Non-Farm Friday – Will Jobs Report Restore Market Confidence?
by phil - October 3rd, 2014 8:07 am
Ouch, that really stings!
They say you can't keep a good market down but it remains to be seen whether or not we have a good market with almost all of August and September's BS gains (see any of my posts for warnings and hedge ideas) erased just 3 days into October.
As you can see from our Big Chart, the Russell, in particular, completed it's 10% drop yesterday and, as I said to our Members in yesterday's live Chat Room as we neared the bottom:
/TF/Jasu – Just a bit oversold and, as noted yesterday (and above) it's completing a 10% drop from 1,200 at 1,080, so that's a very firm line for a bounce and that's 20% of a 120-point drop, so we're looking for 25-point bounces to 1,105 (weak) and 1,130 (strong) now. Anything less than 1,105 today is a failure and, if not tomorrow, then expect more downside next week.
/TF is the Futures on the Russell 2000 index and already this morning we're back to 1,097, which is up $1,700 per contract (see how easy this is?) from our 1,080 entry and just a little shy of our expected weak bounce.
We do expect resistance at 1,100 so this is a good time to take profits off the table and we can go long again over that line or flip to the S&P Futures (/ES) over 1,950 or Nasdaq (/NQ) over 4,000 or the Dow (/YM) over 16,800. As long as they are all performing, we can be confident on the long side.
As we discussed with our Members earlier this morning, there's no particular reason to get bullish – this is just a technical bounce we expect off our 5% lines per our 5% Rule™ and, if they trun out to be weak bounces, then we can expect another 2.5-5% of downside next week. That means we can use those same index lines to go short if they fail as we would to go long if they succeed this morning – that will be all up…
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Friday Follies – Will Today be the 13th Day Below S&P 2,000?
by phil - September 12th, 2014 7:20 am
12 failures so far.
12 trading days since the S&P first hit 2,000 (Aug 25th) in which we have failed to hold 2,000 for a full day. Not one and, unless the Futures pop 10 points before we open, not today either. On 10 of those days, we've had a late-day run-up on low volume that popped us over 2,000 and on 7 of those days, 2,000 held at the close but EVERY SINGLE DAY – it also failed to hold.
Let's not forget that, during this time, we've had TRILLIONS of Dollars of additional stimulus pledged by Carney, Draghi, Kuroda and other minor Central Banksters and Yellen has certainly been as doveish as she could by (while still tapering our existing Trillion Dollar stimulus). This is how our market behaves WITH Trillions of Dollars of cash being pumped into the Global economy – I wonder what will happen when it stops?
Of course, maybe it won't stop but, if it doesn't, this chart will look even uglier. This is a chart of our projected net annual interest payments on our debt in 10 years. That's $880 BILLION Dollars each year, just in interest payments, up $650Bn from the $233Bn we are spending now.
That's WITHOUT additional stimulus so I guess we can go for a bit more and make it an even Trillion, right? These are what we used to call CONSEQENCES – back when we used to care about such things. The US is not the leader in debt issuance, not by a long shot. Japan is 150% more in debt than we are and China has now doubled our debt to GDP ratio, after having been a creditor back in 2007 but now the undisputed king of stimulus spending.
Europe is also a mess. As I said to our Members in an early-morning Alert: Another thing the US Media is purposely ignoring is the 12.5% correction in Europe (example on Germany chart) since July that, so far, has bounced weakly (4-point drop on EWG has weak bounce at 28.8 and strong at 29.6) – failing exactly…
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Friday Fedapalooza – 8 Fed Speakers in One Day + Draghi!
by phil - August 22nd, 2014 7:44 am
Hang on to your hats!
Janet Yellen speaks at 10 am, EST and she's scheduled to discuss her "Labor Dashboard" and, from that, the pontiffs will then attempt to read the tea leaves of Future Fed action. She'll likely note that the Labor Market is generally improving but that there is no immediate reason to raise rates. The definition of immediate will be much debated.
If that does not confuse us enough, we will hear from 7 of the Fed Dwarves as well including Williams, Lockhart, Plosser and Bullard. Draghi takes the stage at 2pm, EST. In case Yellen's empty promises don't do the trick, Draghi is sure to have even emptier ones – whatever it takes to end the week on a positive note!
Still, we're playing the day bearish (we added bear plays in yesterday's Live Member Chat and we're short /YM below 17,000 along with other Futures) as it's hard to imagine what Yellen and company can possibly say that they haven't already said. Unlimited amounts of FREE MONEY forever is already priced into market expectations – anything less will be a severe disappointment. Any firm mention of ending QE in the next 12 months can send the markets down sharply. As "clarified" by Goldman Sachs:
With opinions mixed as to whether or not Jackson Hole will be the forum for Yellen to say something new, many are trying to figure out if it is a buy the rumor and then buy more after the fact event, a buy the rumor sell the fact event, or a do nothing with the rumors and then buy the fact if the USD is actually rallying after the fact event.
According to Zero Hedge, only "Full Doveish" statements are likely to lift the markets at this point. Those would be for Yellen to:
1) Argue that the
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Huge Victory for the GOP – Bottom 90% Completely F’d!
by phil - August 7th, 2014 7:05 am
Victory in our time!
They said it couldn't be done, they said that people in a "Democracy" would never allow it to happen but, in the past 5 years we have actually taken 15% of the income AWAY from the bottom 90% of American wage-earners and re-distributed it to the top 10% and, since there are much less of them, it has boosted our top 10% incomes by 115% over the same period!
In the words of the great Winston Churchill (as redefined by the Conservative Bible): "Never was so much taken from so many for so few." As you can see from the chart above, the Reagan Revolution successfully reversed years of gains for the average American and began shoveling all of the economic progresss to the top 10% for the last 30 years but only in the last 5 has this policy gone into overdrive as we have begun to actively TAKE the money from the bottom 90%, Look how rich that makes us – no wonder we are all voting to keep this policy going!
As noted by Zero Hedge:
"Inequality in the U.S. today is near its historical highs, largely because the Federal Reserve’s policies have succeeded in achieving their aim: namely, higher asset prices (especially the prices of stocks, bonds and high-end real estate), which are generally owned by taxpayers in the upper-income brackets.
The Fed is doing all the work, because the President’s policies are growth-suppressive. In the absence of the Fed’s money printing and ZIRP, the economy would either be softer or actually in a new recession."
It's not just our Fed, of course, this morning we are getting more doveish noises from the ECB press conference as Draghi promises MORE FREE MONEY (for those of us with the credit scores or balance sheets to qualify) and that is already (8:30) pushing our Futures up half a point in pre-market trading. We're still watching our bounce levels (and shorting /TF at 1,130),…
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Wealth Levels, Wealth Inequality and the Great Recession
by phil - July 1st, 2014 7:10 am
By Fabian T. Pfeffer, Sheldon Danziger and Robert F. Schoeni
Pfeffer Danziger Schoeni Wealth Levels
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Monday Market Movement – Mind the (Wealth) Gap!
by phil - September 20th, 2010 7:55 am
Congratulations to 440,000 of us!
That’s how many people became Millionaires in the past 12 months (ending in June). According to a new survey from Phoenix Marketing International’s Affluent Market Practice, the number of American households with investible assets of $1 million or more rose 8% in the 12 months ended in June. The survey says there now are 5.55 million U.S. households with investible assets of $1 million or more. That follows two years of declines and brings the Millionaire count back to 2006 levels. Of course, that is still below the peak of 5.97 million in 2007 and the current growth rate is well below pre-financial crisis levels, when the Millionaire population increased as much as 35% a year.
Still, the numbers offer further evidence that the wealthy may have decoupled from the rest of the economy, as we expected would happen in "A Tale of Two Economies," my 2010 outlook. The study’s authors say high salary growth, rather than investments, are the main drivers of the Millionaire expansion. As we who play the markets are painfully aware, $1M in assets doesn’t leave a lot of room for investments. The very wealthy, on the other hand, had a much better year than the mere Millionaires. The population of American households with $5 million or more in investible assets surged 16%. The population of those with $10 million to invest increased 17%. The rich have never been getting richer than they have been in 2010!
Of course, in order for someone to get rich, someone has to get poor and, this year it took 4M Americans falling below the poverty line ($22,000 for a family of 4) to provide the cash for our 440,000 winners. That’s pretty much right in line with the numbers I’ve been citing over and over again – it takes 1,000 poor people to make one rich one!
The Census Bureau found that the fraction of Americans living in poverty rose sharply to 14.3% in 2009, up from 13.2% previously. This is the highest level since 1994. In total, 43.6 million Americans were living in poverty last year. Even the median family is getting the shaft in America with 2010 inflation-adjusted salaries barely keeping pace with 1980 inflation-adjusted salaries – making 3 full decades without improvement for the average American family. According to the WSJ, the bottom 40% (120M people) have dropped from having 14.5% of the nation’s income in 1980 to having 12% in…
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Government Policy Caused the Drought of Unemployment
by ilene - September 3rd, 2010 4:41 pm
Government Policy Caused America’s Unemployment Crisis
Courtesy of Washington’s Blog
Indeed, even after the government plays with the numbers to make them look better (using inaccurate birth-death models and other tricks-of-the-trade), this is how the current jobs downturn compares with other post-WWII recessions:
The Government Has Encouraged the Offshoring of American Jobs for More Than 50 Years
President Eisenhower re-wrote the tax laws so that they would favor investment abroad. President Kennedy railed against tax provisions that "consistently favor United States private investment abroad compared with investment in our own economy", but nothing changed.
For the last 50-plus years, the tax benefits to American companies making things abroad has encouraged jobs to move out of the U.S.
The Government Has Encouraged Mergers
The government has actively encouraged mergers, which destroy jobs.
For example, the Treasury Department encouraged banks to use the bailout money to buy their competitors, and pushed through an amendment to the tax laws which rewards mergers in the banking industry.
This is nothing new.
Citigroup’s former chief executive says that when Citigroup was formed in 1998 out of the merger of banking and insurance giants, Alan Greenspan told him, “I have nothing against size. It doesn’t bother me at all”.
And the government has actively encouraged the big banks to grow into mega-banks.
The Government Has Let Unemployment Rise in an Attempt to Fight Inflation
As I noted last year:
The Federal Reserve is mandated by law to maximize employment. The relevant statute states:
The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy’s long run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.
***
The Fed could
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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 site
