Wednesday Rejection Weakness

by Phil - February 3rd, 2010 8:21 am

So close but yet so far!

We set our bounce levels way back on Jan 25th and just yesterday I posted up the WEAK BOUNCE levels we need to see before taking our bullish betting to the next level but we have only skimmed along our lines, finishing yesterday at Dow 10,296 (down by 2), S&P 1,103 (down by 2), Nasdaq 2,190 (down by 10), NYSE 7,001 (up by 1) and RUT 614 (down by 6).  This may be seem like some pretty amazing targeting 10 days in advance but, actually, we could have predicted this move last year as it’s nothing more than the same 5% Rule levels we’ve been using since the middle of last year.

That is why, we are not in the least bit impressed by close.  Close, as they say, is no cigar!  Don’t forget those are the natrural dead-cat type bounce levels off the drop from the top that we are trained to IGNORE as they are meaningless in the grand scheme of things.  What is meaningful is when they we retake those levels and that means we found a true floor at 5% (see weekend chart)  NOT taking back AND holding our retrace levels means we are very likely to see phase 2 of our leg down and hit 10% drop levels of Dow 9,630, S&P 1,035, Nasdaq 2,088, NYSE 6,660 and Russell 585 so we will now become much more concerned by failure or those lower levels (10,058 on the Dow etc) which MUST HOLD.

We’re not there yet, we MAY be consolidating along the 5% lines and that would be good, but unnerving.  We have our disaster hedges in place and we got our commodity rally so we can on some oil puts (what a joke at $77.50 already with yet another inventory build to be announced today) and perhaps even some gold puts as we test $1,130 (GLL $9 puts have very little premium at .90).  Our favorite hedge of the moment is once again EDZ, who are back to $5.50 thanks to a nice move up in Asia today.  March $5 puts can be sold for .45 and that’s a very nice way to collect premium as EDZ has to fall 20% before you even owe the putter a nickel but the July $4/6 bull call spread at .85 pays $2 (up 135%) should emerging markets falter (and you know how we love to exploit those emerging…

Tags: CHINA, debt, EDZ, GLL, Gold, Greece, IYR, PIMCO, Roubini, SRS, Stiglitz, TBT

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Roubini, Summers and Obama: Duh

by ilene - February 1st, 2010 5:20 pm

Roubini, Summers and Obama: Duh

Courtesy of Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker

Out of Davos come two opinions that Bloomberg (and others) have spun as arguing for "continuing stimulus efforts":

“The headline number will look large and big, but actually when you dissect it, it’s very dismal and poor,” Roubini said in a Jan. 30 Bloomberg Television interview following a U.S. Commerce Department report that showed economic expansion of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter. “I think we are in trouble.”

Roubini said more than half of the growth was related to a replenishing of depleted inventories and that consumption was reliant on monetary and fiscal stimulus. As these forces ebb, the rate will slow to 1.5 percent in the second half of 2010.

No really?  We’ve embedded $500 billion in annual transfer payments of various forms over the last 18 months.  That’s about 3% of GDP, or more than the "advance" GDP number says that personal consumption expanded (2.2%)

In other words, but for the additions to transfer payments over what was present before we went into this mess consumption would be printing a solid negative number - still.

Summers said that the "statistical recovery" won’t mask "a human recession."

Human recession Larry?  Is that like the "mental recession" that John McCain’s favored economic wonk proclaimed during the campaign?

Never mind our "good friend" President Obama, who is proposing a $3.8 trillion budget today.  In a break with the usual "optimistic" view compared to the CBO, he’s predicting that the deficit this year will total $1.8 trillion, or almost 50% of the total federal spending - and that’s with more than $800 billion in higher taxes (which have a near-zero chance of actually passing Congress in an election year!)

The President claims to be enacting a "spending freeze" and claims that it is "everything but security and defense."  In typical Washington form this is a lie - education and R&D (everywhere) are getting a 6% increase.  This, while inflation is currently running at a statistical zero, and on the back of the last year’s budget which amounted to a "ratchet up" game played with the voters.

This is the same game, by the way, that was played with the states and their so-called "Federal Help" during the last year.  To qualify for "stimulus" payments from The Federal Government they had to agree to freeze spending at 2005 or above levels - right at the top of the housing bubble when their revenues…

Tags: Human recession, mental recession, monetary and fiscal stimulus, Obama, politicians, President Obama, Roubini, Summers, transfer payments, Wall Street

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Singing “Davos Done and We Need Another Loan”

by Phil - January 31st, 2010 7:40 am

Debt-O, debt-uh-oh
Interest come and we need another loan
Debt-O, debt-uh-oh
Interest come and we need another loan

Work our lives just to lose our homes
Interest come and we need another loan
Stack default swaps till they come undone
Interest come and we need another loan

Come on Economists, tell us some more BS
Interest come and we need another loan
Come on Economists, tell us some more BS
Interest come and we need another loan

6%, 7% - it’s a credit crunch
Interest come and we need another loan
6%, 7% - it’s a credit crunch
Interest come and we need another loan

Debt-O, debt-uh-oh
Interest come and we need another loan
Debt-O, debt-uh-oh
When interest comes we’ll need another loan
 

It was the best of times (with the IMF predicting 3.9% Global growth) and the worst of times (with Roubini saying we’re all doomed) at Davos this week as the men who rule the world gathered to divide the spoils over card games while vying with each other for podium and TV time so they could talk their various books from the safety of the Swiss mountains.  Davos, a tiny village perched on a mountain with just two main streets, lacks the protests of other Global gatherings.  During the annual meeting, the town is taken hostage by thousands of police.  “Anyone who looks like a protester can be thrown off the train,” says Marco Leutholz, head of the local Socialist party (and that train often overlooks steep cliffs!).  Sir Howard Davies (director of the LSE) writes:

The mood is certainly better than last year, when the world was ending, but it is worse than at the beginning of last week. Alessandro Profumo of Unicredit acutely observed that Davos is likely to accentuate whatever mood you arrived in, rather as alcohol does, I guess. So those who arrived nervous about the economic prospects are leaving even more jittery. If you arrived feeling pessimistic, you will leave somewhere between suicidal and homicidal.

The market background has not helped. Anxiety about Greece has grown over the past three days. In the circumstances, it was strange to see both the Greek prime minister and his finance minister here. Maybe the subtext was to show that there can be no crisis if they are munching muesli in the mountains, but though some may have been reassured, more people asked who was at home minding the taverna.

Hey I like that guy - let’s sign him up as a regular writer!  Let’s NOT sign up Bill Gates, as Captain Obvious posted on his blog: "One of the big topics of conversation here in Davos is the economy."  They say retirement makes your brain…

Tags: Cramer, Davies, Davos, Gates, Greece, Roubini, Sarkozy, Sorrell, Stiglitz, Whitbread

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Philly Fed Thursday - The Fix is In!

by Phil - January 21st, 2010 8:26 am

After what looked like a good recovery, there are signs that Northeast Manufacturing is in shap decline.

Jobless numbers are on the upswing as temporary holiday hiring is being trimmed faster than census jobs can pick up the slack.  We had a big build in inventories in Q4 as clearly manufacturers were overly optimistic and a sharp rise in commodity prices during the quarter didn’t help much either.  We get the official report at 10am today and the most optimistic expectations have us down about 10% from last month’s 20.4 reading so we can expect today’s report to move the market one way or the other. 

Not to worry though because, as Jonathan Weil points out in Bloomberg today, "the fix is in" on Wall Street as the 10-member Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has been given 11 months and $8M to examine the causes of the financial crisis, including Fannie Mae’s 2008 meltdown and the near-deaths of at least 10 other major financial institutions, including Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., American International Group Inc. and Citigroup.  The statute that created the commission says its report specifically must tackle the role of regulators, monetary policy, accounting practices, tax policy, fraud, capital requirements, credit raters, executive pay, derivatives and short selling — plus a dozen other required areas of study.  

Wow, that’s a lot of ground to cover!  To put in perspective what a joke this is, Weil points out that when Fannie Mae hired former U.S. Senator Warren Rudman in 2004 to investigate how its accounting practices had gone awry, his law firm’s final report took 17 months to complete and cost the company more than $60 Million.  $60M in 2004 to investigate ONE firm over 17 months and Congress has allocated $8M over 11 months to investigate a DOZEN firms as well as get an overview of the entire financial system.  What are the odds the commission can conduct all these investigations by mid-December and do a thorough job?  About zero, which clearly was Congress’s intent all along.  If this is a joke, it’s a bad one and it’s on US!

This is why we’re bullish on the markets (or the market manipulators, at least) - fundamentals don’t matter!  The banksters have taken control of government and are flat out laughing at us, the citizens of the US (and the world) as we cry "foul" and try to reign in the madness.  This is not just a US problem, it’s a global problem but you…

Tags: China GDP, DIA, GS, Jobs, Roubini, Whitney

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Options Expriation Day - Back Where We Started!

by Phil - July 17th, 2009 8:10 am

"And now we’re back where we started,
Here we go round again.
Day after day I get up and I say
I better do it again.

Where are all the people going?
Round and round till we reach the end.
One day leading to another,
Get up, go out, do it again." - Kinks

That’s right, we often talk about various market scams but there is no bigger scam in the world than options expiration day when all the stocks are herded back to prices that benefit the largest number of SELLERS of options while the buyers of options can only stare in shock as momentum shifts and trend-lines break and stock after stock magically settles into a value that wipes out the most possible premium.  There is something in options called the "Max Pain Theory" that says that stocks will always settle at the strike where the most puts and calls expire worthless but I think that’s a self-fulfilling prophesy as options activity tends to center around the strike as it moves so of course the strike is surrounded by the most options.

What isn’t a theory is what we can observe happening time and again.   This is why, at PSW, we primarily SELL options, not buy them.  Buying options is gambling, selling options is a business!  I often point out to members that options is the game in the world where you can be the "house" with no disadvantage.  In Las Vegas, you can bet with the house but they still have an edge but in options, there is no edge and day’s like this remind us why selling options beats buying them - not EVERY time but certainly OVER time. 

Our last option expiration day was June 19th and I will give you today’s levels to watch because they are the levels of June 19th:  Dow 8,540, S&P 921, Nasdaq 1,827, NYSE 5,934 and Russell 512.  All the markets have to do to take out the calls sold that day for a nickel or a dime is to hit those levels at some time today.  Of course, anything within 2.5% of those numbers is fine to as you can roll the calls you sold to the next month at no cost, collecting another premium for another month.  This is the centerpiece of our Buy/Write strategy, which we discussed last weekend and I will be putting up a new Buy List for Members…

Tags: BAC, C, CVX, GE, GOOG, Roubini, XOM

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Roubini: Oil Will Crash

by ilene - June 16th, 2009 9:55 pm

Tags: economic recovery, Oil, oil prices, Roubini, weak dollar

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