financeguy
ONE love, blood, life
So, anyone follow the strange Dow Jones movements today?
Frankly I'm a little baffled they didn't suspend trading for a short while, especially if there were technical glitches.
All I know is that there are buying opportunities today.
The markets were heading down before the "goof" - I'm expecting more down days ahead (perhaps a good rebound tomorrow, then more selling in the weeks ahead)
it seems these (honest) mistakes can game the market
a smaller mistake might have gone unnoticed
but when we have some entities trading huge and with derivative? accounts,
known market swings will have huge returns
Are the OPEC members king-makers right now (aren't they always?) given that they could throw a wrench in things and switch oil trading into Euros from USDs? Not that they would, but would that almost instantly fix Europe?
No. This is a common misapprehension. It makes no difference what currency oil is traded in.
Congress looked serious about finance reform – until America's biggest banks unleashed an army of 2,000 paid lobbyists
It's early May in Washington, and something very weird is in the air. As Chris Dodd, Harry Reid and the rest of the compulsive dealmakers in the Senate barrel toward the finish line of the Restoring American Financial Stability Act – the massive, year-in-the-making effort to clean up the Wall Street crime swamp – word starts to spread on Capitol Hill that somebody forgot to kill the important reforms in the bill. As of the first week in May, the legislation still contains aggressive measures that could cost once-
indomitable behemoths like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase tens of billions of dollars. Somehow, the bill has escaped the usual Senate-whorehouse orgy of mutual back-scratching, fine-print compromises and freeway-wide loopholes that screw any chance of meaningful change.
The real shocker is a thing known among Senate insiders as "716." This section of an amendment would force America's banking giants to either forgo their access to the public teat they receive through the Federal Reserve's discount window, or give up the insanely risky, casino-style bets they've been making on derivatives. That means no more pawning off predatory interest-rate swaps on suckers in Greece, no more gathering balls of subprime shit into incomprehensible debt deals, no more getting idiot bookies like AIG to wrap the crappy mortgages in phony insurance. In short, 716 would take a chain saw to one of Wall Street's most lucrative profit centers: Five of America's biggest banks (Goldman, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup) raked in some $30 billion in over-the-counter derivatives last year. By some estimates, more than half of JP Morgan's trading revenue between 2006 and 2008 came from such derivatives. If 716 goes through, it would be a veritable Hiroshima to the era of greed.
"When I first heard about 716, I thought, 'This is never gonna fly,'" says Adam White, a derivatives expert who has been among the most vocal advocates for reform. When I speak to him early in May, he sounds slightly befuddled, like he can't believe his good fortune. "It's funny," he says. "We keep waiting for the watering-down to take place – but we keep getting to the next hurdle, and it's still staying strong."
In the weeks leading up to the vote on the reform bill, I hear one variation or another on this same theme from Senate insiders: that the usual process of chipping away at key legislation is not taking place with its customary dispatch, despite a full-court press by Wall Street. The financial-services industry has reportedly flooded the Capitol with more than 2,000 paid lobbyists; even veteran members are stunned by the intensity of the blitz. "They're trying everything," says Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio. Wall Street's army is especially imposing given that the main (really, the only) progressive coalition working the other side of the aisle, Americans for Financial Reform, has been in existence less than a year – and has just 60 unpaid "volunteer" lobbyists working the Senate halls.
Can you judge how close the global economy is to the brink of another financial crisis by measuring risk-taking in the markets?
Jacob Gyntelberg and Michael King, two researchers at the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), seem to think so. And they've found some alarming parallels between recent bank and investor behavior and the patterns preceding the global meltdowns that began in 2007.
The BIS is the so-called central bank of central banks, where the U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and others come together to share information, policy ideas and economic research. It also acts as an agent or trustee to help international financial operations flow and a counterparty for transactions between central banks -- in other words, the world's lending facilitator of last resort.
In a commentary accompanying the latest quarterly BIS report on banking and market statistics called "Back to the Future," Gyntelberg and King compare the tumult of two and three years ago to the volatility of stock markets and credit markets in recent months as Europe grappled with renewed financial crises in Greece and elsewhere that threatened to spread across the Atlantic.
"The swift reversal in market confidence evokes painful memories of autumn 2008, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers brought money and capital markets to a virtual standstill," they write. "In both cases market sentiment deteriorated rapidly around a trigger event, with problems in one region spreading globally through the network of interbank funding markets and counterparty credit exposures."
To translate into nonfinancial language: After Lehman collapsed, investors around the world lost confidence in all banks with investment ties to Lehman -- which was many of the world's big institutions -- and panicked.
With the stock market lurching again, plenty of investors are nervous, and some are downright bearish. Then there’s Robert Prechter, the market forecaster and social theorist, who is in another league entirely.
Prechter is convinced we have entered a market decline of staggering proportions – perhaps the biggest of the last 300 years.
In a series of phone conversations and e-mail exchanges last week, he said that no other forecaster was likely to accept his reasoning, which is based on his version of the Elliott Wave theory – a technical approach to market analysis that he embraces with evangelical fervor.
Originating in the writings of Ralph Nelson Elliott, an obscure accountant who found repetitive patterns, or "fractals," in the stock market of the 1930s and '40s, the theory suggests that an epic downswing is underway, Prechter said. But he argued that even skeptical investors should take his advice seriously.
"I’m saying: ‘Winter is coming. Buy a coat,’" he said. "Other people are advising people to stay naked. If I’m wrong, you’re not hurt. If they’re wrong, you’re dead. It’s pretty benign advice to opt for safety for a while."
His advice: Individual investors should move completely out of the market and hold cash and cash equivalents, like Treasury bills, for years to come. (For traders with a fair amount of skill and willingness to embrace risk, he suggests other alternatives, like shorting the market or making bets on volatility.) But ultimately, "the decline will lead to one of the best investment opportunities ever," he said.
Buy-and-hold stock investors will be devastated in a crash much worse than the declines of 2008 and early 2009 or the worst years of the Great Depression or the Panic of 1873, he predicted.
For a rough parallel, he said, go all the way back to England and the collapse of the South Sea Bubble in 1720, a crash that deterred people "from buying stocks for 100 years," he said. This time, he said, "If I’m right, it will be such a shock that people will be telling their grandkids many years from now, ‘Don’t touch stocks.'"
The Dow, which now stands at 9,686.48, is likely to fall well below 1,000 over perhaps five or six years as a grand market cycle comes to an end, he said. That unraveling, combined with a depression and deflation, will make anyone holding cash "extremely grateful for their prudence."
Prechter is hardly the only market hand to advocate prudence now, but nearly everyone else foresees a much rosier future once current difficulties are past. For example, Ralph J. Acampora, a market analyst with more than 40 years of experience, said he moved entirely out of stocks and into cash late last month. Now a partner at Alverita, a wealth management firm in New York, he said recent setbacks suggested that the market would drop another 10 or 15 percent, probably until September or October, before resuming another "meaningful rally."
Over the next several years Acampora expects an "old normal market," characterized by relatively short-lived swings that will provide many opportunities for smart investors – one that resembles the markets of the 1960s and 70s. "I’ve lived through it," he said.
Like Prechter, he is a past president of the Market Technicians Association, the leading organization of technical market analysts, and he said that his colleague has done "some very good work." But Acampora doesn’t agree with Prechter’s long-term theories, either intellectually or emotionally.
The "mathematics don’t work," Acampora said, because such a big decline would imply that individual stocks would need to trade at unrealistically low levels. Furthermore, he said, "I don’t want to agree with him, because if he’s right, we’ve basically got to go to the mountains with a gun and some soup cans, because it’s all over."
Still, on a "near-term" basis, he said, "We’re probably saying the same thing."
For those whose 401k took a beating then rebounded, this looks like your chance to sell high.
A stock market forecast that says ‘take cover’ - thestar.com
Jeff Sommer
New York Times News Service
^I just heard about that report on CNN. Ugh.
Is it unwise to put all of my money in metals?
Is there a way to invest in fresh water?
Cisterns and underground tanks, here I come.
Never put all your money in any one spot!
Is there a way to invest in fresh water?
Warren Buffett has been investing heavily into water utilities for the last few years including the world's largest water treatment company. He will likely profit large from the Gulf oil spill.
Oh, I know.
Nothing seems to make sense right now. And, I can't stomach that whopping 2 percent that bank CDs are paying.
Tangible assets seem the most attractive right now.