How's that recovery coming along?
In housing, not so well, it turns out.
Housing starts fell from 705K in January to 698K, annualized, in February, with much of the new construction boosted in the multi-family, "5 units or more" category (apartments), which implies a couple of things. First, investors seem to believe that single-family home construction is a fading business, and, second, most of lower and middle class Americans cannot meet the current, stringent lending requirements needed to qualify for mortgages, so they will rent instead of own.
That's something of a setback for the "American dream of home ownership" crowd that watches in horror as each month more and more existing homes sell for less than their listed price, even more become vacant eyesores due to bank and tax foreclosures as the economy stumbles along at maybe two percent growth.
Building permits rose to 717K in February from 682K in January, probably due to the unusually warm weather across most of the country, though the apparent contrariness in that metric may be merely stealing from the future and is also the very first step in construction - a long way from completion, which, as people in Las Vegas and elsewhere will contend, often never happens.
With those numbers released before the open as a backdrop, stocks opened sharply lower and remained in the red throughout the session, though the NASDAQ and S&P 500 had interesting intra-day rallies that took them well off their lows into the close.
Oil got shocked down as the Saudis pledged to pump more crude, Iran assured its neighbors that the Strait of Hormuz would remain open and more signs that the Chinese economy is slowing emerged.
Overall, it was a good day for consumers and not such a great one for oil barons and one-percenters, though financial stocks were among the leaders. As usual, volume was weak and maybe just a mirage. Silver continues to slump, now down into a great buying range below support at $32/ounce.
Dow 13,170.19, -68.94 (0.52%)
NASDAQ 3,074.15, -4.17 (0.14%)
S&P 500 1,405.52, -4.23 (0.30%)
NYSE Composite 8,241.27, -56.20 (0.68%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,508,268,500
NYSE Volume 3,656,522,250
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 1753-3806
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 116-40
WTI crude oil: 105.61, -2.48
Gold: 1,647.00, -20.30
Silver: 31.83, -1.12
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
Stock Split as Week Ends with Dull Session
Stocks ended the week in mixed fashion on slightly elevated volume, most likely due to quadruple-witching options expiry.
There used to be a time when stocks would experience high volatility on options expiration, but those days seem to be gone, now that the entire market is being front run by insiders and HFT operations (many of whom are one and the same firms).
The big gains on Tuesday were responsible for the bulk of this week's advances, as there was virtually no follow-through to the big ramp job.
Some economic data led to the dull, confused markets this Friday. CPI for February came in with a 0.4% gain, with Core CPI up 0.1%, as most of the inflation was due to higher food and (mostly) energy prices. February Industrial Production was flat and Capacity Utilization fell by 0.01% in February, to 78.7%.
The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index fell a full point for March, to 74.3.
Dow 13,232.62, -20.14 (0.15%)
NASDAQ 3,055.26, -1.11 (0.04%)
S&P 500 1,404.17, +1.57 (0.11%)
NYSE Composite 8,270.40, -23.68 (0.29%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,993,724,375
NYSE Volume 4,893,666,000
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 2674-2978
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 265-25
WTI crude oil: 107.06, +1.95
Gold: 1,655.80, -3.70
Silver: 32.60, -0.12
There used to be a time when stocks would experience high volatility on options expiration, but those days seem to be gone, now that the entire market is being front run by insiders and HFT operations (many of whom are one and the same firms).
The big gains on Tuesday were responsible for the bulk of this week's advances, as there was virtually no follow-through to the big ramp job.
Some economic data led to the dull, confused markets this Friday. CPI for February came in with a 0.4% gain, with Core CPI up 0.1%, as most of the inflation was due to higher food and (mostly) energy prices. February Industrial Production was flat and Capacity Utilization fell by 0.01% in February, to 78.7%.
The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index fell a full point for March, to 74.3.
Dow 13,232.62, -20.14 (0.15%)
NASDAQ 3,055.26, -1.11 (0.04%)
S&P 500 1,404.17, +1.57 (0.11%)
NYSE Composite 8,270.40, -23.68 (0.29%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,993,724,375
NYSE Volume 4,893,666,000
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 2674-2978
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 265-25
WTI crude oil: 107.06, +1.95
Gold: 1,655.80, -3.70
Silver: 32.60, -0.12
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Stocks Higher
Seriously, you're not watching the tournament?
Besides, it was just another normal up day for the US equity markets. We'll talk about bond yields next week.
Dow 13,252.76, +58.66 (0.44%)
NASDAQ 3,056.37, +15.64 (0.51%)
S&P 500 1,402.60, +8.32 (0.60%)
NYSE Composite 8,246.72, +61.41 (0.75%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,688,321,125
NYSE Volume 4,278,291,000
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 3535-2067
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 241-44
WTI crude oil: 105.11, -0.32
Gold: 1,659.50, +16.60
Silver: 32.73, +0.55
Besides, it was just another normal up day for the US equity markets. We'll talk about bond yields next week.
Dow 13,252.76, +58.66 (0.44%)
NASDAQ 3,056.37, +15.64 (0.51%)
S&P 500 1,402.60, +8.32 (0.60%)
NYSE Composite 8,246.72, +61.41 (0.75%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,688,321,125
NYSE Volume 4,278,291,000
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 3535-2067
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 241-44
WTI crude oil: 105.11, -0.32
Gold: 1,659.50, +16.60
Silver: 32.73, +0.55
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Bankster Kleptocrats At It Again: Bank Stocks Up, Gold, Silver Down
One of the more tried and true methods of tape-watching is what's known in the business as "follow-through" - the tell-tale next day move in a stock or an index following a bold rally.
A lack of follow-through or extension of the rally usually means that the initial move was either false, poorly-constructed, had less-than-optimal participation or a combination of all of those.
If the tape is correct the day after the biggest one-day upside move in stocks this year, then today's trading certainly did little to confirm the veracity of the rally. With the Dow and NASDAQ up marginally at best, the slight decline in the S&P and the pretty healthy drop on the NYSE Composite reveal the tell-tale signs of a market rally surred on entirely by insiders, those of the Wall Street bankster crowd commonly known as the kleptocracy.
Their aim, obviously, was to instill a desire for individual investors to jump into those juicy big bank stocks like Bank of America (BAC), JP Morgan Chase (JPM), Goldman Sach (GS) and everybody's favorite, Citigroup (C), which incidentally was one of the four which failed the Fed's marginally-constructive stress tests on Tuesday.
The other fairly obvious feature of the Tuesday rally was the often overlooked calendar, which shows clearly that Friday is the third Friday of the month, meaning, yes, siree!, Tuesday's move was decidedly correlated to making oodles of cash on front-end, expiring call options.
Want proof? Take a look at the imbalance of open interest puts to calls on the 40 and 41 strikes of Friday's expiring options in JP Morgan. There were nearly 69,000 calls at those two strike prices, compared to about 25,000 puts. Since we all know there's no free lunch in America - unless you're a school-kid with cheap parents or a bankster will plenty of one-percenter street cred - the imbalance should be a tip as to what happened late yesterday afternoon, when Jamie Dimon jumped the shark and released his firm's (JPM) dividend upgrade before the Fed could expel the stress tests of the other banks. Talk about front-running! Jaime wrote the book with that move.
And for more proof, look below at the Advance-Decline line for today. The rally was definitely sold into by money smarter than that of most people. Volume was at its usual dismal level again today as well.
Just in case anyone thinks the Fed's stress tests were anything more than a call to action from the Fed to individual investors who don't believe a word that comes from ben Bernanke's mouth, one should definitely take a read of Chris Whalen's excellent article at Zero Hedge, Bank Stress Tests and Other Acts of Faith
One needn't be a bank examiner or financial wizard to understand what Whalen means when he says things like,
Face it, the Fed's stress tests of 19 of the nation's largest banks were nothing more than a pimp act for their favorite bailout buddies, designed to boost their share prices so insiders could profit at the expense of smaller, less-savvy investors and traders.
If that wasn't enough - and you know it wasn't - the raid on gold and silver today speaks volumes about the un-American policies the Fed pursues. According to the Fed, holding near-worthless scraps of paper like stock certificates of shares in illiquid banks or constantly-devaluing Federal Reserve Notes is far more prudent for us "little people" (or as Goldman Sachs executives like to call their clients, "muppets") than holding onto those relics of the past, gold and silver.
The gloves are off, folks. The Fed, the banksters, the kleptocracy of corporate America has had them off for a long time, bare-knuckling the American middle class like a punch-drunk patsy. It's time Americans with brains (maybe 30% or so of the population) rip off the Everlasts and land a roundhouse on the chops of these wealth thieves.
Close out the 401k, pension plan or whatever vehicle they're "managing" your money in and go buy some silver coins or bars, gold, or land, raise some chickens or pigs, grow some corn or tomatoes or broccoli, but at least stop putting your money into the wall Street Ponzi scheme.
That's going to be easier said than done for a lot of people who have their futures tied into their government sponsored pension plans, which, by the way, will pay out a lot less than expected when the s--- hits the fan, but, if the outflows from mutual funds over the past four years is any indication, you don't want to be one of the last players in the market (otherwise known as bagholders) when the rugs gets pulled out and the bottom drops out of the bottomless pit the financial "industry" has created.
It could be two years, two months or two weeks before the next market "event" but you don't want to be around when it happens and you definitely don't want it all to fall on your pretty little head, now do you?
Tomorrow, we'll take a look at the moves in bonds, and why what they're telling us is very, very bad.
Dow 13,194.33, +16.65 (0.13%)
NASDAQ 3,040.73, +0.85 (0.03%)
S&P 500 1,394.28, -1.67 (0.12%)
NYSE Composite 8,180.17 54.30 (0.66%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,627,102,500
NYSE Volume 4,446,792,500
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 1631-4036
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 318-38
WTI crude oil: 105.43, -1.28
Gold: 1,642.90, -51.30
Silver: 32.18, -1.40
A lack of follow-through or extension of the rally usually means that the initial move was either false, poorly-constructed, had less-than-optimal participation or a combination of all of those.
If the tape is correct the day after the biggest one-day upside move in stocks this year, then today's trading certainly did little to confirm the veracity of the rally. With the Dow and NASDAQ up marginally at best, the slight decline in the S&P and the pretty healthy drop on the NYSE Composite reveal the tell-tale signs of a market rally surred on entirely by insiders, those of the Wall Street bankster crowd commonly known as the kleptocracy.
Their aim, obviously, was to instill a desire for individual investors to jump into those juicy big bank stocks like Bank of America (BAC), JP Morgan Chase (JPM), Goldman Sach (GS) and everybody's favorite, Citigroup (C), which incidentally was one of the four which failed the Fed's marginally-constructive stress tests on Tuesday.
The other fairly obvious feature of the Tuesday rally was the often overlooked calendar, which shows clearly that Friday is the third Friday of the month, meaning, yes, siree!, Tuesday's move was decidedly correlated to making oodles of cash on front-end, expiring call options.
Want proof? Take a look at the imbalance of open interest puts to calls on the 40 and 41 strikes of Friday's expiring options in JP Morgan. There were nearly 69,000 calls at those two strike prices, compared to about 25,000 puts. Since we all know there's no free lunch in America - unless you're a school-kid with cheap parents or a bankster will plenty of one-percenter street cred - the imbalance should be a tip as to what happened late yesterday afternoon, when Jamie Dimon jumped the shark and released his firm's (JPM) dividend upgrade before the Fed could expel the stress tests of the other banks. Talk about front-running! Jaime wrote the book with that move.
And for more proof, look below at the Advance-Decline line for today. The rally was definitely sold into by money smarter than that of most people. Volume was at its usual dismal level again today as well.
Just in case anyone thinks the Fed's stress tests were anything more than a call to action from the Fed to individual investors who don't believe a word that comes from ben Bernanke's mouth, one should definitely take a read of Chris Whalen's excellent article at Zero Hedge, Bank Stress Tests and Other Acts of Faith
One needn't be a bank examiner or financial wizard to understand what Whalen means when he says things like,
So when I look at the Fed stress tests, which seem to be the result of a mountain of subjective inputs and assumptions, the overwhelming conclusion is that these tests are meant to justify past Fed policy.or
But as we have written over the past several weeks in The Institutional Risk Analyst, the Fed does not want to believe that there is a problem with real estate.
Face it, the Fed's stress tests of 19 of the nation's largest banks were nothing more than a pimp act for their favorite bailout buddies, designed to boost their share prices so insiders could profit at the expense of smaller, less-savvy investors and traders.
If that wasn't enough - and you know it wasn't - the raid on gold and silver today speaks volumes about the un-American policies the Fed pursues. According to the Fed, holding near-worthless scraps of paper like stock certificates of shares in illiquid banks or constantly-devaluing Federal Reserve Notes is far more prudent for us "little people" (or as Goldman Sachs executives like to call their clients, "muppets") than holding onto those relics of the past, gold and silver.
The gloves are off, folks. The Fed, the banksters, the kleptocracy of corporate America has had them off for a long time, bare-knuckling the American middle class like a punch-drunk patsy. It's time Americans with brains (maybe 30% or so of the population) rip off the Everlasts and land a roundhouse on the chops of these wealth thieves.
Close out the 401k, pension plan or whatever vehicle they're "managing" your money in and go buy some silver coins or bars, gold, or land, raise some chickens or pigs, grow some corn or tomatoes or broccoli, but at least stop putting your money into the wall Street Ponzi scheme.
That's going to be easier said than done for a lot of people who have their futures tied into their government sponsored pension plans, which, by the way, will pay out a lot less than expected when the s--- hits the fan, but, if the outflows from mutual funds over the past four years is any indication, you don't want to be one of the last players in the market (otherwise known as bagholders) when the rugs gets pulled out and the bottom drops out of the bottomless pit the financial "industry" has created.
It could be two years, two months or two weeks before the next market "event" but you don't want to be around when it happens and you definitely don't want it all to fall on your pretty little head, now do you?
Tomorrow, we'll take a look at the moves in bonds, and why what they're telling us is very, very bad.
Dow 13,194.33, +16.65 (0.13%)
NASDAQ 3,040.73, +0.85 (0.03%)
S&P 500 1,394.28, -1.67 (0.12%)
NYSE Composite 8,180.17 54.30 (0.66%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,627,102,500
NYSE Volume 4,446,792,500
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 1631-4036
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 318-38
WTI crude oil: 105.43, -1.28
Gold: 1,642.90, -51.30
Silver: 32.18, -1.40
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Can This Fairy Tale Market Be Believed? Fed Stress Tests; Jaime Dimon Pumps JP Morgan
Just a day after the lowest volume session in the last ten years or so, stocks jumped out of the gate and skyrocketed after the usual FOMC we're-doing-nothing release and JP Morgan's announcement of a quarterly dividend hike of $0.05 (from 25 to 30 cents) and a $15 billion stock buyback program.
Apparently Jaime Dimon, Morgan's CEO, thinks his company's stock is too cheap and could not contain his excitement as he jumped the shark, upstaging the Fed's bank stress test announcements which were released just after the close. Hard to figure, since JPM was already up (at yesterday's close) more than 43% since it bottomed out at a close of 28.18 on November 23, just about 3 1/2 months ago. Apparently, Jaime subscribes to the banker's creed, "math is so overrated."
Morgan's timing was appropriate, coming right after the Fed-speak, precisely at 3:00 pm ET, which everyone knows is the "magic hour" for stocks and whirring HFTs. The algos really cranked up hard in the final hour of trading, sending the Dow up by more than 100 points and the NASDAQ shooting past 3000 at the close for the first time since 2000.
As to those stress tests, 15 of 19 banks tested passed with flying colors, of course, being - according to the Fed - sufficiently capitalized to sustain conditions such as 13% unemployment, a 21% decline in housing prices and probably Lindsay Lohan failing another sobriety check. Among those which failed were Citigroup, Sun Trust, Met Life and Ally Financial. It's simply ludicrous to believe in test results administered to subjects which are wholly funded, pampered and coddled by the test-giver.
The Fed's stress tests were supposed to have been released at 4:30 pm ET on Thursday, but apparently some bright economist at the Fed realized that most of America would be occupied with first round games of the NCAA tournament at that juncture, so they, without announcement, sent them out to the rabid financial press corps today, right after the closing bell. Nothing like a little pile on to get the new out on what would have otherwise been a fairly uneventful Tuesday afternoon.
The whole afternoon was such a departure into overt silliness that it can hardly be believed that it's anything more than pure pumping by the financial entities which now own the entire market, from opening trade to closing casino-sounding bells and whistles.
Since individual investors have been pouring out of stocks at a record pace since 2008, the message is pretty clear. Despite all the jolly good news, nobody believes it and nobody is going to be buying it, especially at these new nose-bleed levels.
Join the club. Get completely out of stocks and just watch the stupid party. US euity markets are not real anymore. Since everything is going so swimmingly, who needs stocks? We'll all be millionaires several times over with all the money sloshing around these days. And, even if the markets are completely contrived and meaningless, it's all about perception, anyhow, no?
Dow 13,177.68, +217.97 (1.68%)
NASDAQ 3,039.88, +56.22 (1.88%)
S&P 500 1,395.96, +24.87 (1.81%)
NYSE Composite 8,234.48, +148.20 (1.83%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,681,104,625
NYSE Volume 4,329,381,000
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 4496-1184
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 375-27 (Zounds!)
WTI crude oil: 106.71, +0.37
Gold: 1,694.20, -5.60
Silver: 33.58, +0.17
Apparently Jaime Dimon, Morgan's CEO, thinks his company's stock is too cheap and could not contain his excitement as he jumped the shark, upstaging the Fed's bank stress test announcements which were released just after the close. Hard to figure, since JPM was already up (at yesterday's close) more than 43% since it bottomed out at a close of 28.18 on November 23, just about 3 1/2 months ago. Apparently, Jaime subscribes to the banker's creed, "math is so overrated."
Morgan's timing was appropriate, coming right after the Fed-speak, precisely at 3:00 pm ET, which everyone knows is the "magic hour" for stocks and whirring HFTs. The algos really cranked up hard in the final hour of trading, sending the Dow up by more than 100 points and the NASDAQ shooting past 3000 at the close for the first time since 2000.
As to those stress tests, 15 of 19 banks tested passed with flying colors, of course, being - according to the Fed - sufficiently capitalized to sustain conditions such as 13% unemployment, a 21% decline in housing prices and probably Lindsay Lohan failing another sobriety check. Among those which failed were Citigroup, Sun Trust, Met Life and Ally Financial. It's simply ludicrous to believe in test results administered to subjects which are wholly funded, pampered and coddled by the test-giver.
The Fed's stress tests were supposed to have been released at 4:30 pm ET on Thursday, but apparently some bright economist at the Fed realized that most of America would be occupied with first round games of the NCAA tournament at that juncture, so they, without announcement, sent them out to the rabid financial press corps today, right after the closing bell. Nothing like a little pile on to get the new out on what would have otherwise been a fairly uneventful Tuesday afternoon.
The whole afternoon was such a departure into overt silliness that it can hardly be believed that it's anything more than pure pumping by the financial entities which now own the entire market, from opening trade to closing casino-sounding bells and whistles.
Since individual investors have been pouring out of stocks at a record pace since 2008, the message is pretty clear. Despite all the jolly good news, nobody believes it and nobody is going to be buying it, especially at these new nose-bleed levels.
Join the club. Get completely out of stocks and just watch the stupid party. US euity markets are not real anymore. Since everything is going so swimmingly, who needs stocks? We'll all be millionaires several times over with all the money sloshing around these days. And, even if the markets are completely contrived and meaningless, it's all about perception, anyhow, no?
Dow 13,177.68, +217.97 (1.68%)
NASDAQ 3,039.88, +56.22 (1.88%)
S&P 500 1,395.96, +24.87 (1.81%)
NYSE Composite 8,234.48, +148.20 (1.83%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,681,104,625
NYSE Volume 4,329,381,000
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 4496-1184
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 375-27 (Zounds!)
WTI crude oil: 106.71, +0.37
Gold: 1,694.20, -5.60
Silver: 33.58, +0.17
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