October 20, 2011

Getting Fleeced

Author: Barr Jozwicki - Categories: Market Update - Tags: APPL, BAC, Bankstas, Citigroup, consumers, DB, getting fleeced, GS, Mark Hudson, Mark to Market, Matt Taibbi, sheep, taxpayers

Getting Fleeced

Life is Good if you are a Banksta.

Banks are critical to the growth of any economic system. But if you decimate the regulations and regulators who watch over the financial system then greed runs wild.

Today too big to fail banks with infusions of trillions of dollars from governments/taxpayers continue to threaten worldwide economic systems while still torturing taxpayers and consumers.

Here’s just the latest -

No one goes to jail. Our understaffed SEC (many scream cut government/cut regulators/cut regulations/cut SEC) who has often been accused of being in bed with bankstas (read Matt Taibbi) just settled with Citibank who was telling clients one thing and defrauding them by doing another.

Everyone from US Military Commanders to Apple Computer are held accountable for their actions. Bankstas are special. They don’t have to mark to market their earnings results.

Goldman Sachs earnings (even without mark to market accounting) report is worse than expected and has a revenue LOSS – next day goes up +6%. Apple, who has to use mark to market accounting has a worse than expected earnings report and goes down -6%

No one will go to Jail – Price fixing scandal grows as major banks (BAC, C, JPM, DB) are accused of Price Fixing

Noted Economist, Prof Mark Hudson explains how European Debt Crisis is “Bankstas waging war against the people of the world”

The 1% at the top benefit enormously from banks. They reap they huge bonuses & salaries, they trade the unregulated Credit Default Swaps, and they run and invest in High Frequency Trades.

Damn it feels good to privatize those gains, socialize the losses and not be held accountable.

What do we sheep do?

(except the Occupy Wall Street protestors)

BAC and other banks save enormously when you use your debit card instead of a check. Now they charge a $5 monthly debt card fee. Again and again and again and again….

We sheep passively get fleeced.

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Stocks

Another broken eggs meltdown day. NASDQ and Russell 2000 get clobbered. Dow and S&P spanked. Europe and earnings results to blame. Seeking Alpha’s “must know” stock news for today.

Some Important Points

High Frequency Traders are volumizers. They don’t have a basic fundamental bullish or bearish bias in their algorithms. They pump up the volume and therefore make price moves more distorted. Technically, many of the algos they use do become more bullish when markets are oversold and bearish when they are overbought.

Fundamentals (example earnings) and Manipulators (example – Central Bank intervention) move markets. Technicals offer guidelines on how those markets will move. (example overbought = bearish, oversold = bullish)

Technical Forecasting Tools

Our primary technical forecasting tool, the McCellan Oscillator fell dramatically from 67 to 34.04. Moderately overbought = NEUTRAL/Bearish
Our secondary forecasting tool, the Put Call Ratio, fell to 1.12 = NEUTRAL
For more on these two indexes click on STRATEGY section on top of page.

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Reading Tea Leaves

Our technical bias (MO &PCR), in the short term, is moderately bearish. – Translation – If all the fundamental news was neutral, the market would probably go down

All eyes on Sundays big meeting on European Debt

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Paul’s Corner

Wednesday started out on a positive note, then in the afternoon a Fed Beige Book report wasn’t well received and news out of the Euro War Zone turned negative about 2PM and down went the market. Until Greece settles it looks like an unsafe market.

GMCR has sure been getting tossed out like a bad brew these past few days. The trouble started after a David Einhorn presentation. He specializes in short sales.

Read his report.

Even with Wednesday’s soft action on the tech stocks many are starting to show life. Here are a few to look at:

ATML Atmel Corporation designs, develops, manufactures, and markets a range of semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) products. The company’s Microcontrollers segment offers various proprietary and standard microcontrollers, such as embedded nonvolatile memory, integrated analog peripherals, and capacitive touch controllers

BSFT BroadSoft, Inc. provides software that enables fixed-line, mobile, and cable service providers to deliver voice and multimedia services over Internet protocol (IP) based networks.

IACI IAC/InterActiveCorp engages in the Internet business in the United States and internationally. The company operates in four segments: Search, Match, ServiceMagic, and Media and Other. The Search segment develops, markets, and distributes various downloadable toolbars; provide search, reference, and content services through its destination search and other Websites, including Ask.com and Dictionary.com; and aggregates

KLAC KLA-Tencor Corporation designs, manufactures, and markets process control and yield management solutions for the semiconductor and related nanoelectronics industries

RAX Rackspace Hosting, Inc. operates in the hosting and cloud computing industry. It provides information technology (IT) as a service, managing Web-based IT systems for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as large enterprises worldwide.

RNOW Rightnow Technologies, Inc. provides cloud-based customer experience software products and services.

SIMO Silicon Motion Technology Corporation, a fabless semiconductor company, designs, develops, and supplies a portfolio of multimedia data processing, storage, and transfer solutions primarily for consumer electronics applications

SPRD Spreadtrum Communications, Inc., through its subsidiaries, operates as a fabless semiconductor company that designs, develops, and markets baseband processor and RF transceiver solutions for wireless communications and mobile television markets. SPRD is a Chinese company.

Stocks listed are for education only. No buy sell recommendations are made or inferred.

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Investors411 LONG Term Investments

Each day Paul (change setting from profile to activity) offers up to the minute commentary on the markets & YSL #5 in the Comment section of the blog. Catch his Paul’s Corner every Tuesday and Thursday.

Our Hedge Investment - Theory – Technology will do better than financial sector over time. Thus hedge is set to hopefully work well in both up and down markets.

Short Financials – Investors411 will use ultra short SKF (opened at 78.91 – sold at 71.51).
Long Technology - Investors411 will use ultra long QQQ (tech’s) QLD (opened at 81.13 – sold at 87.48)
The last half of this trade was sold or less than a -1% loss = Total lost /gained of entire trade = 0%
Why it was sold – See editorial above. Financials have a major advantage NOT using mark to market accounting and continued support from central banks. No trend was developing in this trade.

Taking it on the Chin.

After four very successful YOUR Stock List, the 14 stocks in YSL #5 is taking it on the chin. The reasons

Two days ago CROX had a bad earnings report and fell -39%
Yesterday GRMC suffered from a poor forecast by a major analyst and fell -13%

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Long Term Outlook

3 to 6+ months

NEUTRAL*

*Investors411 has 5 different long term valuations - BULLISH, CAUTIOUSLY BULLISH, NEUTRAL, CAUTIOUSLY BEARISH, and BEARISH.

* Everything written in BROWN is a repeat from a previous day(s)

AS ALWAYS, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH BEFORE INVESTING

ALL TRADING INVOLVES RISK AND POTENTIAL LOSS OF PRINCIPLE

CHECK ALL DATA, I MAKE MORE THAN GRAMER ERRORS.

April 14, 2011

Top 3 Investments for 2nd 1/4

Author: Barr Jozwicki - Categories: Market Update - Tags: budget cuts, GE, Gold, GS, jail, Japan, JPM, rare earth metals, Shadow Banks, silver, Wall Street, wives of wall street

Rolling Stone Photo – Wall Street Wives

If you haven’t taken your blood pressure medication this AM – Please take an extra dose before reading below.

Wall Street Wives – Matt Taibbi from the Rolling Stone has come up with another jaw dropper. Remember Geithner and Bernanke’s Wall Street Bailout. Seems that the “wives of JPMorgan bigwigs walked away with $220 million dollars.” Opening line of editorial – “Most Americans know about that budget. What they don’t know is that there is another budget of roughly equal heft, traditionally maintained in complete secrecy“

The Closing Government Soap Opera. – Remember all the media attention of the $38 billion the Republicans were supposedly cutting from the budget. Two days ago the press went bananas when they found out it was only $14 billion. Yesterday the non partisan CBO put the actual figure at $353 million. Yes, that’s million with an M.

Crony Capitalism - It’s simply not fair to put the blame on the real housewives of of Wall Street or JPM. Now that the Fed was forced to open its books we find out the real husbands at Goldman Sachs got (See Matt Taibbi’s piece) $800 billion from the Fed. Yes, that’s billion with a B.

Get out of Jail Free - The US Treasury Department actually used hash language toward shadow bankers in a sternly worded proclamation Remember the phony foreclosures, robocalls etc. reveled months ago. Billions evaporated thousands lost their homes. Bankers got a tender tap in their wrists. The NYT has finally caught on and its headline story is on No one from Wall Street goes to Jail

GE is to return $3.2 billion tax rebates!? The whole AP story turned out to be a hoax. YOU pay taxes, GE doesn’t. – Bummer

The Prestigious Pinocchio Award. The Japanese government has been less than than honest about the nuclear reactor situation. FYI – TEPCO has just confirmed reactor 4 is open air fussion. YANKEE BOB is back in the comments section (scroll down) with an editorial. Here’s a sample – “the gamble with public safety to use Nuclear energy to boil water has failed.”

Maybe we’re more than just a morsal for Wall Street sharks. EW in the comments sections saw Obama’s deficit speech as hopeful – Obama quotes “There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires,” …. “There’s nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill. And this is not a vision of the America I know.”

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KISS & Stocks

(Keep It Simple Stupid)

If you don’t understand a term look in up at Investopedia.com dictionary

AS ALWAYS, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH BEFORE INVESTING!

DOUBLE CHECK ALL DATA, I MAKE MORE THAN GRAMMAR MISTAKES

Today a format change to focus more time on three investments for the 2nd quarter. But first here’s market news

Fed’s ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy) & QE 2 is sustaining stock rally and forces anyone who wants a high yield is forces into higher risk stocks, or junk bonds.
Yesterday’s action was no more than a pause (slight uptick) and we’re close, but haven’t reached oversold levels or a buy the dip level yet
Paul often makes closing remarks in the comments section of the blog. From yesterday – “If any of you folks like to study the charts, you’ll see on many of the major indicies a clear “double top’ and that often signals coming hell fire and brimstone’s”

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Three Top Investment Areas

Rare Earth Metals - REMX (link to chart)

REMX is the ETF that tracks the major rare earth metal companies. Most data below is from Van Eck Global owner of REMX ETF.

This is a simple supply/demand story. The demand outstrips the supply. China currently provides 97% of rare earth metal production. InDec. of 2010 China announced it would cut exports of rare earth metals 35% because to keep some for their own use. REMX has only 17% exposure to china. It takes a long time to mine these metals so many of the companies REMX invest in have yet to become major producers. Obviously the companies/mines outside China are ramping up production as fast as possible.

Some applications for Rare earth metals include hybrid cars,steel alloys, wind turbines, flat screen TV’s, jet engines & cell phones. So you can understand the demand.

Downside risk – If we fall into a second recession or depression REMX will suffer. However it should outperform because of the supply/demand issue.

Gold - GLD & DGP (2x or ultra long gold)(both ticker symbols are links to charts)

GLD & DGP (2X) are the ETF’s that track gold prices. Obviously DGP carries twice the risk/reward.

Arguably the #1 source for gold information is GFMS Reuters last week featured their supply/demand analysis on both gold and silver. The fundamentals are relevant, but we all know, gold prices move higher on fear of the future.

I follow Jesse’s Cafe Americain on both gold and silver. The technical analysis and inside information is superb. In the future Investors411 will give updates from this site.

Silver – SLV & AGQ (2x silver) (both ticker symbols are links to charts)

SLV & AGQ are the ETF’s that track silver prices. Obviously AGQ carries twice the risk/reward.

Silver has more industrial uses. Links to important information on silver above.

If you are considering investing in this area or just want a good laugh you have to watch one of the two bears videos on silver. “You want me to buy more silver? Holy s–t man I’m going to s–t my pants.”

Paul would be a great source on individual gold, silver and rare earth companies if you are interested ask. MCP is the one company that I like in rare earth field. We almost put this on YOUR Stock List #4, but decided REMX would cover the sector.

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Positions

The POSITIONS Section at top of the blog is a link to 4 different portfolios. It’s full of investment idea. The actively managed portfolios #3 &4 - Aggressive ETF Trading & Your Stock List can be found in the POSITIONS Section of blog

I have personal positions in REMX, RJA, SLV, EWV, (Note – sold UWM into rally) In fact the single largest investment for a non profit I’m the treasurer of is GLD for the past 5 years.

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Look for Paul R’s always enlightening remarks on stocks and sectors in the comments section of the blog. See ”POSITION“ section of blog (at top of page) for lists of potential stocks & ETF’s including ”YOUR Stock List.”

Longer Term Outlook - CAUTIOUSLY BULLISH

AS ALWAYS, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH BEFORE INVESTING

July 16, 2010

Obama’s Birthday Presents

Author: Barr Jozwicki - Categories: Market Update - Tags: Barney Frank, BP, Capped spill?, David Stockton, earnings reports, Elizabeth Warren, Financial regulation, GS, NYT, Obama, Ron Paul, SEC, Your comments

Obama’s Victories

It may be over the top to call the events of yesterday Obama victories (credit/blame should be spread), so lets call them birthday presents.

Bottom line - We should have done better, but it could have been a whole lot worse.

The BP oil gusher in the Gulf looks to be completely capped. Also, victory for oil industry who now proves they can stop leak at 5,000+ feet.
SEC gets record settlement against shadow bank GS, legislation to prevent what GS did is included in financial reform legislation, but GS wins by preventing a whole lot of bad PR by going to trial.
The biggest birthday present is the Financial reform bill passes congress. (Senate, 60 -39)
Another big victory is Republican leadership, like in health care, promising to repeal it all instead of saying well keep this part because its good and eliminate that.

Here’s the lead NYT editorial on Financial Regulation. Some relevant points.

“Since January 2009, the financial sector has spent nearly $600 million to weaken reform” – they scored many victories.
“the margin of victory was really about partisan politics and not the bill’s content.” Majority of blame here is on Republicans, but NYT does not mention Democrats are not without partisan transgressions.

Investors 411 has beat the drum for a tougher bill and it to be more inclusive of transparency in government agencies. However, we got more out of this than we did out of health care legislation. Both are steps in the right direction that need amending.

The next big battle is who heads and is on the board of resolution authority and consumer protection. Geithner is opposing Elizabeth Warren as the new head of Consumer Protection Agency. Warren is perhaps the #1 hero in the accountability, transparency and reform of Wall Street.