The manipulation continues

Some might say the market had a scary close yesterday erasing most of these sessions gains late in the day...might make you a little nervous to come in long today right? Never fear with team Obama running (gunning) the markets. At around 7 PM central time last night the White House announced that they are going to announce some housing assistance program today, which will for sure mean more money for the morons who over leveraged and you and me have to keep making our regular payments, so for some reason the market likes this and the futures just start rallying. Of course lets remember where the money for Obamas latest bailout is going to come from...thin air!!! A day does not go by where he does not announce more spending we cant afford....Why the market rallys on this you ask? You know why...I suspect this mornings gains will evaporate rather quickly as people are beginning to understand the true danger of the fiscal situation we are in and that this administration seems hellbent on putting us in a continually worse situation.
So for all you people out there who reached a little to far, bought a little to much house - congrats - your life is about to get a little easier, mine?? the same.

JB

Im short the wrong market...

Anybody see the carnage in US Govt bonds today?? The stock market is to stupid to see the ramifications of this insane healthcare reform bill but the bond market saw it and exit left was the move. Treasuries got smoked for 2 full points today - all we do is issue new debt week in week out - and tax revenue is going down so people got nervous about a fiscal crisis and sold - the stock "market" took it quite well posting a 50 point decline for the Dow, what us worry. Tonight the SPUZ are getting an early jump on tomorrow and are rallying by a point or so....why the natural inclination is to buy em when the bond market is under serious stress Il never know. I think at this point the stock "market" has become an experiment for the fed and Goldman to see just how far they can push it, how many traders they can put out of business, how many people they can suck in - did anybody see todays housing numbers?? They were HORRID..total garbage and yet housing stocks rallied....now that might be understandable 70% ago in the market but up here?? Oh well...
JPM issues a new 7% preferred tonight - the offering sold out in 5 minutes...I bought some of it.

JB

Really?? Really??

We are just going to go up everyday? everyday? Nobody finds this in the least bit strange that after 75% gains we still just march forward all day??
Oh well - im a moron - thank G-D for MPG and MPGpA as longs which I talked about here months and moths ago they made power moves today after the company conference call this AM - the move in this name today bailed me out on some shorts - why I still have any shorts on is a damn good question....
Anyways more secondary offerings tonight, a bunch of converts a few billion - they will be digested with not even a belch is my thinking....make no mistake the FED is in control and are sponsoring massive risk taking once again. Have fun and make sure you have a seat when the music ends...

JB

Surprise Surprise

An upday to greet the passing of healthcare reform...the SPUZ traded down all night and all morning but the persistent buying that we have become used to started doing its thing at around 845 AM and simply never stopped. Obamacare is a winner who cares about taxes, deficits, who cares about anything - SPUZ are on cruise control to the moon.
Blah Blah Blah more rhetoric between China and Google today - this I promise you is a significant issue - but pay no heed just keep buying the market.
75% off the lows in a rally that has been sponsored by massive stimulus and massive job cuts...and the pundits are as bullish as ever - oh well Im a fool.
Oh by the way like 6 secondary offerings tonight and an IPO - gobble gobble gobble.
Bernanke might be able to blow this bubble even bigger than Greenspan blew his - the difference between the two is that Bernanke cant even cut rates if he gets in trouble - he might never raise em but he sure cant lower em.

JB

Has there even been a worse market

We either grind higher or do absolutely nothing, nada, zilch. This morning is an extra special zilch b/c its expiration - Goldman has to pin their SPX strike - so they just make the S&P futures market stay very calm with a slight upside bias so as to keep all of their subjects calm - heaven forbid someone actually come in on a Friday and want to ring the register...Today you have a significantly stronger dollar and the SPUZ are still slightly higher...good stuff good stuff.
Ok you dont need any more of my rantings...
Very active secondary calendar last night deals were done in

HRP 7.25 pricing
TSL 20.25 pricing
SB 7.0 pricing
THRX 11.5 pricing
HT dunno yet

Keep an eye on these to see how well they perform.


JB

Jobless Claims

457k more people filed initial jobless claims this week.....boy does that go hand in hand with a stock market that is not ALLOWED to trade lower for one minute of one day...Obama, Geithner and Bernanke are perpetrating one of the biggest scams of all time - inflating this market 24/6.
Have a wonderful fraud of a day.

JB

Groundhog day, again

So today would be day number 15 of the current S&P rally.
Stock buyers see absolutely nothing but rosy scenarios,http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-16/christie-seeks-to-suspend-n-j-tax-rebate-skip-pension-payment.html - they didnt see that story or countless others - but me warning you (is anybody out there?) about these issues is silly at this point - I have been dead wrong about this market since I started this blog. The fed as expected did NOTHING yesterday - so in the immortal words of Wayne and Garth "Party on"

JB

13 days in a row for the SPY

Higher for 13 days in a row - today for almost the whole day looked like a down day but in the last two hours the markets pushed higher to close the S&P up yet again. Today bigcap tech was absent from the rally - I perceive an incredible lack of liquidity in the markets - has anyone else noticed that the S&P mini contract is now 50 cents wide occasionally? Whats up with that? Look at the moves in BIDU and GOOG today - so since this talk about GOOG leaving China BIDU has rallied from about $390 to $580 today - would you say its starting to be cooked into the cake?? But yet today it was up another $28 dollars on a WSJ story that GOOG is 99.9% leaving the Chinese market....havent the algos ever heard of selling the news?? I guess not. Tuff to make sense of it all - real tuff......Obamas war on shortsellers I would say has been an amazing success - vols have been crushed, puts have not been in the money in months...stocks are kicking everythings ass. I guess the old line of "its stuff to fight city hall" was made for the past 9 months of government sponsored jigginess in the market. Tomorrow the fed will say nothing as usual - as they continue to run their hedgefund and are rather enjoying the zero% fed funds rate - I would love to be wrong - I would love for the fed to say we are going to tighten - love it - Bernanke is to stupid or maybe he knows just how shitty the economy really is so he knows inflation is nearly impossible as there is no end demand unless of course you manufacture IPODs, IPADS or IMACS. Anyways in the immortal words of Art Cashin "stay very nimble"

JB

Enough of this shit allready

Screw the fed, screw them - how long are they going to keep this zero interest rates going - its just stupid allready - the equity markets continue to zoom with literally no downticks - we opened ever so slightly lower this morning traded there till about 2 pm when Bernanke and Geithner took another run at the futures pushing them to new highs.
This market has made me feel like a total fool - TOTAL. The wonder of it all is that Im having a profitable month - i have a few good arbs going and some PIPE deals have worked but my short positions have been disastrous. When the Russell 2k is up 20/22 days being short anything is pretty pretty tuff. Watching this tape grind inexorably higher is no fun - none at all.

JB

This is beyond crazy

The Russell 2k is now up 19 out of the last 21 days - almost as good as Goldman - almost - they dont have any losing days. The SPUZ went negative for about 45 seconds this afternoon but cooler heads prevailed and stocks immediately recovered and ended up AGAIN. The beta masters, AAPL and BIDU were up to there usual tricks leaping higher and higher - boy its hard fighting this tape. Luckily some of my longs have done really well lately and we have been doing some PIPE transactions and secondary offerings.
The way the markets trading one would think we were embarking on a new age of prosperity and growth like the 1950s...stocks arent allowed to trade down - crazy - that Russell 2k stat is insane.
When the market looks like its gonna peter out it just makes another burst higher blowing out more shorts and skeptics....there are not many shorts left which IF this market ever trades lower will be a negative not a positive - they will have no bets to cover. Lots of pundits have been talking about perhaps the CDS market being banned which would cause a massive rally they say?? Im not smart enough to know if thats true. What I do know is stocks are jiggy, offerings are flying off the shelves and the fed continues to wage war against people with savings - Bernanke will not be happy until he has inflated a Greenspan worthy bubble - he wants not one penny in savings....again lets just highlight things that should give the crowd who is willing to pay ever higher stock prices pause
1)Sovereign debt issues
2)State governments being broke, Cal, Ill, MI
3)Fed funds rate can only go higher....its zero if you recall
4)The market is overvalued by a good amount unless you listen to the pundits whose job it is to push it higher
5)FDIC is broke or on its way
6)FNM and FRE are a gaping whole bleeding money
7)Banks are still marking their portfolios to fiction and not to market
8)The aholes buying SPUZ wearing 3k dollar suits dont know what the real world is like
9)Taxes are going higher - they have to - or the dollar gets reduced to nothingness take your pick
10)The higher we go without a pullback the more likely a one day debacle becomes
Need I go on??


JB

A link

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/spy-volume-back-2010-lows-equity-mutual-funds-run-out-cash

This story above makes the absolute permabid nature of this market all the more confusing...

There is a ton of supply coming to market this week in the form of converts, TARP warrants, an $800 million dollar offering from Comerica Bank - etc etc etc

As far as today being a down day that prediction was sorta right sorta wrong - the DOW was down ever so slightly and the Russell 2k was up ever so slightly.

Sleep tight

JB

Odds???

The Russell 2k has traded higher 16 out of the last 18 trading days - pretty incredible - will tomorrow be 17/19 - seems totally possible but in my opinion unlikely - Im saying this even as Mondays have been the most powerful days of this bull run...Everybody is aware of the monday effect now so perhaps its time to mix it up a bit and have a dare I say down day??
I participated in buying some of the Bank America Tarp warrants last week - they seem like a really good deal to me, 13.3 strike with 10 years until expiration trading for about 8.5 per warrant vs 16.7 stock price - I like it.
I as a father of four and husband of a tech savvy woman have seen IPODs march in to this house as well as a MAC computer - AAPL products are awesome - but am I alone here in thinking the IPAD is a silly item?? I hope its a flop and the stock goes down so I can buy it - I think AAPL will continue to grow the IPHONE business and continue to take share in the PC market- so I hope the IPAD fails the stock gets clocked and then I can buy it.......
Anyway heres hoping for a profitable week that offers plenty of great trades.

JB

Lets see what they are made of

So we have the nonfarm payroll report this morning and the number came in a little better than expected - mind you the economy still shed 36k jobs and the rate is still 9.7% Unemployment but it was still better than expected. So of course the bulls are lathered up buying futures (as they were all night...hmmmm???) pushing them up 3/4 of 1% premarket.
So we have rallied from 1040 to 1129 now in 2 weeks - do the bulls have more room to run? Sure is hard to fade em.....Bonds are getting roughed up, Oil is rallying ($82 bucks a barrel) those are your negatives. The positives are momentum, momentum, momentum.

Dunno what to think here - we are massively overbought but that really doesnt matter these days...Good luck

JB

Getting back to that maximum frustration point

The market is doing nothing except terrify bears and other endangered species called skeptics.
Obama, Bernanke and Geithner can do nothing right except gun the market 24/7 - in the 1930s the market crashed recovered 83% (ie sucked everyone back in) and then dropped like a rock - make no mistake that is exactly what I think is happening now. There are nefarious forces doing their best to make sure the market appears well bid at all times, at some point that will end and end badly. Commodity stocks leading the market higher in a world where employment is a major issue, there are empty office buildings and homes all over the place, and tankers filled with crude floating at sea.....go figure, but more importantly dont believe the hype, we are now excited about false hopes, remember the fed funds rate is still zero - if things were so strong that cheater Bernanke would raise rates and throw savers a bone, but no he knows how tenuous things truly are so in deference to wall st. keeps the fed funds rate at the insane rate of zero. Timing is the key to this bear case, we will not be at the bottom until the bald guy on CNBC is saying you cant be in the market - he stays fervently bullish - lets remember who he works for - perhaps the worlds largest hedge fund GE - triple AAA rating.....you know insanely low borrow rates and lends higher......anyway Im tired and I just want the truth to bubble to the surface.

JB

The song remains the same....

At 4AM the markets hockey sticked higher - I was not up but my 15 minute chart was tracking all the action so I could wake up and take a look when the market inflation team started buying futures...I suppose the bullish flavor of today would be??? Im open to suggestions - Im not sure should it be the pounding of the UKs currency? The fact that the market is being led by IPODs and commodities....oy vey - dont get me started.
1120 acted as major resistance in the past for this market and thats where the futures are "trading" this morning - could be a rejection point butmore than likely the algos will start selling dollars and keep buying futures even though we have rallied 80 SPU points in almost a straight line.
In other news BAC is auctioning off its TARP warrants this morning - should be lots of activity in that stock and its options --could smush volatility even more.
Food for thought - why at the same time as 6 month bills yield last than 1/10th of 1% does Verizon yield almost 7%?? Risk aversion?? I have to say that Verizons balance sheet is a heck of a lot better looking than the US governments right now.....

JB