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! 

Introducing – Smack Down- A top ten list of  ”toxic” politician’s personalities, groups,  or even ex girl/boy friends that deserve to have a can of whoop ass opened on them; Kissing the Pope’s ring – another Republican apologizes; Have you puked yet? – Roller Coster stock markets; &  Shadow Banks Rule Wall Street.

The Hulk from Marvel comics – by Brian Hitch (source Wikipedia)

                     SMACK DOWN

Investors411 has gone to great expense to hire The Hulk to Smack Down anyone or group YOU think deserves to be knocked off his/her pedestal.

Just because this blog focuses on economic trends doesn’t mean you have to. Send your nomination(s) to the comments section of the blog. 

 If you can’t find the comments link at the bottom of this post go to top right of blog and click on “Subscribe to RSS.” A list of previous post will come up and click on one blue headline. An old post will come up and scroll down to comments section. (sorry my trusty tech is still working out the bugs) 

Alan Greenspan – The Jolly Green Giant -(my choice) This guy was put so high on a financial pedestal that it reached up into the clouds. He, more so than anyone else, could have stopped the greedy “free market” shadow banks and others.

The SMACK DOWN LIST

#1 Alan Greenspan

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9

#10

                   Kissing The Pope’s  Ring

Another Republican Representative who dared to call the leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, something other than his “His Holiness” has genuflected and apologized. All these nabobs of negativism like Limbaugh do is stand and throw stones. The once great Republicans (Party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt etc.) has been reduced to is labeling these hate monger’s as “a great leader of the conservative movement.”

Technicals & Fundamentals

Forget all about the major indexes – What happens to the shadow banks (financials) absolutely dominates stock  trading.

Yesterday Tim Geithner played dodge ball in front of Elizabeth Waren’s TARP Oversight Committee. This gave shadow banks hope that all the profits would be privatized and the risk socialized (payed for by taxpayers)

Yesterday was a Geithner rally.

XLF - The ETF that tracks financials (mostly shadow banks) rose +7.40% in increased 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 - 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.

Still bullish in the short term. But think in the longer term, say Sept/Oct (or sooner) – a test of lows could happen.

For traders – If you really want to gamble – The ETF’s that do 3x what the shadow banks do long – FAS and 3X what financials do short FAZ. This is for those of you who have experience trading covered calls.

AS ALWAYS DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH BEFORE INVESTING!