MKW

Dow 10,000 and More Irrational Exuberance

"But this market's ability to shrug off bad news and climb a wall of worry is very impressive and might last awhile longer."

I have a problem with this statement. I don't see the market climbing a "wall of worry" at all. What I see is a market cherry-picking the one spinnable-into-good-news item from the 37 bad news items and then, completely uncritically, going absolutely gonzo with it to the upside. There's no worry here. That's what frightens me.

Goldman's Programmed Trading Is Back with a Vengeance

Interesting the end-of-day stick-save attempt failed this afternoon. I'm not quite sure what to make of that.

Tuesday Outlook: Commodities, Global Markets

What worries me is that, while I enjoy the comparison to HAL9000, it's almost certainly giving the Powers That Be too much credit. For starters, I'd bet the software in question isn't running on some big, monolithic heavy iron, but more like the years-old Linux workstation under my desk. As such, I'm concerned that the actual level of sophistication of the programs running the market these days is, in reality, relatively low. I'm in IT and I've worked with all sorts of software, from Computational Fluid Dynamics and complex Computer Aided Design to, today, a web-based retailer. The problem with software is always error handling. I'm really worried about what happens when unexpected input starts coming in. I've got a funny feeling that real testing of this software was never a very high priority.

Friday Outlook: Commodities, Global Markets

About the stick save at the end. Are you implying it wasn't because Individual Investors Everywhere find the market is offering such compelling value, especially in financials?


LOL!!!!!!!

IBM's Gerstner Favors Taxing Short Term Capital Gains

The frequent mini-stick-saves on SPY yesterday positively reeked of "A Certain Large Bank's" shenanigans. Note how amid all this "bullish action", SPY basically didn't go up unless it shot up more than one point in a tick on a surge to at least half a million shares traded in that minute.

Tuesday Outlook: Commodities, Global Markets

About there not being anyone interested in the market beyond Da Boyz... I don't know if you ever read Tyler Durden's posts on SA, but a couple weeks back he noted that institutional and individual investor volume on the major stock exchanges had sunk from an average 3.8 billion shares a few months ago to 1.8 billion shares. That left, as he put it, "a bunch of computers desperately trying to front-run each other" as the sole remaining source of market volume. Well, that and a certain large bank which likes to regularly shout "Boo!" in its own special way by dumping multi-million share market buy orders of SPY into the system.

Wednesday Outlook: Commodities, Global Markets

It's actually gratifying to finally see Mr. Market get his head out of you-know-what; however my sense is that things are going to get interesting from here. My current thesis uses the market from 12/2/02 to 1/6/03 as the model. It was two months off what would eventually be recognized as the ultimate low of the tech bubble burst. S&P 500 hit an intraday high of 954 (sound familiar?) before retreating to roughly 870, then blasting back up to 930 again - and I mean blast, it took three trading days.

Let's not forget, it's JPM that's been almost solely responsible for the "emergency" large-block buy orders in SPY which have provided us almost daily stick-save entertainment for the last couple of months; and it's JPM which still has its secondary coming up at the end of June. I have a funny feeling that they've finally come to the conclusion that it would be too difficult to keep the market propped for that long and so are content to let it drop. Easier to make a repeat of 1/2/03 - 1/6/03 to elevate their share price.

Thursday Outlook: Commodities, Global Markets

The "Stick Save" into the end was of quite a bit different character than has been the pattern lately. For one thing, there were no spectacular blasts of volume on SPY taking the thing up most of a point in one tick - it's been a long time since we haven't seen at least one of those in a trading day. My sense was that the buying efforts which took us off the bottom were probably trading programs trying to get ahead of the typical 2:00 and/or 3:00 and/or 3:30 and/or 3:50 and/or 3:58 Gargantuan, Market Dislocating SPY Buy Orders Courtesy of JPM. Today had a totally different texture. I'm wondering if, now that GS and JPM, et. al. have repaid TARP, if there will be less urgency to keep the market propped.

Thoughts on Apocalyptic Prophesy

All money, whether it be gold, silver or fiat, is, in the end, a gigantic Gentlemen's Agreement. It is only the fungible medium of exchange for goods and services because everyone agrees to act as though it is.

Tuesday Outlook: Commodities, Global Markets

Note that as far as volume was concerned, GS and XLF were the whole show yesterday - and even they just managed to get up to volume which would have been considered average in mid-April.

The Rally That Won't Die

Buyer exhaustion should have set in a few weeks ago, but my bet is that this market is going to be a bit more insidious than you think. My bet is that the market finally drops - starting with a day down 300ish like you said - and then takes a retracement to one of the standard Fibbonacci levels. After that, it'll come back up, probably just as violently, sucker still more people in because they'll take that as confirmation of the new bull, maybe go as high as S&P 1000, THEN it'll crash to test the lows/break to new lows. I suggest this because it's the most insidious thing I could think of the market to do, and the way it's been behaving lately, expecting the worst is the best course of action.

Defending the Fed

Money, whether fiat or based on Gold, Silver, Zinc, or Rubidium is simply the biggest and most pervasive "Gentlemen's Agreement" the world has ever seen.

U.S. Market (Lack of) Action Charts

Now isn't that interesting. The day after it becomes official that JPM can pay back TARP, the market action is totally different - among other things, it's 1:30 and I haven't yet seen a great blast up in the markets on a volume surge in SPY. The market is actually being allowed to go down! Amazing, and what a coincidence!

Wednesday Outlook: Commodities, Global Markets

Hold on! Wait just a minute! There's got to be something wrong with your chart for SPY! It looks like the market actually went down in the last ten minutes. That can't be - it isn't allowed anymore, I thought. Oh, sure, I've heard legends that it used to happen, once upon a time, but I can't believe I'm actually seeing it. Got to be a mistake.

You Can Keep Your Doctor - If Your Employer and the Union Say So

This is fundamental to how insurance works. Those doctors who are willing to abide by insurer X's schedule of fees are in network. Those who aren't are out of network. It's been that way for decades - it's how it works. The best advice is to find a doctor with a practice affiliated with a local hospital. You'll have the best chance of that doctor taking basically all insurance. I've had my doctor for eight years and five changes in insurance. It's never been a problem.