Griffin Account Talk

[JTH]

I guess the market didn't like what the Fed said...

 

[nnuut]

Burntankle gave Cramer a RASBERRY!!

 

[fedgolfer]

you think the nonchalant tone in the Fed statement is intended to make this correction sound like they anticipated it? Even if that is his intent, it ain't enough to provide a breakout... to me, it sounds like downwared trend confirmation until data, financial sector prove otherwise.

 

[Griffin]

Burntankle gave Cramer a RASBERRY!!

A Raspberry?

He B&^%$ slapped him :laugh:.

 

[nnuut]

A Raspberry?

He B&^%$ slapped him :laugh:.

YES! more appropriate. SLAPPPP calm down Jim, what's wrong with you man!!View attachment 1855

 

[Griffin]

I'd buy some hedge funds making volitility worse by buying/shorting swings but the Financials types are historically very conservative. I don't think they would play those type games. Now hedge funds which are heavily invested in those financials might try to play some game but it is more likely pump and dump to lessen their own losses.

FS,

I've been meaning to get back to this. That may have described what we saw after the Fed more accurately then my conspiracy theory. If this is the case then we probably can expect another up day and maybe something of a rounding top as we progress into the week and serious selling possibly as earlier as Friday. I don't think they would dump all at once because that defeats the purpose, they'd spread it out especially if they can generate a slight upward channel. Obviously, we need to be looking for abnormal behavior in the financials, but the way this market is right now, that may be like trying to pick a person with OCD out of a line-up of manic depressants.

If we still consider this past 4-5 days as the formation of the first bottom, we should be looking for a retest soon anyway. Maybe today's rally was straight forward, although I am suspicious with all the money and reputations in the balance. Then again, they may have realized their best course of action is to shut up and let things play out naturally.

 

[Griffin]

I decided not to punch out today.

I am tentatively considering a move to CP at the 50 dma or when the full sto gets to 80, which ever comes first

View attachment 1862

 

[Griffin]

In the aftermath of last years correction, Pointman72 quickly rose in standings. His approach was to stay 100% in stocks and I think he may have moved a few times shifting back and forth based on dollar changes, but he held throughout.

In a rapid recovering, highly volatile market, timing is very difficult and it is even more difficult to consistently beat the rise. I am taking a lesson from Pointman72 and that situation and staying invested.

I congratulate everyone who sidestepped today's fiasco but it already appears to be a non-issue and certainly one that is not going to take the market to new lows. I may try a similar approach and take a day off here and there if I am extremely confident, I can dodge a bullet.

I'm not remotely suggesting that we are out of the water with this credit crisis issue. However, we appear to have compensated for the future diminshed returns within the financial sector. While the sector will continue to throw us curve balls over the upcoming months, I am going to follow Ben's que and expect moderate expansion of the economy going forward.

My hat is off to those lenders that kept there standards high and I wish you many successful hostile takeovers of those that were silly and now find themselves compromised. Good lending practices and restricted credit are going to suck alot of this excess liquidity out of the market but it will also help to keep inflation in check. If we have high inflation, then every baby boomer that can't afford to retire as a result will stay in their job and their home. That means every job from entry level through the corporate ladder to that position will have stagnation, costing more salary money and reducing profits and driving up costs even further. Long term, low inflation that allows the baby boomers to retire is way more important then the current hucklebuck. Besides, if we let the air out of the real estate market now, the high end recreational areas will come down the most. The baby boomers will be able to afford their beach retirment homes, freeing up their 2500+ sq ft industrial/corporate suburbia single family homes.

 

[Griffin]

http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/070809/aig_subprime.html?.v=7

I've said enough...let the news speak for itself.

 

[anthony]

I've said enough...let the news speak for itself.

Hi Grif, I saw a different variety of news reporting earlier today with CNN's morning broadcast -- and it was of the borderline criminal variety!

Two "beautiful people" anchors were up there getting everyone excited about every story and they mixed the market report right in there between a story about a kid who was attacked by racoons and rescue efforts for the miners.

Their so-called analyst couldn't even get a word in edge-wise on the anchor who had already formed his own advice of "everything's coming apart so pull your money out now and put it in a savings account" (so much for objective reporting). And he practically pushed the analyst to the same conclusion.

If the everyday-joe on the street was watching that half-awake, he walked into work this morning thinking "I gotta pull out all my money." But in so doing he's really losing because at this point he's too late, it's already happened.

I didn't see the drop coming. When it happened I had 20% in the F Fund. So now that we are where we are, I've dropped that in the bucket too for 100% invested and riding this out.

Bobbleheads who are paid for their looks, but who try to talk about stockmarkets need to receive a gag order from their producers. Criminal, I say!

okay ... end of rant.

 

[Griffin]

Anthony,

That's what you get for watching the communist (Clinton?) news network (then again, given the choice between that and hearing what a fantastic job Rumsfled and Bush did/are doing on the other station, I'm not sure that I would suggest otherwise).

CNBC, if your listening, keep Becky, Erin and Maria - in fact put all three on one show at lunch time.

Anthony, pay very close attention to the chart Tom posted this morning, without bobbleheads we might never get panic. BUY I TELL YOU! BUY! BUY! BUY! while the blood is thick and the stench of it all makes you want to puke. on a more sane note - if the S&P drops below 1430 you may want to SELL SELL SELL!

PS At least one guy had a great day on wall street

AP Photo: Specialist Jason Dowd talks with Victoria's Secret models Karolina Kurkova, center, and Selita Ebanks as they visit the post that trades Limited Brands on the floor of the the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, Aug. 10, 2007.

 

[Griffin]

Folks,

Here's a couple of articles - read them before you look at the date and try to guess which ones were written yesterday and which ones were written in February

http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/mortgage-crisis/2007/02/28/

http://www.moneyweek.com/file/25376/will-the-us-sub-prime-mortgage-meltdown-spread.html

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-loanaug08,0,3995275.story?track=mostemailedlink

Now that you skimmed the articles and you've looked at the dates, ask yourself....how the hell did these lending institutions manage to go months after February's correction and not put a back up plan together or start adjusting their policies?

I got a lot of questions I would like to get answers for:

Are the people running these organizations that stupid? Were they sitting there with their head in the sand when all this blew up the first time? Is it possible that any of these companies were caught by surprise?

In a situation like this, you got to assume everybody is lying, so follow the money. Are the ranks of the unemployed going to swell as companies downsize their lending divisions? Will the Fed cover the interim unemployment costs? Who are the owner's of these hedge funds, whose losing money? What's going to happen to reputations on Wall Street?

Is the end of the age of irresponsible lending a bad thing for the US economy?

 

[DrFaustus]

I think they did start adjusting their policies - one of the articles said that Countrywide had starting tightening its lending policies. However, I think there was just too many people stuck in ARM loans they couldnt get out and as the Fed continued to jack up the rates, they felt the crunch from both their mortgages and their credit cards.

 

[anthony]

Griffin, could you expand on your 1430 comment and what significance it holds? If my math is right that is only ~1.5% from where we are now, but still less than a 10% pullback.

I guess if we were entering a bear market with a long way down to the bottom, I might think about taking my lumps, but from what I've been reading, all this seems more like just a normal pullback in a bull market. I have a long way to go before retirement, so I guess I'm not that worried about hanging on now that I'm already in.

We have a lot of firewalls and security in place here so I don't get to see a lot of charts. I could up until 3-4 weeks ago, but somebody changed something. If they are attached as a .gif sometimes I can do a 'save as.' Luckily TSPTalk is not blocked like a lot of sites (for example the nonprofit AAII is blocked because bigbrother thinks it is a stocktrading site - go figure).

Thank you for your comments. CNN = limited AFN choice in the chow hall at the time ... not my preferred source. At least the PX is finally getting Kiplingers again.

 

[Griffin]

Anthony, I'm sure the security is ridiculously tight and the signal guys are trying to minimize bandwith, so I will try to speak to my points. Quid pro quo - from your position, what effect are these talks with Iran having? (put it in a PM if you prefer)

1430 on the S&P 500 (SPX) is the support level we saw a few days ago. As long as that continues to hold as support, the more likely the market is to rebound. Once it does, we still may see a lower high on the next bump up which will be a good indicator that we are slipping into a bear market. If we slip into a bear market, eat your losses and go to the F-fund unless you think you can consistently count on having daily access.

It's amazing how bleak the economy gets painted during one of these pullbacks. It's always seems that we are at the end of our rope, but then things turn around. Which is what I was getting in my last post. After all, if the solution is really so simple that Ben can fix this whole problem with a snap of his fingers and a hundred basis points, how bad can it really be?

Follow the money, subprimes and Alt-A's were not issued to middle and upper, middle class America, they went to lower middle class America. Check the foreclosure listing's in your hometown, if you want to see who's going under. These lending institutions and hedge funds issued and packaged crazy adjustable rate mortgages when you could obtain a fixed rate mortgage at historic lows. They did that because they fully intended to fleece the hell out of these people when the Fed inevitable raised interest rates, it was their plan to squeeze the hell of the lower middle class. Now these institutions are crying in their milk because these folks are squatting in their homes and sucking all the profitiability out of the scam, becausing housing prices are tanking. The scammer's got scammed, and the only hope for them is for the Fed to lower interest rates so they can increase their profitiability on their paying customer sub-primes. Will they pass the savings rate onto their customers if the Fed does cut? Hell no, they will bank every dime, and no amount of rate cutting by the Fed is going to stop these babies from throwing their hissy fits.

 

[Remo]

Wow, well said. Here, here! A whole slew of those fly by night mortgage shuysters are going under and I hope they choke on their own foreclosures and bankruptcies. Damn vultures.

 

[Eldritch Flatus]

Wow! again. Amen to that. Evil is afoot! But if they undermine the base of the pyramid too much, even the top stones will topple. Trickle up?:worried:

 

[Griffin]

Distinctively different tone to today's news. Goldman Sach's pulled a solution out of their butts to their hedge fund problems, banks are adding liquidity, etc....amazing how things suddenly turn around.

Give it a couple of days though, and they'll come up with a new reason why the Fed should cut....any bad news out of the economic reports will be the war cry of the bears. Hang on folks, were not out of the woods yet and there is probably a couple of good plays to be made over the next couple of weeks.

 

[Griffin]

FYI to all that follow my moves, there was a mistake on the tracker, after today I am back up to 13.34% after going into the weekend 100% in the I-fund (which should have had me at 12.00% for all the appropriate tallies not 13.81% - which would be 5th place behind safteyguy).

Not to worry, I was down to 94th place earlier this year......I will bump Big J for more then 24 hours befor the years out!

 

[airlift]

Good move Griffin. Are you staying in the I-fund today? or do you see other signals calling?