Free Republic

<p>AS if the announcement this week that actor Josh Brolin will play an evil short seller in the sequel to the movie "Wall Street" wasn't enough of a contrarian signal to go long on stocks, what about this?</p> <p>History shows that when the approval rating for a US president dips below the magical 50 percent mark, it is also typically the time to buy.</p>

Wall Street has been cheating main street for years. We know it is happening because of several pieces of evidence. One that sticks out is that the markets frequently seem to go the opposite of what common sense, economics, fundamentals, etc. would dictate. While working on my car today (ironic), it came to me. All the pieces of the car have to work together to cause the common function of a given process of the car. And, in intelligence, it is the aggregate data that give you the final one answer as to what the plan is or what is...

Housing Doom Word 4 the Day: ingenuous Reuters this morning.[1] A Goldman spokesman just emailed me a quick statement, trying to downplay the firm’s involvement in HFT. The spokesman notes that “even using the broadest definition, high frequency shares trading accounted for less than 1% of Goldman Sachs’ total revenue in the first half of 2009.” The spokesman goes on to note that Goldman’s proprietary trading HFT desk does not receive so-called “flash quotes” from stock exchanges. A flash quote is a controversial practice in which an exchange allows some hyperactive HFT desks to get a sneak peak of other...

The recession is not over. Investors will soon return to worrying about deflation and weak share earnings. Despite a 31% gain in the S&P 500 since Mar. 9 reports of the bear market's demise are greatly exaggerated. There have been statistics that suggest otherwise--that the economic decline is tapering off or that green shoots are sprouting on the economic landscape--but before you kick your shoes off and frolic in the foliage, take a hard look at the stock rally and our economy. The stock market is exhausted, and I think investors are again worrying about the reality of a deepening...

Friday 10 July 2009 China Panic! China is dead in the water without exports. They are in panic mode. That is why they are flooding their economy with massive amounts of capital and suppressing any hint of dissent everywhere. That is why they have chased out the major financial news outlets, and forced them to take all cues from the state. But no matter how many bridges they build, excess capacity they expand, stock market propping they do, dollar reserve currency jawboning they employ, or internet sites they shut down, it doesn’t change the fact that exports have crumbled and...

Rogue Algorithms And Other Mutually Assured Destruction Program Trading Alternatives Posted by Tyler Durden at 12:54 PM Submitted By Joe Saluzzi Of Themis Trading Why Institutional Investors Should Be Concerned About High Frequency Traders By Sal L. Arnuk and Joseph Saluzzi A Themis Trading LLC Mini White Paper It is now generally understood that high frequency traders (HFTs) are dominating the equity market, generating as much as 70% of the volume. HFTs are computerized trading programs that make money two ways, in general. They offer bids in such a way so as to make tiny amounts of money from per...

The banks just never do quit, do they? July 8 )-- Morgan Stanley plans to repackage a downgraded collateralized debt obligation backed by leveraged loans into new securities with AAA ratings in the first transaction of its kind, said two people familiar with the sale. Morgan Stanley is selling $87.1 million of securities that it expects to receive top AAA ratings and $42.9 million of notes graded Baa2, the second-lowest investment grade by Moody’s Investors Service, according to marketing documents obtained by Bloomberg News. The bonds were created from Greywolf CLO I Ltd., a CDO arranged in January 2007 by...

Yesterday I gave myself a report card on my predictions from January of 2009 through the end of June 2009 to mark half a year's passing. I was writing today but got side tracked because I couldn't stop thinking about grading Barack Obama after his first semester. As of today, I've officially decided that for the duration of Barack Obama's term I will give him a semester report card as well. So rather than finish what I was working on I spent some time this morning creating a Presidential Report Card from American University. CNC's blog column is a bit...

The financial system is crashing and action must be taken by the US government to convert debt into equity to produce a more stable environment, Nassim Taleb, author of "The Black Swan," told CNBC Thursday.

MAHAWIL, Iraq, June 17, 2009 – After two years of planning and building, the Central Euphrates Farmers’ Market here is open for business after a June 12 grand opening. Left to right, Army Brig. Gen. Jerry Lang, 34th Infantry Division deputy commanding general for support; Sheik Khodaer Abdlhosaen, director of the Central Euphrates Farmers’ Market; and Deputy Gov. Iskander Witwit of Iraq’s Babil province discuss how the market will help the region excel in agriculture. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Darryl L. Montgomery  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “The fact that this market is here today demonstrates the...

Everyone dreams of becoming rich and considers ways of minting money, so much so that one may be able to live one`s entire life comfortably. Make a resolution that you will convert a big portion of your savings into investments. The simplest way to get rich is to save a part of your hard earned money first and make investments from the savings. Savings are an indispensable element of every one`s life. Here`s Robert Allen`s take on the subject: There are two meanings for the word save: (1) To pay less for your purchases, as in `Safeway saves you more!...

The dollar, which has dropped 5 percent against the euro over the past month, has a lot further to fall, says Stephen Gallo, head of market analysis at Schneider Foreign Exchange. He told Bloomberg TV that the German economy, which shrank 3.8 percent in the first quarter, has probably hit bottom. Economic indicators in both the United States and Europe have stabilized, he points out. "The market is pretty much convinced that in terms of economic contraction, we're already through the worst." And fundamentals aren't necessarily paramount for the currency market now anyway, Gallo says. "They're more responding to risk...

An accounting rule that governs how banks book acquired loans is making it possible for banks that purchased bad loans to reap billions. Applying this regulation — known as the purchase accounting rule — to mortgages and commercial loans that lost value during the credit crisis gives acquiring banks an incentive to mark down loans they acquire as aggressively as possible, says RBC Capital Markets analyst Gerard Cassidy. "One of the beauties of purchase accounting is after you mark down your assets, you accrete them back in," Cassidy told Bloomberg. "Those transactions should be favorable over the long run." Here’s...

This would normally be my time for a quiet Memorial Day at home. But even as we seek calm, investors overseas are doing precisely the opposite. They’re dumping U.S. assets. They’re driving those assets down in price. And they’re threatening to sink our entire economy into a THIRD phase of this crisis. Remember: The first phase was the debt disaster. The second phase was the collapse in the economy. Now, in the third phase, Treasury bonds and the U.S. dollar are getting hit hard, largely due to foreign selling. The latest drama began this past Thursday … The supply of...

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia signed a landmark deal to supply nuclear fuel directly to U.S. companies on Tuesday, setting itself up to control 20 percent of the U.S. uranium market and extending its global reach in the nuclear sector. At a ceremony in the Russian capital, U.S. electricity firms PG&E, Ameren Corp and Luminant signed deals to get more than $1 billion in uranium supplies from Russia's state nuclear fuel exporter Tenex between 2014 and 2020. "This is a revolutionary breakthrough," Sergei Kiriyenko, the head of Russia's state atomic energy firm, Rosatom, which controls Tenex, told reporters. Until last year,...

The psychic tells him that he will soon be $50 poorer. The psychic then charges the man $50 for the session. The man, being somewhat simple, is so impressed by the psychic’s abilities that he tells his friends. The friends, also gullible, experience similar sessions with the psychic and are similarly impressed. They in turn tell their friends. Eventually the psychic is world renowned as the Ultimate Guru for forecasting the future. As laughable as this scenario seems, it’s roughly how today’s stock market rally is playing out. And the psychic is the “futures market.”

The 2006 Pension Protection Act means that companies with underfunded pension funds will have to increase their contributions to their respective funds. Consequently, some companies will have to pony up big money to make up the pension shortfall. Investors, take note.

Strike up the band, boys, happy days are here again! Recently released short-term economic data, including unemployment claims, non-farm payrolls, home sales, and business spending, which had been so unambiguously horrific in February and March, are now just garden-variety awful. With the Wicked Witch of Depression now apparently crushed under the house of Obamanomics, the Munchkins of Wall Street have sounded the all clear, pushing the Dow Jones up 25% from its lows. But the premature conclusion of their Lollipop Guild economists, that the crash of 2008/2009 is now a fading memory, is just as delusional as their failure to...

Worst may be yet to come ECONOMY | Prognosticator with a remarkably good record says stock market gains won't last May 11, 2009 TERRY SAVAGE savage@suntimes.com Last week the stock market heaved a sigh of relief. The gains were widespread. The broad-based Wilshire 5000 is up 38.66 percent or $3.2 trillion from the market low of March 9. There's a growing consensus that the worst of the economic news is behind us, and that a rebound in the economy can't be far behind the rebound in the stock market. File all of that under the heading "Everything is Relative." The...

Does Instant Information Promote Market Efficiency? April-26-2009 I have been reading the updated sixth edition of Security Analysis from cover to cover and on more than one occasion, I have stopped to consider the major advantages modern day investors have compared to Graham and Dodd. Investors today have access to a wealth of information that Benjamin Graham lacked during his career. However, more widespread information also would theoretically lead to more market efficiency and reduce opportunities to find mispriced securities. Is it true that the market is more efficient due to the widespread dissemination of information made possible by the...

Travel and hotel groups are braced for a turbulent ride today as stock markets react to fears over the strain of swine flu that was reported to have killed up to 71 people and closed much of public life in Mexico at the weekend. Analysts said that the news would revive memories of the 2002-03 severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak. Although the disease, first noticed in southern China in November 2002, was short-lived, it caused the deaths of 774 people worldwide and had a devastating impact on the Asian economy — particularly in Hong Kong — and on the...

New Ways to Shop In an economically challenged world, people may need to acquire a host of additional skills, even when it comes to carrying out simple or mundane tasks. In fact, based on the following USA Today report, "Food Auctions Thrive During Recession," the extra training that might soon be required to go grocery shopping could include how to bid at an auction, which bidding strategies work best, and how to avoid getting scammed. Marvin Mason, who runs grocery auctions in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, tells the Associated Press that more and more shoppers use credit cards and food...

Congress Takes A Serious Look At Reforming the Mortgage MarketBy Kenneth R. Harney Saturday, April 4, 2009; Page F01 Congress is preparing to take up a comprehensive plan that would fundamentally reform the home mortgage market, starting this year. Had the same rules and standards been in place earlier in the decade, congressional supporters say, it could have eliminated much of the funny-money loans, slipshod underwriting and Wall Street abuses that distorted the market from 2002 through 2006. The boom wouldn't have been as big, and the bust might not have happened. The Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of...

As the administration and Congress micromanage the production of US auto makers by attempting to dictate the production line, their disconnect with reality calls into question their very ability to make astute marketing decisions. Part of Obama's bailout carrot for GM/Chrysler restructuring is revamping their production line to his satisfaction, manufacturing smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. The president's auto task force said Chrysler needs to partner with the Italian car company Fiat, which has "committed to building new fuel-efficient cars and engines right here in the United States," Obama said in a speech at the White House. "Fiat is prepared to...

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner defended his approach to fixing the country's economic mess Sunday, saying "the market will not solve this" while disclosing a bailout fund for battered banks has $135 billion left and might need more. Geithner used his first Sunday talk show appearances to promote President Barack Obama's massive government spending plan to ease credit, help borrowers and inject billions of dollars into the financial sector. Long kept behind the scenes, the treasury secretary has emerged as the administration's champion of a plan that fueled an uptick in Wall Street markets. "We came through a period where people...

WASHINGTON - With the country sinking deeper into recession, the Federal Reserve launched a bold $1.2 trillion effort Wednesday to lower rates on mortgages and other consumer debt, spur spending and revive the economy. To do so, the Fed will spend up to $300 billion to buy long-term government bonds and an additional $750 billion in mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

When it comes to our complex economy, Pres. Barack Obama would do well to heed the physician’s ancient commandment to first “do no harm.” Instead, Obama’s administration has been prescribing all sorts of multibillion-dollar borrowing remedies without any consistent diagnosis of what is exactly wrong with the weak economy or even how bad things actually are. Since becoming president, Obama has offered numerous bleak economic prognoses. He has told Americans: “The situation we face could not be more serious. We have inherited an economic crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression.” He has also warned,...

You can't be a successful investor unless you can overcome your fears. So what's bothering you? Maybe, after reading one too many stories about investigations of Ponzi schemes, you are fearful that your entire portfolio may have been embezzled. Huge and scary! Yet I've seen nothing addressing this well and simply. There is one foolproof, easy way to be sure this never, ever happens to you. If you hire anyone to make investment decisions for you, be sure it, he or she is separate from whoever has custody of your money. That's it. Have your assets held at a major-name...

Stocks climbed Monday amid continued gains for banking shares, extending a rally that lifted markets from bear-market lows last week. At 9:50 a.m EDT, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was higher by around 64 points at 7288. The S&P 500-stock index rose 1% amid a 3% climb in its financial sector and a jump in shares of utilities. The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.3%. Stock markets knitted together four straight days of gains last week, bolstered by assurances from the CEOs of big banks that the first two months of the year were profitable, a flurry of merger activity in...

The election of Barack Obama offered the promise of a new set of fixes for the financial crisis and the economy, a do-over that might help nurse the stock market back to health. Since then, the market hasn't just gotten worse - it's turned in its worst performance ever for a new president. The Dow Jones industrial average has fallen 21 percent during Obama's first seven weeks in office. Count back to Election Day and the results are even bleaker: That afternoon, the Dow closed at 9,625. Now it stands at 6,547, a loss of 32 percent. Stockholders have lost...

As if investors didn't have enough to worry about, a new land mine is lurking: "the Obama market." That's what I heard over the weekend from a veteran investment adviser, Charles Allmon. "Political ramifications represent a significant added market risk that should not be ignored," he says. Initial polling suggests that Senator Obama will be the next president, a view Mr. Allmon shares. An Obama presidency is certain to mean a big tax increase, he says. Further, the veteran adviser, who publishes a 46-year-old monthly investment newsletter, the Growth Stock Outlook, out of Bethesda, Md., made a marvelous market call...

Imagine that some hypothetical enemy state spent years preparing a "Manchurian Candidate" to destroy the U.S. economy once elected. What policies might that leader pursue? He might discourage private capital from entering the financial sector by instructing his Treasury secretary to repeatedly promise a brilliant rescue plan, but never actually have one. Private firms, spooked by the thought of what government might do, would shy away from transactions altogether. If the secretary were smooth and played rope-a-dope long enough, the whole financial sector would be gone before voters could demand action.

...as of 3:59pm Dow 6,552.47 -74.47 -1.12% Nasdaq 1,270.03 -23.82 -1.84% S&P 500 676.98 -6.40 -0.94% ------- I like how the keep writing things like "investors are battling uncertainty" when it's the certainty of Obama's socialism, desired tax increases and hostility to the free market that people are battling. There's nothing "uncertain" about it.

The Market Ticker For the math-challenged, for the last four weeks the losses have been 48, 50, 37 and 48 points, respectively, or an average of 45.75 points per week.The President is about half way through his first 100 days.  Assuming this rate of decline continues for the next 50 days, or approximately seven weeks, we would see another 320 points come off the index, placing us well within the "three handle", or 3xx, on the SPX. **snip** Simply put all of the following must happen right here, right now, today: The CDS casino must be closed today.  The AIG...

Pension plan health erodes in February Friday March 6, 3:38 pm ET Pension plan health declines again in February, BNY Mellon says BOSTON (AP) -- This year's continuing stock-market decline further eroded the health of U.S. corporate pension plans in February, BNY Mellon Asset Management said Friday. Funding rations for the typical plan fell six percentage points last month, as represented by a pension index maintained by BNY Mellon Asset Management, a unit of Bank of New York Mellon Corp. Since the start of 2008, funding ratios for the typical plan have fallen more than 32 percentage points. A funding...

The Market Kills The Bezzle It appears that Mr. Market is singularly unimpressed with the unemployment situation, which is actually showing a slowing in the rate of change in U-6, which is in fact positive. However, "The Bezzle" remains unaddressed by government, and therefore, irrespective of anything else, the market will sell off. The Nasdaq is down more than 2% at this point, and here's the chart of today's /ES thus far: This will not stop until "The Bezzle" comes out. One way or another, it will come out. That's more than a 3% move downward today in the first...

I would ask my fellow FReepers' indulgence with this naked vanity post. It's time we all realized something. Wall Street's plunge is not about GM, Chrysler, Citadel or any other individual company. It is not about any group of companies or any sector of the market. This is about Obama. It is the investor's realization that Obama does not have even most elemental set of skills to manage the economy. None of those around him have the skills, experience or wisdom either. Stop and think; if his advisors couldn't get their own taxes right.... or weren't smart enough to hide...

So let me do the preachers of Armageddon one better. Today's stock market isn't just the “worst since the Great Depression,� like they're so fond of saying. No, it's even worse than the Great Depression. Take a look at the chart, below. It shows the daily progress of the S&P 500 in terms of percentage change from the very top. The brown line is the change from the recent all-time highs on October 9, 2007. The blue line is the change from the all-time highs just before the Great Depression, September 6, 1929. As of yesterday's close (Thursday, March 5),...

So the stock market drops over 25 percent since Election Day, almost 20 percent since Inauguration--and Barack Obama tells the American people at his press conference Tuesday not to "spend all your time worrying about that": What I'm looking at is not the day-to-day gyrations of the stock market, but the long-term ability for the United States and the entire world economy to regain its footing. And, you know, the stock market is sort of like a tracking poll in politics. You know, it bobs up and down day to day. And if you spend all your time worrying about...

Finally after five straight down days for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), it rallied back 149 points to finish at 6,875 on March 4. But it picked right back up today and continued to fall. What's holding it back? CNBC "The Kudlow Report " host Larry Kudlow had Jeff Macke, founder and president of Macke Asset Management on his March 4 program and asked if the rally, along with other indicators might be signs of a recovery. Macke, a co-host of CNBC's "Fast Money" said he wasn't impressed and blamed President Barack Obama. "It would if not for an...

Maybe I shouldn't accuse our illustrious leader of lying about every aspect of his plan for forcing socialized medicine onto us, maybe it is just his teleprompter that is lying...or maybe it is his speechwriters (hired by George Soros )that are lying....!!!!

Here is video of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs bashing CNBC's Jim Cramer who said this morning on The Today Show that President Obama's budget is a "radical agenda," adding, "This is the greatest wealth destruction I've seen by a President." I've embedded that video below again for easy reference. Cramer makes the "radical agenda" and "wealth destruction" comments at around the 3:00 minute mark of the video . . . . . (Watch Videos)

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama is comparing the stock market to the daily tracking polls used during campaigns, saying that paying too close attention to Wall Street's "fits and starts" could lead to bad long-term policy. Obama spoke to reporters Tuesday after meeting in the Oval Office with visiting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Obama said he is not measuring policies against "the day-to-day gyrations of the stock market,"

The Dow dropped another 300 points yesterday, continuing its implacable downward spiral since the inauguration of President Obama. Though the stock market had already declined substantially prior to Obama's arrival in Washington, it is significant to note that since he was sworn into office, on yesterday's close, the market has dropped 28% in value in two months time. Although many members of the chattering class may be enthralled with the reign of the New Messiah, investors are fleeing…

Today Obama said not to worry about the market: ...he is not intently focused on the “day-to-day gyrations of the stock market,” comparing the downward roller-coaster on Wall Street to the fickle nature of political polls. “You know, it bobs up and down day to day,” Mr. Obama said. “And if you spend all your time worrying about that, then you’re probably going to get the long-term strategy wrong.”.. However... October 1st, 2008 was a different story: On Monday, over the course of a few hours, the failure to pass the economic rescue plan in the House led to the...

Obama said he is not measuring policies against "the day-to-day gyrations of the stock market," but by whether lending is flowing more freely, businesses are investing and the unemployed are going back to work.

Did anyone just hear during the short Q&A with Obama & the British PM, Obama's comparison of the stock market to daily political polls? Is he freakin' serious?

What stands out most clearly, amidst all the panic inducing talk and extravagant promises, lately spewing from the mouths of Federal office holders & Central Bankers, is of a desperate need to keep America dependent upon credit--easy credit;--that what is most feared, in the seats of economic power in contemporary America, is a period in which people restrain expenditures for new goods and services, pay down debt and actually try to provide for the cyclical, as well as disaster driven, downturns that have always been part of the economic history of human nations. The boom can last only as long...

We have all heard about planned obsolescence. The auto industry does it with annual model changes. Intel does it with computer chips; Microsoft does it with every change in Windows. Hell, even razor blade manufacturer so it. But planned impoverishment? To what end? OK, how about this? Total dependence on Government. The US stock market has dropped 20% since the beginning of the year, and it’s only the beginning of March. This is on top of the 40% drop last year. People are watching their savings and investments evaporate before their eyes. Plans for retirement, education, a home are being...