive economic development in 2009 was the stock market rally. (But) We cannot identify the source of the new money that pushed stock prices up so far so fast. For the most part, the money did not from the traditional players that provided money in the past."
Huh? So, this vast infusion of liquidity--which helped the banks to avoid painful deleveraging--did not come from the usual suspects?
That’s right. According to Biderman, the money did not come from (a) companies ("which were a huge net seller") (b) retail investor funds, (c) retail investors, (d) foreign investors, or (e) pension funds.
What about the hedge funds?
Biderman: "We have no way to track in real time what hedge funds do, and they may well have shifted some assets into U.S. equities. But we doubt their buying power was enormous because they posted an outflow of $12 billion from April through November."
Okay; so we’re back to Square One. Where did the money come from?
Biderman again: "As far as we know, it is not illegal for the Federal Reserve or the U.S. Treasury to buy S&P 500 futures. Moreover, several officials have suggested the government should support stock prices. For example, former Fed board member Robert Heller opined in the Wall Street Journal in 1989, “Instead of flooding the entire economy with liquidity, and thereby increasing the danger of inflation, the Fed could support the stock market directly by buying market averages in the futures market, thereby stabilizing the market as a whole.” In a Financial Times article in 2002, an unidentified Fed official was quoted as acknowledging that policymakers had considered buying U.S. equities directly, not just futures. The official mentioned that the Fed could “theoretically buy anything to pump money into the system.”
Don’t miss reading this enlightening article. "Thank yous" to author Stephen Lendman ("we need a mass public awakening determined to change a very ugly system"), and Tyler Durden for finding.
Wall Street’s mantra is that markets move randomly and reflect the collective wisdom of investors. The truth is quite opposite. The government’s visible hand and insiders control markets and manipulate them up or down for profit – all of them, including stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies.
It’s financial fraud or what former high-level Wall Street insider and former Assistant HUD Secretary Catherine Austin Fitts calls "pump and dump," defined as "artificially inflating the price of a stock or other security through promotion, in order to sell at the inflated price," then profit more on the downside by short-selling. "This practice is illegal under securities law, yet it is particularly common," and in today’s volatile markets likely ongoing daily.
Why? Because the profits are enormous, in good and bad times, and when carried to extremes like now, Fitts calls it "pump(ing) and dump(ing) of the entire American economy," duping the public, fleecing trillions from them, and it’s more than just "a process designed to wipe out the middle class. This is genocide (by other means) – a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by the scoundrels of our history texts."
Why? Because the profits are enormous, in good and bad times, and when carried to extremes like now, Fitts calls it "pump(ing) and dump(ing) of the entire American economy," duping the public, fleecing trillions from them, and it’s more than just "a process designed to wipe out the middle class. This is genocide (by other means) – a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by the scoundrels of our history texts."
Fitts explains that much more than market manipulation goes on. She describes a "financial coup d’etat, including fraudulent housing (and other bubbles), pump and dump schemes, naked short selling, precious metals price suppression, and active intervention in the markets by the government and central bank" along with insiders. It’s a government-business partnership for enormous profits through "legislation, contracts, regulation (or lack…
I am glad I am not the only one who notices these things…. I am only speaking as someone who has watched the market since mid 90s and have never seen the behavior I see now. Whenever a key technical average is threatened a magical flood of futures buying comes in. Almost every morning the past 10 weeks pre market futures are green (apparently there is not enough time to buy stocks between 9:30 AM and 4:00 PM). The last 30 minutes has magical reversals – we saw it just last Thursday at a key moving average. [May 21: Bookkeeping - Covering Index Shorts Around 3:30 - 3:45 PM]
There can only be one entity who has the buying power to do this… and with Goldman Sachs as the 4th arm of government you can use them behind closed doors. But I am sure we’ll never know the truth… and I hate to sound like a grassy knoll type but the market just does not act like it used to if you really watch closely. The S&P now regularly jumps in 4-5 point increments in a matter of 60-120 seconds late in the day. In my humble opinion the government knows so many quant and program trades now are tied to the indexes that it is easy to manipulate this market… you lead, they will follow automatically (by their programming). So for a relatively low cost you can move things where they "should be", and the momentum performance chasing computers will support your case. And Goldman Sachs can pile up trading wins since somewhere in their bowels, in the cigar smoke… cheers of victory cry out. From late April via ZeroHedge
This is getting surreal. Goldman principal program trading is now well over 5x compared to its customer and agency trades and a 150 million share pick up compared to last week. For yet another week, Goldman’s principal trading represents more than half of all NYSE member firm principal transactions.
Clearly in a ‘free market’ system it would look embarrassing for this type of behavior to be out in the open. But heck Japan was tossing around
It seems the Fed head is confident that we are on our way back (despite cutting forecasts) - well he should be given his efforts - but as the following chart shows, arguing that downside risks have diminished seems not to fit too well with macro reality...
The question is - if the macro situation is so clearly weak, juist why is he is discussing a taper (if not because he knows he has broken the markets)
No change to the statement as expected and Ben is speaking now. Basically he is dovish – one takeaway which I mentioned quite a few months ago but he reiterated today. The 6.5% unemployment rate is a threshold NOT a trigger. What that means is if inflation is benign when 6.5% unemployment returns, the Fed will be in no rush to raise interest rates. i.e. the goalposts are soft, nor hard. The market rallied on that… but it's not new news really.
Also the majority of members do not anticipate selling MBS off the balance sheet – this is part and parcel with the view that the balance sheet will not...
We no longer have a free market. The world’s financial asset prices have become a plaything of central banks and the sovereign wealth funds of a few emerging powers.
Julian Callow from Barclays says they are buying $1.8 trillion worth of AAA or safe-haven bonds each year from an available pool of $2 trillion. Nothing like this has been seen before in modern times, if ever.
The Fed, the ECB, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, et al, own $10 trillion in bonds. China, the petro-powers, et al, own another $10 trillion. Between them they have locked up $20 trillion, equal to roughly 2...
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...
In advance of today's FOMC meeting outcome and Chairman Bernanke's press conference, let's take a quick look at a couple of items in the latest Wall Street Journal survey of economists -- this one conducted June 7-11. With the recent controversy over the direction of Treasury yields, a key issue addressed in the survey is where economists expect the 10-year yield to be across six timeframes: mid-year and year end 2013 through 2015.
The survey was sent to 52 economists, 46 of whom responded, and of the 46, some skipped individual survey questions. Here is a table showing the major response statistics: Low, Median (middle), Average (aka Mean), Mode (most frequent) and High.
As we readily see from the table, the responses for ...
On the heels of the American Medical Association's decision to officially recognize obesity as a disease, Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Reps. Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-La.) and Ron Kind (D-Wis.) introduced legislation today to help lower health care costs and prevent chronic diseases by addressing America's growing obesity crisis. The Treat and Reduce Obesity Act gives Medicare beneficiaries and their health care providers additional tools to reduce obesity by improving access to weight-loss counseling and new prescription drugs for chronic weight management, among other provisions.
Health care costs related to obesity total nearly $200 billion each year. Furthermore, nearly 70 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, and 42 percent of Americans are projected to become obese by 2030. Obesity increases the risk for chronic diseases ...
LZB - La-Z-Boy, Inc. – Shares in furniture producer, La-Z-Boy, Inc., increased as much as 3.9% to $19.80 at the start of the session, the highest level since 2004, ahead of the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report after the closing bell today. Options volume is up ahead of the report, with roughly 400 contracts in play this afternoon versus average daily volume of around 80 contracts. Trading in La-Z-Boy call options is outpacing puts, with the call/put ratio up above 4.3 as of the time of this writing. Some traders appear to be p...
The market responded well today to good economic news and to the positive and somewhat surprising response to the election of a moderate Iranian President. Some moderation in Turkey didn’t hurt either, and overnight positive markets in Asia and Europe gave bullish investors enough encouragement to buy equities broadly.
This drove all three major domestic indices up about 1% before a late small selloff left the S&P 500 Index up nearly 1% and the Nasdaq and Dow Jones Industrial Average both up well over 0.5%. We think it likely this week that the market will challenge highs set in late May.
NEW: Writers are available to chat with Members regarding topics presented in SWW, comments are found below each post.
Click here for the latest Stock World Weekly. Sign in with your PSW user name and password, or sign up for a free trial. There's an interesting option trade on LULU presented in the newsletter this week.
Trivia on lululemon via Paul Price, article found in NYTimes.
Reminder: OpTrader is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
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.
Please feel free to participate in the discussion and ask any questions you might have about this virtual portfolio, by clicking on the "comments" link right below.
To learn more about the swing trading virtual portfolio (strategy, performance, FAQ, etc.), please click here
Reminder: Craigzooka is available to chat with Members regarding his virtual portfolio performance, comments are found below each post.
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:...
Reminder: Pharmboy is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
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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By Stephen Lendman, posted at 
I am glad I am not the only one who notices these things…. I am only speaking as someone who has watched the market since mid 90s and have never seen the behavior I see now. Whenever a key technical average is threatened a magical flood of futures buying comes in. Almost every morning the past 10 weeks pre market futures are green (apparently there is not enough time to buy stocks between 9:30 AM and 4:00 PM). The last 30 minutes has magical reversals – we saw it just last Thursday at a key moving average. [May 21: Bookkeeping - Covering Index Shorts Around 3:30 - 3:45 PM]
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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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