"Fed Commits $800 Billion More to Unfreeze Lending"
http://tinyurl.com/6zvenv

David,

Any luck with your representative from SLW? I sent email yest to IR without luck.

Treasury yields are coming down this morning in response to the GDP report (showed a revision down of -.5%)

http://tinyurl.com/57mc94

But if you look at pre-market trading in equities, the market seems to be shrugging this off.

Also, an item on TBP from an analysts shows this market hasn't put together three consecutive positive days in awhile.

That, and the toppiness evidenced on the 15 minute charts has me wondering if the strong open will have any legs.

The pullback in SLW yesterday was puzzling, NYUgrad. I had moved my stops up on my position yesterday after the open and it got hit later in the day. So it was a profitable trade -- my first good trade in a long time.

I'll consider another entry on a pullback after the open. And that recent low looks like a good stop price if the market does decide to sell off hard.

What's the ticker for that direxion 3X bull large cap etf? Thank you...

Buy Bill A Beer Web Button:

I think we all owe Bill and family alot of gratitude. Talk about self-sacrifice. We all recognize his contributions to our fiscal lives plus some through the community blog he graciously provides. Gotta tell ya, he must really love this stuff to be so giving. Anyone else here measure up to his yardstick? Case closed.

In fact I would like to propose a “buy Bill a beer” button for his blog so that we the recipients of his openness can express our gratitude in the way friends do it best. At distance makes it impossible but for the possibility of having Bill (twist his arm) to include a button at the top of his blog with a “full beer mug” picture we can push at will. A no obligation way to personally recognize his contribution to our families lives. Paypal or whatever, a preset $$ for a Bahamas beer. One click…one beer and a hand shake.

Keep a note attached to the button to prevent outrage from newbie’s (boy, are we human or what) seeing this as a $$grab. Like “this button is at the blog communities voted request and is in no way solicited by BC but accepted as only a show of mutual gratitude”.

Of course there would be no expected obligations from Bill on the blogs content etc. This would purely be a “Buy the man a beer!” principle, a pat on the back. Can’t be clearer than this.

What’s the community think?? It’s your show supposedly! Lets prove it.

I believe if there is no discourse on this topic then it can be assumed there is no support.
Lurkers, login (its very easy) and say “Re Beer button, Yea/Nay.” Four simple words. Take the time!

Disclosure: I have no links with Bill nor was solicited in any way, shape or form to post this. I am a 8 month lurker in Ontario Canada who sees value in this discourse and appreciates Bills awesome contribution to my person well being. I intend to subscribe to CTAB when it does become approved in Canada.

Step up to the plate gentlemen. It’s time to be heard. It’s all about social justice!
SteveB

The Effective Volume Tool shows further or even increased selling in SLW by the large players.

Bill,

re: the monetization solution — It looks as though everything hinges on this.

So, I'll keep asking...

Why are you so confident foreigners will buy our Treasuries?

We keep trying to lower the value of those they already own by inflation.
We are devaluing the USD — big time.
They all have domestic projects and problems to pay for.
Other countries (or individuals) are able to buy things or companies with real value...

Why buy pieces of paper value in more paper of falling value instead?

Would you?

Grym, That's why TOG works, we will have to pay increased yields to get them to buy....

The Direxion 300%

http://tinyurl.com/6zh9ct

BGU for the 3x large cap, Craig.

weve seen the flight to t-bills during the panic moments.

negative yeilds and the like dont seem to be scaring people away.

the USD has been falling the last few sessions but is still much higher than it was only a few months ago.

panic selling of stocks has led to panic moves into USD, there has been only someindications this has changed over the short term but until we see the behaviour of stocks/bonds and the USD during the next slide down, (if that should occur) im not fully convinced panic's will result in a boost to the USD.

the ongoing outperformance of the miners vs. the broad market is a great sign, albeit a short term development that needs some time to suss out.

Cara 100 Update:

EXC - Soleil initiates coverage with a Buy

sorry correction to my post should read, "im not yet fully convinced panic's WONT result in a boost to the USD any longer"

good luck gang. USD just took a stair step down as i write.

If there ever a more compelling reason to let the Big 3 go Ch.11 let me know:
http://tinyurl.com/5kmj6j
and the 'jobs bank'
http://tinyurl.com/6og427

Buy Bill Beer Button

Yeah, works for me.

Great piece by Barton Biggs, yes that barton Biggs, in the FT
http://tinyurl.com/684prl

U mean "Wrong Way" Barton?

LOL.

$CPC dropping like a rock. Danger of a major sell off increasing IMO.

$SPG ($47.68) hitting resistance near $50, and now down a little after opening higher.

SLW about to reach critical 2.58 price usd.

Volume for the Nasdaq composite hasn't been all that great the last 2 rally days. In fact, yesterday's volume was lower than the initial rally on Friday.

Same volume pattern on $CDNX, which is the speculative index that Bill pointed to as a sign that investors were willing to take on more risk.

SLW: printed a new low on the TSX: 3.19 CDN... not good - I can never seem to win with this stock

SLW
Looks like the LUN taint is starting to spread........

bsi87
Yep, same Barton, he actually admits to being wrong in the piece. Worthwhile read though.

Steve B - sounds like a good idea but....Bill will have to drink his way through about a dozen crates to get in his front door.

It should make for an interesting Week in Review:
"This week I worked zero hours while smashed on Kalik. The markets - oh, yeah, the markets...to be honest I missed it all and couldn't give a ****

Tune in next week to read about my dream with the giant jellyfish and etc etc"

Just a got filled on my SLW. Close to the 52-week low, so I like the risk/reward.

But there are still large sellers out there. Be careful.

Biggs retired because he was a bear all thru the Naz bubble. Early=wrong as I well know.

bsi87
He's been back for awhile and still manages money. Recall John Paulson flamed out as well and has come back w/a vengeance w/Greenspan.

re:SLW

No position. Max pain for Dec 5 bucks.

Paulson: piece of work on BNN live
Can anyone tell me what are they and where to find these symbols such as $CPC.

Paulson: piece of work on BNN live
Can anyone tell me what are they and where to find these symbols such as $CPC.

$cpc is on stockcharts.com.

bsi87 said:

"Early=wrong as I well know."

BINGO ! Very true.

bsi87

Just curious, what weighting of importance do you put on max pain theory in your trading?

I think max pain definitely is very helpful (and I have traded using that info) when trading gets closer to options expiry. Trading on that info when expiration is still weeks away lessens its effect, imo.

Would be interested in your take on this.

lets keep in mind that max pain for DRYS in nov was $17.50

I would like to have a drink with you two.
Seems a person could learn a lot just shooting the breeze. There appears to be a mutual respect growing here. Thank you for the dialogue.

I have made money on both and I'm sure others find it helpful.

long CIT group (CIT)

re:max pain

I don't use it as an end all/be all. But if the value is at or below current price, obviously I'm not interested in taking a long position. And with the markets as fraggy as they are, if the max pain value is not 1.5 or 2X current price, I'm not interested in taking on the long position.

Is it me, or did I detect a touch of Elmer Fudd in Paulson today?

Craig,

I seem to have difficulty in getting anyone to realize my question is NOT how much must we offer as interest — NOT how much will it cost us...

The question is: Why would they choose to buy, or more more crucial, what if they cannot afford to "invest" due to heavy lifting with their own domestic expenses?

It seems obvious to me that countries, states, cities, companies— like individuals can simply be to stressed out to think any interest rate worth the expense.

That is the current situation with many of us in the U.S. now.

I'm getting indigestion from a load of Paulson thanksgiving turkey: "Have we begun to see the result of all this money being thrown around?" "That's a naive question." The man does not want to share with us.

FDIC on US banks: 171 problem banks, up from 117. Profits fell 90%, 20% not profitable.

I propose instead of a Bill Beer Button, it be a button with a link to Bill's favorite charity.

SLW $2.58. here we go again.

I see. Well, you know the answer, as you and I were both around for interest rates with 20 handles in the 70's. Welcome back. :>)

You ride the TOG to the top, then as Seamus mentioned, buy the 30 yr with an 18% yield and retire for good.

Who is Bill refering to when he says "Back room boys" in his comments and outlook on the daily report for Tuesday? The way i read was the board room members were keeping the price down in efforts to award themselves very cheap warrants and call options for SLW?

Paulson confirmed in that Q&A that Geithner was in on everything that's been done to this point.

So it matters little if Paulson would have stayed on or not during the initial Obama transition period.

From the standpoint of bringing on new blood (and hopefully new ideas) in the new administration, it likely won't occur from the newly named secretary of the treasury.

I'm shocked.

Thanks Hank
Takes the Dow down 80 points for a 15 minute chat?

This market's no good

COF right at its downtrend line when connecting the highs set on Sept. 22 to Nov. 5 to today.

Will be interesting to see if it can break through.

Re:FAZ

bought with a stop above 10 AM price 72.64

So what's everybody doing for Thanksgiving?

Sharkie,

I love this market. Lots of volatility. Can be a bear one day and a bull a couple days later.

Going to sister in laws. Make her cook dinner. Watch football. Sleep.

Anyone have thoughts on RTP @ $98? Looks like a nice washout as BHP has dropped the takeover offer. Is the debt load too large to be sustained in this climate?

Todd: TG might have disagreed with some things along the way, we can't know that. The fact that he was in the room doesn't necessarily make him of the same mind as Paulson.

FWIW, John Browne of Europacific Capital, who called much of this long ago and who seems to be dubious of everybody remotely attached to this debacle, said it was a great choice. I don't know, but from a few things I've read and seen, it seems Geithner has a lot more foreign respect than does Paulson.

bsi87,

re: NAZ bubble

Late wrong is just as bad.

I avoided the tech thing until late in the game. As a longer term investor I couldn't see any reason to buy into companies with outrageous PEs. Finally, when my dividend paying stocks had been stagnant far too long, I put everything into 3 mutuals heavily into the tech boom.

One Small Cap, one Mid Cap and one Large Cap. Between Sep 2000 and Jan 2001 all three dropped 30% plus.

As with mutual funds the Q4 report listed what they then owned — all were invested in the same popular tech names — so much for diversification by class!

Against the advice of my broker I sold all.

Thanks to a friend's sweet tooth, I bought Krispy Kreme Donuts (KKD) and with a year of day trading — I recovered all and then some.

I had the time to do it because my one-man business was about kaput. There are unexpected upsides even in the worse of times.

Todd,
We all knew Geithner is part of the problem. I'm curious to see though if there will be any difference between him and Paulson since he is the head of the banks and Paulson was the head of Wall Street.

Grym,
I really think the banks, especially the Federal Reserve banks will buy as many treasuries as needed to fill the gaps when the foreigners stop buying. And then, eventually, they'll be lured back with the high interest rates, and the fact that we haven't defaulted yet and they'll be buying. I really think that's the main reason Geithner got the job, to ensure that any amount of treasuries will be bought, even if foreign governments start selling them as well as not buying new ones.

Rob.

Thanksgiving: harvesting venison-hopefully.

How's mum sharkie?

As a means of comparison with regards to downtrend lines, RIMM wasn't even able to rally back to its line yesterday before rolling over today.

It's currently hitting new daily lows at $40.96.

I'm thinking I should have sold my DDM calls this morning and then reloaded later in the week.

Rob.

Craig,

Still not addressing the question.

I'm assuming most of this tech pounding must be related to HPQ's earnings last night. With all the big cap tech getting hammered, they must have revealed something bad.

Or it could be people rotating from tech to financials.

Rob.

buying drinks- if/when the details get worked out, why not extend the idea to allow any one of us to buy any other poster a beer (or whatever, as the case may be)...

RE: Geithner

Foz & Finger Lakes

Color me "skeptical". :)

When I see some of the same cast that's been all around these financial problems now joining Obama's cabinet, or serving as advisers, the notion of "change" becomes less likely.

Now get this, I'm a life long registered Republican who voted for Obama; so I'm hopeful ...

NovaGold CEO Sold before Monday Share Drop (NG)
General Comments::On Monday morning, gold and copper miner NovaGold (NG) issued a press release which included, "If NovaGold is not able to raise additional cash in December, it will not have sufficient cash to meet its obligations." The company's shares subsequently dropped 67%, closing the day at 72 cents.
In our report yesterday, the top 10 tables listed some top officer selling at the firm. As it turns out, these recent sales were by CEO Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse. Those transactions took place last week and we review the details of the CEO's most recent selling below.
According to filings with regulators, the CEO of NovaGold (NG) sold 154,727 shares in the public market at a reported price of $1.892 last Friday. The day before on November 20th he sold 145,273 shares at a reported price of $2.061 in the public market. Both sales were done on an indirect ownership basis. On Wednesday November 19th, he sold 20,000 shares in the public market on a direct ownership basis.
After these sales, the CEO holds 1,958,508 company shares on either a direct or indirect ownership basis according to tabulations made by the System for Electronic Disclosure by Insiders (the balance provided by the insider indicates that the amount of shares held by the CEO may instead total 1,440,570).

NG
Moral of the story, SELL first THEN let the market in on the bad news.

Sundance

Re: RTP

I would not recommend buying a stock that falls that dramatically on such overwhelmingly high volume, especially in this market. And I know it's approaching RSI 7 below 30, and it's an astonishing 74% below its 200 DMA, but I wouldn't do it.

Maybe fading my bearishness on the chart is the correct play.

FingerLakes,

Isn't that like me buying my own credit card debt at a higher price? (If I were dumb enough too have any, that is :-)

Seems meaningless to me.

To survive people need trade with others — otherwise we go back to hunting and gathering. I expect we will declare another war on somebody rather than do that.

I agree on the Geithner choice — definitely an insider. But try as they may it looks like an exercise in futility as far as our nation is concerned. IMO their sole goal is their own self preservation and to hell with the rest of us.

Wouldn't it be interesting to know were they have parked their own money?

Todd,
I'm hopeful as well but my hopes are not as high as they would have been if Obama had chosen someone who was less complicit in the current problems.

I still think the main reason we got Geithner was to ensure buying of treasuries so it could work out that the banks lend this money to infrastructure companies and other manufacturers. I would love to see us start making our own steel and cast parts again. We can't even build a new John Deere here because our metal-working industry has been exported. I would love to see it and many other industries come back. Seeing a change like that would make me much more hopeful.

Rob.

re:RTP

I agree with Todd. OHMIGAWD. LOL

I'm finding longs that RSI 7 day <10 (!!!!) are the only ones that are holding together. The RSI Triple Time frame scan works better (IMO) when the major averages MA's are in LT uptrends - very similar to Elder's approach.

Todd in Fl,

Outside of inserting massive doses of dollars into the economy, I don't know what not other options there are (at this point).

Where I see Real Change Occuring with the Obama administration, is by involving us to participate more in changing laws through the use of the Internet.

To me, this is BRILLIANT and we are going to see REAL CHANGE VERY SOON.

"Analysts say Obama isn't just trying to make government more transparent by posting online videos of himself or his transition team's doings. He is attempting to organize his campaign supporters into a political force that he can tap in tough times - like when he needs to go around Congress and the mainstream media for direct citizen support."

Here is the full article posted on the SF Chronicle yesterday
http://tiny.cc/twG9Q

geithner's CV is interesting. I think I saw it on wiki. He has a broad liberal international oriented education, not narrowly focused on finance and greed. Maybe we can expect some integrity and concern for the people.

Grym, you're asking at what point there won't be buyers of treasuries, and I'm answering that we've seen some of those levels and maybe this time it will be even higher.

It's no different than consumer credit. If you are a flake you get the default rate of God knows what, 28-35%? Guess what rate we'll get.....

Beggers can't be choosers.

Grym,
I would love to see where Geithner's money is parked and the rest of them as well.

I just think that "self-preservation" like you say will trump everything. They will not allow a bond auction to fail. They can't because then all bets will be off and we will have an Iceland style monetary collapse.

That's why the FED banks and the foreign desks of the commercial banks will step in to buy anything not bought until the system is stable enough for higher interest rates.

Rob.

Now that I've started looking looking at stocks getting near or hitting their downtrend lines, I can't seem to stop.

AXA, hit its downtrend line yesterday at $17.67 and is falling today.

AZ actually briefly broke above its line today but is now backing off as well.

Many traders use rallies to these DT lines to establish short positions. Although trading anything longer than a few hours on a holiday shortened week where volumes decrease as we get closer to the holiday, is not something I recommend.

RE: SLW

Bill concluded his write-up on Monday's markets with:

"No further comment today other than maybe Silver Wheaton (SLW) is going to be ok once the backroom boys decide who is going to take control and issue themselves all kinds of warrants and options. Watch for it."

Does anyone else care to comment? Am I right to understand that one possible explanation for the share price drop may lie in insiders deliberately lowering the price so they can get bargain basement warrants and options?

Have some June 2009 2.5 calls. I haven't been having as much fun trading them as I had hoped. . .

And it is exactly like taking a loan from your credit card to put in your checking account.

When you don't have enough income to cover expenses the money has to come from somewhere.

It's a pretty sweet business where you can lend money(which was created by selling treasuries) to a bank who uses some of the money to buy more treasuries that are needed to pay the banks to buy more treasuries.

It's a continuous loop that could expand forever as long as some other people buy treasuries sometimes. Otherwise, the printing would really get exponential as they'd have to print more and more to cover the interest they'd, in essence, be paying themselves.

The only way the rest of the world could stop it would be to remove themselves from the dollar standard.

Rob.

Grym - Where will the buyers will come from?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetize

Todd - I am not jumping in on RTP (as I would perhaps have done in the past).

I do think they are blowing the bid cancellation out of proportion (of course it was not going to happen as both BHP and RTP have fallen substanitally since the takeover was proposed) and todays downdraft could largely be due to the end of an unnatural arbitrage unwind.

Mr Market has kindly allowed me to re-enter TBT at a 20% discount to when I last sold.

I also took advantage of SLW's ornery weakness by adding.

I am still in Phuket. Bangkok saw street battles (Yellows against crypto Red taxi drivers) today and the closure of both airports, as of 21:00 local time. I had thought the lull in hostilities might persist until after the King's birthday on 5 December but a couple of lobbed grenades last week have escalated matters. The real violence will occur when both street "teams", the Bangkok based "Yellows" and the provincial "Reds" mobilise on the same day, that day coming as soon as tomorrow.

I been watching miners, most of these stock are pump and dump or lots of inside manipulating
I got slw at 2.98 sold yesterday at 3.00 breaks even. I check my trading in miners for last 8 month and I will say I lost enough in TCK
Will never touch miner again. SLW was my last trade

re: pump and dump miners. Crap shoot bought 100k USA.V for a nickel/sh. Just waiting for someone to pump it up to a few bucks/share LOL. Gambling money, not a trade really! Not quite as much fun as Vegas though...

MCM

Grym - "we go back to hunting and gathering"

Vegetarian is an old Native American word for "bad hunter".

here here on the miners,

i think when the dust settles we will see what most of the miners are: con-games.

all this talk of production costs is utter bull*$#t imho, with oil at half the price, gas down and gold moving back up we will have to find out if in fact this was what held them back as they claimed for so long.

yes the miners have been doing well the last few days but such a trend does not make. the miners have a very very long way to get even close to where they were relative to golds actual price. i forsee nothing but problems going forward for the miners as credit issues, labour and legal problems continue to plague them.

i suspect many people are tired of hearing about all the problems in the mining industry and prefer using GLD type vehicles to invest in gold w/o the propaganda that these are the preffered way to invest in gold.

this may eventually prove to be true because of the leverage miners can enjoy but going forward there is still much working against them.

im looking forward to the PDAC this spring,
i suspect there will be lots of space availble for booths as most jr's wont beable to get loans to attend!! ;)

Action in SLW is determined by the action on Lundin and other similar situations that could happen in other mines that belongs to SLW.

For example, Lundin represents 10% of the SLW sales and there are risks of failing to fulfill commitments due to the lack of cash in Lundin. It also it has or had potential over 12 million SLW common shares and warrants as were contracted in 2004. The share price will be undervalued until the conflict in the take over, by Hudbay, Jaguar Financial (JFC.TO) between others insiders related with the business is solved.

[Bill Cara note:

If Jaguar is involved, I personally have no interest.]

FingerLakes, CP, Craig,

I trying to get a bit of outside the box thinking here. I realize how it's been done in some past situations. I understand the theory of what the Fed and Treasury are attempting. While all events have some similarity to others in the past, the differences are the key.

Who says "they" must continue to to use the U.S. dollar?

Any auction needs bidders who are Interested and who have the means to purchase.

In the U.S. our employment conditions are far different than in the 1970s. The speed of communication and global interdependence is totally new and different.

Our work ethic and government funded liabilities are far different than the 1930s. We're no longer an agricultural or even a manufacturing nation. It is such differences which concern me as to the willingness or ability of the U.S. to auction Treasuries or to be able to inflate our way out of this mess.

I don't believe we can keep it"in the family" — we'll need to trade.

Have you heard the term "revulsion" as applied to economics?

http://tiny.cc/7HtHZ

On gold miners - if I remember correctly, when the miners hit their highs, the forward curve for spot gold was considerably higher than it is now. Now you can buy gold futures 2 years out on COMEX for just slightly more than spot:

I.E.

Dec2008 819.50
Dec2010 846.40

I don't have access to an abundance of historical data, but I remember the spread being much, much wider (100+) when gold miners peaked. This would have implied that miners could sell production forward at a nice margin.

Now I think the market is much less certain of the prices for forward sales (for all commodities, not just gold).

Craig - "You ride the TOG to the top, then as Seamus mentioned, buy the 30 yr with an 18% yield and retire for good."

I suppose this might work if inflation were much less than 18%..... I don't trust the numbers enough to park my money in bonds other than in anticipation of an event.

re:ash

Capitulation. Buy stop 9.17/limit 9.20

RE: SLW

... Does anyone else care to comment? Am I right to understand that one possible explanation for the share price drop may lie in insiders deliberately lowering the price so they can get bargain basement warrants and options?

Posted by: 4theFuture at November 25, 2008

I just checked SLW for insider activity and the last activity was in August when there was some buying in the $11 range.

Bill: Jaguar Financial is involved in SLW share price situation.

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/November2008/24/c3756.html

[Bill Cara note:

If there are three or four players involved (and I don't yet know because I'm too busy on other matters), then all I can say is that I like two of them. HudBay and Silver Wheaton are solid. If HudBay directors want to acquire Lundin, they must have good reasons. I believe that metals prices are headed back higher and that the backroom boys in Toronto and Vancouver are up to their old tricks. I appreciate that if you are long the stocks, you want to know everything you can. But I don't think the stories you hear are going to teach you a thing about trading, and helping you avoid getting yourself into these situations. I don't have a high personal regard for some of the players behind these situations. They talk about getting shareholder value, but they are interested in gaining management control. They do that to work out favorable deals in options and warrants, perks from the company, and the inside knowledge of when deals are going to be made. This is insider trading at its worst. It usually becomes an issue at the peaks and valleys of price cycles. Media reporters and journalists either don't have the sophistication or knowledge to understand and they get spun just like the public. End of story. End of my interest in this situation.]

short BAC at 14.4.

Best mortgage rates since January on the heels of the Fed intervention. Call your mortgage provider if a 30 year fixed @5.5% with no points is of interest. Happy Trading

So? What's the verdict? Is SLW a buy or a sale here?

I am willing to hang in there for the LT (1+ years).

Norman - Bill has stated he believes SLW is healthy. I have no position.

[Bill Cara note:

CTAB will issue a Briefing on Silver Wheaton in early to mid-January. We have access to lots of public information and can link the dots when we have to. Until then all I care to say is that I think silver prices are headed higher and that Silver Wheaton will be ok financially. People who populate the stock chat boards with drivel and pure speculation are a waster. "Don't pay it no heed" as a Bahamian lawyer friend would counsel. What did KRY ever amount to after the trillion words written about it? Zip. Every deal needs at least one reason to be in it, and if that reason goes missing, then walk. With KRY it was Todd Bruce who I put my confidence in. I knew it was let's say a challenging environment for him, but I hung in until he was cut loose. Had I shorted it every bump after Todd left, I would have done very well. Some people did. The losers were the ones who continued to believe the "story".]

Need stammerin' Hank to make another speech so my FAZ trade (77.58) can get some traction!

MCM

SLW

Short Position CANADA... Oct.31 1,001,018... Nov.14th 1.156,685 (TDWaterhouse)

USA...Oct.28th 4.97M

I am holding for the longer term. I expected volatility and I tried to prepare for it by setting a weekly closing price as a Stop and a $ loss Stop... it is still in a comfort range for me.

Norman - based on the chart, there is no bottom now for SLW. It just cracked thru it's 2.56 support. I learned from DRYS that once it breaks the support in this market it's good to get the *h* out. I did so and avoided a 70% drop in about 2 days.

re:SLW

another thing to note. The 10 day ATR is .58

If one uses a 1.5 day stop (.58*1.5=.87), it means the stock can move 29% against you (assuming a 3 buck entry price) before you sell out. So with that great of volatility, the position size has to be tiny unless you're Buffett. JMO.

Nice thing about the 2-3x ETFs is that you can look at a graph of the opposite trade (e.g. FAS, FAZ) and ask yourself if you still want to be in the trade. Like turning the chart upside down. Keeps you honest.

MCM

Bill has been clear in his opinion that SLW's longterm prospects are solid even though there appears to be near term downside risk.

Bill - do you feel the same way about TCK? I've been catching a falling knife lately. TIA

{Bill Cara note:

I still like the management. I like the properties. I think the prices of their resources will now rise. So, I'm there. I don't like the trading though -- just like I didn't like what happened to SLW yesterday afternoon. This is institutional hot money -- let's call it OPM. I question is a few of the managers of OPM have personal interests. That concerns me. Like I say, I don't have the time to dig out the facts. Insiders only talk among a few people, so the real story often doesn't come out. Later, often, you can figure it out.]

Just pulled up Bloomberg where in the upper right corner of the screen they have (in error) a graph of the Dow up 657 points. Looks like it's from last month sometime. Interesting way to spark a short covering rally...hmmm

I got burned to catch falling knives more times than I'd like to admit. I am looking to go long SLW and TCK too. But the fact is that they are both in a bad down trend lately. I am waiting for a confirmed rally in these stocks before entering just to be safe.

Is NOT.V done? - now down to $0.50 - Anyone still long?

Good morning! Today, finally, one of the sell limit orders I placed in early October got triggered! I sold 2000 shares of WGW at $1.25, which I purchased at $1.05. Even though the interim period was scary (WGW dropped to $0.5), but in less than 2 months the patience was rewarded. I suspect the same will happen with the general stock market -- in a year the investors will be wishing they were fully invested now.

Also, looks like my intuition of selling all my GG yesterday "into strength" yesterday at $26.18 was correct. I am keeping a buy limit order at $23 to buy the shares I sold yesterday.

Some news on coal....teck....fording

Soros and other funds buy major coal equities at fire sale prices

Tanking coal mining shares prices have attracted serious interest during the third quarter from some of the country’s foremost investors and fund.

Author: Dorothy Kosich
Posted: Tuesday , 25 Nov 2008

RENO, NV -

Über investor George Soros bought a 2% stake or 2.9 million shares of Arch Coal, the nation's second largest coal producer, during the third quarter, as Citadel Investment Group and Invesco Ltd. snapped up 3.5 million shares of Peabody Coal, the biggest U.S. coal miner.

SEC third-quarter 2008 filings show Soros also bought 833,658 shares of another U.S. coal miner, Consol Energy, as well as purchase another 490,000 shares of Brazilian iron ore mega-miner CVRD (Vale).

Meanwhile Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel bought 1,688,088 shares of Peabody Energy as New York's Invesco Ltd. made a dozen purchases of Peabody stock, totaling in excess of 3.5 million shares. SEC filings show that Invesco also has holdings of more than 1.5 million shares of Teck, as well as shares in Canadian gold miner Agnico Eagle.

As shares of coal mining companies have dropped along with the rest of commodities, investors have embarked on snapping up coal equities at fire sale prices. For instance Bloomberg reported that T. Rowe has bought Peabody, Arch, Consol Energy and Indonesia's PT Bumi Resources.

Daniel Rice--manager of BlackRock Advisors Inc.'s Global Resources Fund, which is also among the largest holders of Peabody and Arch-told Bloomberg Monday, "Coal is the best commodity to get into right now. It's a lot less sensitive to downturns because it is needed for basic power generation, and demand is growing."

any predictions on which direction we go in the last hour? I say down...

Grym,
If we wanted to make our treasuries attractive to foreign investors, instead of treasuries being the easiest way for them to dump their excess dollars, we would have to cut spending and raise taxes to show we're planning on paying down the debt eventually.

And I don't mean cut the rate of growth either. I mean actual dollar cuts across every program. And then balance those cuts with equal tax increases(even though I'd like to see 2X the cuts and 1/2 the tax increases) to make it fair.

Foreigners would see this as us taking responsibility for our debt instead of just playing shell games with the banks and pretending there's any interest in treasuries.

I'll bet half the reason for such low short-term rates is because the banks are parking all the taxpayer money we've given them there.

We'll have to see if "change" means thinking long-term or if they'll just keep the current shell game going until the dollar completely collapses.

Rob.

It seems to me that the path of maximum frustration is up.

No one is counting on this rally succeeding. How many small guys are betting against it would be the easy tell but only HB&B can have that info.

Rob.

The S&P tested 840 three times today. I would think it would be a good sign if we hold above that level.

Rob.

blue bluff - anything specific behind your prediction or just a hunch?

I am skeptical that todays swoon is trying to draw people in on the short side only to punch a new high later today and stop them out....

Also interesting that both the dollar and oil are down.

Rob.

long ASH @ 8.90.

Finger -

I kind of feel the same way - Who is left to get shaken out if last weeks disgusting market action didn't already do the trick?

{Finger -

I kind of feel the same way - Who is left to get shaken out if last weeks disgusting market action didn't already do the trick?}

those who bought Friday and Monday.

I have a link to a site that reports positions added or sold for mutual funds by ticker. Dont want to post as i do not know the validity of the data.

But it shows Oppenheimer Gold & Special Minerals adding 1,660,000 shares on Nov 24 for a total value of $4,664,600 ($2.81 per share).

Oppenheimer's site only has infor as of Oct 31 so it doesnt list SLW in the holdings report yet.
http://tinyurl.com/6eydwp

Can someone confirm?

just to confirm my last post is regarding oppenheimer opening a new position on slw for 1.66M shares.

that same site shows oppenheimer sold 3,373,068 shares of GG on the same date 11/24 for the same fund.

Re: Debt Monetization

What's stopping the Chinese from buying up all the gold to put an end to the Forex problem?

U.S. Fed could empty Fort Knox and the Chinese party officials could be there with more Yuan-Dollars on its way to a new gold standard.

I could see some people locking in profits if they got in Friday.

I just think that pretty soon this rally will hold as it seems most people expect the opposite.

We saw what happened after Congress passed the TARP and the consensus view was that we were going higher.

And the same after the Election.

I just think that most people expect the rally to fail now.

Rob.

Now I think the market is much less certain of the prices for forward sales (for all commodities, not just gold.

B. Sundance: I am looking to buy some GG and possibly others...I am waiting for a pull back...do you see this happening? Thanks for your input.

Re: GM

Obama/Congress plan a new gasoline tax and green subsidy, not a TARP-like handout. When Waggoner shows up next week in a Volt prototype years from production instead of his trusty Gulfstream, Congress will shock and awe with its automotive agenda.

I added some TCK strangles for $0.53. The price seems to be trading in a narrow range for a bit too long. And the market trading between 840-870 seems like it's loading up for something.

Faulty home mortgages - Lending credence to reflation theories, perhaps the anticipated reflation wave will manifest itself in higher home prices. This could negate some majority of need for renegotiating residential mortgage terms? I'd feel much better if some prior effort were made to convert those ARMs over to fixed though, as rates most certainly will increase.

It is interesting to see that 800 billion from the Fed to buy mortgages doesn't even move the needle much these days. Homebuilders are up but that's fading now too somewhat. Do we have bailout fatigue? I think confidence in the Fed's ability to "manage" the situation is mostly gone.

Remember the furor over 29 Billion for Bear? Now, 800 billion barely excites a comment. What does that say about where we are going?

they're not buying a lotta puts.

volatility run against indices shows RSI 50.

Neutral. Not much fear or greed out there today.

TN Blogger - will there be another pull back in GG? Thats really a tough call in the short term after the miners have had such a vicious 2-day pop. This market is too vicious for me to take a really short term view.

In the long run (1-3 years) I think fundamentals support gold bulion prices going slowly and steadily to higher. (Not necessarily a huge upwards blast). Therefore I think that the market favors accumulating a position over time rather than going all in.

Selling out of the money January puts at 15-20 strikes may be a good/ low risk bet. I would also consider buying a long-term in-the-money call (i.e. Jan 10 or Jan11).

Can GG dip below $20 in the short term? Quite possibly, way too hard to say for sure. Why not accumulate a position over 3-6 time?

BillySundance said:

"I am skeptical that todays swoon is trying to draw people in on the short side only to punch a new high later today and stop them out...."

Market action during holiday shortened weeks can be skewed because many professional market participants are gone, either on vacation or back home with their family.

For this reason, any assumptions/decisions made based on this week's trading (unless we see unusually large volume) are less reliable and not to be trusted.

jmo

"The S&P tested 840 three times today. I would think it would be a good sign if we hold above that level".

In addition, it made lower lows with each test, which to me says? Any opinions on this?

...."3-6 months" time....

Todd - agreed that market action is less reliable during holiday week.

From a psychological perspective, I think it is a good time to push the market higher and when mom & pop return from their vacations next Monday they will be scared to jump back in.

Mom and Pop definetly were not taking new positions Friday and Monday - they were scared silly selling everything last week only to have big shorts covering with their shares at end of Friday.

betting on at least one +1500 day to get us over resistance...not necessarily today, of course, but i think it needs to happen for cash to start coming in from the sidelines...

Nice writeup on SLW at the fool.com.
http://tinyurl.com/5je7mo

"Silver Selling for $1 per Ounce"
Excerpt: Even within a sea of drowning value stocks, Silver Wheaton (NYSE: SLW) mining stands out like a lighthouse. Thanks to its unique, fixed-cost business model, a dive into these numbers is a lot more fun than the math-wary Fool might think.

My take. I am holding. Too many positives.
- Lundin issues seem much to do about nothing and opportunity for manipulation in the short term. - I believe USD will go down, thus gold/silver to rise in 2009.
- CTAB is putting out a report in Jan and i dont think Bill is one to waste time on dead money.
- Unless Silver is going down to $5, SLW is a steal at these prices.
- if SLW goes down any further i will be loading up on call options with late 2009 expiration.

Cp

Reflation won't work. It will appear to work if the public's sediment changes to positive. Very difficult for that to occur when we see bailout, Russian analysts saying end, riots in Iceland and government speakers everyday.
The sheeple have to be peeplexed.

Our gov would rather see another lost decade more than prosperity over generations.

Wiki quanatative easying.

That will/us more likely than monetizing our debt.

Ohhh.

Ask Japan how the easing worked?

And those ajustable rate mortages, once global G-12 ZIRP goes into effect all loans tied to libor will be near zero percent plus their margin. Most of the prime ARMs have a margin of 2.25%.
If they can keep their jobs, their house mortgage interest could eventually get as low as the margin.
2.25% Arm!!
Yes please.
There are opportunities.

The fact the the put/call ratio is so low and that the S&P made lower lows three times today sure makes it seem like it could go either way from here.

We'll have to see how it plays out.

Is anyone short right now?

Rob.

2nd,
I think Friday or Monday could be that day when the Black Friday reports come in. I'm thinking it will be much bigger than people think. People save all year for Christmas. They even go out to dinner less often if it will allow them to save more for Christmas. Every woman I know is heading out at 5AM or earlier Friday and their lists are equal to or larger than last year.

Rob.

Today's Bond Market Issues......11/25/08

JP Morgan will sell 3-yr notes backed by FDIC.

Goldman Sachs will sell $5B of FDIC insured notes due 2012.

Morgan Stanley will sell FDIC backed notes.

GE Capital will sell $11B of floaters.

Dominion Resources will sell 10-yr notes.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe will sell $300M of 5-yr notes.

Watching SKF is interesting, another 40 points from here, its back to the strong support line

"Is anyone short right now?"

I will be if we're @ 8580 - 8599 @ 3:59:59 PM and XLF / IWM haven't broken above the days highs...

Rob
Sales around this area start at 4AM......
I question the 1 year marathon savings idea.
I think many more are still paying on last years Xmas credit card charges.

I am also shorting USD via UDN, 30% allocation.

"Russian analysts saying end"?

For many years Soviet citizens were taught that capitalism rots... standing joke went, "It does, but what a nice redolence".

Just lightening the mood :)

Got shaken out of FAZ with that last rally...those things sure move fast!

Now Vadym teaches me vocabulary, as well... Lol

Spasibo!

(i had never seen "redolence" before... wouldn't want anybody taking my post the wrong way)

ok ok... aroma? :)

"smells of rich mahogany"
Mr. Burgandy

I just spoke with Brad Kopp, director of investor relations at SLW. He said that there is a very slim chance that the takeover of Lundin by HudBay will fail. If it does fail, then there is only a slim chance that Lundin will declare bankruptcy in the near future. If Lundin does declare bankruptcy, there is only a slim chance that SLW’s agreement with Zinkgruvan will be broken, because Zinkgruvan is a flagship asset and a low-cost mine, and it will most likely be separately purchased by someone if Lundin declares bankruptcy. Zinkgruvan was a separate company that was acquired by Lundin, and they may also be allowed to operate on their own because of the intricacies of the bankruptcy law. So if you multiply the probabilities of all these slim events, you get a VERY small probability that the silver stream from Zinkgruvan to SLW will be interrupted. I just bought another 1000 shares of SLW at 2.64.

FingerLakes,

We have been parking huge sums in short end Ts. One estimate I read recently said we would need to refund to longer Treasuries more than $3 trillion within the next 12 months. This is what got me thinking back to the revulsion article I read about a year ago.

This is too short a time to do any of the items you just listed (not that I think congress would do them). With the job losses we already have (the gov. numbers are always low) we have a huge number of people in dire straights.

We have many retirees who are having trouble meeting utility bills, meds and food bills.

In Illinois the state has been cutting funding for the mentally ill and others for several years. We are now at a point where several long time charitable agencies are falling way behind on contributions.

Even if a Republican had been elected the cuts would not be done — with Obama we will go the other way — no question.

In other words when people are disillusioned due to the lack of borrowing ability the fix is to re-illusion them and get them to shop, shop, shop. Total idiocy in my view.

Foreigners have been buying companies and parts of companies — which makes far more sense than buying Treasuries.

We've had a hell of a party — now comes the bill. If we can't sucker the other guys into picking it up this time, we may need to give them the family silverware.

History over the past few years has indicated that the next few days will be very gold friendly...

For years now, the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. has been a very favorable two-day period for the gold price as shown below - this year is not likely to be an exception.

While anything could happen later this week, a number of conditions have developed that would favor a higher gold price by the weekend, perhaps much higher.

First, due to the closure of the Comex in New York on Thursday and light trading on both Wednesday and Friday, there will be less selling than usual coming from New York bullion banks - this has probably played a big role in the steady gains over this two-day period in recent years as shown above.

Second, the gold price has surged recently, up almost a hundred dollars an ounce in just the last week, and this has undoubtedly caught the fancy of "momentum traders" around the world who may now set out to push the price higher.

Lastly, there are those shrinking short positions for both gold and silver and the unknown number of holders of December futures contracts who, on Friday, will announce their desire to take delivery of the metal next month rather than having the contracts settled in cash.

http://tinyurl.com/5kuarv

Great job David! I got no response to my email to Brad Kopp.

my own deduction was also that Zinkgruvan holds a value. i dont care who owns it or mines it. SLW has the rights to the silver and has in fact pre-paid. So its really a non issue in my eyes.

And even at worst Zinkgruvan is 10% of current scale. As i am sure with Silver going higher, more of it will be mined out of other properties. just the two from GG alone will be monsters.

No one is having my shares for this cheap. Thanks David for reaching out to IR and sharing your findings here!

Bought some SLW again, this time at $2.61. I'm hoping it holds this time. I'm also one of those who thinks that precious metal values will increase considerably in the next few years.

I agree that the changes I proposed will never happen, except for the raising taxes part of it.

I just wonder what Geithner and Bernacke will say if any of these chosen banks still fail even after we've dumped 7.5 Trillion into them.

If we say the population is 300 million that would be $25K for every citizen or $100K for a family of four.

Somehow it seems like giving every family $100K might have been a better solution than giving the banks $7.5 Trillion.

Or we could all just tighten our belts and spend within our means. I know that's how my family operates. Too bad noone from the banking industry or government seems to know how to balance a checkbook.

Real world experience like that would be invaluable right now at the top.

Rob.

CP, FingerLakes, Craig, Norm,

If we do indeed fall into depression we have a number of pluses — agencies experienced in dealing with the down and out. A number of safety nets which were unheard of in the last one.

On the minus side we have more than 2.5 times the population since I was born in 1938 and a workforce not accustomed to sweat. Most think going of a meeting as work.

The way young people reacted to the 9/11 attack gives me hope.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/business/economy/26oecd.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel, the group’s chief economist, warned in the report that the uncertainties associated with the forecasts were “exceptionally large, especially those related to the assumptions regarding the speed at which the financial market crisis — the prime driver of the downturn — is overcome.”

The O.E.C.D. projected that the economies of its 30 members would decline in 2009 by 0.4 percent over all, after growth of 1.4 percent this year. It forecast that growth would return in 2010, with advanced economies growing a combined 1.5 percent.

The number of unemployed people in those countries could rise by 8 million over the next two years. Inflation would ease, it said, but some countries would face a small risk of deflation.

The group also called on governments to take aggressive fiscal policy measures, as “current conditions of extreme financial stress have weakened the monetary transmission mechanism.” But it warned that once a recovery started to take hold, governments must “begin promptly to unwind the macroeconomic stimulus in place to prevent inflationary pressures from gaining a foothold.”

norm - "There are opportunities"

Let's hear them!

FYI
Latest AAII Investor Survey Results
Still very bearish.

Results as of November 20, 2008 This week's survey saw bullish sentiment fall to 24.37%, below its long-term average of 39.1%. Neutral sentiment fell to 18.49%, below the long-term average of 31.4%. And bearish sentiment rose to 57.14%, above the long-term average of 29.6%.

Anyone have a free online short squeeze price calculator?

I think the only way we'll see a depression is if foreigners won't buy enough treasuries and the banks can't pick up the slack.

Rob.

Thanks seadog. I think you are perhaps a big picture investor like myself. What sources do you use to form opinions on the trend for the market?

thanks early

"Somehow it seems like giving every family $100K might have been a better solution than giving the banks $7.5 Trillion."

Correct me if I"m wrong, but the banks weren't "given" 7.5 Trillion. Bloomberg knew exactly what kind of reaction they would get printing their crap, and it worked exactly as intended.

The Fed "pledged" 7.5 Trillion. That's a loan, not a gift.

As for "pledging" trillions to all the families - well we already did that, remember? Almost every homeowner in America at some point had 100k$ handed to him on a platter in the form of home appreciation. But like all "pledges" the money needs to be repaid, hence the current results.

CP

Always putting me on da spot. Haha. Jk.

Opportunities: cash, more cash, more cash and pm.

Yup I said cash.

Above they mentioned slight chance of deflation. IMO more than slight, more than.

I'm with Todd but wishd I had the trading sets. If I did I would be playing the trend which is against investor's long term
mindset.

Market plays many many games.

http://shortsqueeze.com/

Last month, there was a participant in this community posting Elliott Wave turn dates, quoting from service to which they subscribe. He mentioned that there was a major event turn date in late November. I'm just curious if he's (or she's) still out there in the community and if they have any updates for us.

Thanks!

mballard, I am not sure, perhaps it was Quasi and the site/service was tehnicalindicatorindex? The last I received was Saturday and it said:

"We now find ourselves in a catastrophic Bear Market, Grand Supercycle degree Wave {IV} down, which is correcting a Bull Market from 1718, before the United States even started. We show this degree labeling in the big picture chart on page 13 in this weekend's newsletter to subscribers. How do we know this? Because the S&P 500 fell to 752 Thursday, below the closing low the market formed at the bottom of the Bear Market in 2002. It means that low in 2002 was primary degree wave (4), that prices have now fallen below that bottom, which means the rally from 2002 to 2007 is a completed primary degree wave (5), which is all that was needed to complete a series of larger degree wave fives, supercycle degree wave (V)'s top, and Cycle degree wave V's top. This is not good. It means there is a very high probability that we are going to see new lows far below Thursday's 752. This hurricane is not over, not by a long shot.

However, the good news is we are about to enter a period of relative calm, the second phase - a rally/sideways phase - to this three phase Bear market. This Grand Supercycle wave {IV} down is correcting centuries of rally very fast, and furiously. Time-wise, it may be relatively short compared to other Grand Supercycle waves, but damage-wise, this Bear Market is going to change the world as we know it. "

It reminds me a bit of Nostradamus.

Nostradamus... that could be a problem... he predicted earthquake in California as far as in 2044, however according to Mayans the world will end in 2012... who to believe, who to believe... (holding head with both hands and desperately rocking back and forth)

"... Grand Supercycle degree Wave {IV} down, which is correcting a Bull Market from 1718, before the United States even started. "

Is this... even.. for real? Seriously if I had been trying to write some kind of cynical dark comedy article, this is the type of crap I would have written. People actually pay to read that stuff??

I also read somewhere else that the S&P now form s a giant head & shoulder pattern from the 1980s, and that the target area for the "upcoming drop" on the S&P is -42. Yes, that's MINUS 42.

Seriously, you have to put some of these people in straight jackets at some point. Panicked people will believe absolutely anything.

SiO2,

Is that a free service?

2nd
I am looking at November 4 closed. To buy some more
If we closed there by next week, we might go higher for year end.
If not we may go side way and or test low again. That is the opinion of people here

SiO2/ Vadym Graifer
Isn’t it interesting that we are looking at any type of crystal ball to find out where market is going so we can make some money? Intent and interest here is to make money playing market and without going to or doing any meaning full work. Thai is one of the reason people go to casino.
It is no different, and so result cannot be any different like casino there will be few winner and lots of loser?

"Is this... even.. for real"

I was saying the same thing after Countrywide, BSC, Leh, Aig, fannie/freddie, WB, MER, C, TARP (drama), the 15 other programs the ppt implimented, and our fed's balance sheet could at least get to be 8.5 trillion.
This is for real and anything is possible.

I just started reading a book by Prechter that was written in 2002 that I picked up in 04. I laughed could this happen, hmmm.... Yeah it sure is happening.

Help me understand how a new program everyday is suppose to make me think we are going to bounce out if this fast?

IMO NO ONE has a clue towards the forces that are here.

The USA and the globe will become hedge funds trying to keep fantasy land going.

The century long correction that "they" say may decend upon us.

I would rather be prepared at this point and be made fun of than get caught in the old way.

The old way maybe, the old way.

How many more times will we here the bottom is in?
To many. When it hits we won't know for months.

Muzie,
"The Fed "pledged" 7.5 Trillion. That's a loan, not a gift."
What happens if they can't pay it back?
This is sort of like "loaning" a deadbeat uncle money when he hasn't had a job in two years. You don't expect it back.

I would like to see what this will cost each taxpayer in the end but I doubt any of us will be alive to see it "paid in full".

mballard, Si02, re Elliot Wave,

Nope not me, it might have been QT you're thinking of, he has posted some of this info in the past.

Check out his posts in the daily chat on Oct 16 & 23, pull them up from the archives and just use your browser to search for "Elliot"

Quasi

ALOHA !!

As I posted earlier this week I have been accumulating SRL(ASX) and ECU(TSX). Within the past five days I have close to a 100% return on ECU, buying in the $0.60CDN range and to day it closed at $1.20CDN on high volume over the past three days. No affiliation to SLW and working on putting out a 300mil Ag oz reserve by Dec 15th all 100% owned.

Obviously someone has taken notice recently ...

Yes, where is QT
we need latest update from him

ALOHA !!

ON SLW/ECU
I meant to say that ECU has no plans to sell ounces to SLW as they do not need the cash. They plan to mine their own ounces, which is what they are doing now ... That is what I meant by "no affiliation to SLW" ... Well, okay, they both have silver!

"What happens if they can't pay it back?"

Then they don't get it back, fine. It's still far fetched to immediately throw your hands up in the air and say "it's a gift and we should shower average americans with this money instead", which is what the OP appeared to be suggesting.

"I was saying the same thing after Countrywide, BSC, Leh, Aig, fannie/freddie, WB, MER, C, TARP (drama), the 15 other programs the ppt implimented, and our fed's balance sheet could at least get to be 8.5 trillion.
This is for real and anything is possible. "

There's question of degree here.

It's one thing to believe a bunch of poorly managed banks could go bankrupt.

It's another thing to imply that, because a couple of big banks went bankrupt, the entire stock market of the last two centuries was all a fluke and we're going to back to an S&P level that we had when were driving with steam engines and toothbrushes were a luxury for the priviledged.

I'm sorry, but I can't convey to you how ludicrous it is to imply that we correcting a bull market "from before the United States even started", then nothing will ever convince you, and you and I will have to agree to disagree.

They should have put money in stock market
700B will triple in couple of year. (If we believe expert). And people would not feel poor on paper.
There may not be big withdrawal from Mutual fund and hedge fund
Also this 700B going to be 2100b will help reduce deficit we way and Happy days are here again?

The Grand Supercycle degree Wave {IV} down can only happen if the Federation doesn't destroy the Death Star, and all earth inhabitants fail to wear hats fashioned from aluminum foil. It's mandatory to use an old newspaper hat as a template. Good luck and may the Force be with you....

"Isn’t it interesting that we are looking at any type of crystal ball to find out where market is going so we can make some money?"

vinod- this is just my opinion, but there is a crystal ball...the market, at any given moment in time, is the sum total of the buying and selling at that moment, which sums up the collective emotional state of investors at that moment...i have no idea how much predictive power resides in an individual who is both good at reading sentiment and has extensive experience in interpreting the gestalt of the market based on that reading in conjunction with the 'tape,' but i would bet it's better than 50/50...(i've never been to a psychic, but i hear they're quite good at reading people, which is how they 'see' enough about a person to convince him it's supernatural...there are undoubtedly traders who can come close to predicting either the next move or the next big move a high percentage of the time)...

craig- LOL...i was hesitant about posting my last comment until i saw your last post..of course, you're kidding, and i'm not ;)

Of course.

So perhaps it is ok that total USA consumer debt is over 5 times GDP. If you believe the GDP numbers.

House is built on credit cards just as they say doom doesn't mean that the whole population will be done. Even if the death starship destroyer shows up over los angeles doesn't mean the world stops.

Long term trend is up, we are going down until we go up.

The globe has to much money in the system and does not have the human capital to service the debt. Printing more will result in failure eventually. Either way the sun rises and sets as Kaimu says it works till it doesn't.

All we hear are different bull/bear tards calling a super low bottom what was it 11 months ago you heard Dow 15k, 20k 25k.
Oil 200, 300. Sound familiar?
I thought oil 100 was crazy. Now nations are screaming why it isn't 90, news flash the world can't afford 90 oil, unless there excess supply if credit. The problem is that we can't even pay the old credit back. How are we suppose to pay back the new credit everyone wants to be issued?

Kaimu says also it is the money stupid.- I finally get it.

Also. Yeah "maybe" this won't be the correction before the USA.

This bear market is far from over, IMO just plain silly to believe otherwise.

re the "low of 1718:" if we adjust the DJIA for inflation, maybe we're already there...

Cp

If a 30 y bond ever yields 18% it will be called back in 10 years anyways unless current 30 y bonds are at higher rates at that time.

Japan didn't have run away inflation.

Imo if we expect it, look the other way.

No one saw this, 140 oil, Companies losing 75% of market value in weeks.

Maybe they weren't suppose to be that high in the first place?
Maybe the whole credit system is still blown up to big?

No idea but to sit down and compare all of these forces at play is quite amazing.

Rules change everyday. Being a student is good.

speaking of inflation, does TA make adjustments for inflation (and dividends) when looking at targets, or is the assumption that all investors only care about historical numbers without regard to context? lots of talk in the media about US indexes giving up 10 years of gains, but even after correcting for dividends, we are probably talking significant losses way beyond that in terms of real dollars...

I just spoke with an investor relations (IR) representative at Teck about their debt issues, and the big picture is that they have taken out a short-term debt for purchasing the Fording Canadian Coal Trust, and they will need to re-finance that debt (using a longer-term loan) in October 2009, which was their original intention. The IR representative pointed me to a November 20 release on their website, which details the steps they are planning to take in order to reduce the short-term debt, so as to take on a smaller long-term debt next October. He said that they plan to take more steps on the debt reduction front, with the goal of generating enough positive cash flow so as to meet their long-term debt payments starting next October and also have enough positive cashflow left. He said "we'll be just fine."

I have no idea how to value Teck's shares, but I assume they are priced now with the assumption that the global commodity prices will stay where they are or maybe even decline, since the current popular belief is that of deflation. Based on just that, I think Teck's shares should be very attractive to those who believe that commodity prices will rise next year.

Or one may simply wait for the smoothed price chart of Teck to turn up, which would indicate that all the "weak hands" have sold their Teck holdings and the only direction for its share price is up.

I have no position in Teck, but I'll be watching its price closely from now on. Teck did not really participate in the recent rally, so I'll wait to see how it performs during the next pullback.

TA ignores inflation and dividends. The only time it would include inflation would be if you looked at the numbers priced in a stable currency, of which there seem to be none on any given day. Perhaps looked at in a basket of currencies and commodities inflation could be filtered out.

thriftybob- would be interesting to compare the relative performance of $10,000 in (i) a dividend-reinvested total market portfolio versus (ii) an interest-reinvested T-bill portfolio, over the last ten years...

SLW
http://tinyurl.com/5je7mo

"Intent and interest here is to make money playing market and without going to or doing any meaning full work."

For many, probably... not many of those are going to succeed unless they run into string of great luck by putting money in at the right time and getting out when it's time. Rarely do both get done by luck. I know (as I am sure you do) a lot of people who were smart/lucky enough to get in one of bubbles but never got out in time. Happened with tech boom, repeated itself with housing, then with oil, like clockwork - paper fortunes get built, then destroyed by failure to realize gains.

I don't believe it luck in trading. I believe in hard work that starts paying off. As easy pushing buttons is, there is a lot of sweat behind consistent successful trading. Not necessary during button-pushing, rather in the past while skill, knowledge, understanding and right psyche were being formed, day by day, loss by loss, trade by trade.

norm - cash, cash, more cash, & PM - How does Joe obtain these items? Okay, it's not my desire to put you on the spot, I'm attempting to drag reasoning out into the open for discussion.

Concerning PM's, isn't this a form of currency in competition with Fiat? If Fiat were to become more valuable, then PM should loose value (as we are now observing)?

Finger Lakes - "I think the only way we'll see a depression is if foreigners won't buy enough treasuries and the banks can't pick up the slack."

This is the same point Grym has been pondering.

What about printing money? This is a flat tax the government can utilize to move cash into the "right" hands? This devalues Fiat and increases value of alternative currencies (ie:PM's) inversely?

norm - "If a 30 y bond ever yields 18% it will be called back in 10 years anyways unless current 30 y bonds are at higher rates at that time."

I think I still have a few of these left over from the late seventies stuffed in the back of my safe somewhere. I'm not sure if they were called back, but I don't remember receiving any letters on the subject. They're still in there last time I looked... Don't have the faintest idea of how much they're worth, I figure not much...

TN blogger

As an investor, a trader of longer duration than a few weeks or months, I tend towards themes. I am still into Chindia and commodities (both minerals and food) which have had the cold recently. Hopefully the antibiotics will kick in soon and the patient will recover otherwise this patient will be off to the loonie farm.

Apart from using a couple of very competent professional traders in my local market I personally trade about 30% of my equity funds in my local ASX bourse and a smaller amount in the US. I aim more towards trends where I look to take a good slice of the trend rather than the start and end which are impossible to catch. I use, apart from Alex Elder's 'buying at value' method, a charting method called Guppy MMA. This method uses EMA's from 3 to 60 days in a novel manner. Its interesting that this indicator highlights concensus (value?) between short term and long term traders. Longer term averages normally lag so far behind and therefore don't provide much for set ups and triggers however the MMA provides an indication of behaviour and not price. If you have charting software it is easy to set up. I'm sure there is info on the web about this methodology. Remember however you'll never be the first in or first out but you can catch the wave for a good distance. For shorter term trades I tend to use a variation of Elder's impulse system.

What I wish I had done during this melt down was use a series of MA's as exit points, ie as the market(s) dropped past a selected MA I'd sell say 1/3 of my holdings and so on further down. Perhaps I will use this on the way back up. Hope this helps.

Great insights in today's opening commentary by Bill into a pro trader's thought processes at a critical juncture in the market cycle, like we have now. If I understand it properly, we have to dig deep here - following the money - if we are going to differentiate between those groups of stocks that will ultimately be leaders in the next lift-off and those that are providing only day-to-day noise in the market (e.g. retailers that moved hard-up yesterday on news of their sugar-daddy's reprieve from the gallows).

Something must be rubbing off on me because yesterday evening I also spent a bit of time trying to decipher the above-average strength I had observed in a certain subsector of the financials on Monday. Specifically, the Listed Private Equities like

LUK Leucadia National Corp. +12.98%
SIVB SVB Financial Group +14.19%
BKCC BlackRock Kelso Capital Corp.+16.85%
AINV Apollo Investment Corp. +17.11%
PSEC Prospect Capital Corp. +11.98%
BX Blackstone Group L.P. +38.28%

and others

What intrigued me was how they were all, as a group, market outperformers. I dug a little further and couldn't come up with much except

1) Listed Private Equity, as a group, has been beaten up even more than Financials (e.g. XLF) over the last year.

2) Listed Private Equity, as a group, seem to have the capacity to dramatically outperform the overall market during Bull Markets: http://tinyurl.com/69o8hr

3) There is actually an ETF tracking this group which has a current gaudy SEC Yield of over 20%! It's called PSP. Perhaps some of you know of it: http://tinyurl.com/6mhe6q

Anyway, unlike Bill I have no thesis about their strength yesterday - I just lay this out hoping that someone has some insight, or opinions, on whether Listed Private Equities have any reason to come under a serious trader's radar.

Trading the stock market is not about making money. It can't be about the money because surely as day follows night, a decision to begin a career in trading precedes a series of nasty, humbling losses that will challenge not only one's pocketbook but more importantly, one's ego, conditioned by all experience to minimize offense to it's sensibilities and avoiding circumstances which may arouse those challenges. It makes no sense NOt to hit on pretty girls shamelessly, so why do so relatively few guys do it? Those whose ego's remain intact from this experience (trading and losing and not knowing why) will never succeed, could never succeed. To be good at this requires both a mercenary cold-bloodedness, usually to stay in good positions for sometimes hours, finger near the trigger, as the price/circumstance improves. More importantly, the ability to first, know that you're wrong in time to do something about it and second, take the appropriate action without further confirmation, because usually that inkling that something's wrong is your first and last clue that the floor's about to cave in. Ego is inconsistent with a lot of this because of the simple reason that you're going to be wrong, and you're going to be wrong a lot. The market is random enough and situations unpredicable enough so that a wide variety of outcomes can and will result from seemingly similar setups, tempting one to draw erroneous conclusions about those results and the behaviors that led to them.

In my opinion there are 3 basic errors committed by people like me, and I feel fairly representative of the "hotshot in his mind" but in reality depressingly Joe Average stock trader hoping to avoid honest labor:)

Buying into setups early, stopping out at small but frequent losses.

Selling good stocks when you should be adding to them.

Trading "too much", really great risk/reward scenarios really don't come along 300 times a day and anyone who tells you they do 300 distinct trades a day needs to see a psychiatrist.

My "best" trade ever came as a result of an accident. I was riding up 2000 shares of a mining stock during a real bodacious rally. All of a sudden, up about 20 cents above my buy price, which was a good buy, and for almost no reason at all like a stunad I reached to sell. Instead of the sell button, and maybe this was subliminal or whatever, but into this rush of strength I "accidentally" bought 2000 more shares at the market for a total of what was, for me, a sizable position. As in huge. End result, stock rallies another 20, 30 cents, and of course, being extra sensitive to the massive size of the load, sold into the next significant upwoosh of strength kind of in the middle of that range. A little early, again.

The moral of the story? Sometimes rallies just crash into the ground and die and in those cases it pays to take early profits. Also, some moves are meant to be small ones, they're kind of predictable but modest in size. But for those rare times when a stock is going great guns, load up the boat and try to hold on for five or ten minutes. It can do wonders for your account equity. Which come to think of it mine could use another little goose in the rear...

norm, vinod, quasi, muzzie,

Sorry Quasi (must have been the Q!). Well I said Nostradamus because you can always find an angle to get the forecast right. The site gives you one month free, perhaps mine expired Saturday, not sure. I found the daily summaries interesting and entertaining. You could always find an angle where he was right. The thing is, everyone is right eventually. "the stock market will go down, but may go up first", 60% chance of rain. As far as I can tell Ralph Elliot was not even born in 1718. Was there a stock market then?

2nd

i have heard that argument about dividends and profit.
I agree with you...
BAH humbug. There is no way that dividends in the SnP 500 are the same as the inflation rate, that isn't even including your principle or transaction costs either.

If someone can prove that opinion wrong, please do because the last 10 years no way. In fact I heard that there as never a 10 year period of time when the SnP didn't increase until this year. Now "they" say it is a 20 year period.

Incidently, I created a Google Finance portfolio of the following Listed Private Equities to track them in the future:

LUK SIVB BKCC AINV PSEC BX CSE ARCC CODI FIG ACAS CSWC MVC HTGC ALD AMG FSC KED GAIN KFN EVR GLAD TICC TINY KCAP PNNT CAP MCGC TTO

I like the idea that they provide exposure to thousands of small-cap, value, privately held companies.

Vadym - I just stepped out of my time machine after a short trip to Dec. 2044. I was curious to discover if Nostradamus' prediction was correct. After checking the public records and consulting with the locals, I can tell you there had been no major earthquakes since the Big One in 2025. Now you can relax. Oh, the new music and style of dress were great!

Jim Rogers Video interview
45 min on bloomberg from yest, posted today
http://tinyurl.com/5g3wpa

I am still watching but talks about the dollar sinking and commodities rising.

[Bill Cara note:

What decade was he not saying precisely the same thing?]

Mackinaw - Sometimes you scare me... Good Gawd!

BTW, when were we going to buy into the experiment?

CP -

PLEASE always call me out and bring up discussion. Keeps my thoughts and many other thoughts in check. I am a student but I feel that I am building confidence in my studies..

"Concerning PM's, isn't this a form of currency in competition with Fiat? If Fiat were to become more valuable, then PM should loose value (as we are now observing)?"

Precious metals have a store of value meaning they will always be worth something, someone will always pay you something for that or barter. You are correct about your statement with Fiat were to become more valuable.

What just made sense to me is the following..
Changes in the volume of credit/money causes changes in the value of money units. Add social psychology to the mix and we could have a bull run on paper based assets (stocks, bonds) or bull run on PM and commodities.

The thing I learned about Precious Metals is that can't go to ZERO. A stock certificate can go to ZERO, bonds can go to ZERO, a houses in Michigan have been selling for less than $1000 which is less than the annual property taxes. So that is essentially zero. Gold has a store of value.

IMO - we are in a time period of deflation, now I said that, eventhough we are in this period of unwinding we could have moments of change/correction (feel good for a minute/moment/days/weeks/months) and it would appear that we are in re-flation but that will correct and the unwinding will begin. Just because governments are re-flating doesn't mean that consumers balance sheets are being fixed. If consumers can't flush their debt away, those corporations will never flush theirs. It would appear the goal of the gubermint is for EVERYONE to be in debt because that is the ONLY way we can grow out of this... when that happens the whole globe will be in debt and we will look to the colonies on the Moon and Mars to take more debt so we can grow... See the problem here?

If I miss out on upside opportunity, I couldn't be upset about that. As I have lost TONS thinking all markets always go up. Now I understand that the whole world is in over it's head. The central banks believe that we must take on more... sure... sure... "Lets add more water to patch a leaky dam... " mish.

Regan who was Reagan's Treasury secretary in the 80s made the 30 year bonds callable, better check up those.
That scheme allowed the clinton administration some relief with their balance of payments because those high yielding bonds were refunded with new bonds at lower 90's rates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Regan

2nd, re TA adjusted for inflation / dividends,

TA is based on the charts you choose, I've never seen a site where you could get accurate inflation adjusted charts, (wild currency swings and inflation ups and downs over time).

Now as far as dividends go that depends on where you get the charts, Yahoo are not adjusted for divs where as Stockcharts do adjust for divs on most US stocks. Its actually something in Stockcharts I wish I could turn off just to be consistent and they don't adjust very well at all for Canadian stocks. Off course for things like Can Roys it gets tricky if you try to adjust, as some is a div, some is interest and some is return of capital which should all be treated differently.

Over time the support / resistance levels will have different levels for the same stock depending on whether its a div adjusted chart or not, I tend to like the non-adjusted but for most stocks the divs are small so doesn't make much difference.

Just some other things to think about.

Quasi

CP, I'm already in. Making new hay with 2000@$2.55 on Friday.

shark, "Ego is inconsistent with a lot of this because of the simple reason that you're going to be wrong, and you're going to be wrong a lot."

You have made another contribution to the openness and honesty on this board so well done to you. All too often traders get wound up about their method(s) but don't pay attention to their psychology of trading and how ego can take control. I liked a suggestion from Vad's book where you use a "minder/mentor" to check your trades before you place them, ie you have to justify your trade to your method coach. If you can't do a good job of it you will know you shouldn't trade it. A bit like justifying buying the latest model sports car to your partner... good luck.

I loved your comment about hitting on all the good looking girls. I remember back in the 60's (oh so long ago) going to hall dances where the girls lined the perimeter of the hall and the boys in the centre picked one for the next dance and hopefully the thereafter! If you were more interested in the thereafter (and at 17 who wasn't) you learnt to pick your target (a trade's set up) and then got in before everyone else (the trigger). Ah, lifes memories.

Out of the 11,585 U.S. and international stock mutual funds tracked by Morningstar Inc., 11,584 have lost money in 2008, according to fund data through Nov. 20.

just one fund hasn’t lost money this year—and that is the APX Mid Cap Growth Fund, which was flat through Thursday’s close

Grym - Frank Veneroso - I don't think he explains the root causes of the 80's S&L crisis in enough detail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_Loan_crisis

Actually, to expand upon this wiki article, and something sorely overlooked, I believe the S&L crisis was caused in large part, by increases in FDIC coverage just prior to the era. This caused people to become overly confident and careless with their deposits, which the S&L's were consuming at high rates on bad real estate bets. If the FDIC insurance levels hadn't been so high, depositors would have been forced to manage their money with more prudence, therefore limiting overall losses.

I'm very afraid the 2008 increases in FDIC insurance levels could lead to similar circumstances.

CP,

so aside of that end of the world, everything was OK??

Thank you, life is bright again!

Amongst all the doom and gloom a hedge fund operator says "We are in for the mother of all bear market rallies" refer the Financial Times article attached.

Earlier I posted the current AAII investor sentiment survey in which the Bears outnumbered the bulls 2:1. IMHO the posts on this board are consistent with that survey (perhaps Bill might want to run a regular survey at some stage, maybe not given the admin required). There has been a lot of comment re the new head of Treasury and his background however it is up to Obama to give this guy his driving instructions. When I was a CEO I told my exec's what I expected from them (challenging but achievable goals) and told them they would get all the help they needed (or didn't need if they were behind the 8 ball). From the little I know of your P-elect I am confident he will be of similar mindset. Always allow your exec's to make mistakes but never the same one twice, ie let your boss down. Give Obama a go and give him your support and trust unless he makes the same mistake twice.

Ok due to operator error the link did not come out so for the article "We are in for the mother of all bear market rallies" the link is
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1ef9847e-ba41-11dd-92c9-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1

All day long, at work, I just couldn't get out of my mind the image of turkeys being bled for the upcoming holiday feast. This is something that can't even be repaired by a guest spot on SNL. Can you imagine what it's like being on her spin-doctor team today, trying to deal with this? What a hoot!

Save a turkey, become a bad hunter!

Mortgages rates went wild today with as the hope parade hit main street...locking down our lender websites and causing mayhem. 5.375% for 30 year fixed across the board with lenders who had sufficient access to the dough. Floating down short term locks wins hearts alright. Norm, the LIBOR is way to volatile even with 2.25 margin for very long. It is the LONDON Interbank Rate after all. Count on mortgage rates climbing after the Inaugeration if history still matters.

Bill, BCE, which rarely trades after-hours had a slightly downward move on 2M shares quietly this evening, followed up at 9:30PM by a WSJ article putting the buyout deal in question due to continuing problems in the banking sector. It seems apparent that a short sale or option trade at the open would be timely. This dog just won't hunt and market manipulation is the only explanation for recent moves that are counter to the market in general and M&A targets in particular. IMO, priced to this market reasonably, BCE should be $20 or less for reasons given in previous posts.
Posted by at November 25, 2008 10:34 PM

re: Elliot Wave/technicalindicatorindex etc
I purchased a 3 mo subscription and have found it useful. I don't make any huge decisions based on it but take it into consideration. McHugh is a good technical analyst. He even responded to email feedback from me re: his newsletter. His commentary on Puplavas FinancialSense program is excellent when he is a guest. Only thing that makes me a but leery is the string of biblical quotes at the end of his newsletters. (Been cut off in traffic too many times by rude/cold drivers in cars with fishes on their back panel LOL). He offers a free 1 month trial subscription with no catches, so try it yourself before judging. He has made some really good calls in the last 6 mos....
MCM

norm - "high yielding bonds were refunded with new bonds at lower 90's rates."

I wasn't aware. Now there's a good reason not to buy bonds!

PM's can't go to zero, nor can they pay interest.

Money is no longer tied to PM's for a reason. Well, perhaps more than just one reason, but the reason that sticks in my head is for the purpose of inflation. Pookie's theorm says inflation is a necessary evil. Paper money is easily minted, and redeemable only in faith, since conversion to a fiat system. This allows government to levy a flat tax whenever necessary, known in simple terms as inflation. This mechanism can be used by government to compensate deflation with reflation.

I think we're about to witness a mean and nasty effort to reflate out of this crisis, it will be interesting to see what the USD will actually purchase in the next few years.

Loannetter..

The libor is very volatile. How true, very much so.

My assumption is ZIRP. Yeah Fed funds rate at 0, Bank of England will eventually get to 0, Bank of Japan 0, ECB 0, Austrialia 0, Swiss 0, hmm... who am i forgetting, oooh.. China won't quite hit 0 but since they are tied to the USD, it won't matter..

The libor might trade around 30 bps higher than zero but effectively it will get that low when all the central banks are fighting off deflation...

If the Ten Treasury is effectively at 3.1% today. 30 year fixed rates should (but they are not) be around 4.8%.

Not sure but if I remember right 30 year fixed loans were around 5.625% in December/January 06/07 and the ten year note was around 4%???

Now spreads are so jacked, we may not see rates this low for a while but eventually those rates will get lower!
I believe we are all mistaken if we think long term rates must go up.

I am trying to figure out why they were so high in the late 70/80s but it wasn't because of our "current state of affairs".

The rhetoric around the world could be wrong again.

If they are worried about our default, why is the 10/30 yielding, 3.1/3/6%???

Bond traders seem to always know more than stock traders...

3.1/3.6% - Correction.

RTP Down 32.07% at 7:57 Pacific Standard Time

Rio Tinto had nearly a third of their value wiped out Wednesday, in line with declines in London overnight, as investors reacted to news BHP Billiton had withdrawn its $66 billion hostile bid.

http://tinyurl.com/6zk97v

Mackinaw - Good work, I missed out on the move...?

CP - NOT! The target is $7-$10+ a juicy 12.5% monthly Dividend. Just bite before Nov. 27. :P

CP

I hear totally. I am starting to think contrarian to "inflation is a necessary evil" because we are/have (been) conditioned to believe that inflation is normal and necessary. That maybe the case but just because we have inflation doesn't' necessarily mean we need to go FROM BUBBLE TO BUBBLE.
SNL, TECH, Res Real, Com Real, Commidities...

If we got rid of the bureaucrats who make interest rate policy decisions and allowed markets to determine interest rates I would bet that we wouldn't grow as fast but we would have WAY more stable markets. I'm rich, I'm ruined, "Mortimer we're back"!, I'm poor.
Wouldn't it be nicer to have more stable way of living? won't happen because people need policies to be elected. These bubbles take years to build.

My fear is this current crisis will take out small countries, Iceland for one but more to come but we will eventually leg out of this... The next time the crisis will take out NATIONS, not just the USA, many more than that. The world is coupled, no stopping that now.

Who knows what our dollar will buy in a couple years.. Japan did quantitative easing and never suffered hyper-inflation.

The whole globe is stimulating their economies... whole world is printing money.
EURO banks are more levered than our banks. China banks have ZERO transparency. Japan is still hiding stuff from the 80s.

We need a global revolution, or the next time.... It will get nasty.

just my thoughts nothing more... all with a grain of salt please.

different note but credit crunch is hitting UAE.
http://tinyurl.com/6j4ce4

No, scratch that - the div. is quarterly. I'm getting my juicy ex-div. dates all jumbled up.

Current on ASX:
Rio Tinto down 32% (Thank goodness for long RTP puts)
BHP up 7.6%
FMG (Fortesque) down 10.7%
ASX mining up 0.5%

Market schizophrenia: holding on to falling resource equities for the long term and at the same time playing the volatility with options.

ex-div should be Dec. 11

Jeremy Grantham

Rare TV interview.
http://tinyurl.com/6cxuhq

Okay, isn't ex-div ~12/11? last ex was 9/11! Where do you get your ex-div date? I'm jumping in if we get a pullback but likely take profit long before ex-div. This market moves so fast it "trapped" me in some equities so I'm extra sensitive...

Wakadimashta!

Have you peeked at DSX recently CP? They cancelled their Div recently but showed some strength today. Chart still scares the heck out of me.

norm - This wouldn't have happened if our gov weren't asleep at the wheel. Their tools are intended for steering the economy. No, I don't think a totally free and unregulated market would work, there are too many crooks to spoil the broth. CDS's were a free and unregulated market - look where that lead us...

Mack - Dry bulk - Will China be needing coal/ore soon? AH -6%? I wouldn't be in it for more than a day trade, unless you were going to park money for months(I've done just this on some)... In any case you might get a better price, wouldn't be surprised if we don't have another couple of terrible days waiting between now and Jan end ya know... I don't expect to see a 9k DOW before then, but a good couple of days from auto bailout is possible.

Shipping will recover, it's just a matter of when.

Well, we are never a totally free market..

What is about a free market with tax subsidies?

buy your 6k lb SUV and write it 100% off for tax year of 03, 04.. Is that make suv purchase a free market? not really.

The whole IRS tax code is filled with lobbied loopholes to promote inefficient markets but no one ever complains about that because it needed to get an industry going. Ethanol from corn?
1700 gallons 51 cent tax subsidy, more energy goes into one gallon than comes out of one corn based gallon. Sugar is better and so is Timer and Hemp. Those industries can't lobby because one, Hawaii doesn't have enough, brazil isn't part of the usa and hemp is illegal, timber isn't sexy.

These are several examples but you are correct maybe a true free market would be bad but the "free market" we have is nothing of the sort. Gubermint needs to back off.

CDS are part of the problem, but they are less than 1/10th of the global derivatives. More problems to come.

Be sure to watch the Grantham video... Interesting...

IMO stock market rally to come, I am in agreement with the bear rally FT article.

Changing my nickname to "Grand Supercycle degree Wavesmash {IV}"

just because.

I stopped believing in Nostradamus prophecies after Y2K. The only thing that one did for me was make me work at 1am Jan 1. The one thing that crashed we had fixed in about 15 minutes.

Seems as though predictions like these get pulled out for propaganda or political reasons.

That mutual fund money-losing stat is pretty incredible though.

"But that was all the way back on Thursday. Now, according to Yahoo Finance, APX Mid-Cap Growth is down 1.5% for the year. And Forrester is back on top with a 0.58% gain for the year. In a year when the typical large value fund has lost 45%, according to Morningstar, that is nothing short of spectacular. "

"So manager Thomas Forester wasn't just hiding from the market. And it doens't seem to have been a fluke: the fund returned about 2% annually over the last five years"

With gains like that, makes MM, t-bills & GICs look pretty good. Heck, dump that money in a savings account.

Beating cash by 2% doesn't seem like something to brag about, unless every single mutual fund lost money. That could never happen though. :)

And searching for Nostradamus gets you a spam stock site on Google.

As Charlie Munger says, "invert, always invert." Charts on the SPY & Q's seem to be triple topping to the upside? Unfortunately, doesn't fit the definition of triple bottom since the lows got lower. Also closed lower than the open.

SPY showing low pole reversal on P&F chart. Q's are still O's.

"The low pole reversal is seen when a chart falls below a previous low by at least 3 boxes but then reverses to rise by at least 50 percent of the fall. The reversal implies that the supply that was making the prices fall has been absorbed and demand is taking over. The pattern is an alert that higher prices could be seen in the future. The ideal buy point would be on another reversal back down to be closer to the stop loss point. This would also set up a double top breakout if the prices reverse up and break over the current column's high. "

No more reversals please.

norm - No system is perfect, for reasons too numerous to count. I like a system that's got knobs for tweaking in case balance is lost (didn't have knobs back in 1920's/weren't used?). Unfortunately, knobs turn left and right and if the guy turning the knob doesn't understand what he's doing (or not doing), he can create problems. Banks become thieves, borrowers become deadbeats, etc. etc. One bad apple spoils the entire basket. Our politicians are responsible for safeguarding the system and we've got to hold their feet to the fire. Maybe our Pres-elect will start a new precedence.

I can only hope so...

I think he seems to have the right mojo going so far...

I just hope all isn't lost after the first 100 days... Bush changed, so did Clinton... Lets hope he does not.

He has my support for the first 2.5 years no matter what... afterwards that is based on how well he doing... open mind.

till next time!

happy thanksgiving

I decided to cancel my buy limit order on GG at $23. I have already made a "lateral move" into the more risky SLW at the average bargain price of $2.77. $23 is not such a bargain price for GG. Under $20 -- maybe...

However, TCK is on an even greater sale right now. I am thinking that I would rather buy TCK when it stops falling, as its upside will be much greater than that of GG. One should invest in solid companies with little volatility when there a large risk of an abrupt market crash. However, AFTER the crash, one should invest into risky volatile companies that will survive the recession, since they have a much greater upside potential AFTER the crash.

Norm,
In 1980 when the baby boomer demand was at a peak interest rates were 16%. I went on 35 interviews for my first job out of college. Perhaps it's about supply? Prices are after all an indication of what the market will bear.

2nd,

Its pretty safe to say that any type of treasury bill or safe money market beat the S & P 500 including dividends for the past 5 year or 10 year period, including dividends reinvested, since both were negative. That hasn't normally been the case, but this year with the losses as big as they've been, it is. The "buy and hold" because long term stocks always go up theory is about as valid as the long term real estate prices always rise theory if you ask me. I think MOST of the time they do, if for no other reason due to the positive bias inflation provides. This year they have proven that timing is everything.

Here is an article with the S & P 500 returns including dividends.

http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle+articleid_2803347.html

re: foreigners buying or not buying treasuries

It occurs to me that they need to do SOMETHING with the U.S. Dollars they get from our trade deficit and bonds/bills maturing, and what alternatives are there that are perceived as safe? That is why they get invested in treasuries, IMO.

Kick the can down the road another 11 months and I'm not so sure they will want to reinvest it all after watching us borrow/spend ourselves to oblivion and beyond.

I agree they will be eventually buying what good companies we have, and I think some of it will gravitate to gold as well, as faith in our ability to tax sufficiently to repay the astronomical sums begins to wane. The kinky thing about that is that the people they buy the companies or gold from are as likely as not to buy treasuries with the proceeds, anyway.

It seems to me that hyperinflation starts when people get anxious about holding U.S. dollars for fear they will decline in value, and want to unload them immediately. I suspect the velocity of money will increase as a result at that point.

ALOHA !!

Seadog ... OBAMA has already made the same mistakes and he hasn't even had one day in office yet! Look at the ex-Clinton cronies he has chosen to run "the money" side! You better focus on the MONEY and not the "green promises". Promises die when the money dies! For the most part I see no decrease in government or government spending. The US military looks to have been given a GO by OBAMA, so companies like LMT will benefit. OBAMA is definitely giving a GO to entitlements, so look to a debased currency to continue. These guys all attended the same Ivy league palaces that say government must expand! They are the product of statist education that is based on Keynesian economics and fiscal policy, which debase US Constitutional legalities. If you have a fiscal problem then the automatic response is to throw more money on the fire not less! This is how it has been for decades now! We can throw more money because we are the World's Reserve Currency and right now all the global central banks want America to throw more money onto the fire! Settling a DEBT issue with greater DEBT will never solve anything. Ask anyone who owes a lot of money! Can you become solvent by going into more DEBT? INFLATE OR DIE! As I have said before the US DEBT cannot be repaid while we face a $92.4tril unfunded liability to Social Security and Medicare and while we have a multi-trillion dollar DEFENSE spending. There is nothing more inflationary than going into DEBT to build a M1 tank! Not only that there are some seriously unfunded private pensions as well with some of the largest US corporations and some of the largest US States and counties and cities. The police, firemen and other unions will be forced to accept less then they will be forced to accept nothing ... Right now in the USA the poster child of US GOVERNMENT impotence is KATRINA.

It boils down to the "C WORD" and as more and more BAILOUTS of US BANKS happen and as BAILOUTS are expanded to cover States, counties and cities as well as private industry the "C WORD" looms larger! That's a monetary crisis in the making ... Our money only has the "faith and credit"(that's the C WORD)of the US government standing behind it, which in essence is the US TAXPAYER! When the US TAXPAYERS revolt(not if)then that will be a signal to US DEBT holders that the system is maxxed out! The their "guarantee" will be on the ropes! I focus on lost payroll tax revenues as evidence of an impending monetary crisis, since with severely reduced tax revenues the US government must resort to more DEBT and eventually monetizing the DEBT, which really brings the "C WORD" right out into the public's view! A default on CONFIDENCE(C WORD)is a monetary crisis.

OBAMA addresses absolutely nothing regarding the value of our money system. He says nothing of the "faith and credit"!! Long before a US Sovereign Credit Rating downgrade happens owners of US DEBT will be voting with their feet! I see red flags that has already started. The FX markets are only for traders, the rest of us living in the "real world" have to think longer term than the next trade! Like the COMEX let the FX do what it will do, but take action to buy insurance against a monetary crisis on this USDX rally. There is only one currency that you can hedge the entire global fiat monetary system with. Look to "liabilities". The only way to survive a monetary crisis is to have as few liabilities as possible attached to your currency. All global FIAT are liable 100% only one is not. Do you believe your eyes? Then if you answer that question with a "YES" then you can plainly see that global governments, especially the USA can provided endless BAILOUTS to every entity under the Sun! Its on TV every day ... We are even now engaged in BAILOUTS to foreign central banks either directly through the US FED or the IMF or World Bank! BAILOUTS are liabilities against our Balance Sheet not assets and these are liabilities that nobody on the face of the Earth can accurately price. That is the basis of the FIAT monetary system ... no stability ... no store of value ... no standard of measure! That is why the malinvestments have been so tremendous and have kept piling up until now. What are the "malinvestments"? Simply put they are investments into "false wealth" ... into paper and paper has no real basis because paper is an IOU. Paper is a warehouse receipt against empty warehouses! That is an old trick ...

I am using the USDX rally to move out of US Pesos.

ITS ALL ONE BIG GLOBAL CASINO!!

We are now witnessing why one global currency will not work, just as the EU will not work. Germans could care less what Spaniards want! I have yet to see one German take to the streets in Berlin to protest against the high unemployment rate of Spain. In Germany unemployment is at 7% while Spain is at 11% according to BLS! Its only natural to be egocentric. A human being will always consider his or her own survival first, that's the human condition. We always run into trouble when we attempt to "centralize" the human condition via legislation of government and currency. What global government needs to do is not centralize but vaporize! Who in Washington DC knows where the worst potholes are on my street? Who in Washington DC cares what I want? That is TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION! Does it make sense for me to watch my taxes go from my home all the way to Washington DC to run the special interest gauntlet and then return to my county, my city in very much less quantity so that the Streets Dept at my city can come out and make note of the potholes that I need repaired. They can't repair them, because that's not in this year's budget, because funds were siphoned off in the centralized DC apparatus of corruption, known as PORK. When you get your pay check do you get in your car and drive to another city in another state and hand your money to a complete stranger and say, "Here, this is my pay for the month, take care of my needs!" I just described our US tax system and the centralized government that created this tax system! I just described the two-party political system and their joint platform of government expansion. That's what you voted for on NOV 4th!

We need to decentralize and government needs to get out of our way because our best interest no longer exists in Washington DC! PERIOD ... So stop HOPING for CHANGE and take prudent steps to protect your family and then be prepared to take to the streets like they are doing in ICELAND to protest government!

Like ICELANDERS ... my TRUST is gone in my own government and its money!

QUESTION AUTHORITY !!! Its what the US CONSTITUTION orders us to do as "WE THE PEOPLE"! It is your patriotic duty to protest and to defy government abuses. Do not think otherwise ... If you do then you have NOT read the US CONSTITUTION or the BILL OF RIGHTS or the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE and you are NOT patriotic! CIVIL UNREST is how our country was formed until outright REVOLUTION took place and then AMERICA was born as our oppressive BRITISH RULERS admitted defeat!

My question is ... WHEN ARE THE BRITISH PEOPLE GOING TO REVOLT! You guys never have! Your entire EMPIRE revolted against your rule but you! I do not understand the magic of the QUEEN I guess! Any Brits want to comment? What is the situation on the streets of the UK? I read it is not good! Define "not good" from your own perspective. Maybe the media has mislead me ... Wouldn't be the first time!

Where are all the Moon maidens?

WHERE'S THE TRUTH?

David - I agree only in so much as you're assured we are now in the period AFTER the crash. As Jeremy Grantham stated in his interview link above, the highest quality companies significantly outperformed inferior quality companies during the GD and they have likewise outperformed the S&P as a whole roughly 20% since June.

kaimu,
Moon maidens... I hate to ask.
Not being an American or Pom I can't answer most of your questions. Interesting though I've been reading about the French Revolution today and the number of iterations they had before settling on their final political structure. Many of the names and roles made me think of many of the names mentioned on this board over the past month or so.

I can begin to understand where you are coming from in your discourse but I still think you will not see the true colour of your P-elect until he is in office. From an international perspective he presents more promise than the incumbent has for the last eight years.

Perhaps in the USA we may yet see a storming of the "Bastille" or a revolt of the masses as seen in Manila so long ago and then the forces of self interest(s) will have to engineer a new political structure..... without a FED (pour vous)! Unfortunately the strength of any trend, its inertia will delay any meaningful change. Whilst I am a Vietnam veteran I don't begrudge those who prostested against my (et al) involvement in an unpopular war (where are we hearing that one now?). Perhaps for this generation the unpopular war is against the forces of self interest resident in DC and Whorl Street (a convoluted spiral of financial bluebirds).

John Lennon said "Give peace a chance" all I'm saying is give Obama a chance, really you don't have a choice until the youth rise up and storm the Bastille, figurative or literal.

Back on November 3, I mentioned 6 education stocks for study/watching.

4 of the 6 have actually held up pretty well, are above their 50 DMA and 200 DMA, and have moved up of late on some decent volume..

The 4 stocks are: STRA, APOL, ESI, and DV.

Good morning.

Here are your Cara 100 Ratings Changes:

BHP - Downgraded to Hold @ Canaccord Adams

GE - Price Target Lowered from $24 to $18 @ Oppenheimer

2nd_Ave.

You may be interested in reading a few free commentaries at contraryinvestor.com or (John) Walter Williams' website where alternative data interpretations of CPI, GDP, PPI, etc. are given.

An interesting point is the comparison of the bank failures to the demise of smaller retailers. Bailouts are more common for bigger banks with large retailers as clients due to the economy's reliance on the retail sector. In essence, the bailout of banks like Citi are strategic and calculated to have further-reaching effects than salvaging the credit market or keeping bank trading alive.