classic line from John Hussman's report that goes very well with your morning report Bill

One of the fascinating aspects of Wall Street is the ability of analysts to provide opinions without the faintest backing from evidence. Among the latest topics of opinion is how far the mortgage crisis has to go. Evidently, the idea is that the recession that these analysts didn't forecast is already over.

http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc080414.htm

dr. cosa -

I also like the following from John Hussman's report:

Balances in money market funds are also not “cash on the sidelines.” Securities are simply evidence that money has been intermediated from a saver to a borrower. Once the security is issued, it exists until it matures or is otherwise retired. If I have $1000 of “on the sidelines” in Treasury bills, it represents money that has already been spent by the Federal government. If I sell this T-bill to buy stocks, somebody else has to buy it, and there will be exactly the same amount of money “on the sidelines” after I buy my stocks than before I bought them. It is simply a fallacy of non-equilibrium thinking to imagine that money “goes into” or “comes out of” secondary markets in securities.

Blockbuster to buy Circuit City for over 1 Billion dollars. CC is up over 51% in pre-market.

For those without access to pre and after markets live charting, Google now offers this. Just quote a stock, select the settings tab, and check the Extended Hours checkbox. Nice.

For example, this is the chart for CC:

http://tinyurl.com/64ukem

I provide (almost) daily pre market quotes with direct links to Yahoo! Finance, MarketWatch, and Google Finance. The list gets updated about every 15 minutes.

See e.g.: http://tinyurl.com/5k2ja8

Good Morning.

Here are your Cara 100 Ratings Changes:

Upgrade:

GOL - to Buy @ Deutsche Securities

Downgrades:

ABB - to Equal Weight @ Lehman Bros.
GE - to Peer Perform @ Bear Stearns
GE - to Peform @ Oppenheimer

Target Price Lowered:

GE - $44 to $37 @ Lehman Bros.

--------------------------------------------------

Thanks for another great WIR, Bill. Have a great day everyone.

Retail sales "better than expected" or so claims MarketWatch and many uninformed commentators. In reality the numbers are skewed by inflation in gas and food.

The futures responded positively to this initially, but I doubt it will last long.

Blockbuster buying Circuit City: good grief, who cares?

traders quest,

i checked out your site,
it would be easier to read if you wrote it in
english as opposed to the made-up language youve
used.

;)

craig- pre-market headlines not necessarily setting the tone this morning...would be more concerned about upside risks to any short positions?

I think the key thing here to remember is that each and every time the US has gone through a bear market, we've also had a recovery. Those who made money were the ones who didn't get emotional while the economy/market were doing poorly. The ones who made money picked their shots carefully, didn't try to catch falling daggers and exercised some patience. Patience being the biggest factor because quite frankly, who knows when this market will turn up again? Anybody trying to predict that is insane.

-Wayne

2nd: Yep, took partial profits on FXP @ 84.50.

How many times have we seen down Fridays, negative Asia/Europe to open the week lower, only to have Monday futures appear down but go higher at the open?

Lots of bad news today....all kind of expected.

dr.cosa

I'm afraid that it wouldn't make any difference and it would not be easier to read if I write in english. ;-) The numbers count.

Why front-run?

For longer-term money (e.g. index investing) use a simple timing signal such as is shown here:

http://www.tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=39911

That, by the way, has returned 20% average annual returns (before reinvested dividends, if any) .vs. 14% for the SPX over the last two full market cycles, and requires less than 5 minutes per week to implement.

If you're a TRADER then there's a different discussion to be had, but if you're an INVESTOR, do you really need to do anything more complicated than this?

That signal walks all over the floor of virtually ALL active managers, is tax-advantaged (virtually all gains are long-term), has a beta 30% below the market (since you're out for Bears hiding in cash) and beats the total return handily.

Over 20, 30 or more years this sort of SIMPLE management method will make you very wealthy and keep nearly all of your money in YOUR pocket instead of your broker's.

If you want to trade the Bear periods (and can do it without losing your ass) you can do even better.

Something I’ve been following, but haven’t mentioned in the past.

Flying beneath the radar—municipal bond decision.

U.S. Supreme Court may issue some decisions on or about April 15, 2008. One of the cases may be Kentucky v. Davis, which concerns the way states tax other state municipal bonds while keeping their own muni bonds tax free for residents. Another consideration is the tax free status of state’s private activity bonds. The decision has been delayed, which has raised some conjecture about which way the court may go.

http://tinyurl.com/42x2db

Good morning (en route from La Jolla to Cape Town)

After the sense of relative calm of the previous week, investors again had to stomach “a thrill a minute” during the past week, with the recent stock market rally reversing course as sentiment took a turn for the worse on the back of the familiar themes of deteriorating economic data, housing woes, and concerns about further asset write-downs in the financial sector.

Read all about this in my weekly blog post, highlighting some thought-provoking news items and quotes from market commentators during the past week.

Here is the link to the “Words from the Wise”: http://tinyurl.com/6ozbkh

Enjoy the read.

DJIA futures almost flat...

craig-> putting AAI, NWA, DAL on the watchlist

DJIA set to open in the green...

For those following alternative energy, good news today as the Senate passed the Clean Energy Tax Stimulus Act of 2008:

http://tinyurl.com/6rfpl2

Solar stocks traded up a bit in pre-market, likely in response to the vote. Also remember that ESLR reports earnings this week. I expect good news, but that may be muted by overall market weakness.

The US markets seem to be the only major world market that doesn't react to news the way you'd expect. Maybe there's too much smart money playing here where they run so many head fakes to throw other participants off.

It will be an interesting day and week for sure.
Great WIR this week, Bill and I love the quotes. I saved them all on my computer.

The quotes really reinforce my debt-free philosophy. Interestingly though I came to despise debt not because I ever thought bankers were in collusion against me but because my parents were always and still are controlled and kept down by their debts. Like most people they share the blame since they try to live above their means and have no discipline with money so they're always behind the 8-ball. They have what they need though and do fine but if they were more fiscally disciplined they would be so much better off.

Rob.

Re: Red Lake Camp

Two companies in the Red Lake camp report excellent drill intercepts, RMX.TO and GEA.TO

I guess they would make a good example of disparity of valuation, how they are not exactly indexed to the gold price or bear any relation to NAV, both have large floats and are drilling in a well known district which requires signficantly large capital investment to bring into production, since large deposits in the Red Lake Camp are all at depths ~1000m+.

The Red Lake Mining Camp is where Goldcorp has its prolific gold mine, next to both Rubicon and Gold Eagle.

Rob Mcewen is a large investor in RMX.TO

http://www.rubiconminerals.com/s/Home.asp

http://www.goldeaglemines.com/news/?cms_news_type_id=1

opening positions in FNM/FRE...

Looking for a hedge against GE bet.

How about HE?

http://tinyurl.com/4jgro6

I'm seeing bullish divergences on intraday charts for the indexes. FWIW.

Cara 100 Update:

BA upgraded to Neutral @ AmTech Research.

How can we get a sustained rally with S&P500 company earnings declining and too many companies diluting current shareholders to stay afloat?

I could see a counter-trend bounce, especially if there's too many people lined up on the short side, but I don't see any trend changes until it appears earnings will bottom soon. And isn't this the first quarter of declining earnings for most companies besides financials and retail?

It still seems like the major players are trying to push the idea that this quarter is the bottom in earnings.

Am I missing something here?

Rob.

Short term treasury yields down:

http://finance.yahoo.com/bonds

Rob,

IMHO, you're not missing anything. If the market traded on fundamentals instead of blatant manipulation, it should be about 20% lower than these levels.

Regards

Rob- sometimes it's difficult to separate investing from trading in terms of justification(s)...i think investments ultimately follow fundamentals, whereas trading is a mental game where the minority viewpoint often wins...

I'm not a frequent poster, so I tend to accumulate things I wish to say or ask about.

1) Morality question. In looking at Roubini's site, someone came up with the statistic that 40% of the recent increase in agricultural commodity prices is due to speculation. Is it moral to be buying etfs and other commodity plays considering the possible effects on poor people who cannot afford food?

2) I'm way under water on PM stocks. I bought them in my IRA and the commissions on Canadian stocks are so high that I was reluctant to sell when the prices droped. GIX at 2.40, PNP at 4.34, VAL at .25, ugh! While I didn't buy that many shares I'm down about 15% in my portfolio. Any suggestions? Would you wait this out or just sell them off now and pay more commissions on getting back in? I know these are volatile stocks, but I'm in shock about GIX in particular! Clearly I should have sold when my portfolio was down 1 or 2 percent in order to buy in at lower levels.

Genesis--love your 20/50 MA signal. It has the beauty of simplicity. I tried it out on $GOLD and $HUI and right now it says stay in. I plan to use it for my TIAA CREF.

Bernankes strategy--last night's discussion on Roubini suggests that he is following a Friedmanite by the name of Eggerston who says essentially, "Creat the impression that you are generating inflation or even hyperinflation (for which there is no real possibility)by printing money with abandon and taking on crap collateral in order to deflect market participants from realizing that the real battle is against deflation." If this is the case, I would be inclined to think this strategem will fail and we will have deflation instead.

In IBN 38.62 cara 100 company

Re: Junior PM Stock

imo, PNP.TO is not a precious metals focus stock. Its an investment fund heavily exposed to base metals. Many companies in the merchant banking sector all have the same exposure and have all seen the same declines. A merchant banking stock which is exposed solely to junior precious metals explorers with absolutely NO exposure to base metals would be an attractive investment. But there are many types of companies in that sector with varying business plans.

The CDNX has seen similar declines to the SPX. The GFMS base metals index is especially well correlated to the SPX. In terms of foreign exchange values, the $C has declined against the €, therefore exposing Canadian based stocks in the precious metals sector (as well as the base metals) to a serious downdraft.

Only the largest operators in the precious metals sector with listings across Canadian, American and European exchanges presented a close indexing to the gold price. This week is earnings week, so we get to see how the decline in the $US would have affected precious metals operators, especially if they have hedged copper production.

In terms of the news cycle, the junior precious metals companies are in a news release phase for the next few weeks. This very week will be very telling for the gold price as well. So in order to determine an exit strategy for junior PM stocks, I would say that this week is not an opportune time to cut losses.

I don't have an answer, but I have questions.

Does buying an ETF drive commodity prices or ETF prices?

Or...if a food commodity ETF falls 50% tomorrow, will the related food commodities fall 50%?

It doesn't appear they are really connected.

what constitutes "speculation" as opposed to "investment".

i think the calls that speculators are driving up commodity prices are what industry shills use to defend themselves from not knowing whats going on, or from protecting themselves from any real critism.

if oil stays above $100 a barrell you blame speculators, not market forces or supply/demand, or even worse: inflation.

speculators are this mythic group, sometimes called "hedge funds" even though no actual proof is ever given of which funds entering the market are from investors classed as "speculators".

i would agree with craig-> in general it would be speculation in the commodity itself that drives prices; the EFT simply tracks...however, ETFs that hold the underlying commodity (GLD, SLV) may in fact (temporarily) affect prices when adding to inventory...

I agree w/ Dr. Cosa -

If speculation is allowed on both sides of any trade, how can you attribute speculation to a rise in price?

For instance, the rise in price of an ETF holding a basket of commodities for instance is an effect of higher prices in the market, not the cause.

The second portion of that should have simply read:

"The rise in price of an ETF holding a basket of commodities is an effect of higher prices in the market, not the cause"

Anyone watching COF? I just put on a put spread ahead of their earnings this week. I'm expecting a disappointment.

Technically, the daily chart is at key support this morning so I don't expect it will go down easily. But go down it will.

INTC after tuesday close-> catalyst for a rally or catalyst for a sell-off...any opinions?

Bought some DXD for 401K. I'm giving this room to breathe as I expect the bear market will last at least through the end of '08.

Be very wary of 20W/50W timing signal as panacea. Any such moving average crossover system works well ONLY in strongly trending markets. So the SPY example looks great since '95 or so (straight up until 2000; straight down until 2003; straight up again until 2007; straight down since then). Even over the same time period, using the system for DIA would have yielded poor results and system will lose you a LOT of money in congested sideways markets.

INTC & NVDA are fighting GPU wars... I see NVDA as the winner.

Looking at accumulating NVDA.

Apparently, in technical terms it is decision time. 1327 is the 50% retrace of the move off the low so you are seeing support there. Under that on a closing basis would seem to support the shorts. I will hold onto to the shorts until 1340 is breached on the upside.

Also, Goldman came out today saying early indications of earnings have been horrible. Financials are in desperate need of cash with investors demanding onerous terms, if they can be found. Fundamentals are very bad. GE has been able to manage earnings for decades, until last week when nothing legal could hide the deterioration.

Bull Hunter,
I agree! It's crazy when you look back and see where the indices should be in historical terms based on future earnings and then look at where they are. I'm still a firm believer that we will revert to the mean eventually. I just don't know when eventually is.

2nd,
It is hard to distinguish investing from trading these days. Especially with the most stable stocks in the world suffering 13% one day drops. I could see a push upward this week to try and negate all the bad news we know is coming. It is getting hard to trade in this bizarro market where nothing is as it seems/

I'm still holding my Sept COF puts and will likely hod them through earnings unless COF breaks down to 40 before.

Rob.

INTC,
I would think many people and companies are making do with their current computer systems right now until the uncertainty is lifted. I just don't see how tech spending can hold up in this cautious environment, where adding to debt can be disasterous, unless you're one of the FED's special companies.

Maybe I'm being too pessimistic though.

What are the current readings on NYSE and Nasdaq short interest?

I heard on March 31st that NYSE short Interest was at an all-time high.

Anyone know the most current place to get short interest numbers?

Rob.

Anyone else checking out Diane Garnick's big brain on Bloomberg?

Pretty impressive.

Bill: in your Week in Review yesterday (WIR #15) you wrote:

"SNDK which was a huge loser a week ago (-10.7%) was in recovery mode (+3.5%) after the very good and hugely popular California high-tech writer John Dvorak called it a turn-around. John apparently also liked Sigma Designs (SIGM)."

I don't consider Dvorak to be one of the best sources on technology writing. In particular, the community at http://slashdot.org considers him to have something of a "churn" style of journalism--that he often throws out wild statements to see what will stick. For instance, if I do this google search:
dvorak site:slashdot.org
then this is the first hit:
http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/06/06/10/1529257.shtml
"Dvorak Admits To Trolling Mac Users"

A writer who I think is much better is Robert X. Cringely of PBS and, historically, Infoworld:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X_Cringely

speaking of bloomberg, is it me or do the morning news casters seem like they are yelling all the time? even during interviews that blonde host always seems to be yelling.

against the grain (and not making any recommendations)-> opening 25% positions in a few beaten down sectors with a short-to-medium time horizon:

air transport (FDX/BA/TIE/NWA)
home finance (FRE/FNM/WM)
China FXI
technology (INTC/AMAT/MRVL)

2nd

INTC may go down further
AMAT is a Hype about solar
Barron has written about it this week

2nd
Now a day any thing I buy goes down

vinod- thanks for weighing in...didn't realize AMAT was being hyped, maybe i'll rethink that one...o/w, i'm buying mainly because there appears to be little to no buying interest right now...

She does have a penetrating voice....I don't know if it's volume or tone.

i think anchors get hired based on personality types that improve ratings...right now, the muted understated types are not in vogue, with the attention span of viewers having shrunk with channel surfing and multi-tasking...

PCX breakout. A hot coal

Re: Concern over Silver Lease rate

Short-term silver lease rates continue in the negative:

http://www.kitcosilver.com/charts/silverleaserate.html

This would indicate surplus silver supply. But silver prices continue to be resilient, which probably is due to dollar declines with the open.

Gold basis still very tight, however. Short term gold lease rates are now in the positive.

http://www.kitco.com/charts/popup/au0030lr.html

Rubicon Minerals (RBY)

sights on DUG/SMN once again-> sticking with intraday moves this time...

PBR fans, another massive offshore oil find by Petrobras, Repsol-YPF and BG Group, may be the world's biggest oil discovery in the past 30 years. "Carioca", could contain 33 billion barrels of oil equivalent, five times the recent giant Tupi discovery. Petrobras stocks jumped 6.23 per cent to 83.50 reais on the news.

re: COF

Found an article that kind of addresses the question i had about cc companies needing to raise capital as card use increases:

http://tinyurl.com/5nmcfj

"...they have the ability to do the same as the brokers and other companies [note, bond and stock offerings], yet a quieter and quicker maneuver is the bring in new deposits through higher yielding savings accounts."

Another thing this article adresses is the strange dividend increase/share buyback announced 2 months ago: "...raise the quarterly dividend from $0.027 to $0.375... $2 BILLION stock buyback"

The article goes on to say this:

"allows the company to actually pay less for the dividend, in total, and increases EPS by taking shares off the market."

Not sure how company pays less for dividend, i mean, they still pay dividend on the $2 billion of stock until such time as the shares are actually repurchased, no?

Article also points out that "insiders reduced their positions by 10% during the past few months"

Typical pump and dump...

UBS....

Just cancelled all new hire programs and halted all training for new advisors.

Cutbacks coming....

ALOHA !!

The basic underpinning of any stock listed on the NYSE or any DOW component or any T-Bill is the US Peso. A rally in the markets without a US Peso rally is not even a rally! You may as well be playing with Monopoly money ...

That's the basis of holding PMs and their shares. If I had a 15% loss in my 401k I would not sell, but instead accumulate at lower levels if you have a long term horizon, which was the original idea behind 401ks since they are generally set up for retirement(long term). Now days though 401ks are being used for "lifestyle loans" and "momentum trading", so they are no longer actual "retirement accounts" but "desperation accounts"! Still the one fatal flaw of all 401ks and IRAs and stocks and T-Bills is that they are denominated in rapidly depreciating US Pesos. If Bush wants a real "stimulus" to get people spending then allow all retirement accounts to be liquidated without any penalties and reduced capital gains taxes. Yet just another solution based on fantasy!

My first visit(1996)to my ex-Morgan Stanley broker he pointed to a chart of the DOW, he had prominently hung on his office wall, from 1900 to 1995 and told me to look at how "investing" in the DOW over the long term has been extremely lucrative. I told him the chart looked like an inverse chart of the US Dollar's purchasing power! That went over his head as he was "twenty-something" and hadn't been alive long enough to recall a 17% car loan or when an AUD was worth more than a USD, thanks to the Vietnam War and monetary inflation. To most people born after 1980 inflation is defined as the "CPI" ... just a number that hasn't moved much since they were born, yet, as bill-paying adults, they wonder why it always seems to get harder to make ends meet instead of easier.

Our US government is a reflection of the Average Joe, spending beyond his means. We vote for images of ourselves! If a politician like Ron Paul or Ross Perot are presented to us we dismiss them as lunatics or not really "viable". That's because the message they bring is unacceptable to us and our lifestyle of spending and debt. We only vote for those who promise us more "debt" because "debt" is all we know. Debt is our comfort food! Debt is our saviour ... We are caught up in accumulating as much paper(false wealth)as possible. At some point it will become obvious that the American Dream was a hoax, not because working hard and striving to own a home is wrong, but because owning "debt" is wrong. In actuality most people own "debt" ... not a home. In actuality the bankers have made "debt" the American Dream and that's all the American Dream is now ... "spending beyond ones means"!

I personally would not own a 401k and I do not, except for what's left of my accumulations up to 1999. Why? For the simple reason you cannot protect yourself from a US Peso and you cannot protect yourself from a predatory tax monster, which is what the US government will be once the real estate collapse and the "War On Terror" and baby-boomers have gutted tax revenues. So long as you have to cash out in US Pesos and under draconian US Tax laws you are trapped! You are trapped into a US Peso accumulation machine that I hate to think what its worth will be by time you actually retire and at what level will income tax brackets be? Ask yourself ... "Has the cost of living and taxes ever really gone down since you have been alive?" So long as our money is dishonest the systems that are built upon our money will be dishonest. That is just a cold hard fact ... Plan accordingly!

Hi, normally before investing in any precious metals company I put it on my watch list, and watch these stocks for up to a year before making a decision to buy.

There should be no anxiety about whether you are getting in on the top or out at the bottom if you observe the stock in question for up to a year, and if it meets your criteria, it will probably compete strongly for your investment dollar.

Today, I will be removing GIX.TO from my watch list as it is NOT a precious metals stock. The gold grade is sub-economic and the silver grade is only modest. The rest of the value in this exploration is primarily in Base Metals. This disqualifies it from my watchlist.

GIX.TO will never be a precious-metals-focus company. It should not be promoted as such. It is primarily BASE METALS.

Unless the company in question is primarily exposed to an economic-grade precious-metal-focus deposit with a large land holding, then it just doesn't get on the list.

I have added FST.V to my list. Fortress Minerals.

F6

And what do they teach kids these days Kaimu?

You need to "build credit", go ahead, buy something and pay it off so you can build credit.

They NEVER say "don't buy anything, build SAVINGS."

Your Grandparents told you that.

As of this morning, SA.V, Southern Arc, primarily a copper play in Indonesia with some gold values has been removed as well. Why GIX.TO and SA.V should be considered precious-metals-focus is beyond me.

Note that there exist very large competing deposits in Mongolia, Alaska, and Northern B.C. which have similar grades that are amongst the largest untapped metals deposits in the world. Should the copper price eventually collapse, these companies with billions of lbs. of coppper and tens of milliions of oz. of gold will become sub-economic, especially in a declining $US scenario, and no longer be able to re-imburse development costs.

That is just my opinion.

Added to U.TO - Uranium Participation Corp @ 8.55.

As mentioned before, the technology as outlined in this link represent a vast and sea-change over current pharmacalogical approaches to healthcare:
http://tinyurl.com/6hy3hk

THESE METHODOLOGIES ARE ABSOLUTELY REVOLUTIONARY in both application and effectiveness. They will utterly and completely change the manner in which we approach disease treatment and prevention in the future. These systems are vastly cheaper, safer, and easier to utilize than ANY methodologies (radiation, innoculation, chelation, etc.) being utilized by our medical practitioners. They have the potential to place control of good health and longevity within the grasp of the average man regardless of socio-economic and geographic location... quite literally, the democratization of disease treatment.

These technologies have been systematically and very proactively repressed by the military industrial complex since the technology was initially discovered, implemented, and then concealed in the early part of last century. THis was done for a variety of reasons, the most important perhaps being weaponization. For decades, researchers looking into these processes have been harassed, discredited, demoralized, demonized, and even killed for their indescretion. Every few years like clockwork, another inventor or researcher would rediscover the technology, unknowingly bring it forth in good faith, and be pilloried for the effort... resultant patents forcefully closed, stolen, or extorted and buried.. many careers and lives prejudicially ruined.

Many researchers are aware of this history. (See "Raymond Rife" for one of the most well-documented histories of discovery). But for the first time in the past twenty years that I have been following these issues, these discoveries are being permitted media coverage. This indicates to me that there has been a fundamental change in policy regarding the release of these technologies for commercial development and use... all I can say to this THANK GOODNESS, and IT IS ABOUT F-ING TIME.

Keep your eyes open for developing investment opportunities in this area. And rejoice in the fact that the current level of bondage to a self-serving and anachronistically deadly medical industry may be loosening!

Coxe Commodity Strategy Fund Plans IPO
April 14, 2008 2:06pm ET

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Toronto's Coxe Commodity Strategy Fund has filed for an initial public offering of Class A combined units and Class F combined units.

The fund said the combined units comprise one unit and a unit-purchase warrant.

The IPO hasn't been priced.

The fund said it has been created to provide investors with long-term capital growth by executing the commodity investment strategies of Donald G.M. Coxe. Harris Investment Management Inc. is the investment manager and will be responsible for implementing the fund's investment strategy. Mr. Coxe will act as Portfolio Consultant to the fund.

The syndicate of agents for the offering is led by BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc.

-Carolyn King; 416-306-2100; AskNewswires@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

04-14-08 1405ET

Copyright (c) 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Hey Bill,
Am curious, what is your take on Don Coxe?

[Bill Cara note: I have often written that Don Coxe, who works for BMO, is one of my favorite analysts and writers. I have never met him but I know and respect BMO staff who revere him.

With respect to the BMO commodity fund under his name, I suspect he's a front man and I hope he is well paid for whatever he puts into it. Regarding commodities trading and BMO, do I have to remind you that it was just a year ago that BMO fired people who caused them to lose about half the total year's trading revenue of this large bank.

So, do I think BMO has any particular expertise in commodities trading? I haven't seen it. Do I think they have a good front man for this fund? Absolutely. Have I read anything more than headlines regarding this fund? No. Would I be interested in looking into it further? No.]

3 month T-Bill yield seems like it is starting to roll over again.

QUESTION: - Cdn. RRSP Account -- Reducing foreign exchange costs inside a registerd account by washing trades?

I'm a recent qTrade convert and was trying to find out details of how US/CDN conversions were handled. In the process discovered that it is possible when buying/selling US issues on the same day within a CDN RSP accout to call the brokerage before noon PST and request that the exchange rates be "washed".

Here are more details about the general process however was wondering if any Caraistas have used the opportunity to cut back on FX exchange conversion costs? The feature doesn't really appear widely publicized even though it does have potential to reduce costs.....
A general link http://tinyurl.com/6g2vsd

There's talk of the IMF wanting to unload over 400 of its 3200 tons of gold to set up an endowment to help finance itself. This supposedly would happen over a number of years so as not to upset the gold market. Can one unload 400 tons of gold w/o influencing the gold market?

Can anyone give me an opinion on a buy price for U?
Thanks.

the world supply of above-ground gold is around 155,000 tons, so selling 400 tons over several years is probably not going to have a material effect on price...if expectations are for a spike in prices over the next few years, preparing for sales could be a sound move...

ALOHA !!

F6 ... I do not invest in Russia or Mongolia. FST is based in Russia and Mongolia. See the Jim Siclair post on how they are abandoning Russian investments. Of course I have been posting this for years. My ex-Russian boss convinced me there is nothing "capitalist" or "free market" about the current Russian government.

GIX is primarily PM focused projects. I would prefer to take my chances with GIX in Mexico. The base metals are by-product credits to PM. This is a Silver Standard deposit so don't discount that. Obviously no country risk is 100% safe, but you can do a lot better than Russia!! I have been leaning towards Australian, specifically West Australian companies.

I do own ECU and GIX both are mainly Mexican plays, however as I stated before its hard to pull gold and silver out of the ground without other minerals attached. I do not consider base metal exposure in the context of combined PM plays to be as negative as you do. Long term in a collapsing fiat monetary system where huge amounts of money roam the Earth looking for stability and "real wealth"(anti-paper) I believe base metals and especially copper to be viable. Naturally PPGs and uranium would be on my list. Fiat creates scarcity. If you do not believe that look at Zimbabwe. They have gazillions of paper dollars flooding their streets(not as many as the USA does)yet manufacturing and gold mines are shut down and so are farms. Fiat creates no incentive to work! No work ... no products ... that's called "scarcity"! At some point even stock certificates of companies like Taseko(copper)will be looked upon as "real money" simply from the aspect they have paper backed by base metals. Remember copper pennies? Copper is money! Copper is a lot closer to money than a US FRN! That's where this all going ... Discount that at your own peril!

FROM JIM SINCLAIR WEBSITE ON RUSSIAN COMPANIES:

RUSSIA...THEFT OF COMPANIES BY BUREAUCRATS...WHAT IS HAPPENING IN RUSSIA IS NOT GOOD FOR INVESTORS.

WE ARE CONCERNED THAT INVESTORS MAY HAVE THEIR ASSETS STOLEN BY WELL ORGANIZED GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRATS. WE PLAN TO SELL OUR SMALL REMAINING POSITIONS IN RUSSIA ON RALLIES.

Please note the following excerpt from a letter written on April 3, 2008 to shareholders of the Hermitage Fund, a large mutual fund investing in Russian stocks.

HERMITAGE FUND
4/3/2008

It now appears that the Moscow Interior Ministry officials whom we named in our criminal complaints are retaliating by coming up with new spurious claims and inaccurate press leaks. We are confident that in any proper hearing all of these accusations will be thrown out.

While this story of official corruption may sound completely unbelievable, it is unfortunately not unusual in modern Russia. The theft of companies via these tactics (office raids, forgery, false contracts, fraudulent court judgments, attachment orders) has become so common that those who perpetrate these frauds are now known in the Russian vernacular as simply "raiders." Every day small businessmen, landowners and even large Russian companies are the targets of raiders, and the problem has become so endemic that President Medvedev specifically referred to it in a speech in February this year, calling for "real instruments to prevent raider activity."END

After reading this, you can see why we have abandoned our bullish outlook on Russian investments.

Monty Guild’s website

In my precious metals focus, I just pay attention to companies which have primarily gold or gold & silver, and little or no exposure to base metals. Its my rule of thumb by now. I had assumed copper was to collapse one day, but in reality it has shown resilience.

Still on a CPI-deflated basis, with a declining dollar, and non-hedonic inflation prices, a steady copper price is a declining copper price. As for zinc and lead, they require bonanza grades to be profitable over costs, the same goes for nickel. The same can be said for gold, but gold has had the feature of rising in ALL currencies.

Yes, its true there are some real concerns going forward to investing in Russia. This is why FST.V goes on the watch list. Mongolia and Russia have been serious disappointments to investors.

Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, all have seen their problems.

Saskatchewan, the new 'it' province

Globe

http://tinyurl.com/5gxq2f

"While this story of official corruption may sound completely unbelievable"...

Only for foreigners... for someone coming from Russia/xUUSR stories of that kind are not only believable, they are in fact more "normal". There is only one thing garanteed over there - your life/business in Russia will be INTERESTING.

Remember Ambac?
While it may seem like years ago, it was only two months ago that the direction of the market seemed to hinge on the daily fluctuations of Ambac (ABK). Remember that Friday in February when the Dow rallied over 200 points off the low on rumors of a bailout for the company? Luckily for the market, investors have moved on from watching ABK. Since the early March capital injection into the company, ABK shares are down 44%.

From Bespoke

I want to submit a question about the Bear Sterns 'incident': What if it was an organized action by JP Morgan using the NY Fed to force Bear Sterns into a desperate situation?

Reasons:
1. Bear Sterns reported a $115 million profit in 1Q08.

2. Bear Sterns only had to be bought out so cheep because the loan it had from the NY Fed that Bear Sterns thought was for 30 days(something like that), the NY Fed told Bear Sterns that they were mistaken and that the loan was due MUCH sooner. Somehow I find it hard to believe that in a company that large that nobody knew the correct duration of the NY Fed loan.

3. JP Morgan in front of Congress testified that even if Bear Sterns had declared bankruptcy, that JP Morgan would not have been at risk.

4. The federal Reserve isn't a governmental 'tool'. but a private company. As per the recent Supreme Court case.

It sounds like JP Morgan, as Bear Sterns banker, knew that Bear Sterns was walking on thin ice, and with the help of the NY Fed setup Bear Sterns to take a hard fall that would allow JP Morgan to buy it up on the cheap, and from behind closed doors.

Quentusrex :

Your logic is impeccable.

Just remember it's all amongst friends and family

PS: I am however not related

Could the Bear Sterns deal be the another part of this event:
"Government subsidies and incentives

BBC News reported that JPMorgan Chase struck a deal to receive large incentives and subsidies from the City of New York and the State of New York to ensure that the company does not follow through on threats to leave downtown New York for Connecticut.[9] While there are other companies that have received similar incentives to stay in New York's Downtown after 9/11, BBC News reports that this is the largest deal of its kind to date. A quote from the BBC article:

New York City officials have already paid Goldman Sachs $650m (£330m) to build new offices in Battery Park City. [...] But the paper says that JP Morgan Chase will receive an even better deal, with tax breaks, discounted electric power and rent subsidies worth $100m from city and state authorities. And it says that rent subsidies will amount to $50m per year for 15 years, or $750m. JP Morgan Chase is a huge, and very profitable company.
" -Wikipedia

Could staying in New York be another part of the leverage used to get the NY Fed to go along with the 'misunderstood load'?

Ok, so if Russia is out of the question, here is a stock which I believe to demonstrate what I'm talking about, which is so well indexed, and yet lately has so chronically underperformed probably because of interest rate cuts and declines in the $C:

stockcharts.com MAD.V is overlaid in blue-

http://tinyurl.com/5ruejy

This is a serious case of ouchies. Can you say undervalued?

really enjoyed the article contained in John Mauldin's weekly email, thought id post it for up for others,

enjoy

http://jglobal.blogspot.com/

THE OUTLOOK FOR Applied Materials' highly touted solar venture is partly cloudy, at best, according to the current issue of Barron's.

Around midday Monday, shares of AMAT (as the company is referred to on Wall Street for its stock symbol), were little changed at just over $19. That price reflects a meaningful correction from $22, where it traded last month, as analysts began voicing skepticism about bulls' enthusiasm over new equipment from AMAT's SunFab unit to make solar panels to generate electricity.

SunFab solar equipment will take on those from First Solar, the low-cost producer, which uses cadmium telluride, a semiconductor material. SunFab uses more common but less efficient silicon, and attempts to make up the difference by making its solar panels six times as wide as First Solar.

While the AMAT unit boasts at 17% cost advantage, Barron's senior editor Bill Alpert points out in the article ("Applied Materials' Forecast: Hazy, Rain Possible1," April 14) that the machinery to install SunFab's huge panels doesn't yet exist.

AMAT's stock leapt to its recent high on news of a $2 billion order from an unnamed Asian customer, which one analyst said reminded him of the dot-com bubble period, when companies would tout big orders that never materialized. As another analyst observed about SunFab's prospects: "We're in the show-me phase."

surprised no one mentioned crox. i am sure there will be bottom fishers at $10 but its just rubber sandals. what a fall from $75.

Is Amazon next?
I'd be interested to see what people think. It has large institutional support with low volume, making it easy to hold up the price. PE multiple is extremely high for a company that still has a majority of revenues derived from media sales. I can't see how this company is immune to the recession.

ALOHA !!

I think it was yesterday I made fun of "Monopoly Money" the game by Milton Bradley. Here is an e-mail from a mate in Australia about Monopoly Money ... My appologies to Milton Bradley! if only our elected leaders would have been as responsible ...

READ ON:
G'day Bill,
The other day I read in the Mogambo's column, that the price of real estate on the Monopoly board game has remained the same from its inception. The reason for this is that there has been no change to the money supply in the game. The explanation of inflation to those ignorant of the concept could not be simpler.

The evidence of stable prices in the Monopoly game are in stark contrast to the surreal world of modern monetary inflationary policies of the global central banks. With the inflationary nominal prices of houses being what they were, it's no wonder that people were mesmerized by the illusion of being rich. Before the collapse of housing we were on our way to being as rich as Zimbabweans . As we revert to mean property prices the money supply remains inflated. I shudder at the implications. As gold, silver and other commodity prices rise, I find myself oddly surprised that I wont be feeling any richer for the experience, despite my holdings.
Regards,
Jon

Re: "As gold, silver and other commodity prices rise"

I want to see CPI-deflated charts of gold, silver, oil, etc. compared to all of the base metals, since there is a habit amongst analysts to post cliches about the CPI-deflated DOW since 2000, and how in CPI-deflated numbers over the long term, there's been little advance since then.

Setups from the CARA100

http://ronsen.blogspot.com/2008/04/setups-from-cara-100.html

Bill,
Thank you for your input, my feelings exactly.

number2son

Could you explain your spread position on COF and the advantage of a spread? Not looking for specific numbers but just some info on the spread.

Thanks - ulvy