Bill Cara: When bad things happen to good people, Wed., June 7, 2006, 12:25 AM

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June 7, 2006

When bad things happen to good people, Wed., June 7, 2006, 12:25 AM

You know I care deeply about people. I have been having second thoughts about the drivel I wrote yesterday about CNBC TV. Let's revisit my anger of last summer to get to the heart of what is bothering me tonight.

Last summer was when CNBC anchor Bill Griffeth ("one of the most respected financial journalists in the country") was sent across the country and around the various "hot" real estate markets of America. I wonder if he realized he was pumping the last drops of blood his promoters could suck out of the American People buying homes.

I was enraged (but what else is new?).

Well, let's revisit this issue tonight because I am still enraged. I'll show you how this situation played out. It's not pretty, but I don't expect Bill Griffeth or CNBC to apologize to the People.

They are marionettes after all; puppets on strings being jerked about by the bankers, Gnomes and the Administration. Hear me out now.

Does CNBC actually serve the People by helping them create wealth as they promote themselves doing? No, I'd say the People are suckers who CNBC entertains, and willfully preys on.

So what am I talking about tonight?

You remember those home-builder company chairmen CNBC routinely paraded last summer? And the real estate brokers (bubbleheads from Miami included) they highlighted amongst the other clown suits right at the peak of the market?

The SEC chased my Martha for a chump change trade, but how about the billion dollar con job they allow to go on every day with Financial Entertainment TV?

Do you want evidence? Haven't I been giving it to you? Haven't I been undressing daily in front of the world, saying look at this, look at that? Well, tonight let's look at the home-builders for evidence that I had good reason to be protesting CNBC last summer.

How about looking at this? How about my pleading, Please Bill, save that tape? Did CNBC save that tape? I have a lot more, but I'll spare you.

My readers know what I am talking about. It is all in the blogs I write and in the archives in any event.

Here is the financial damage. This is real money lost in the IRA's and RRSP's of Mom & Pop who bought the homebuilders stocks (and their real estate at the peak of the market).

So with these results Mr. SEC, are you going to do something about this? Just once?

Or is TV a protected species?

If I am running a business like CNBC, this kind of performance is totally unacceptable. Under my watch, people would be fired for putting such shameless promotions on the air. And then I'd be fired by GE/NBC for selling out to the audience. They'd tell me to go to PBS.

So I'll leave this one question, who paid for that cross-country junket that Bill Griffeth went on to start the summer of 2005? Who paid the flight and ground arrangements, etc of the entourage that followed Bill Griffeth across America?

If I'm an SEC staffer I would be asking those questions. Because when I look at the charts, I figure that trip was no coincidence.

Monthly data charts for the Home-Builders:

Weekly data charts for the Home-Builders:

Was it just a lucky guess on my part in blogging at the time that I was ridiculing "America's leading journalists" for their actions? Or was I was calling them the "take out" play for vested interests that wanted to "off" their stock at the cycle peak?

Dream on civil servant. Better still; try to understand what is going on in the capital markets.

Based on my experience, these regulators are people who wouldn't recognize a stock or a bond if it was taped across the front of their PC monitor.

Btw there are some Mexicans who have dibs on their jobs. Foreigners cannot believe that Americans can be paid so much to not have to do back-breaking slave labor in the fields.

At the end of the day, there will always be mistakes made in markets, errors in judgment. It is not possible to be perfect.

But when the real estate market in the summer of 2005 was screaming out for Big Media to turn down the heat, there, front and center, was CNBC turning it up. They were playing the hot buttons of an audience without having the journalistic ethics to question if perhaps they might be hurting the People they say they were serving.

So yes, good people were hurt.

And CNBC will not change their formula, so the mistakes are bound to be repeated over and over and over.

It is one thing for me to become an expert trader and another to ignore the marketplace where people are getting hurt every day and nothing be done about it. It bothers me greatly. So much so, I cannot sleep.

It would be so much easier if I didn't care.

Posted by Posted by Bill Cara on June 7, 2006 12:25:43 AM | Category: Cara Today in the Market

Discourse

Cheers to that Bill. Silence is loud so please speak, am personally tired of this type of stuff going on and the problem is also the people too who are serving themselves on the platter; education is a great medicine.

You see Robert Toll's Insider sales? Right at the top almost! http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=tol

Great, he builds homes, and certainly deserves alot of reward, but 250M + in options SOLD to many who bought the line/hook and also SOLD into the enormous 401k buying by mututals where its only a small hit to each on the receiving end, but still, it adds up quickly for one person! J

Posted by: Jason22 at June 7, 2006 12:59 AM [link]

Well done, Bill. I wish I had been following your blog last summer. Not that this would have prevented me from being a sucker (I wasn't a buyer of HBs) but rather it would have confirmed what I already knew from seperate research.

I know that I'm not alone in appreciating the great service you are providing to less experience traders and investors. Sleep well knowing that as bad as things are, you are helping to level the playing field for those of us who would otherwise be getting fleeced.

Posted by: number2son at June 7, 2006 1:24 AM [link]

I hope I haven't missed the bulk of the downturn. I bought puts against the PKB ETF today. Sept 14. They should do OK unless the PPT decides to start propping up housing. I'd buy more bets against housing, had I the resources to do so.

Thanks for the blog Bill. I recently discovered it but it's already among my few "must checks" all day long. What you are doing is great.

BTW, CNBC is just info-tainment. They will give the people what keeps them glued in to watch the advertisements. Last year everyone loved real estate and was flipping condos. So they put some stuff on there to get the channel flippers to stop by and hopefully keep watching the ads. That's all. Just like Oprah, ESPN SportsCenter and Desperate Housewives. It's all about the ad revenue.

Posted by: MikeNYC at June 7, 2006 1:55 AM [link]

another insider transaction site.

http://www.form4oracle.com/company?cik=0000794170&ticker=tol

Posted by: r. saunders at June 7, 2006 2:17 AM [link]

same thing again re: Toll, different summary link.

http://www.form4oracle.com/insider?cik=0000922997

Posted by: r. saunders at June 7, 2006 2:20 AM [link]

Bill-

Asian indices waxed again by nearly 2% across the board.

I am looking at that FTSE chart and thinking that it looks precariously balanced on its 200dma. I am also following all these earnings revisions on global companies that seem to me to be getting announced in Europe FIRST and not here. (Hmmm. Coincidence?) So goes the FTSE , so goes the SP500 I would think.

Posted by: MarkM at June 7, 2006 5:14 AM [link]

MarkM:

If you were out cash for the next several weeks would you sell some of your low 60's GLD core today for Bear Bargains to come or just hold on a tad longer?

Of course this is all hypothetical ;)

Posted by: C.Note at June 7, 2006 6:23 AM [link]

I would want to have a position in this thing at ALL TIMES no matter what I THOUGHT was going to happen. Mr. Market has a way of teaching us that in spades.

So I have a positions taken at XAU=121, one at XAU =135 or so and am just awaiting events. I have taken trading stakes and ridden them to gains and then taken them off again as I am very much in the "singles hitting mode". If I can clip coupons of .25% for my portfolio I take them. I have a feeling those are going to look pretty good at some point in time.

This $USD action can't last. What I am more concerned about is Base Metals falling and taking (stupidly) the PMs with them. I think we recover from that scenario fairly quickly though.

So I have some cash ready to buy further declines and also to buy breakouts above the declining channel.

Posted by: MarkM at June 7, 2006 6:49 AM [link]

MarkM:

Thanks. Just to be sure, is that .25% or 25%...

Posted by: C.Note at June 7, 2006 7:01 AM [link]

I think you were being facetious, no? But for full disclosure, I am taking names off the table that have/had appreciated 7-15% and adding them to my portfolio cash levels causing increases of portfolio values of .25% or so each time. So you can see that the individual exposures are/were small. It's ugly out there folks.

Well I see gold just broke through 620 so hang on. So much for trying to base. It never happened.

Posted by: MarkM at June 7, 2006 7:16 AM [link]

Calling All Americans

Bill mentioned the other day the most of his readership is American, if every reader tells someone else about this site it will surely grow the readership and hopefully help all to see what is becoming of a once great country, perhaps the voters will scream for reform and hopefully it will help reform what is fed to you daily on the tube, caught a bit of Kudlow yesterday with four other anylysts and to no ones surprise they were all bullish on the stock market, one of the fellows had such a stupid smile on his face even this beginner could see right through it, im a beginner at trading but ive been around for half a century and one thing is for sure, my common sense has never failed me

Posted by: tgifbipo at June 7, 2006 9:10 AM [link]

Yeah, Bill, give em hell!

I was just a little worried a while back that you might be going a little soft on these guys. Not that we wouldn't understand....who wants to be a pariah?

But.....If the men and women in a corrupt and defrauding system are nonetheless comporting themselves well within that system, what comfort can Mom and Pop take from that? They still get nailed.

Historically, its not a defense that holds up, when such folk are called to account.

Posted by: tom sheepngoats at June 7, 2006 3:25 PM [link]

This site tells there is no buying from TOL,

CFC's insiders are selling almost everyday!
http://www.secform4.com/insider/showhistory.php?cik=CFC

Posted by: tickle123 at June 12, 2006 5:38 PM [link]