MKW

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.

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.

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

Yes, I agree. Note what happened after the three day run from 870 to 930. The market went sideways for a couple of weeks then plunged to its March, 2003 low.


On Jun 17 08:44 AM DDPearson wrote:

> On Jun 17 07:01 AM MKW wrote:

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.

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!!!!!!!

Tuesday Outlook: Commodities, Emerging Markets, More

I'm sorry, Pelosi's speech was inappropriate, but any Republican congresspeople who decided to change their vote (and in the process risk setting dynamite at the foundation of the economy) due to it need to be demoted to something more appropriate to their judgment and maturity level. Junior High School comes to mind.