User 237841

Why Stocks Scare Me Now

"It will be interesting to see how well the trading units of the big banks do in the next few quarters."

I read recently that GS traders lose money only 2% of the time. (They have a 98% win rate!)

Goldman Sachs' Trading Huddle: About Nothing?

"....the so-called tips are merely “market color” that is only of interest to clients with “short-term investment horizons"

Right. As in "We know you want a quick pop, so we'll be upgrading XYZ at noon. Please position yourself accordingly."

What happened to Chinese walls between traders and so-called analysts, anyway?

Market Inflection Point

Moving average crosses are lagging indicators, and therefore have little or no predictive value .

Google: Short Interest Increases on Job Cuts News

Not a bad thing, as Google is famous for over-hiring. As for the increased short interest, shorts tend to pile on at market bottoms, as longs do at tops. Nothing starts a rally off with a good bang like frenzied short covering.

Question: What do you call a short seller after he's sold?
Answer: Buyer.

Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave in Market Headlines

So far it's a double top...which could morph into a triple top by way of a typical vicious bear market rally (or into a head and shoulders, since the middle is, so far, the highest point in the pattern). In other words, deferred pain...

Geithner!

A "short squeeze" means that shorts are being forced to cover. That clearly happened Friday afternoon. Short term traders are not going to take positions home over the weekend, especially shorts, and especially at this point in time, after such a long decline. Shorts would have covered anyway, but the news doubtlessly brought in a few more. Result was a rally. There wasn't necessarily any 'real' buying going on.

What the Hedge Funds' Bad September Could Mean for Markets

"Funds of hedge funds probably put in more than $100 billion in year-end redemption notices by this week's Sept. 30 redemption deadline, according to London-based advisory firm Clontarf Capital."

This shouldn't be a problem if the following is true. (And why shouldn't it be...hedge funds no doubt have been selling all the way down!)

seekingalpha.com/artic...


"Citigroup analysts already estimate that hedge funds have around $600 billion in cash reserves in anticipation of redemptions."

Barney Frank's Money Quote

This is nothing new. SWEDEN has been down this road, and done it successfully.

Just hire them as consultants.

www.nytimes.com/2008/0...

Google: Our AOL Investment Is 'Impaired'

"Google is saying that AOL’s value has declined permanently and won’t recover."

No, they actually said that they do NOT consider the impairment as 'other than temporary'. "Other than temporary' means 'permanent'. In other words, they do NOT consider it permanent.

For now.

Thoughts on the Housing Bill

It isn't so much that people have bought houses they can't afford, it's that houses have become unaffordable. Prices need to come down from their current nose-bleed bubble high of 10x-median-salary level. 40-year mortgages? Give me a break. It's not as if new construction nowadays is going to be standing long enough for the kids to inherit it, and finish paying it off anyway.