Yankee Bob - just one week before the baseball season starts and Bob is back with an editorial on Nuclear Power in today’s comments section. Here’s an excerpt -

“…First rule of poker or gaming theory is never bet more then you are prepared to lose. Who paces bets on nuclear energy generation? Not the people.  Corporations looking for profit place the bets…”

Hint  - The young Red Sox’s fan pictured above is NOT making a comment on Yankee Bob’s editorial, but on a baseball team.

Investor In Wonderland – Stock market editorial below in Reading The Tea Leaves Section.

Radiation In Japan – Two other prefectures next to Tokyo have the glow in the dark radiated water. (so maybe it doesn’t glow, but I sure folks wish radiated water did glow) No “harmfull” levels in Tokyo today – or so we are told by those oh so reliable officials. Steam from all 4 reactors today. 1st time from reactor #1. This from helicopter crew with might big zoom lens 30 kilometers away from nuke plant.

Hacker Collective/Anonymous - Out with proclamation – These folks exposed The Chamber of Commerce’s hidden smear tactics against opponents and BAC’s hidden manipulations.

“getting our National Rights and dreams back….To effectively reform the system that has enslaved us, we must consider the advice and example of those who have preceded us. Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and JFK are good places to start. All took fierce positions against central banking, government corruption and corporate power… The time has come for us to unite, the time has come for us to stand up and fight. ”

_____________

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

_____________

.

Index	Percentage	Volume
Dow	+0.56%	up
NASDQ	+0.54%	up
S&P 500	+0.29%	up
Russell 2000	+0.32%	-

_____________

.

Technicals, Fundamentals & Analysis

Investors411 record - 6 years of beating benchmark S&P 500

BUBBLE-ICIOUS - Investors411 term for the stock market – We are all riding on the outside of an ever expanding &  Central Bank manipulated liquidity stock bubble. See Investors411 STRATEGY section for more

• Another weak volume liquidity driven manipulated rally. Fed POMO buying ended at 11:00AM EST and that’s when US stocks started to rally
• 2 days of Fed buying = $15 billion Sure helps stocks to have a tsunami of liquidity behind the trading desks of Goldman Sachs and other shadow institutions/primary Fed dealers.
• BAC (Bank of America) was NOT allowed to issue a dividend. Our cover up specialists, oops excuse me – government regulators said no dividend for BAC, they didn’t pass the stress test, but its all opaque because no numbers were published and would you trust the numbers of people who post government job could be to work for financials they regulate.
• New home sales dipped 17% – another horrible statistic in housing. XHB – The ETF for homebuilders rallied on the news – Really I’m not kidding.

________________

.

Shorter Term Forecasting Indexes

• The Dollar (USD) [Any daily price move over +/- 0.50 is significant. Dollar usually moves inversely to stocks]   The dollar rose significantly +0.75% One day does not change the pattern. Clear bearish longer term pattern still in place. For stocks = Bullish
• McClellan Index - (MO) [The very rough guideline is over +60 = overbought market = sell positions or short stocks, & -60 = oversold market = buy stocks .] MO rose to -0.81 Right in the middle – not overbought or oversold. = Neutral

________________

.

Reading The Tea Leaves

Welcome to the world of liquidity driven Shadow & Central Bank manipulated markets. Not Alice in Wonderland, but Investor in Wonderland.

The Bad news

• Housing down 17%
• Huge Bank fails stress test.
• Oil Prices high and moving higher
• The dollar up significantly
• Radiated water in a city of 13 million people
• Another oil war looks like a protracted stalemate.
• Europe debt crisis grows as Portugal’s government collapses on a no confidence vote

So what does our stock market do – A RALLY

There is a perverse logic to this bad news is fodder for a rally.  The more bad news there is the more Central Banks (especially the USA) around the world print money or institute quantitative easing. This is all leading to one big bubble bursting down the road, but for now we have all leaned to balance on the top of that ever expanding bubble.

From Yesterday on Japan’s growing Nuclear problems –  Investors or media in the USA may not pick up on this story immediately, but it sure looks like it has major long term consequences that will impact Japan’s GDP.

At least Japan’s markets were actually DOWN a bit on bad news. But just a bit because Japan, just like the USA is going to print gobs of  TOILET PAPER (aka money)  to pay off their debt.

Short Term Bottom Line – So in honor of baseball season in just one week – Put Your Rally Caps on – This is a Bubblicious Wonderland,

What to watch today

• USO - ETF for oil - Oil up = stocks down - Now back above $100. - Headlines from Libya. (diminishing factor, but still important)
• UUP - (Tracking ETF for dollar) Remember - The dollar is a contrarian indicator. Bad dollar = good stocks
• AAPL – Trading below 50 day MA is bearish.
• Japan Rector Developments

___________________

Positions

UWM - – Sell order still in at 43. 93 (1% above what i was bought for) which will close entire position.

ETF’s currently Under Consideration.

EWV for those who love risk is the ETF that is ultra short (2x) Japan. Problems there are under estimated and/0r covered up.

UCO -(2x oil prices) Why not, its also a hedge against higher gas prices. – approaching highs of last month & 2010 – I do own this ETF in other accounts and have sold covered calls on some of it.

REMX (Rare Earth ETF) - Really believe this a good long term holding. - Shouda Woulda Coulda – Up +3.73% two days ago - Dipped yesterday, but ended up confirming or holding onto gains. Strong consideration to buy any dip.

DGP – (ETF is 2X gold)also SLV (silver). Breakout on worries of future inflation – Buy the dip

DBC - (Commodities ETF) For a more complete list of commodity ETF’s see POSITIONS listed at top of blog  DBC is tilted to energy.  A good alternative would be DJP that is more agriculture and metals -

RJA (Agriculture commodities Index)An ETN, not an ETF.

UWM (2x small cap stocks) TNA (3X small cap stocks)

.

_________________

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.”

Another day or two like yesterday and the Long Term Outlook goes back to CAUTIOUSLY BULLISH.

The Problem is Suburbia

Geography 101

Throughout the last 100 years geography has worked for and against the USA. Today mega trends dominate the flow of what happens. Investors411 has focused on 3 megatrends for years. There are, of course more. Lets look at an overly simplistic view of US history as a geography lesson to understand the pickle where in today.

• We ended the Great Depression with the massive spending of FDR’s New Deal and World War 2
• The end result was a debt that was 30% of GDP (relativity — today its @10%)

How did we fix this huge debt problem? We relocated people into suburbia  - built massive highways, factories, shopping malls and developed greater tolerance. Yes, we had much higher taxes then. The middle class and suburbia flourished and perhaps reached its zenith in the late 70′s (see comments section of blog for amount of wealth in top 1%) The Geography here is we sprspeadead out in & built a vast suburban sprawl , worked hard, eliminated a massive deficit. This achieved a lot for many Americans.

Along comes mega trends of  globalization (jobs move abroad) and peak oil (end of cheap energy sources). Geographically, the suburban sprawl depended on cheap energy and the building of more suburbia to thrive. We did hold ourselves together for a while with innovation (computers/internet) but soon because of “scaling” these too are being developed faster and cheaper overseas.

Now. Unlike almost every other country we’re stuck in a geographical nightmare that is dependent on cheap energy and its own further suburban growth to survive.

If you’d like to see a more radical apocalyptic presentation of this kind of scenario read Minnesota economist Jim Kunstler for a while. (Thanks to AG who first showed me this site)

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!

Index	Percentage	Volume
Dow	-0.01%	down
NASDQ	+0.13%	down
S&P 500	+0.01%	down
Russell 2000	+0.07%	-

Technicals, Fundamentals & Analysis

Investors411 record – 5 years of beating benchmark S&P 500

Same Mantra for this week -The Black Box/High Frequency Traders BB/HFT control the vast majority of trades.

Many thanks to Paul R for providing stock information in the comments section over the last 5 days. We are both working together on YOUR on a stock list. Many of you have sent in stocks to be considered and a few more will be added. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get this together by mid week before we both leave.

Significant Indexes-

• McClellan Oscillator (MO) fell  to +40.41 over the last few days [+60 or above = Overbought = sell. -60 or below = Oversold = buy]. StockCharts has a better version of the McClellan chart ($NYMO) LINK. –  & Investopedia on –  How the MO works. MO is back from overbought to = Neutral
• US Dollar –  The dollar  rose slightly  +0.12% yesterday [Anything over +/- @0.50 is significant.] The dollar/stocks relationship is strong – Dollar up = stocks down and visa versa. Dollar  is in a two month long fall and is approaching a major support level. The fall = Bullish
• BDI - The  Baltic Dry Index (Measures cost of shipping – Higher costs good = more being shipped = Bullish. Also, good proxy of China.) BDI was in free fall from a high of @4200 to 1700 . This was a huge -60% drop in 8 weeks is very bearish Often a leading indicator for stocks. Here’s a 3 year chart of BDI for context. The BDI has staged a two week rally and is up +16% rally and is at 1942 = Bullish

Reading Tea Leaves-

We’ve had what looks like a four day breather in a month long rally. The MO is back in the upper end of neutral territory. It did establish a higher high above 90 (see chart) This gives the bulls over 50 points (90-40=50) of wiggle  room to move higher. The benchmark S&P is at 1101 and major resistance is at 1131 (see chart) The dollar and the BDI have turned bullish for stocks. So another charge higher is likely.

While the possibility of a good week for stocks exists, not only will we impact resistance levels on the S&P 500, but we will also confront support levels for the dollar. The BB/HFT traders that dominate stocks pay very close attention to the larger currency markets.

Simply put and longer term - GLOBALIZATION is a reality. Jobs and GDP growth are in emerging markets. The US can remain stagnant economically and US stocks can/will move higher along with China, India, Indonesia, Viet Nam etc. There is long term danger here, but for now globalization, peak oil mega trends are back dominating and the financial meltdown (the problem has NOT been fixed)  is not taking its toll on these markets.

Positions

The  Positions Section link to latest & former buys and sells  - These are positions I actually own

The remaining 1/2 of SDS (ETF that double shorts the S&P 500) was sold at 33.17 on Friday for a +2% gain. Total gain a measly +1% on this position. Again will enter buy short ETF’s when MO gets overbought. This week will wait till/if we reach at least +80.

EWZ (Brazil ETF) - Bought 10% of portfolio position at 69.80 on Friday.

FXI – Under consideration if market does not make huge move higher today.

Any US or foreign stocks that benefits from emerging markets is back on the table.

Long Term Outlook - NEUTRAL

AS ALWAYS, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH BEFORE INVESTING!

-

The Illusion of Democracy

In the USA we have an Illusion of Democracy. What we really have is a rich oligarchy that buys votes through money any lobbyists. Lets use two blatant examples.

• The Billionaire ultra right wing Koch Brothers - JAB a few days ago sent a link to a site that quantified and qualified the $50 million they have spent to influence the American public’s vote. These right wing zealots with their $50 million sure have vastly more of an impact than you do with your one vote.
• Let’s look at politicians who get this money – Great site to see how much your representative (Dems or Reps) is bought and by whom is OpenSecrets.org. Today’s focus Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell.  His leading contributors are shadow financials (securities & investment) at $1,147,924. Republican leadership just met with Shadow Financial and other Wall Street leaders on financial reform. Even ultra right FOX Business news carried the story

From the Tea party workers to the leadership of the Senate (include lots of Democrats in this) the truth gets distorted by the vast financial resources and screamers in & reported on by the media.

Yes, along with JAB I still boycott Exxon, and have now added Koch Industries (Georgia Pacific -paper products) to my small protest.

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!

Index	Percentage	Volume
Dow	+0.94%	up
NASDQ	+1.58%	up
S&P 500	+1.12%	up
Russell 2000	+2.17%	-

Investors411 record – 5 years of beating benchmark S&P 500 and almost all major US indexes

Technicals, Fundamentals & Analysis

See Positions for changes made each weekend

I really try to make this stock section as simple as possible, but I certainly hear your public (see comments section) and private pleas to make it simpler.  Over weekend I’ll put together some simple rules, strategy and sources

Big volume + Big rally = Bullish Outlook

UPS – world’s biggest package mover clobbers expectations. = Bullish

Weekly jobless claims worse than expected – two weeks in a row – Bad for economy, bad for Obama politically, but neutral for markets.

Reading the Tea Leaves – Add UPS to JPM & INTC results yesterday and you get the financial and technology sectors growing over expectations. Add more packages are moving across the globe. Add the Dollar dropping and McClellan Neutral (NOT overbought)  Everything at least till the McClellan gets overbought says Bulls will continue to stampede.

Its time to buy the dip and ride this rally till we enter overbought territory on the McClellan Index.

Significant Indexes

• McClellan Oscillator rose to +19.34 yesterday.  [+60 or above = Overbought = sell. -60 or below = Oversold = buy]. StockCharts has a better version of the McClellan chart ($NYMO)LINK. - This is still in NEUTRAL territory – technically neither overbought or oversold.
• US Dollar – fell   -0.42% yesterday. [Anything over +/- @0.50 is significant.] Mantra – right now The Dollar Rules Remember, dollar down almost always = stocks up. The dollar broke though its 50 Day Moving Average support level and next significant support at @$79.5. Dollar closed at$ 80.19

Positions

The  Positions Section = latest buys and sells – (Revised positions last weekend) - These are positions I actually own

Right Now, as I read the tea leaves, it looks like the beginning (first week+) of earnings season is going to be a bullish period and it would be good to be invested in those stocks/ETF that are going to move the highest.

Example, Yesterday Investors411 added a 10% position in TYH the ETF that does 3X what the tech stocks do. Price 174.1.  Originally, had planned to hold this for a small gain (3+%) but it now looks safe to hold till the McClellan Oscillator hits or gets close to overbought territory.

Depending on your level of risk – Buy dips (1 to 3% = dip) of following ETF’s – You can also check out YOUR stock list.  but as Pail R suggests – watch out for when earnings reports ate (google company and you will find date or your trading platform should provide this)

List from MOST risky to LESS risky

• SOXL – 3x semi conductor stocks – Warning very thinly traded.
• TYH – 3X technology
• UWM – 2X small cap stocks
• ROM – 2X technology
• SSO – 2x S&P 500

I will be adding another 15%+ of these on dips.  Remember once we enter overbought territory its time to sell or lighten up. Set a stop/loss at a level you feel comfortable with. 7% maximum loss is what I use.  Once a stock goes up I usually raise the stop. There are more sophisticated ways of doing this, but I’m keeping it simple.  Investors411 will be exiting these positions as we come close to or over +60 on McClellan Oscillator.

Remember its a short term trade. It’s natural for their to be a dip today. If markets fall over 50% of yesterday’s gain in bigger volume this strategy is in trouble.

Long Term Outlook = CAUTIOUSLY BULLISH

AS ALWAYS DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH BEFORE INVESTING

Whose getting the preferred treatment? Shadow banks/institutions like Citbank or American manufacturers like GM – A cartoon. Fixing the Financial News Channel- CNBC – Remember Jon Stewart’s drubbing of Jim Cramer? Now comedians are banding together. A fearless market forecast- wear your rally cap.

cartoon credit – Daryl Cagle

Fixing Financial News – CNBC

The major financial TV channel, by far, is CNBC. We all remember when Jon Stewart opened a can of whoop ass on its most politically moderate host Jim Cramer. The hosts of the rest of the shows like Cramer are  basically cheerleaders for their advertisers - Wall Street

Now a group of comedians is doing something to fix the biased network. “Jon Stewart made the case, now we’re demanding action.”  A funny 4 minute video, but more importantly 20,000 people and economists have asked CNBC to start holding Wall Street accountable. 

You too can sign up to make financial journalism accountable at – FixCNBC.com

Together we can make a difference – take a minute and sign the petition – In the long run it will protect your money, our economy and your job if we have less biased financial reporting.

(Sorry yesterday’s link allowed for no comments and it took a long time to appear- I have no idea what went wrong.)

 

AS ALWAYS DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH BEFORE INVESTING

STOCKS

Index	Percentage %	Volume
Dow	+0.61%	flat
NASDQ	+1.86%	down
S&P500	+1.81%	up
Russell2000	+2.41%	-

-

Technicals & Fundamentals

 Markets moderately moved higher yesterday. Volume was well below average.  Therefore volume offered NO confirmation of the price move.  

Overall this week looks like a consolidation of the previous three weeks gains. Just what you want is you’re a bull.  The chart to watch is XLF (ETF for financials – See below) Usually after a big move & then consolidation, stocks continue to move in the same direction,  This should make bulls happy.

Baltic Dry (Sea) Index - (see chart link on side of blog)  Measures flow of goods/trade and is a leading economic indicator.

Since 3/10 the BDI has fallen each day and yesterday was again  no exception. Another @0.20%  Total loss from high more than 31%.   How many days in a row can an index fall?  Right mow it’s 21 trading days in a row.  The rate of change (fall) has slowed dramatically.  We could be seeing a  bottom here.  This would be positive for markets

Reading the Tea Leaves - Same mantra - As long as  Shadow Banks/Institutions are going to get bailed out by taxpayers instead of bond/stock holders then the rally is on. That seems to be the direction Geithner Summers & Bernanke are headed. Trillions in wealth is changing hands.  

Fearless Forecast – The consolidation will end & the rally will continue as shadow banks announce better than expected earnings.   With diamonds, rubies and gold being showered on shadow banks and a big treasure chest to hide accounting procedures in these banks are going to SHINE this earnings season. Its baseball season so put on your rally caps.

Shadow Banks/Institution Watch

XLF (financials/banks) is therefore the key sector to watch. Checkout the chart and technically you will see that the XLF has tried to move above @9.75 for almost 3 weeks and failed. It closed at 9.20 yesterday up +0.55%.

Add Insurance companies  to those receiving bailout funds. Beyond the infamous AIG others are lining up. The reason for the modest rally in stocks yesterday is insurance companies shot up significantly. Story from MSNBC here.

Bottom Line - The more the tax payers bailout shadow institutions and the less transparent they are allowed to be the better these stocks will perform in the short term. The worse it will be in the long term for taxpayers and the national debt.