Investors 411 Blog

What’s Up? – Your Smack Down List- 20, count them, 20 smack downs – you guys are angry – The HULK is on his way; The New Your Times – a phenomenal resource – Charts, graphs and data. Consumer Rights Legislation; Barney Battles Banks; David Brooks on Obamanomics; Tomorrow - Torture

     Your  SMACK DOWN LIST

Investor’s411 is sending THE HULK (Movie version above) to Smack Down the following people, institutions, & concepts that you selected. Instead of 10 Smack Downs YOU came up with 20. To see full list of comments & reasoning scroll down on this link.

1. Alan Greenspan
2. Hit & run Drivers
3. Hezbollah
4. Hamas
5. Inflating intelligence
6. Larry Summers
7. Ahmadinejad
8. Bush
9. Cheney
10. Rumsfeld
11. Tortures
12. Junk mail
13. trashing the environment
14. Former Senator Coleman
15. Minnesota going without representation
16. MN Governor Pawlenty
17. those who cut education
18. those who cut health care
19. N. Dakota sate legislature
20. those who discriminate

For those of you who missed out on Smack Down comments or thought we missed something - tomorrow’s #1 topic is TORTURE. There will be another Smack Down List next month.

AP photo Scott Appelwhite 

Consumer Rights Legislation

Barney Frank is leading the major consumer rights bill through congress . You can imagine how hard the Shadow Banks & Credit Card Companies are fighting this bill to aid consumers. Obama meeting with big banks today. NYT story

Say what you want about, Barney Frank, but he like Elizabeth Warren is one of the heroes fighting the big money Shadow Banks. No bank(s) owns Barney Frank The Republicans and many Democrats owned by the big banks killed his efforts for consumers last year. Check out his long but enlightening “Great Economic Hole” Speech of 2/4/09

Why the NYT’s is a Phenomenal Resource

* NYT has a graph and interactive chart telling Where Your $ Bailout Money Has Gone 

* NYT has another chart/outline on Our Government’s Total Bailout Tab

* NYT has another interactive chart on Pay at the Top (CEO’s)

Obamanomics

Obama’s landmark economic speech is reviewed by conservative NYT columnist David Brooks Also see April 15th blog post on Obama’s speech.

Tomorrow TORTURE

This is the #1 topic among the blogs. Want to lead the discussion? Send in your comments below.

STOCKS

Technicals & Fundamentals

Repeat from yesterday -Forget all about the major indexes - What happens to the shadow banks (financials) absolutely dominates stock  trading.

Earning season continues – Markets have already factored in most of the bad news into this earnings reports. Apple and Ebay did hit earnings home runs. UPS struck out

XLF - The ETF that tracks financials (mostly shadow banks) rose +0.91% in decreased volume.  Financials have lead this rally and if they  collapse so will almost all other sectors (see Positions section of blog on XLF) This leading index is the one to watch.

Short Term Outlook -(again a repeat) Second technical chink in the bulls armor appeared Monday – another big volume sell off.  Volume, the #1 confirmation factor of stock price moves. But Tuesday’s bigger volume (for FLX) means we are one again going up on the roller coaster and gives hopes to bulls.

Too early to make a call on which way this may break, but short term traders should pay attention. The Danger signs to watch for - more big price/volume decline  and/or stocks moving lower on no news or good news. Especially in the XLF

Reading the Tea Leaves - Look for a pull back this week or before the governments “Stress Test” becomes public May 4th. 

AS ALWAYS DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH BEFORE INVESTING! 

Sorry limited time this AM – No time to format.

The Truth About the War

Finally, after years of Republican stonewalling the Senate’s Intell Report has become public. It is the lead editorial of the NYT. Finally we are getting the facts about of all the propaganda, fabrications and lies that sold the American public on the Iraq war. Last week Scott McCllelen, Bush’s press secretary revealed his insider’s view and now the Senate has published the facts. Most Update readers of are already aware of that the causes of the Iraq war were fabricated propaganda. But the more sources that bring these injustices to light the better it is for our country, democracy, morality and the world.

From the NYT

The report shows that there was no intelligence to support the two most frightening claims Mr. Bush and his vice president used to sell the war: that Iraq was actively developing nuclear weapons and had longstanding ties to terrorist groups. It seems clear that the president and his team knew that that was not true, or should have known it — if they had not ignored dissenting views and telegraphed what answers they were looking for.

Over all, the report makes it clear that top officials, especially Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, knew they were not giving a full and honest account of their justifications for going to war.

NYT editorial

Stocks

Everything moved higher. Oil prices gushed higher and stocks exploded to some of the best gains of the year

Obviously something is not right when oil prices rise 4.49% and major stock indexes also explode about 2% higher. You would expect stocks to fall if oil rises and visa versa. Volume was a bit above average for both stocks and oil – so volume did not confirm either move. The big question is which one will continue to go higher?

Reading the tea leaves – Answer – In the short term stocks should go up and oil go down. Oil prices are so extended above their 200 day or 40 week moving average they need to take a breather.

Every technical analyst on the planet knows that oil prices are way over extended. What probably happened yesterday is that a lot of traders (traders as opposed to longterm investors) got caught shorting oil and had to buy to cover their shorts when oil gushed higher. 4.49% is a huge move for oil. There was no major fundamental of story behind the price increase. Best guess is a bunch of major oil speculators colluded to drive oil prices higher and when a resistance level fell everyone was thrown into panic.

Short term it looks like energy related ETF are going to flatten or fall because oil prices are so over extended are way over extended.

NEUTRAL – Long Term Outlook

Barr