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     holycow
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Username: holycow
Post Number: 3261
Registered: 08-2004
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Votes: 0
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| | Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - 01:51 pm: | 
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http://tinyurl.com/33pq4y
Glut of unsold homes rises to 18-year high - Home prices falling at fastest pace in 16 years, Case-Shiller says...
In a sign that the housing slump is far from over, home resales slipped for the sixth month in a row in August as the credit squeeze forced many sales to fall through, the National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday.
With sales of existing homes falling 4.3% to a five-year low seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.50 million in August, inventories of unsold single-family homes rose to an 18-year high.
Meanwhile, a separate gauge of home prices fell for the 12th straight month in July, with prices falling in 15 of 20 major cities over the past year. Prices in 10 major cities are falling at the fastest pace in 16 years.
Consumers are getting more worried about the economy. The consumer confidence index fell sharply for a second straight month, hitting depths not seen since Hurricane Katrina struck two years ago, the Conference Board reported in yet another report.
"Households are increasingly concerned that the housing recession and credit crunch will impact future job security and income," wrote Bernard Baumohl, managing director of the Economic Outlook Group. "If we do enter a period of significant consumer retrenchment, this expansion is doomed." ...
*** so, it is raining cats and dogs and blood in the US property markets... what's next? The big R?
HC
...with charts will travel
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easymoney
Member
Username: easymoney
Post Number: 78
Registered: 03-2005Rating: N/A
Votes: 0
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| | Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - 02:13 pm: |
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HC wrote: The big R?
...or perhaps the bigger D?
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Two of them say they're Jesus.
One of them must be wrong.
Industrial Disease
Dire Straits
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holycow
Member
Username: holycow
Post Number: 3262
Registered: 08-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0
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| | Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - 02:23 pm: |
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... a reminder, tomorrow, 27/9 is option expiry day, and usually around this date, the share price of certain shares would develop certain consciousness and go walkabout on their own...
Here is the link for your future reference: http://tinyurl.com/3xh2og
HC
...with charts will travel
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holycow
Member
Username: holycow
Post Number: 3263
Registered: 08-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0
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| | Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - 02:29 pm: |
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http://tinyurl.com/3ykzb9
*** ok, Jim Rogers speaks, all commodity nuts must listen... so pay attention!
Perhaps the most refreshing part of Jim's message is that it's so darn upbeat about the future as the epicenter of the world economy shifts to Asia compared with Dick's message which is so heavy, so bleak, so scary about America's economic future. In his advance materials Jim says that thanks to the rapid emergence of capitalism plus the easing of Communist principles, Asia is winning the economic war:
* The Chinese economy's growth rate has averaged 9% since the early 1980s
* 40% of China's output goes to exports, so there's no crippling foreign debt
* China's savings rate is over 35% compared with America's 2%
* Thanks to $60 billion a year in direct foreign investment, combined with a trade surplus, China's foreign currency reserves are now more than $1 trillion
* China's fixed assets -- ports, bridges, roads -- double every two and a half years.
Jim's bottom line: "If projections hold, China will surpass the United States as the world's largest economy in as little as 20 years ... the time to act is now."...
HC
...with charts will travel
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holycow
Member
Username: holycow
Post Number: 3264
Registered: 08-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0
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| | Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - 02:32 pm: |
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EM,
Big D? D=depression? Can't be this serious? Huh?
Cheers.
HC
...with charts will travel
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holycow
Member
Username: holycow
Post Number: 3265
Registered: 08-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0
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| | Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - 03:10 pm: |
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NASD Comp daily
HC
...with charts will travel
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holycow
Member
Username: holycow
Post Number: 3266
Registered: 08-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0
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| | Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - 03:27 pm: |
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http://tinyurl.com/26yvqs
Wall Street profits short on details - Fortune's Peter Eavis looks at how little investors actually know about the hedging bets that led major investment banks to report better-than-expected earnings...
Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns recently reported substantial gains from bets that certain bond prices would fall, helping each brokerage weather very difficult markets and making their investors very happy.
But given the big role that these negative bets played in salvaging what otherwise might have been a disastrous third quarter for Wall Street, investors might want to take a close look to see if the hedging was a sound source of profits for the investment banks - or ephemeral paper gains.
...
All three banks, to varying degrees, credited hedging bets for their better-than-expected performance. All three appear to have gained from shorting mortgage bonds. (In Wall Street parlance, being "short" a stock or bond means that you will make money if it goes down in price.)
Now that the market has digested Wall Street's robust earnings, skeptics are asking hard questions.
How, for instance, can it be that the three firms were able to rack up large gains by betting in the same direction? Were these bets made in liquid markets where prices are dependable and positions can be sold quickly? Or were they made in illiquid markets where brokers have to make their own estimates about what the bets are worth - and where it may be difficult to exit?
...
The other big question that no one seems able to answer is: What poor souls are on the other side of these trades - and will they be able to pay up if they're underwater? After all, it's no use being up on a trade with a counterparty that can't pay out.
Insurance companies and pension funds that took the other side of the short trade could almost certainly pay out. Hedge funds are another matter. They were huge players in the mortgage market, particularly in the subprime instruments that make up the ABX. Hedge funds are opaque and often highly leveraged, so they could be the flakiest counterparties.
"There is a tremendous amount of counterparty risk on hedge funds," says Janet Tavakoli, president of Tavakoli Structured Finance.
Because Goldman, Lehman and Bear were so keen to emphasize their hedging gains, investors will be extremely unforgiving if it turns out these profits can't be realized. The banks won't provide details, and none of the Wall Street analysts questioning the brokers on the conference calls thought to really press the brokers on this point.
It would seem an obvious question to ask. And it would seem an obvious data point for the brokers to offer up.
*** so, they smell something fishy behind all these happy reports? Next happy report, I think, won't be that easy to get off the hook, there will be tough questions... can't wait.
HC
...with charts will travel
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easymoney
Member
Username: easymoney
Post Number: 79
Registered: 03-2005Rating: N/A
Votes: 0
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| | Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - 06:00 pm: |
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HC wrote: Big D? D=depression? Can't be this serious? Huh?
It was just a thought. If things turn bad, how would we know whether we are entering a recession or a depression?
What would trigger a depression if a financial collapse wouldn't?
Two of them say they're Jesus.
One of them must be wrong.
Industrial Disease
Dire Straits
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ingot54
Member
Username: ingot54
Post Number: 1938
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0
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| | Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - 06:05 pm: |
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Interesting report: The Lies of Alan Greenspan.
Alan Greenspan has come back from the tomb of history to correct the record. He did not make any mistakes in his eighteen-year tenure as Federal Reserve chairman.
He did not endorse the regressive Bush tax cuts of 2001 that pumped up the federal deficits and aggravated inequalities.
He did not cause the housing bubble that is now in collapse.
He did not ignore the stock market bubble that subsequently melted away and cost investors $6 trillion.
He did not say the Iraq War is "largely about oil."
Check the record. These are all lies.
On 25th January 2001 Greenspan's Testimony before the US Senate Budget Committee told a different story.
It is difficult to believe that the former World's Most Powerful Banker was actually that gullible, and in fact, he was not.
He was simply a one-eyed Hack for the Republicans, if the bias of the writers in the above links is to be believed.
But maybe I need to spend more time looking into the mirror ... easy to comment with hindsight.
Keep Smiling - Don't look back
Trading style: Chartist Artist _ Breakouts and Shakeouts.
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ingot54
Member
Username: ingot54
Post Number: 1939
Registered: 05-2004
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Votes: 0
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| | Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - 06:26 pm: |
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Charlie Munger, who is Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway manager, had this to say: (Try to equate the message with what Grenspan is trying to hide, and you will understand the connection):
Munger:
A very significant fraction of people in the world will steal if
(A) it’s very easy to do and,
(B) there’s practically no chance of being caught.
And once they start stealing, the consistency principle will soon combine with operant conditioning to make stealing habitual. So if you run a business where it’s easy to steal because of your methods, you’re working with a great moral injury on the people who work for you…..
It’s very, very important to create human systems that are hard to cheat. Otherwise you’re ruining your civilisation because these big incentives will create incentive-caused bias and people will rationalise that bad behaviour is OK.
Then, if somebody else does it, now you’ve got at least two psychological principles: incentive-caused bias plus social proof.
Not only that, but you get Serpico effects:
If enough people are profiting in a general social climate of doing wrong, then they’ll turn on you and become dangerous enemies if you try and blow the whistle.
_______________________________________
Do you grasp the connection?
Greenspan is admitting to only a tiny part in the whole fiasco, while casting blame elsewhere, and pleading ignorance to the bubble developing in the sub-prime market.
C'mon Uncle Alan ... you are at the top of your profession, a professor of economics, and the most powerful man in the world.
You actually control the economy more than the President of the USA. That makes you HIS boss.
You have the power to raise or lower interest rates ... the power of financial life or death.
And you expect the world to swallow that you did not see this coming?
Hmmm.
Maybe Greenspan needs to have a mini-mental dementia test!
Keep Smiling - Don't look back
Trading style: Chartist Artist _ Breakouts and Shakeouts.
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holycow
Member
Username: holycow
Post Number: 3267
Registered: 08-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0
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| | Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - 07:15 pm: |
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http://tinyurl.com/369uvz
The year of unmitigated gloom...
WASHINGTON - What has been obvious for some time now became establishment orthodoxy on September 12. That was when one of the world's most prestigious international security think-tanks, the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, released its annual "Strategic Survey", a review of world affairs.
It found that during 2007, the US suffered a loss of international authority as a result of the failure to impose order in Iraq. Leaders and groups around the world sought to take advantage or to protect themselves from the consequences of this loss of prestige...
...
And if the outlook for the present is glum, the future is worse. The report concluded:
The world in 2008 will be doubly consumed by the politics of parochialism - sectarian rivalries and religious disputes - and by the maneuvers of balance-of-power politics - alliance politics and arms races ... In Europe, the United States and Asia, big powers will talk to each other about role, status, alliance, deterrence, containment, and balance of power. In the meantime, groups around the world will fight those states and alliances ...
In this "non-polar world", the space for aggressive non-state actors to advance their particularist strategic aims has grown. In 2008, managing nuclear proliferation and terrorism will remain the priorities.
But the unsettled relations, rivalries and shifting strengths of the powers that see themselves as custodians of the state system will make the necessary coordination of approaches to these threats immensely hard.
*** the US is losing prestige? Only in 2007? No! Here's a proof (http://tinyurl.com/yuxd7e)... it happened back in 2004 where 59,054,087 Americans got it all wrong, according to the poms!
Alright, the poms may not have the best rugby team in the world,... and they may not have the best cricket team in the world,... and they may not have the best soccer team in the world, or the squash team, or the tennis, the badminton, the swimming... heck, they must be good in something - yes, they are pretty good in picking loser - this time, they know - the Americans had picked a loser as their president!
... and since then, the US of A has been losing their sovereign prestige the world over, naturally. Tell me, who would take their president seriously when his only talent is to talk with his foot in his mouth? Huh?
ps: ok, you can hit me now if you are a pom and if you don't like what I have just said...ouch! ouch!...
HC
...with charts will travel
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holycow
Member
Username: holycow
Post Number: 3268
Registered: 08-2004
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Votes: 0
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| | Thursday, September 27, 2007 - 09:54 am: |
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*** a tale of two exchanges...the big money and big stocks are cautious, while the techs are having a ball! Are they having some kind of expiry too?
HC
...with charts will travel
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holycow
Member
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