fxtrader07

The Case for Getting Short

sorry, i don't want to be short es futures here. play short term spy puts or oex puts or whatever - but not the futures!
looking at the pattern, it smells like a stinky normal a-b-c corrective pattern and if it really is, it will top out either at 1000 (SPX) or 1100 (SPX). likley, it vwill be 1.050 in the sp500.
longer term, this market will likely revisit the match lows and go lower - 400-500 would be my best guess.
that being said, you still could make money in individual stocks and corporate bonds without shorting anything.
However, I will scale into spome otm shorts here for protection.
remember, the heaviest rally off the 1932 lows went 75-80% that's tmhe maximum upside that i give this market off the march 09 lows and if it gets near to 60% i will sell 80% of my stocks and take 50% of the proceeds to go short the overall market

14 Beaten-Up Financials That Now Offer Real Value

sorry, but this list is crap! After lehman#s collapse the financial world has changed rapidly for the worse.
I would not count on ANY insider purchases prior to Mid/End September! they were made in a different world following different assumptions.
and you will notice that aftef end of august hardly ANY insider bought a single share in the companies on your list.
go figure.

Why Stock Market Volatility Is Perfectly Natural

feix, this is not volatility. this is selling on a grand scale. mass-liquidation. and it has little to do with fundamentals anymore.. the same with corporate bonds, btw. lots of people want to or are forced to exit their positions - at almost any price.
thisa is going to stay here for at least 2 more months imho. yes, fears and uncertainties about economy play a role, too. but only a secondary one.
people simply search for reasons - 'there must be some fundamental reason for the low stock/bond prices'. Yes and no. there isn'tnot for THESE low prices of many (not all) stocks and bonds. except if you expect a complete collapse of the world economy. but then again - the prices of all stocks and bonds are still way too high.
so, markets try to price the probabilty of survival and of armageddon. the human brain cannot think in terms of probabilities. it cannot handle a 70% chance or a 80% or 90%. so you have these wild swings and you have all this liquidation going on.
where will it sto?
i have no clue. it may right here. or 20% lower, or 60% lower. wtf do i know? wzhat i do know though, is that economic armageddon has perhaps a 5% probability. so with 95% probability, most bonds and many stocks will be much much higher a year from now

Nothing Good Will Come of Bankers Being in Control

the only solution to this mess: nationalization of all banks worldwide. the only way to make sure that the bailout packages save the real economy from collapsing - and not just the jobs of greedy overpaid bankers.
make no mistake: the prupose is not to save the banks as such - the purpose is to make them lend again to the real economy. if bailout packages cannot achieve that goal, then other measures must be taken. and when push comes to shove it means to throw out the John Thains and Dimons and Kovacevics and all the other crooks and force the banks to do their actual business. the goal is noot to restore profitability at banks. the instant goal must be to keep the economy going.

Quitting the Hedge Fund Game - Mark Sellers

Oh felix, you couldn't be more wrong!! what a poor artcile that reads like someone who jubilates about another one's pain. perhaps you simply can't stand seller's long time success, can you?

the rule#1 means not to lose money - in the sense of a permanent impairment of capital. it does not at all mean that you only buy things that go up in value immediately!

so sellers closing the fund simply means he does not want redemptions to force him to realize losses on sound investments. that's the big advantage of berkshire: it 's investments can go down - and big, but people can't take their money (insurance premiums) out.

and, btw., one of Seller's biggest positions is MCF. and boy, does this company sell very cheap compared to what it is actually worth!

such artciles are below your level, felix - or may be, some other by you simply were positive exceptions? you decide.

Coming Soon: The $600 Trillion Derivatives Emergency Meeting

sorry, but this is just another example of getting hysteric about a threat of derivatives implosion. the danger is real, yes, but the probability as well as the true amounts involved are grossly overstated imho.
the biggest danger is that the non-lending by banks leads to corporate defaults by otherwise sound companies which in turn would trigger CDS-events. The net-net amounts even in the case of LEH will be far, far less than the fear mongerers predict here. it may be anywhere bewteen 8 billion and 100 but that#s about it and even if a couple of counterparties were to default you may not even hear about it. restv assured, the BIS, the fed, ecb and the IMF are all in close contacts with the big players. the cds market may be absolutely intransparent and unregulated - but right here right now he powers that be will absolutely ensure that it will not go into a collapsing mode.
1 week from now, when the LEH case has been finally settled and the derivatives world has not turned into a supernova people will slowly start to realize that the wordl is not coming to an end. and all of a sudden, bank lending will slowly start again . and stock markets will see some heavy upward spikes.
too optimistic? maybe. but not unlikely. in any case, the staggering notional amounts involved seem to confuse people and lead them to underestimate the vast resources of the combined central banks

Countdown of Manipulated Gold Price Running Out

calm down. the increased investor demand (mostly retail) is just sufficient to compensate for the sharp drop in indutrial demand (i.e. jewellery production). gold, in fact, has held up pretty well - just look at silver which has virtually crashed. Deflation is here big time and though reflating efforts by central banks and govts. will perhaps avoid a depression they will not lead to any meaningful inlfation for the coming 2-3 years. Thereafter, they may. gold mining stocks have fallen as if gold were to tank to $400/500. I am not sure it will, but if anything here, i would by quality gold miners, not bullion anymore.

Three Reasons the Stock Market Rally Won't Last

all valid points - but it is easy to make such dire predictions when the stock market crashes. It is another , more complicated, task to back the claims up with some real numbers. The point I want to make is that there are shades of grey and as dark as the economic picture looks right now, it might turn out to be not as dark as most people fear it will be. face it, the recent sell off in the stock market is driven more by redemptions and forced liquidation than by fundamentals. so when things calm down a bit, it may turn out that many stocks have gone down way too much. many surely have lots of further downside.
so your points are valid - but they are not operationable, not actionable because apart from "things are very very bbad" you don't actually say anything specific.

Chesapeake Bites McLendon

@LEA: you harp on the cash flow "problem" but you don't back it up with real, cold numbers. Yopu didn't in your half-baked bashing article either. The hedges will take care of lots of your "cash flow worries" - rest assured.
And, btw, if you think that at current NG prices drilling doesn't make money and production gets shut down left and right, then well, for how long do you think the NG prices will stay that low?
Aubrey has made really good forecasts of NG prices right a year ago and half a year agon and the company's hedges were structured accordingly. They are hedged for the downturn times this year and next and in part the year after. And if you believe NG will be at $6 3 years from now, then you will have seen a lot of companies going under till then. but i don't think CHK would be among them.

Nouriel Roubini Predicts (Surprise!) a Long Recession

@strutzma: when the car races with wharp speed towards the brick wall it will be over faster, yes. but a turnaround cannot happen unless the speed gets slowed.
hate to say it.

What's Causing This Slow-Motion Market Crash?

the author is right: credit markets and especially the interbank lending market are key. unless they get these fixed, the economy will come to a halt and stocks fall even further.. If they can't fix it for another year then todays stock prices will be fair to expensive (depending what sector you look at). If they can fix it over the next 3 months then many stocks are absolute steals here.

@Whidbey: true, the overall s&P p/e doesn't look that cheap. BUT: it already includes now the disastrous earnings of banks and insurers. And while these won't recover to 2006-2007 levels anytime soon, recover somewhat they will - bringing the S&P's p/e down again.
second, there are now tons of stocks trading for their cash in the bank, business for free. msft could buy itself at current stock prices with cash and free cash flow - and still have some money left. oil companies, oil servicers with strong order books and backlogs, fixed contracts for a couple years out trade at p/Es of 3-8, natgas companies at less than half of what their natgas is worth (and that's assuming todays low natgas prices to stay). mlps and royalty trusts trading with yields of 15-20%.
there is indiscriminate selling. make no mistake. either oil breaks down to $40-$50 for an extended period of time or these stocks are once in a lifetime bargains (and many are hedged anyway to quite an extent)

36 Opportunities for the Beginning of the Bull

sentiment suggests a bottom - but the dead interbank lending market, dead credit markets, dead CP markets and the crashing carry-trade (Yen is going ballistic, especially against the Euro) suggest more pain ahead. Form a time perspective, we probably are pretty close to a bottom. But tell that to the Russians who saw their market plunge more than 20%(!!) just yesterday alone - on top of a 50%+ decline earlier. so a bottom will form between now and mid-november - but it may be right here or it may be 20 or 30 or even 40% lower. who knows for sure? on the other hand, selling has now rotated towards tech after energy and materials in summer.the energy complex is the safest imho now - rich dividends and backed by real, needed assets. technology has a further 40-50% downside risk as those items are usually discretionary stuff that you can at least postpone. and people loosing their jobs, banks starved off cash and corporations with no access to debt financing will postpone software and hardware upgrades as long as possible.
i do hope the europeans get their acts together and start lowering rates pretty soon and create a pan-european rescue fund. or else the eurozone's economy will head over the cliff and maybe taking the euro currency with it. which would be no event to cheer because it would inflict another huge round of damages across the world

Hedge Funds: The Next Shoe to Drop

Hm, I think, they are a wildcard and hinestly, much odf the selling in bonds and stocks has already been due to hedge fund liquidation. After all, credit facilities for them have been shut down or gotten very very expensive long ago. heck, it could even give a boost to certain stocks. Just look at the very high open short interest, much of which is due to hedge funds ( and not just long-short equity funds).
In any case, the most important measure of them all is to get a central clearing house for the CDS market exactly to prevent a domino-effect.
And funny thing: there has been so much credit protection been written on certain companies that they vastly exceed the bonds that were insured - and deliverable, for that matter. Now, as I understand, when you bought a CDS, say on GM, then you go to your counterparty and deliver the bonmd which it is written on(!) and in exchange you get par value (or whatever the CDS-terms specify)
Now, I wonder from where will all the CDS-buyers take the bonds for delivery, if the notional amount exceeds the actual bonds outstanding by many many times? That could be really funny to watch. Or maybe not.

The Greatest Short Sale in History

I bet a lot of people thought the same about Japanese govt bonds back in 1990, 1991, 1992....
ultimately, the treasury bonds will be the greatest short sale ever. But not just yet. and being early on this one by a couple of years means being wrong and getting killed.

A Gigantic Buy - Cramer's Stop Trading! (9/23/08)

looks like a top in WMT. If cramer gets as bullish on a stock as possible then ...
anyone following cramer's recommendation fully deserves to get, well, cramered