On May 6th I warned that revolution was in the air.
Today Thailand’s Stock Exchange has been put to flames by protestors along with the malls they can no longer afford to shop in and the television stations that lie to them and tell them how great everything is while their lifestyles go down the toilet. Like any good colony of cockroaches, Thai traders had already scurried off to do their trading elsewhere - in a secret location away from the lights - and they took their market UP 0.7%, betting that this out-of-hand violence will now be met with an equally violent government response that will end all this silliness and let them get back to skimming their profits off the people on a daily basis.
Thank goodness we live in America, where the Lords of Wall Street are free to rape and pillage to their heart’s content while our hardly-burning MSM cheers them on and keeps the sheeple in-line. Just this weekend I noted to Members that:
On the opposite end of the housing spectrum: They say living well is the best revenge and it looks like Lloyd Blankfein’s name must be Vengeance as he pays CASH for his new $26M NYC duplex on Central Park West BEFORE selling his old 5 BR Park Avenue apartment (he’s asking $13.5 for the old place). You would think SOMEONE might have said "Gee, Lloyd, do you really think this is the smartest time to be throwing it in people’s faces?" Maybe his new place has a "spider hole" in case the SEC comes knocking…
Bloomberg had a good article on "$60 Billion in Corporate Tax Dodges" so outrageous an event that even the Tea Partier think it’s wrong. The article focuses on one of many corporate tax tricks called transfer pricing where companies (and Forest Lab is a highlighted example) set up subs that sell their own product to themselves to shift profits to more tax-friendly jurisdictions. It’s a neat trick than any company can do as long as they are big enough to open fake offices in foreign countries and have lawyers draw up BS contracts and use completely immoral accountants to paper it all over. U.S. companies amassed at least $1 trillion in foreign profits not taxed in the U.S. as of the end of last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That cumulative total, based on filings by 135 companies, increased 70 percent over three years, from $590 billion in 2006.
Our government, now a mere tool of these corporations, does not hold the corporations up to the same standards as the people and they don’t suffer like the people suffer and, eventually, that leads to a breaking point at which the people will rise up and REVOLT. Why does this baffle people? The entire history of our planet is based on revolution - so much so that we even call major positive changes revolutions and the most popular party in America at the moment is, not surprisingly, one that is based on revolutionary ideals. How do you really think this is all going to end?
Speaking of Goldman - I HAVE to mention this: While Goldman Sachs (GS) racked up trading profits for itself every day last quarter, clients who followed the firm’s investment advice fared far worse. Seven of the investment bank’s nine “recommended top trades for 2010” have been money losers for investors who adopted the New York-based firm’s advice, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from a Goldman Sachs research note sent yesterday.
When Michael Moore stands in front of the AIG Building and says "I’m here to make a citizen’s arrest" and gets thrown out of the building and later talks to a woman from the Congressional Oversight Office who says she has NO IDEA what happened to all of OUR money, it’s "funny" because this is how Americans traditionally deal with being ripped off - we complain, we get a beer, we complain some more and then we shrug our shoulders and go to work and put another few thousand into our IRA’s and 401Ks where these same jackasses take another 1% of our money per year in fees for 45 years while the government forces another 13% of bottom 90% salaries to go into a retirement fund that we already know can’t possibly pay them back - MADNESS!
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Steve Colbert (video above, or here) does a great job of pointing out the way the MSM is now being paid to drive investors into a frenzy of fear while advertising gold and financial services that will help "steer you through the crisis" that the TV station is telling you is going to come as your incompetent government screws everything else up. Like any great lie, there is a grain of truth to it - our incompetent government has screwed everything up but the stuff about gold saving you is total BS (the sheep are a good idea, though). Gold is yet another scam being run by "THEM" to get you to take your hard-earned cash and trade it for something Wall Street can sell you without doing any actual work. Sound familiar? Just 3 years ago they were doing glamor shots of realtors and featuring all the great homes you should be buying. Come on people - recognize the patterns!
As I said to you on Monday: "Unfortunately, I can only tell you what is going to happen and how to profit from it, I can’t fix things." I said we are looking for consolidation between 10,200 and 10,650 so we were EXTREMELY distrustful of the spike over 10,650 yesterday morning - even though we had gone long on Monday’s drop. Sure enough, it all evaportated in a puff of smoke, which was fine with us as we pressed our disaster hedges "5 Plays that Make 500% if the Market Falls" as well as our new DXD disaster hedge that’s good for 1,500% if the Dow is below 10,500 at October expirations. I also put up a list of 16 of our shorter-term downside plays in our Weekend Post and you can check the performance of those for yourself so you don’t think I’m bragging. What I said to Members in yesterday’s 10:01 Alert (with the Dow at 10,700) was:
Here’s where we are on the S&P, 1,155 is our critical line and the Weekend Post has the chart above this one too, should we get over 1,170. Our below levels are pretty much in 15’s so 1,115 and 1,100 being very critical to hold as it’s also the 200 dma, which is still rising but may falter if we start poking below it and that will yank down the 50 dma and then, even if we recover, unless its a strong recovery we end up heading into a "death cross" and that means we have to go long-term bearish which is sooooooooo depressing…
For now, as I said in the weekend post, we would LOVE a good reason to cash out those short-side hedges but anything below 1,155 is no reason to act and below 1,140 is more of a reason to add more and we’re already getting rejected off that line. Copper is $3.06 so I don’t even have to look at the indexes to know we’re going to be weak. Add oil testing $70 again today and we still need a catalyst to take us higher. Earnings won’t do it, the Fed Minutes on Wednesday are unlikely to do it and none of our Economic data looks likely to do it so I’m not expecting too much for this Options Expiration Week but I will be very pleased if we consolidate between 10,200 and 10,650 on the Dow , which is about 1,100 to 1,155 on the S&P and 2,225 to 2,350 on the Nas and 7,000 to 7,250 on the NYSE (they are the most in trouble so far) and 620 to 660 on the RUT (they are the least in trouble).
See - not complicated - just patterns! We actually finished the day yesterday with a couple of bullish flyers on TNA and DIA because we are LOADED with short plays so our risk is a big move up at this point. Since we "only" have a 25-40% downside protection built into our new bullish plays, I put up a special Alert to Members this morning with 3 more plays that are designed to pay out 1,000% if the market retests last week’s lows in the coming month. Hopefully, we won’t need them - I think the sell-off here is overdone and I’ll be putting up a couple of upside plays that do just as well this morning as we hopefully have a reason to cash out our short-term, short bets but a little panic selling early on would be a nice cherry on top before a move higher.
My expiration day target for the week was 10,650, so we have a lot of work to do today but Europe held the 2.5% levels I set in the morning Alert and the Euro (which we went long on near the close) is recovering and gold is staying down. We have Fed minutes at 2pm and that’s always a fun reason to goose the markets. CPI was in-line today at -0.1% thanks to falling oil prices and now copper is down too along with agriculure so it’s DEflation the gold bugs need to fear, not INflation - YET!
Keep in mind that the Euro may be dropping but the Credit Default Swaps are fairly stable so this is NOT a global financial crisis yet. Not surprisingly, the $1,000,000,000,000 fix in Europe has been enough to last 7 days so far and Greece paid their May 18th notes yesterday and don’t have another issue until July so perhaps this "much ado about nothing" panic in the markets over Germany’s short-selling ban on 10 banks is nothing more than a manipulated blow-off bottom that was designed to scare you out of stocks and into gold and other commodities before it becomes obvious to the average investor that this is a new market, where commodities and financials do not have to lead us higher and they can go back to their historical 8 p/e ratios and the rest of the World can get back to doing some real business…
Not much to do but sit back and see if our levels hold. It’s a long way up before we’re going to be bullish again but, as I said yesterday, that does not stop us from doing a little bargain hunting from our mainly cash positions with our Discount Stock Buying Strategy. Who knows? Maybe we won’t be living in a world without banks and walking around with pocket scales and strips of gold in order to go to Whole Foods (WFD, still over $40) to buy some homemade pasta and extra-virgin olive oil…
