Sunday, February 28, 2010

The Bradley 2010 model..


Bradley, like many other stock market approaches, only works sometimes. Nonetheless, it is interesting that it posits some kind of inflection point, right now. Note that the previous post infers that insiders are looking for safety....

Add to this one of Mike Shedlocks columns:

Short Selling Restrictions "A Great Indicator of Imminent Market Crashes"

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/02/short-selling-restrictions-great.html

When you put it all together, it looks reasonable that insiders are worried...

Something Very Strange Is Happening With Treasuries

http://seekingalpha.com/article/190362-something-very-strange-is-happening-with-treasuries

The end of the article says this:

Keep your eye on US Treasuries. Stocks, despite being so popular with investors are usually the LAST to get what’s coming down the pike. And investors just parked $30 billion for a month with Uncle Sam at virtually NO YIELD yesterday.

Put another way, someone(s) is/are willing to not make money just for the sake of insuring return OF capital (the US can always print money to return it) rather than any return ON capital.

Zerohedge - An Extraordinary Coup?

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/extraordinary-coup

This theme is showing up in more and more places.

Friday, February 26, 2010

So far, the markets are behaving as though January was an important top...


As you can see in this case with the $NDX, normal exponential trendlines generated from the March '09 bottom to the presumed January '10 top are being respected...People making a bullish case can do so, but only if the magenta trendlines on both of these graphs are exceeded by quite a bit more than what you see here....

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

My discussion on the Bull-Bear site about the U.K. and U.S. markets compared...

http://www.thebullbear.com/profiles/blogs/what-is-this-symmetrical

Pretty interesting charts, if I do say so myself....

It looks to me like it's possible something major from a 'default' point of view might actually happen to Britain before mid-summer...I welcome comments...

Market rolls over a little bit late, but rolls nonetheless...



This roll was late, at .26517, fully 6% late...

Friday, February 19, 2010

Watching the market here..

It does appear that the market topped yesterday, but I am waiting for another down day on Monday before I go short...

I have been monitoring the sad busines with this fellow that used a plane against the IRS. I read his note...poignant...

I expect as the global crisis deepens, there will be more events like this...we're in for several rough years...

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Small rally maybe near it's end...





Using the important swing data points from the March '09 rally bottom to the presumed Jan '10 top, We see a narrowing of the range of the high and low data at the .125 (1/8) node and the .250 (1/4) node for the Russell 2000 and $NDX respectively. This means we could be at or near the top of the smaller scale rally that started with the bottom on February 5th. On the $NDX, the candlestick we see is a 'hanging man' often seen at tops. We need a day or two for confirmation on this.....

P.S. Short term sentiment is also getting somewhat extreme...

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

More embarrassments for the U.N. and 'settled' science.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The Continuing Climate Meltdown

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703630404575053781465774008.html

A rundown of the 'Blowup' of the U.N. Climate position.

Report: Goldman Sachs Had Connection To Greece Crisis by Dr. Joe Duarte

http://www.decisionpoint.com/TAC/DUARTE.html

Now it's becoming clear to all, that Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and others are manipulating whole countries (not just companies) into bankruptcy. They set up their clients, set up short positions against them, and then push these entities over..and profit as they collapse in a controlled demolition....

After collapse, they can buy up these assets for pennies on the dollar...

They are positioning themselves to own the whole world....

Thoughts that are not our own.....

I have been thinking for some time now, about the human race's collective inability to step out of the pointless destructive cycles of History. We always repeat the mistakes of our ancestors over and over. Particularly now when there is so much corruption in high places, people seem determined to replace one set of liars with another. The inability to discern truthfulness is widespread.

Equally bad, I think, is the tendency of the common people to want to believe that the elites are good, or noble, or that they care about the ordinary folk. Try this experiment:

Come up to someone you know, and say "We have tracked your ancestors out to five generations, and we have discovered something of note about your great-great-grandfather. Before we tell you what we found, would you prefer that he would have been a commoner, a horse thief, or a King. Please place in order, what you're preferences are, as to what he should have been."

Unerringly, you will find people would prefer that an ancestor be a King first, then a commoner, and lastly, a horse thief.

In reality, they should have put them in the order of commoner, horse thief, then King. Why?

Because Kings murder people routinely to get power and also to stay in power, so they are in general, more unsavory then horse thieves. That's the rational answer. Humans are programmed to believe that Kings are mostly honorable, when usually they are not. This is the glue that binds peoples together into societies, the faith in the sovereign. This observable fact puts these kinds of thoughts into the category of thoughts that are not our own, because the species (not the individual) requires it for social order. Without this (species wide) programming, we would have continual anarchy....

U.S. Treasury Bond Debt Auctions on a Trend to Failure?

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article17240.html

By Fresbee, goto the link above for full article (worth reading)





I like this quote:

The situation does seem to indicate the first signs of stress and desperation at the FED and if the panic spreads, it could be Lehman all over again except this time it will be 100 times more powerful and catastrophic. It is a blessing in disguise that the common man and media does not understand bond market mechanics to great detail else the last auction could have been recipe for some hard questions from the government. The fact that stocks RALLIED on this news tells you how disconnected stocks are from reality. The Debt Spiral has started and the next few auctions will tell us whether it is accelerating.

As Neil Ferguson quotes in his book “The Ascent of Money”, bond market holds the key to world economics. Rest of the markets are all secondary and derived. It is getting eerily lonely and close to annihilation for the FED. How long it can stretch before its ultimate death is anyone’s guess but the fact they have been able to manage this long is a commendation to their genius manipulation.

Move Over China: Beijing Sells Whopping $34.2 Billion Treasuries In December As Japan Becomes Largest Official Holder Of US Debt


http://www.zerohedge.com/article/move-over-china-beijing-sells-whopping-342-billion-treasuries-december-japan-becomes-largest


Uh-Oh!

This will take us on on the path that Greece is now on....

French Bank: Euro Collapse 'Inevitable'

http://moneynews.com/Headline/greece-euro-collapse-dollar/2010/02/15/id/349903?s=al&promo_code=9752-1

Short sales on the Euro are soaring, I've heard....

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Greece Debt Crisis a Precursor to New Era of Sovereign Risk

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article17232.html

This article lays out the options before the people of Greece. There are four, as John Maudlin puts it, one being to leave the European Union. In the not too distant future, Americans will have similar choices to make, with one less option, in that we don't belong to a larger consortium. Otherwise, we are in the same boat, so this article is worth reading to understand where we are and where we're going...

Friday, February 12, 2010

Family values

http://www.energybulletin.net/51538

This was written as a post peak oil piece, but it has some insights to offer generally in world where resources can't be assured any longer by a fading empire...

Forget Greece, the US Almost Had a Failed Treasury Auction

http://www.gainspainscapital.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=226:forget-greece-the-us-almost-had-a-failed-treasury-auction

Be mindful that this article does try to sell you something, and is meant to sound sensational to do so.. That said, I think the article is correctly pointing out that debt default for the U.S. may only be months away...

And now this article has rolled across my screen in a timely fashion, saying pretty much the same thing:

Coming To America: The Greek Sovereign Debt Crisis

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/coming-america-greek-sovereign-debt-crisis

A quote: 'To be sure, Keynesianism is starting to unravel.' Yes, everywhere...

How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201003/jobless-america-future

Yes, people do get less materialistic, but also they apparently become more.... broken.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Market was up today, as anticipated..

I'm tracking the price action, waiting for confirmation of the validity of new trendlines caused by the completed pattern from March '09 to Jan '10. Once these are confirmed, they will be added to the old trendline charts for additional predictive capacity. We need to see where this little rally ends to verify the new trendlines....

How to invest for a global-debt-bomb explosion

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-to-invest-for-the-debt-bomb-explosion-2010-02-09

Prepare for an apocalyptic anarchy ending Wall Street's toxic capitalism - MarketWatch

by Paul B. Farrell

CHART OF THE DAY: Is Austria The Next Euro Nation To Get Vaporized?


Right now everyone is focusing on the PIIGS, with special emphasis on the "G" Greece.

If the ECB handles the situation right, then hopefully this goes nowhere. But if it goes bad, then we're talking about contagion.

So who might fall if periphery Europe goes down?

Check out Austria. As you can see, its CDS spread is just starting to turn higher, and it's well known that the country has major banks with dicey Eastern Europe exposure.

But for now, let's hope the PIIGS firewall remains in place.


The Ever Increasing Parallels Between AIG And Greece... And The CDS Puppetmaster Behind It All.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/ever-increasing-parallels-between-aig-and-greece-and-cds-puppetmaster-behind-it-all

Guess who?

Enough here to feed a lot of conspiracy theories...

More Empires Have Fallen Because Of Reckless Finances Than Invasion

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/02/guest-post-more-empires-have-fallen-because-of-reckless-finances-than-invasion.html

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Europe Risks Another Global Depression


http://baselinescenario.com/2010/02/07/europe-risks-another-global-depression/


Europe enters major crisis..will drag us into it eventually, of course...

I hope everybody checks out the previous post, particularly the videos with Catherine Fitts. Insights there that are not present on the Zerohedge site...they are different. Fifteen minutes of your time...

Saturday, February 6, 2010

SEC has changed the rules, to limit withdrawals from Money Markets during the next Market Crisis.

This set of two videos (about 15 minutes long in total) is an interview with Catherine Austin Fitts, a former Republican official in the George Bush (Sr.) administration, and a former intern at Goldman Sachs. She is trying to sound the alarm about what the Banking and Finance groups in the economy are doing in a general way, and what it means for the average citizen.

Importantly, she is putting up a big red flag about the safety of 401K's, particularly relative to Money Market funds. The Government is about to violate the property rights of investors through a new rule, setting an ominous precedent. The commentator, Max Keiser, does a good job overall of interviewing her, his style is a little bit shrill sometimes, but that's his nature, you have to try to overlook it...Nonetheless, very worthwhile to listen to...Max and Stacy do have a great website/blog, you should all visit it often, great insights and guests there....

The links are here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUSk57QDB4U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBZSkgGIlm4

More on this new rule can be found here, at the website, Zerohedge:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/suspending-money-market-redemptions-now-legel-sec-approves-new-money-market-regulation-4-1-v

Other countries in the past have been known to come up with confiscation schemes against their citizens to shore up national balance sheets that were destroyed by corruption or incompetence, Argentina is one example, there are others...

Beware...