US Economy an Express Train to Nowhere

Where to begin...

Let's start with housing, which continues to be a complete bugaboo for the friends of the Fed (FOF), meaning governments at all levels, financial institutions, public sector employees (overpaid, irresponsible), welfare and entitlement recipients and anybody who spends beyond their means.

This morning, the NAR released their almost-fully-discredited monthly report on existing home sales, which, despite marvelous weather across most of the country, fell 0.9% in February as compared to January's figures. The NAR was quick to point out that sales rose 8.8% from a year earlier to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.59 million.

Median prices were nearly flat, at $157,100, just 0.1% higher than February 2011.

It wasn't such a disheartening report, overall, but points to the idea that any uptick in activity is usually short-lived and not sustainable. Prices have remained mired in the mud, and, with interest rates on mortgages rising recently, March may have come in like a Lamb, weather-wise, but it may go out like a hungry lion in terms of real estate.

Then there was the brilliantly-timed commentary by Goldman Sachs chief global equity strategist, Peter Oppenheimer, titled "The Long Good Buy" which postulates that "the prospects for future returns in equities relative to bonds are as good as they've been in a generation."

Not to throw much cold water (a bathtub of ice might be more appropriate) on this particular bit of financial wisdom, but Mr. Oppenheimer and his buddies at the giant squid must think the muppets are prime for a fleecing. Stocks have not been at these current levels for more than 3 1/2 years, the major indices have pretty much doubled since the bottom of March '09 and he thinks NOW, today is a good time to buy stocks?

Not to be too pushy or overburdened with facts, but isn't the oldest bit of market timing knowledge to buy low, sell high? Oppenheimer seems to want to stand that time-worn adage on its head, which, considering the extent to which Goldman Sachs will go to defraud the public, the government and even its own clients, is about par for the course. (A video, assessing the relative value of Mr. Oppenheimer's call appears at the end of this post.)

As far as stocks are concerned, they are currently stalled out at high levels and while they floated along in bifurcated fashion through most of today's session, there was some significant selling pressure at the close. It probably means nothing, but if you think a quick selloff in stocks at the end of the day is a sure sign to buy more gold and silver, nobody around these parts is going to do anything to dissuade you from that line of thinking.

As usual, volume was unseen and at levels indicating a lack of interest, sponsorship or near-panic, but we've been over that bridge too many times already. Let it just be said that there are many, many, many fewer individual investors playing stocks than there were five years ago. Some went broke, some profited but are scared to death of the markets, others are merely awaiting a return to normalcy, something that isn't likely to occur until there's a crash, a credit "event", a war or something very ugly to shake the stranglehold of the banksters and politicians to their core.

Doug Casey offers three variations on the definition of a depression, plus some valuable insights in an interview, titled Doug Casey on the Illusion of a Recovery. It's an intelligent read. (Hint: Doug likes gold)

Dow 13,124.62, -45.57 (0.35%)
NASDAQ 3,075.32, +1.17 (0.04%)
S&P 500 1,402.89, -2.63 (0.19%)
NYSE Composite 8,219.33, -21.95 (0.27%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,551,352,875
NYSE Volume 3,534,241,000
Combined BYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 2776-2764
Combined BYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 174-32
WTI crude oil: 107.27, +1.20
Gold: 1,650.30, +3.30
Silver: 32.23, +0.39

Housing Not So Rousing, Saudis Naughty on Oil

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

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

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

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,

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