coolhand's Account Talk

[coolhand]

This is from Mark Young on Trader's Talk this morning...

Adapted from my second special alert this morning:

"Excuse the political reference. This crew we have in D.C. right now are nefarious, economically illiterate, and heavy handed. This doesn't differentiate them that much from past crews, save the economically illiterate and heavy-handed parts. The action is so shamelessly heavy handed, I smell their hands in it (in the past I might have had far greater doubts).

The entire "Crash" and massive gap up thing appears to all be to justify another $960,000,000,000 intervention in the markets.

As such, it's likely going to be reversed once the manipulators get done with their plan. I'm certainly not planning on a an absolute collapse here, but this reversal is NOT organic. The sentiment is all wrong. The signature is all wrong. As such, I suspect that we'll be making a run at lower prices before too long. It's still very tricky, but I would expect that we close fairly well today, but later in the week suffer more losses. If we see a set up, we'll advise."

Mark

 

[fedgolfer]

This is from Mark Young on Trader's Talk this morning...

Adapted from my second special alert this morning:

"Excuse the political reference. This crew we have in D.C. right now are nefarious, economically illiterate, and heavy handed. This doesn't differentiate them that much from past crews, save the economically illiterate and heavy-handed parts. The action is so shamelessly heavy handed, I smell their hands in it (in the past I might have had far greater doubts).

The entire "Crash" and massive gap up thing appears to all be to justify another $960,000,000,000 intervention in the markets.

As such, it's likely going to be reversed once the manipulators get done with their plan. I'm certainly not planning on a an absolute collapse here, but this reversal is NOT organic. The sentiment is all wrong. The signature is all wrong. As such, I suspect that we'll be making a run at lower prices before too long. It's still very tricky, but I would expect that we close fairly well today, but later in the week suffer more losses. If we see a set up, we'll advise."

Mark

Thanks, CH. One would think the EU protestors will take up in arms and could cause some unfortunate things to happen. VIX is still saying there's a long term change in directions until it gets in or below the red cloud:

http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$VIX&p=D&b=5&g=0&id=p72663799929

but, if bull market principles hold, it is the time to buy (above the cloud). Thanks for sharing all the Trader talk 411. Stickan is da man.

 

[CountryBoy]

This is from Mark Young on Trader's Talk this morning...

Adapted from my second special alert this morning:

"Excuse the political reference. This crew we have in D.C. right now are nefarious, economically illiterate, and heavy handed. This doesn't differentiate them that much from past crews, save the economically illiterate and heavy-handed parts. The action is so shamelessly heavy handed, I smell their hands in it (in the past I might have had far greater doubts).

The entire "Crash" and massive gap up thing appears to all be to justify another $960,000,000,000 intervention in the markets.

As such, it's likely going to be reversed once the manipulators get done with their plan. I'm certainly not planning on a an absolute collapse here, but this reversal is NOT organic. The sentiment is all wrong. The signature is all wrong. As such, I suspect that we'll be making a run at lower prices before too long. It's still very tricky, but I would expect that we close fairly well today, but later in the week suffer more losses. If we see a set up, we'll advise."

Mark

Thanks CH,

It'll be interesting what he says later in the week.

 

[agogley]

I jumped all in today seeing the vicious rally cycle. Too bad our IFTs take so long. Anyways, I'm going all in until probably Wednesday, so I should be out COB Thursday.

 

[markmars]

Par for the course always blame someone else!

Of course...:blink:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/37023580

It's getting harder to put meat on the table in Venezuela and the government of President Hugo Chavez is blaming the butchers.

At least 40 butchers were detained last week on charges of speculation for allegedly driving up their prices. Some say they were held at a military base and were later strip searched when turned over to police.

 

[nnuut]

Interesting to watch this CLOWN ruin Venezuela one step at a time. This is really sad! I just hope we don't follow in his footsteps.:worried:

 

[coolhand]

Don't even begin to think this is going away any time soon...

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aeY7xsX8bv5s

Money markets and the cost of protecting bank bonds from losses show investors are concerned the almost $1 trillion rescue plan announced by European leaders may not be enough to contain the region’s sovereign debt crisis.

The Markit iTraxx Financial Index of credit-default swaps on European banks and insurers was last at 145 basis points, compared with 108.5 basis points for the Markit iTraxx Europe Index of 125 investment-grade companies, a benchmark it traded an average 10 basis points below for three years, according to CMA DataVision. The three-month Libor-OIS spread, which widens as banks’ willingness to lend decreases, advanced to 19.09 basis points from 18.92 yesterday and 6 basis points on March 15.

 

[coolhand]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aCOKSoGY6hLs

Big problem, big number. The leaders of the euro-area countries have thrown 750 billion euros ($963 billion) at shoring up confidence in the single currency. But it doesn’t matter how many zeros you put on the end of a bad idea. It’s still a bad idea.

In reality, you can’t stabilize a sinking ship.

The new stability package suffers from the same problem as all the other ones the European Union has come up with in the months since the Greek crisis started rattling the markets last year: It tries to fix the symptoms, not the causes.

Greece has exposed deep structural problems within the euro. There is no mechanism to stop governments breaking the rules. There is no popular support for massive fiscal transfers between countries. The rules for the euro area have turned out to be unreliable. And there is no way to start stimulating economic growth again in the heavily indebted nations.

 

[coolhand]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ae1MzNC20dV8

The dollar may extend this year’s 12 percent climb against the euro even after Europe crafted a $1 trillion plan to rescue Greece and other debt-laden governments, said Deutsche Bank AG, the world’s biggest currency trader.

“The risk of default has receded for the time being, but emergency measures alone will not be enough to lift the euro,” said Koji Fukaya, a senior currency strategist in Tokyo at Deutsche Bank. Europe needs sustained efforts to rebuild the finances of indebted nations, not just emergency loans, he said.

“The euro is still overvalued” based on the gap in bond yields and in the differing degrees of economic recovery between the U.S. and Europe, he said. “It wouldn’t be surprising if the currency fell below $1.25 by the middle of the year.” Purchasing power parity, a measure of the relative cost of goods, shows the euro’s long-term neutral level at $1.15 to $1.20, he said.

 

[coolhand]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=awb9IIejehS4

How did Greece get this way? That’s what Americans wonder as the small country’s debt rocks world markets.

There are plenty of obvious answers. Greek officials lied to the European Union when joining the euro. Corruption that preceded Prime Minister George Papandreou was the problem. And so on.

Here’s another explanation: Greece didn’t become what it is all by itself. We made it that way.

Recall the post-World War II situation in Europe. Josef Stalin was solidifying his control of Eastern Europe; the U.K. and the U.S. were desperate to stop him from advancing. To preclude that the U.S. adopted a policy that might be summed up as: “anything but Soviet communism for Western Europe.”

 

[coolhand]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...4.html?mod=WSJ_WorldMarketsRIGHTMoreInMarkets

Shortly after 2:15 p.m. Eastern time last Thursday, hedge fund Universa Investments LP placed a big bet in the Chicago options trading pits that stocks would continue their sharp declines.

On any other day, this $7.5 million trade for 50,000 options contracts might have briefly hurt stock prices, though not caused much of a ripple. But coming on a day when all varieties of financial markets were deeply unsettled, the trade may have played a key role in the stock-market collapse just 20 minutes later.

 

[coolhand]

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fe...even-liquidity-swaps-are-sure-add-about-500-b

Less than 24 hours after bailing out Europe for the latest time with hundreds of billlions of liquidity swaps (full terms TBD still, record short covering certainly not TBD), the Fed is pretending to be a prudent monetary power, by announcing that it will "conduct 5 small-value term deposit offers." As a reminder, in its January 2010 minutes, the Fed noted that it would "eventually" move to a less accomodative policy "using a term deposit facility (TDF) to absorb excess reserves." So the schizos at the Eccles building want the gullible public to believe that just like all those micro reverse repos that it conducted in late 2009 (which led nowhere), the TDF tests will be critical to withdrawing some of the $2.5 trillion in assets on the Fed's balance sheet. Well guess what: with about $500 billion in liquidity swaps about to hit the asset side of the ledger (that's a conservative estimate based on the last time the Fed went full bore on bailing out Europe, and sorry, that European bailout does not come cheap), Excess Reserves (fed liabilities) are about to skyrocket by a comparable amount to match the assets. And here is the double whammy: $500 billion in new excess reserves earning 0.25% for holder banks, means US banks are about to earn an additional $1.25 billion a year risk-free courtesy of US taxpayers, who already are getting the shaft by paying more for gas thanks to the privilege of having bailed out Europe and drowned the world in new and unprecedented gobs of excess liquidity! Simply stated, the Greek "bailout" is a roundabout way of funneling over another extra billion to US banks! Direct cost to US taxpayers to bailout Europe via IMF: $50 billion; Indirect cost to fund incremental bank excess reserves: $1.25 billion; The joy of being raped daily by the Fed-Wall Street complex and assuring another year of record Wall Street bonuses: priceless. Some things money can't buy. For everything else there are trillions in Federal Reserve Notes appearing each and every day out of thin air.

 

[coolhand]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37016.html

WellPoint CEO Angela F. Braly has fired the latest shot in an escalating battle between the Obama administration and one of America’s largest health insurers.

In a letter to President Barack Obama, Braly accused Obama of repeating “false information” about the company cutting off insurance for breast cancer patients and “grossly misrepresent[ing]” the company’s work to treat breast cancer patients.

Braly’s letter was prompted by President Barack Obama’s address on Saturday.

WellPoint came under criticism in late April after a Reuters investigation accused the company of targeting breast cancer patients for fraud investigations with the intent of cutting off their insurance.

Rescissions, the insurance practice of dropping customers when they are sick, came under immediate fire from Washington and, within days, insurers had agreed to greatly scale back the practice.

Before that, a proposed 39 percent premium hike from Anthem Blue Cross of California, a WellPoint subsidiary, drew the ire of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The proposed increase was withdrawn and, last week, Sebelius asked state officials to re-examine all of WellPoint’s premium increases across the country.

In her response, Braley wrote that “despite your claims, WellPoint does not single out women with breast cancer for rescission. Period.”

Braly laid into Obama’s willingness to criticize the insurance industry, especially in light of its role in implementing the administration’s new health care reform law.

 

[coolhand]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/financ...ock-and-awe-may-not-be-enough-to-save-europe/

This is a big moment for Europe and for the single currency. The events of the past 24 hours are quite likely to sound the starting gun either towards a more federal Europe or, just as feasibly, to the break-up of the euro – so high are the stakes. We’ve covered the full run-down of what has been decided elsewhere, so here are a few thoughts:

The European finance ministers are attempting to emulate the G20 summit in London back in April 2009, and to give the impression of throwing a massive amount of cash at the problem. Just as was the case in London, some of this is new, some is old, some is questionable. But the leaders hope that the details will be less significant than the “shock and awe” effect of coming up with such a big total bail-out. The London effort was at least a part-success, in that it left markets in little doubt that the politicians would stop at nothing to ensure that the financial system would not be allowed to collapse entirely, and helped stifle fears at least temporarily.

 

[coolhand]

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/05/is-shock-and-awe-blazing-bluff.html

The important question at the moment is not the debate as to whether or not QE is a good idea, but whether or not the ECB can round up the votes to do it.

Already the Euro has given up 100% of its gains. Round trip currency moves of 3% each way, from 1.27 to 1.31 and back, in just over a day are not the norm to say the least. This could get very interesting soon enough.

 

[coolhand]

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/05/ron-paul-says-its-not-too-late-to-call.html

Taxpayers are sick and tired of bailing out privileged, dysfunctional institutions that should be allowed to fail in order to stop their ability to wreak havoc on our economy. More importantly, agreements with foreign central banks are not touched by the new Sanders Amendment language. At a time when Greece, Portugal, Spain and other countries are experiencing dire financial crises and have their hands out to the international community, we need to know if our Federal Reserve is at all involved in bailing them out.

 

[coolhand]

High Frequency Terrorism: How the Big Banks and Federal Reserve Maintained Their Death Grip Over the United States

http://ampedstatus.com/high-frequen...ained-their-death-grip-over-the-united-states

 

[malyla]

High Frequency Terrorism: How the Big Banks and Federal Reserve Maintained Their Death Grip Over the United States

http://ampedstatus.com/high-frequen...ained-their-death-grip-over-the-united-states

WOW! wow...wow...

Thanks Coolhand - that was an eye opening (better than coffee).

 

[CountryBoy]

High Frequency Terrorism: How the Big Banks and Federal Reserve Maintained Their Death Grip Over the United States

http://ampedstatus.com/high-frequen...ained-their-death-grip-over-the-united-states

Jiminy cricket, that would make a great movie or documentary. That kinda sounds like it might be illegal, but we wouldn't want to see anyone in particular do the perp walk.

 

[coolhand]

WOW! wow...wow...

Thanks Coolhand - that was an eye opening (better than coffee).

Not to make anyone bearish, but I think we should all understand how the game is really played where our own interests are at stake.