Taibbi on SEC
Taibbi on the SEC covering up Wall Street Crimes.
Who sold the Top?
We have heard many times about the smart money on the sidelines, waiting eagerly to enter the Market. That is a huge fallacy. As The Trader wrote in May/June, the smart money sold the Top, and stuffed the average Joe at the Top. From our June 3rd post;
Both Goldman (IPO 99) and Blackstone (IPO 07), top trading firms in the world, went public near the very highs over the past two great rallies. Today we are getting Glencore IPO priced. According to many, people at Glencore are even more intelligent than the Goldman guys. Is this another perfect market top timing?
Both Goldman (IPO 99) and Blackstone (IPO 07), top trading firms in the world, went public near the very highs over the past two great rallies. Today we are getting Glencore IPO priced. According to many, people at Glencore are even more intelligent than the Goldman guys. Is this another perfect market top timing?
and how did they time it? Well great. Smart money sold the Top yet again, and people still believe the fallacy of capital on the sidelines. Forget it.
ABS Inflows to the United States and the Global Financial Crisis
The “global saving glut” (GSG) hypothesis argues that the surge in capital inflows from emerging market economies to the United States led to significant declines in long-term interest rates in the United States and other industrial economies. In turn, these lower interest rates, when combined with both innovations and deficiencies of the U.S. credit market, are believed to have contributed to the U.S. housing bubble and to the buildup in financial vulnerabilities that led to the financial crisis. Because the GSG countries for the most part restricted their U.S. purchases to Treasuries and Agency debt, their provision of savings to ultimately risky subprime mortgage borrowers was necessarily indirect, pushing down yields on safe assets and increasing the appetite for alternative investments on the part of other investors. We present a more complete picture of how capital flows contributed to the crisis, drawing attention to the sizable inflows from European investors into U.S. private-label asset-backed securities (ABS), including mortgage-backed securities and other structured investment products. By adding to domestic demand for private-label ABS, substantial foreign acquisitions of these securities contributed to the decline in their spreads over Treasury yields. Through a combination of empirical estimation and model simulation, we verify that both GSG inflows into Treasuries and Agencies, as well as European acquisitions of ABS, played a role in contributing to downward pressures on U.S. interest rates.
Full FED report, click here.
Important Charts (DAX; STX; SPX; NDX)
As the market was sold aggressively into supporty levels by the end of last week, we are seeing some bounces in all Markets this Monday. Many markets are trading in almost “uncharted” territories. Note several markets are trading very “distant” from the 200 day moving average. This is not telling us to go long, but is showing how extreme the sell of has been. With HFT dominating all trading, and there is a lack of liquisity, the move up could be very furious. Below DAX, Stoxx, S&P and Nasdaq. We expect the bounce to continue, until we get everybody long. Also note the Stoxx is up some 35% from the bottom in 09, while the S&P is still up some 70% from the magic 666 (not deducted for the USD weakness).
Gold Topping our short term?
Small reversal intraday in Gold. Is the long gold trade too crowded short term? With the trend gone exponential, expect a short term correction, since people have been buying gold in Panic lately.
….and for the Daily Gold by Gold Core read below;
All major currencies have fallen against gold and silver again today with gold reaching new record nominal highs in most fiat currencies including U.S. dollars. Gold reached a new record of $1,894.80/oz – just shy of $1,900/oz.
Gold is trading at 1,870.10 USD, 1,296.40 EUR, 1,132.40 GBP, 1,470.90 CHF and 143,670 JPY per ounce and has risen some 1% in all currencies. Gold is particularly strong against the yen and Swiss franc which have fallen in international markets on concerns of debasement.
The London AM fix was a fourth consecutive record nominal high in US dollars. Gold’s London AM fix this morning was USD 1,877.75, EUR 1303.17, GBP 1139.55 per ounce (from Friday’s USD 1,862, EUR 1299.28, GBP 1126.91 per ounce).
Silver is in all major currencies and has risen another 1.4% in dollars after last week’s 8% gain.
Gold’s 6.2% rise last week and silver’s 8.2% rise was barely reported in the press and media in Europe over the weekend – with all the focus continuing to be on equities and to a lesser extent bonds. The usual suspects in stockbrokerages and banks warned about gold being a bubble again.
Silver was not reported at all and remains almost completely taboo in the non specialist financial press. Besides the very occasional article warning that it is a bubble.
According to Bloomberg, the central bank of Venezuela has sent a statement by e-mail requesting its 99 tons of gold holdings from the Bank of England, citing the institution’s president, Nelson Merentes.
“We’ve contacted the Bank of England and the corresponding protocols have been initiated to complete this operation as soon as possible,” Merentes said, according to the statement. “Once that’s done, the shipments will begin by sea.”
What to look for (while HFT churn the Markets)
By Macro Story;
As we enter what should be a very volatile week below are a few random thoughts to consider as you decide what to do if anything with your current investment strategy.
Redemptions
The big unknown is how spooked retail investors have become the past few weeks. ZeroHedge reported (found here) a $23 billion outflow from domestic equity mutual funds for the week ending August 10 which is a truly massive move. With record low cash levels at funds the only way to meet redemption requests is to sell stocks.
Watch for late day selloffs as a sign of such selling pressure. Funds will look for intraday strength to meet such redemption requests. If they are unable to find such opportunities intraday they will be forced to sell into the close causing late day weakness.
A combination of forced selling via margin calls and redemption requests is a self feeding cycle where selling causing more selling resulting in markets staying oversold far longer than charts say they should.
Commodities
Copper looks poised to test the $3 level based on recent COT data (see here). A 25% drop may seem rather impossible but look at oil (WTI) where price fell 24.8% from $100.62 on 7/26 to 75.71 on 8/9.
Credit Markets
Bond yields continue to break down with the 10 year closing Friday at a multi year low and below that of the 2008 financial crisis. It’s not limited to treasuries either. High yield and investment grade debt are signaling economic weakness and risk aversion as are interest rate swaps.














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