Jobless Thursday – America’s Infrastructure Crisis
by phil - September 9th, 2010 8:13 am
What a disaster!
Not only are our students failing to keep up with the rest of the World but America is close to getting a failing grade in Infrastructure. That’s right, what was once the World’s mightiest and proudest economy, this once great nation of builders has been given an overall grade of D in the American Society of Civil Engineers report on our Infrastructure.
The 2009 Grades include: Aviation (D), Bridges (C), Dams (D), Drinking Water (D-), Energy (D+), Hazardous Waste (D), Inland Waterways (D-), Levees (D-), Public Parks and Recreation (C-), Rail (C-), Roads (D-), Schools (D), Solid Waste (C+), Transit (D), and Wastewater (D-). Awful? Shameful? How about DANGEROUS? Deadly even…
For one thing, The number of high hazard dams—dams that, should they fail, pose a significant risk to human life—has increased by more than 3,000 just since 2007, when there were "just" 1,000 dams at risk and 3,000 to pro actively maintain but the administration refused to fund the project, now the costs have tripled as the situation deteriorates but that’s nothing compared to what happens if just a few of them break completely. 1,819 dams are now in the "high hazard" category and, with the current budget, for every one damn that is reparied, two more become an emergency.
In urban areas, roadway congestion tops 40 percent. According to the report, decades of underfunding and inattention have jeopardized the ability of our nation’s infrastructure to support our economy and facilitate our way of life. At risk of catastrophic failure besides the dams (including levees) are things like our drinking water, sewage systems, bridges, waterways, rail lines, airports, roadways (especially elevated ones) and, of course, our entire electrical grid. Additionally, 7 Billion gallons of clean drinking water is lost every day through leaking pipes – that’s 23 gallons per citizen per day WASTED for want of $11Bn in repairs – don’t bother worrying about it, the last Administration wouldn’t fund it in 2001 or 2006 so why bother now – 10 Trillion gallons later?
The ASCE calculates a 5-year $2.2Tn investment is needed to address the situation, that’s $500Bn (25%) more than it was 5-years ago, when they released their last report and nothing was done by the previous administration. So, rather than having invested in America, putting people to work and improving EVERYONE’s way of life, we spent over $1Tn fighting a war, another $600Bn a year on our regular military operations and gave over $1Tn worth of taxe breaks…
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Weakening Weekly Wrap-Up
by phil - August 15th, 2009 8:27 am
What was that?
Did we just finish lower on Friday than Monday? We almost forgot such a thing can happen in Obama's magic market-land but here we are with a week in which the stock market had not one, not two but three (3) red days out of 5. You have to go all the way back to the week of June 22, when the market was finishing a 600-pont down leg from June 15th, to see so much blood on Wall Street. I have, for a month, been drawing parrallels betwen this market top and the market top that ended on June 12th and it's all about next week as options expire and things begin to get very interesting.
As you can see from David Fry's chart on the right, we hit the very tippy top of our expected range on the Qs and then could not close the deal above our $40 line. It didn't seem too much too ask – just a teeny, tiny little breakout and we would have been happy to buy some GOOG and get back into SPWRA and find some other 4-letter stocks to play with, even some semiconductors if the SOX had finally taken out our 308 mark but nooooooooooooo – the Nasdaq couldn't hold 2,000, let alone our 2,017 target, which they teased us with two weeks ago but never came back to.
And don't even get me started on yesterday's close. For those of you who have ever doubted the power of the stick, David and I say HA!, as there has never been a more bogus end to a trading session than the despicable display of market manipulation that went on yesterday, just before the close. The only good thing I have to say about this very sad state of unregulated market affairs is that at least we called it practically to the penny and played it perfectly because, as I often say to members: "We don't care IF the markets are rigged as long as we know HOW they are rigged so we can place our bets accordingly."
As shamefully despicable as these "stick saves" are at least they fall into a pattern that we have learned to recognize and profit from in Member Chat. I was, of course, very bearish in the morning post as we expected a minimum 1.25% correction (1.27…
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Friday Already? Market Manipulation Mania Edition!
by phil - March 27th, 2009 7:54 am
What an exciting week this has been.
A nice 10% up move in the markets and yesterday the Nasdaq closed green for the year but we'll have to see if it lasts today. We went short into the close, 60% bearish as two days in a row of pumped-up closes was just too much to…. bare. After a near 25% run off the bottom, a 5% correction would be good and healthy and we'll be looking to hold the same levels we set on the way up on this pullback – those would be: Dow 7,636, S&P 805, Nas 1,525, NYSE 5,075 and Russell 420, roughly 15% off the bottoms with 5% rule adjustments.
Our dollar adjusted breakout levels remain Dow 8,000, S&P 847, Nas 1,585, NYSE 5,321 and Russell 456 but be aware that the dollar swings wildly almost every day and I am far too lazy to keep adjusting those levels so roughly there is what we're looking for. I already sent out an alert to members this morning pointing out that the dollar was being forced up at the EU open and it seems to be more manipulation aimed at supporting US equity charts for another day as the declining dollar boosts the relative value of the stocks – I'm not sure it will last as it's very expensive to keep the dollar down.
They have literally thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the markets this week to get a 10% gain into the end of quarter (IF they can hold it together that long) but, what next? For the first time in a very long time I've called for raising cash as we're heading into some very volatile earnings and I'm really not expecting us to break our upper levels, now just 2% away, without considerable effort. Balance is usually fine but sometimes the flexibility of cash is a big help!
I'm not bearish per se - I still think the market should settle down back around our old 8,650 range after earnings but it will probably be a wild ride getting there. While the economy is better than you may think (see very cool chart) - charts do still rule. If we can't break our top levels by next Wednesday, we're much more likely to see AT LEAST a 50% retrace of our gains off the bottom. That's why I like a little more cash here, huge drops can…
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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.