Tag Archive for 'government'

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Oh My!

Published on February 8, 2011, 9:11 pm in Opinions and Trading. Closed Tags: , , , , .

Credit card debt grew in December for first time since 2008. But why? Are people really spending to buy more stuff…or are they using credit cards to pay monthly bills?

VXX continues to make new lows since inception…indexes are making new highs. Does “irrational exhuberance” come to mind? Are we really that much better than before the recession/depression started? If so, why are so many people looking for work? And why is gas and food costing more?

SPY volume was 43% below the average daily volume…S&P e-mini futures volume was low also. The markets are going higher and higher each day on lower and lower volume. WTF?

So I shorted the Dow via DIA puts…just so I can play. Besides using some of my mad money, I’m staying out.

The function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.” – John Kenneth Galbraith

Strange?

Published on February 6, 2011, 6:14 pm in Opinions and Trading. Closed Tags: .

Gee, we add 36,000 jobs and unemployment goes down 9%….that’s 0.8% in just 60 days! That’s the good news. The bad news they don’t tell you is that 2 million people have just given up looking for work and are not considered part of the employment pool any more….about 20 million all together.

Y’know about 100K workers drop off the unemployment insurance rolls each week…those people that have been collecting checks for 99 weeks…ususally 26 weeks in “normal” times. Who is going to buy all the stuff companies make?

And if companies start hiring people, their earnings will start to come down. Many companies are missing top-line but making it up on the bottom-line only because they got rid of one of their biggest expenses, the labor force.

I digress…..

It is just amazing how this market just keeps going up….even on crappy news. I guess we’ll have to see how it reacts to the real important stuff….like Super Bowl. I see that Pittsburgh has already announced that schools will be delayed 2 hours on Monday morning.

Happy Super Bowl :!:

W T F?

Published on February 1, 2011, 10:56 pm in Trading. Closed Tags: , , .

Remember, after Tuesday even the calendar says…W T F!

Not sleet, nor snow, nor ice, or Egypt, or inflation can stop this market! 8O   The market gapped up from the get go and never looked back, closing at new highs. Volume was average and 52-week new highs were up big….WTF?

For the last 16 days, the US$ Dollar has gone down. Sure there were 2 days that were green, but not by much…they were just resting days for the down trip. How low can it go?

Wednesday starts the “Jobs Show” with Challenger layoff report and the ADP employment report, Jobless Claims on Thursday and BLS Employment report on Friday.

You can’t control what the market does, but you can control your reaction to the market. – Steve Cohen

Unexpected

Published on January 31, 2011, 10:22 pm in Trading. Closed Tags: , , .

With all the mideast news all weekend, I really thought there would be more panic when the markets opened Monday. Gee, even CNBC had some live reporting on Sunday night. But no! No panic and the markets slowly ground up all day long. The M&A activity helped it along. And BIDU had some good earnings after the close.

In relation to Friday’s drop, today’s gains were not overpowering. I’m still looking for a continuation to the down move, although it may come in spurts and dribbles.

ISM Mfg Index and Construction Spending reports at 10AM and Car Sales reports all day long. For the rest of the week it will be jobs, jobs, jobs with the biggie on Friday. Happy February!

Finally!

Published on January 30, 2011, 8:02 pm in Trading. Closed Tags: , , .

I have been looking for a retracement for a couple weeks now because the market was overbought and sentiment was running too bullish. But it took Egypt to give traders an excuse to sell-off. I’m thinking we may have sold off even if the whole Egypt mess had not happened. Oh well, woulda, coulda, shoulda.

Now the question…Is that all there is? While all the indexes retreated on Friday, the Russell has been looking ugly for a while and now looks really bad. Russell at the end of January

Lots of things happening….the whole Mideast tensions, BLS Employment reports, the start of a new month, February options expiration coming in 3 weeks, financials and techs not very happy, retail sales disappointing…a continuing pullback is possible and probable.

So far futures are moving downward Sunday evening, but it’s a long time until U.S. markets open. Europe’s open should give us a pretty good idea on what to expect for Monday. I will be trading lighter until I see a definite trend, one way or the other.

I would sometimes think that maybe I ought to stop trading because it was very painful to keep losing. In “Fiddler on the Roof”, there is a scene where the lead looks up and talks to God. I would look up and say, “Am I really that stupid?” And I seemed to hear a clear answer saying, “No, you are not stupid. You just have to keep at it.” …..So I did. — Michael Marcus

Thanks for checking in and good luck tomorrow!

Same old

Published on January 27, 2011, 10:16 pm in Trading. Closed Tags: , , .

The Dow can’t close over 12000 and the S&P can’t close over 1300…but they’re trying! Tomorrow’s GDP number will make or break that process.

Gold took a dumper today along with the US dollar. IOndexes tried to take off but hung around the unchanged area most of the day, although they all did close in the green. They will pull back eventually, so I’ll just sit and watch.

“Another lesson I learned early is that there is nothing new in Wall Street. There can’t be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market today has happened before and will happen again.
– Jesse Livermore

Up, up and away!

Published on January 24, 2011, 8:52 pm in Opinions and Trading. Closed Tags: , , , .

My jaw is sitting on my chest as I just stare at the Dow bubble getting bigger and bigger. The bigger they are, the harder they fall! This is not going to end well, but I have no idea when or how it may happen….maybe it just keeps going up!

The rest of the world has problems…China with its inflation…Europe with all its banking issues. It sounded like the Irish government collapsed this morning, Irish parties jostle for power. Both gold and the U.S. dollar collapsing…and oil tagging along for the ride. So why is the U.S. stock market acting so happy? What is the basis for this ballon ride?

As I Twitted on Friday…. OpEx, my day to peep thru the window and watch everyone else get screwed…I’m sittin in $$ waiting for Monday :-) And I’m still sitting there, as must be several traders, as volume was again a lowball Monday. Does everybody take a long weekend?

Truth, sound fundamentals, strong currency are passe – all that matters is rigging equities higher – the free market be damned!

Why have a Fed Reserve?

Published on January 16, 2011, 9:24 am in Opinions and reading. Closed Tags: , .

From The Economic Collapse Blog comes an interesting article to ponder:
10 Things That Would Be Different If The Federal Reserve Had Never Been Created.

“The people must be helped to think naturally about money. They must be told what it is, and what makes it money, and what are the possible tricks of the present system which put nations and peoples under control of the few.”   –Henry Ford

Holiday volume?

Published on January 13, 2011, 10:35 pm in Trading. Closed Tags: , .

Markets took a break after yesterday’s run up…on low volume again. Looking through charts, I came across this one of the monthly S&P. Besides coming up to a resistance level…look how volume has been trending lower ever since the 2007 high.
Monthly S&P

Friday has a boatload of reports: CPI, Retail Sales, Consumer Sentiment among others, but I think JPM earnings report will dictate the type of day we have. And remember it’s the Friday before a long weekend. What kind of volume do you think we’ll have? 8)

Another mixed up crazy day

Published on January 6, 2011, 9:39 pm in Opinions and Trading. Closed Tags: , , , , , .

Except for my shorts on Nasdaq-related issues like QID and QQQQ puts, it was a good day to be short! And the big big winners were the rare-earth related shorts in REE and MCP. I was so giddy, I even wanted to sell my 1970 Rare Earth album…. I Just Want to Celebrate.

Retail sales reports were not as good as expected and started the move down. Then Jobless Claims popped a bit helping to increase the downward pressure. But the techs were not following, keeping the Qs and Nasdaq futures in the green. Just another mixed up crazy day.

Friday we have Non-farm Payroll reports. And the talk all day is that it may be a blowout good number, maybe even 500K jobs in the private sector! With any news, it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad. it’s a matter of how the market reacts to it that counts. And that’s what worries me…the market being disappointed, even on relatively good numbers. Be afraid, be very afraid! 8O