Fin/Inv

The market broke into the Box of Bulls today, and halted at the first Fibonacci level (click chart to enlarge):

The SPX came up a little shy of the 1029.21 level at the green arrow on the chart. However, the futures hit their first fib level in their box right on the nose (not shown). You will often see the futures hitting important targets before the SPX itself does.

Now look at the red arrow on the chart at June 11th. As soon as the SPX broke into the Box of Miracles and tagged the first fib level, it went into a month-long correction. The market probably won’t repeat history exactly, but at a minimum, I would expect a drop back to the 1014 area to back-test the breakout.

Before I get started I wanted to make an announcement: The Housing Time Bomb was just officially approved to be a contributor on Seeking Alpha. Here is the link to the last article that got published(Yesterday's post). I want to thank Economic Disconnect for getting this ball rolling. I was notified this week by Seeking Alpa's editors that they would be publishing some of my work.

Seeking Alpha has been rated the #1 financial website on the net by a variety of publications. You can click on the "follow me" button over at SA if you want to start reading me over there. They have a rather large comments section. Thanks for everyone's support of the blog, and I look forward to working with Seeking Alpha!

It was another Ponzifest on Wall St today as better than expected home sales took stocks to new highs.

There was also a negative side in this report: Home inventories failed to shrink as more condos were dumped onto the market. This part of the news of course was ignored as Wall St's bubble making machine rolls on!

I find it amazing how the street can tune out all of the bad news and take stocks higher based on one meaningless data point. What the bubble boys need to realize is the housing crisis will continue as long as inventories are bloated.

This home sales bump should have been expected as many buyers took advantage of the $8000 first time home buyer tax credit.

I spoke to a mortgage analyst today who explained to me that this is where the big jump in sales is. Basically this boost is nothing but first time home buyer's buying low end 1-300k houses.

I fail to see why the street is so giddy about this recent bump in sales.

Anyone stuck in a bubble loan at 600k and up is still basically screwed because most buyers are no longer able qualify for mortgages that are needed buy these homes.

The lending products that were used to purchase homes at such high prices are no longer available. This is why inventories at the high end still stand at around 20 months or so.

The analyst I noted above also shared with me that he is extremely concerned about what happens to the housing market after October 1st when this tax credit expires.

The thought of the tax credit disappearing at a time when real estate seasonally slows down anyway probably sends chills down the spines of the Realtors. I can hear the crickets now!

I understand the government's premise behind stimulus deals such as the home tax credit and "cash for clunkers". The problem with such programs is you are stealing future growth away from the economy.

I can't wait to see the car and home sales after these programs vanish. All these programs have done is further burden our consumers with more debt. This is what got us here in the first place!

Is the World running away from our debt?


I don't normally post much from the gold bugs, but I thought this chart was extremely interesting:



My Take:

Some of this article seemed a bit "tinny" to me but the data above is both interesting and frightening.

Other than treasuries, the world is pulling a "Forrest Gump" and sprinting away from our various types of corporate and agency debt.

This is happening because the world isn't stupid. They realize that our market is filled with fraud in the form of asset prices that are nowhere near marked to market.

Banks in this country are allowed to carry loans at "fantasy" prices without any penalty. Our previous accounting standards have been thrown out the window as the fraud on Wall St rolls on.

This reckless behaviour makes the risk of default too high for the rest of the world's taste.

You need to begin to wonder if the Fed might start monetizing the debt if they run out of bidders.

The Fed has claimed that they would never do such a thing. However, based on the graph above, they may not have a choice unless they decide to pull the plug on liquidity which will then trigger a 1930's style collapse. I wouldn't want to be Ben right now: Rock Meet Hard Place!

Its going to be very interesting to see how long the world continues to have an appetite for our treasuries. The Fed announced another $200 billion in treasury auctions this week. We just recently finished up a $250 billion auction week. At this ridiculous pace, we will be selling $5 trillion of treasuries per year! Can you say unsustainable?

The Bottom Line:

At some point, the world is going to say "no mas" as we continue to build trillion dollar deficits. IMO, the Fed continues to arrogantly march this country right into default.

The 10-year was up sharply today as the bond market nervously awaits the results of the next round of massive auctions. You need to be careful in the short term if you are shorting treasuries right now.

A credit trader explained to me that these rises in yield prior to auctions is an "old school" bond game from the '70's. The bond market sells off treasuries heading into the auctions so that the PD's(primary dealers) can buy up whats left of the auctions the following week at a cheaper price.

Then once the auctions get completed, treasuries rise and the PD's turn around and sell the bonds and make a nice profit on the spread.

The bond market is currently extremely profitable for the PD's as long as the appetite for treasuries remains high. If yields start to steadily march higher then they are going to be in a world of hurt. However, so far, the auctions have ran fairly smoothly except for a blip or two.

This has made bonds extremely profitable for the PD's of Wall St.

Remember folks: Never underestimate Wall St's ability to find a game that can make them billions. This is a classic game that's right out of the old playbook.

Shorting treasuries via TBT before the announcement of the auction results at 1:00 PM is a nice play when you see a moonshot in yields leading up to the auctions. This trade looks like its setting up nicely after today's move in the 10-year.

Long term however, this action in bonds is not sustainable as the world prepares to pull a Forrest Gump and runs for the hills.

Disclosure: Short treasuries via TBT in long term accounts.

Liz Claiborne (LIZ) is a much maligned retailer that sorely needs a economic recovery. We've added shares in our Growth porfolo accounts just below $4 in hopes that a recovery will lead to a Jones Apparel (JNY) type of return. In the last 4 month JNY has soared from $4 to $15.LIZ still has some strong brands but its questionable whether management has been focused enough on building the strong

According to the recent TIM (Trade Ideas Monitor) report for August 20th, the TIM Sentiment Index (TSI) in North America was 50.37, down 1.76 points, right near the critical 50 mark (see last post, and previous post and the youDevise website for additional information on the TIM report). The TSI Worldwide Index was down marginally. Total new long ideas as a percentage of all new ideas sent to investment managers by way of the TIM decreased 3.15 points to 62.53%.

As for individual securities in the U.S. and North America, Medidata Solutions (MDSO), BJ's Wholesale Club (BJ), and Alcoa (AA) were stocks with long broker sentiment, while First Solar (FSLR), Brocade Communications (BRCD), and Las Vegas Sands (LVS) had short broker sentiment. In general, the materials, telecommunication services, and energy sectors had long broker sentiment, while the consumer staples, industrials, and consumer discretionary sectors had short broker sentiment.

In past articles to explain the price action, I have defined the "this time is different" scenario. For example, at market tops we typically see negative divergences between prices and momentum oscillators that measure price. These negative divergences are indicative of slowing upside momentum and a point where traders are likely to look for the market to rollover. If prices continue to move higher despite the presence of these negative divergences, often times we find investors saying "this time is different" as prices accelerate much higher. Of course, I think the acceleration in prices is due to short covering as traders who where expecting the market to rollover are now forced to cover their positions.

When the S&P bottomed in March, the dollar was weak, notes Faber, who expects the next few months will be a period of dollar recovery and “a correction time in asset markets” as the dollar strengthens. “The strong dollar means global liquidity tightening,” Faber told CNBC.

“In a scenario where growth will be disappointing, I think emerging markets will be kind of vulnerable.” The worse the global economy, the more stocks could go up, Faber says, because the world’s central bankers have become nothing more than money printers. “They’re dangerous to the health of the global economy,” Faber says. “They created the Nasdaq bubble, the housing bubble, and now they want to create another bubble to bail them out.”

Financial crises, Faber points out, usually lead to some fundamental change that purges the excesses that went before. But, he says, the Obama administration chose instead to bail out financial firms at the taxpayers’ expense, leaving the country vulnerable to a bigger crisis in the next few years.

Marc Faber is an international investor known for his uncanny predictions of the stock market and futures markets around the world. Dr. Doom also trades currencies and commodity futures like Gold and Oil.

"Jim Rogers says the Chinese are desperate to increase their holdings in oil and other industrial commodities like copper and nickel, and that they're buying up as much as they possibly can from around the world.

China is on pace to spend more than $40 billion this year on the purchase of foreign commodities, a dramatic increase of 48% over such purchases in 2008, as it attempts to reduce its staggering $2.1 trillion in currency reserves.

China bought a record volume of oil in July, according to figures released this week." in The Daily Crux

Here is Zillow.com's estimate of ten years' of home values on Kent Island (specifically Stevensville, MD) on the Chesapeake Bay. Give it time. Prices are still falling.


Kent Island is where the Chesapeake Bay Bridge crosses. It's circled in the map below.


The only downside (besides the current price): Mapquest says a commute to DC takes roughly an hour each way. Anybody know of good jobs available in Annapolis?

SPY printed a small double-top on its 1-minute chart at 3:42pm Thursday afternoon. It doesn’t look like much, but I have a feeling that they ran out of shorts to squeeze and switched off the squeeze-bots. Perhaps we will have a narrow-range consolidation day on Friday similar to June 26th or July 17th.

Having impressively filled Monday’s large down-gap already, the QQQQ and IWM still have small gaps left open from last Friday morning. The Q’s need to tag $40.09, and the IWM $57.60. If they can’t do so, the market may need to dive down and see if it can reload some more shorts to feed to the squeeze-bots next week.