Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Why a bear market rallye hurts new clickers more...

Baby boomers are learning one of the toughest lessons of aging. Nothing works quite as well when it has been used for a long time.
Having easily done more than 300K trades in my life, I am always amused by all the would be stock traders out there thinking that because they can open an account and click on e-trade, it now empowers them as investment gurus.
The landscape has changed more on Wall Street in the last 18 months than in the last 70 years. Computers and programmers are now replacing complete trading pits and trading rooms. What is left is unemotional program trading,the equivalent of slot machines, waiting for fools to open accounts, turn on their PCs or cell phones and click their money away into "investments"... It's the New Las Vegas and I am surprised we haven't heard ex-mortgage brokers aka ex-pizza delivery boys going into this action. Let's face it, there is supposedly $7.1 Trillion dollars waiting on the sidelines... There must reactionaries who feel empowered by their thinking that because "THEY" haven't lost 50% of their money in the stock market , they are collectively smarter than the people who saw the DJIA hit a 12 year low yesterday and seen their 401K barely able to fund a daily caffeine fix at Blackholebucks...
Well let me give you some really GOOD advice in point form:
- IF you open an electronic account and hope to trade against a person, odds are that you are trading against a machine with no emotion and contrary to you IT makes money on a penny spread
- More stocks fall by 25% or more than stock rises by 20% in a single day in a bear market. This means the odds of having a blow-up are squarely against you
- Hard assets and commodities have a tendency to have higher gyrations when the pie has shrunken by 50% and spreads widen accordingly

CAUTION IS IN ORDER: if you don't have stops, options coverage and hope to pick up some GE like Warren Buffett did at 21.75 , be ready to buy even more at $8...!

Some of the damage I have seen in this market, is extraordinary and thinking you can catch a falling knife is not that great strategy! But every day the talking heads on CNBC, insist a bottom is near, well I tell here and NOW , the market cannot hit a bottom UNTIL AIG is allowed to fail...


Buying PGF.UN at these levels (6.75) after my first return at 10 (ouch), seeing gold hit the 800 before the next rallye, dump silver.

Good trading to you

P.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Further Signs that Obama is fed Pablum!

What a dismal site: There, the commander in chief, earnestly, trying to show empathy in a town hall meeting. Just like Bush, reciting a litany of grievances on previous administrations, ghosts that need to be exorcised and the big man imploring support for his rituals. As forewarned, it did not take long before the powers that be, have corrupted the true understanding of the last days of the republic.
If the Republicans can be commended for delaying by all tactics available to them, the ratification of the spending bill, we are of the belief that it is more in spite that they don't get to spend it themselves and are just planning their 2012 campaign by showing their disdain for this folly rescue package.

We are of the belief that a 50% fall in aggregate demand for a fraction of consumer products will ultimately be met with a 25% fall in supply over the medium term which in turn will spike up inflation while keeping up high unemployment.. THE LAST thing you want to do is throw $8TB that will eventually end up creating hyper inflation when demand in 18 months will outstrip supply!

we are already seeing that the Obama administration has lost its way in the foggy swamps of economic half truths. While the road to indebtness is paved with rearview mirrors, please Mr. President avoid the rhetoric and anecdoctal evidence and let us live in fear for 18 motnhs rather than regret for the next two generations.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

And What If...

I have been talking to three good friends in the money management business this week and the consensus amongst us four was that sooner than later long term rates would rise. A commodity based hedge fund manager, a bond guru, a full service retail broker seem to agree with my thoughts and outlook. That got me thinking. IF we all agree, why isn't the DJIA at 5K yet? Why with all the dire news of 50K layoffs every day, drops in demand of 50% for cars, why can't I buy a brand new Chrysler for $5K?

What if Geithner and Bernanke instead of continuing to be history majors somehow became master poker players? Mind you It's a far stretch but read on!

Congress approves $835BB BUT the SENATE especially the REPUBLICANS get to be the saviors by sending back to el Presidente a scaled back $400BB-$500BB plan. Mkt was bracing for the whopper and they get a diet meal. Obama plays along... USD rallies DJIA coughs up a little because foreign earnings will suffer but all of a sudden, the mother of all short squeezes prays upon the naysayers... GREED is back and that is good as everybody I talk to has only fear and THAT is not GOOD for anybody!

On that note took some nice profits on TBT at $49.01, sold my SU flat ( too much debt), Sold DNR for very nice gain (16%), bought some UUU (keeping fingers crossed) and now TIM and BEN get the hill to cut the pork and let's have a PARTY!

Good trading to you!

Monday, January 26, 2009

7-10, 20 and 30 yr Treasuries: Short them ALL!!!!!!!!

Now that Gold has gone from $730 to over $900 and a drop of the Canadian dollar, our Canadian investors have had a stellar 60 days.
What can we expect for 2009?
THEME 1
Geithner will be to Obama what Rumsfeld was to Bush.
Tim, you are not the man of the hour. The idea of spending recklessly and destroying the purchasing power of countless baby boomers coming into their retirement is dumb. Poking the eye of the Chinese central bankers is even dumber than trying to put the moves on your future mother in law in front of the whole family.
BUY AS MUCH AS YOU CAN: PST TBT ( double short bond ETFs)... courtesy of the Obama administration... I would buy foreign ETF short bonds but they are not marketing on NYSE...
Germany has the most debt maturing in 2009 and the rise in yields ofBunds are already indicators of the next Tsunami.Including financial debt, Germany has the most bonds maturing between 2009 and 2011, with 40 per cent of the total share. Other countries with big exposures in descending order are Sweden, Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, and the UK.Together, these countries account for about 85% of the total financial exposure in Europe.

THEME 2
Gold is moving down to our second long pick BEHIND oil...
As there are much fewer players left standing in the financial arena, some commodities will not suffer immense gyrations of the old Hedge funds "follow the madness of crowds" mentality. WE have been accumulating our darlings DNR, SU & PGF. No small caps! Pick some FCX also as this one is way beyond a normal correction
THEME 3
Top 2 players with clean balance sheets and NO debt will be the darlings of the markets as they allow number one , highly leveraged companies to default on exorbitant debt refinancing.A large chunk of the debt due over the next few years is concentrated in 2009, with $800bn maturing in that year alone, fuelled principally by the financial sector. In 2010 and 2011, total maturities taper off at $633bn and $510bn respectively.

Good trading to you all!

Friday, November 28, 2008

WHy Gold is looking better every day

Dear friends and readers,


My dear friend JP has offered a sensational piece which shows some insight on why you need all the gold you can get your hands on. A good friend said that Wal-MArt was running out of personal safes as Americans are hoarding the metal. I deplore the Chinese's thinking that they need to keep a couple of trillion fiat dollars to keep their economy going. BIG MISTAKE! So without any more gibberish on my part , please read on the dire predictions of our esteemed colleague JP. ( name witheld by request)




I Took the $7.7 trillion of bailouts. donations or guarantees and with the help of my trusted abacus, calculated that the US currency was backed with Gold sitting at Fort Knox and West Point (if there actually is any) but only if gold traded at $35,000 an ounce.
--
At current prices concensus seems to be China's Gold hoard is worth approximately $3billion. In total reserves of $1.9 trillion at last official count. It would seem China is seriously - if not imprudently - underweight Gold.
---
The only reason the USD isn't trading at new lows it is because China and Japan still continue to hold on to it. According to IMF (http://www.imf.org/external/np/sta/ir/802P816.pdf)
----
Obama - with Geitner appointment - does not seem to understand that he needs to deal with the CDS (Credit Default Swap) ponzi scheme and exterminate it. An honest solution would be to allow companies to go into bancruptcy, payoff the CDS at face value and outlaw speculators and be made thankful they are getting out alive. Obama appointing the likes of Geithner is a signal of more of the same. President-elect Obama has choice:

a) adopt financial sanity, safety and soundness by deflating the remaining (and biggest) speculative bubble by letting free-market bancruptcy mechanism do its function.

b) elongate and deepen the economic stagnation (à la Japan method) wading pool for the next 5-10 years by continuing the Paulson / Geithner method of hiding true value of assets and nationalize the banking system and allow the CDS to persist waiting for the inevitable day of reckoning.
-----
US Code
§ 3910. Audit authority of Government Accountability Office
http://www2.law.cornell.edu/uscode/12/usc_sec_12_00003910----000-.html

is forbidden from:

(3) Audits of the Federal Reserve Board and Federal Reserve banks may not include—

(A) transactions for, or with, a foreign central bank, government of a foreign country, or nonprivate international financing organization;

(B) deliberations, decisions, or actions on monetary policy matters, including discount window operations, reserves of member banks, securities credit, interest on deposits, or open market operations;

(C) transactions made under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee; or

(D) a part of a discussion or communication among or between members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and officers and employees of the Federal Reserve System related to subparagraphs (A) through (C) of this paragraph.

JP

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

I bought Physical gold today

I keep reading all these articles about governments printing billions of fiat currencies in the hope of preventing a depression. $700BB, Tarp, $600BB China, ECD , France, Britain. The list includes all the usual lemmings. I believe that all this printing will create a horrible inflation spiral in 2009. It's simply because governments are reading terrible accounts of previous economic cycles.
Just as doctors killed many more patients a hundred years ago because of lack of good diagnostic equipment, today's economic advisers are giving the press and government officials, a terrible diagnosis of what is ailing global economies and subsequent terrible economic stimulus.

FIRST of all STOP calling it ALARMING, AILING, DIRE!

We are simply deleveraging investment banks and hedge fund madness. THAT's a good thing!
Printing money and giving it right back to these people. THAT's a bad thing!

DE LEVERAGING CONTINUES
Banks balance sheets have to clean up and because they can't leverage 30:1 , it's pretty normal that their ROE will fall by an order of magnitude. Citicorp loses $100BB YTD in market cap. That's normal. They grew by dumb acquisitions, bad management and bad oversight from a purely incompetent Board of directors. Let the chips fall... Citicorp fires 53,000 employees and the stock still goes down. Poor Pandit, he has one heck of a mess on his hands. Stock going to 5 and hopefully no lower...
Goldman Sachs, now a federally regulated bank cuts 10% STAFF and bonuses to guys who racked in over $500MM a year ago in bonus...

Printing Money is NOT a long term solution
Printing money will not convince baby boomers to either save, invest or spend. So why are governments hell bent on repeating the mistakes of Germany of the late 1920s?
If you read history, the Germans had to pay exorbitant war reparations bills after they lsot WWI and after 10 years of crippling payments they just got fed up doing it for real so they started printing money. By 1933, you needed a barrel full of Deutsche marks to buy a loaf of bread. You know what happened next.


I bought my first ten ounces of a planned 400 ounces buy as a goal today. The local dealer was out of 10oz bars so I had to pay more for 1 ounce coins. For $60, the stuff gets delivered to the house. Don't get any ideas. Stuff is going straight to my bank safety deposit box. ( That gives me an idea... if banks are not to be trusted, should a non deposit business be started to offer vault services?) My local gold Dealer, http://www.kitco.com , says that since gold fell $300 , his business had the best month EVER in 20 years! It seems smart people have been converting their USD into bullion? They are not leasing or buying into pooled funds. Leasing gold from institutions that will never deliver is not wise. Pooled funds can always have a run and default so your are at risk. The only safe way is to hold the metal in YOUR hands. SO THEY ARE TAKING PHYSICAL DELIVERY.
With all the mining companies hard pressed to get their 2009 financing in place, I can safely say the coast is clear to 2010.
The recent pullback in gold is a tremendous buying opportunity. Remember I told you this less than a month ago. Hedge funds redeem their foreign holdings BACK to USD. That explains the drop in the British Pound, the Euro and countless currencies. The USD is a currency of last resort. Not much longer folks!

Even though, I also predicted a bad 2009 for the Euro, my call is for selling that gold at a significant profit in late 2009-2010 which will allow for nice purchase of real estate in EUROPE in 2011.

Stay tuned

DCW









Green tech is dying yet again after a two year sucker's bet.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Not Convincing, nor hopeful, dreary at best!

It must be my neurotic tendencies that seem to always look for the under dog in the face of overwhelming odds.

With Rabid Democrats jockeying for position in Washington, getting their kids in the best schools, where will Michelle decide to send her daughters, the new FIRST dog etc. How trivial, how mundane, how scary!

Oil at $58... shouldn't we be saying: "Finally relief?"
PACs are still intact. I haven't seen Washington office space prices fall. I would suggest that for 22 Republicans that needed to find other employment, 25 Democrats have already found a spot.
So this is going to be same old, same old, or is it going to be worse?
DJIA is telling you worse: Why?
Simple: Toxic investments are still out there contaminating a shrinking pool of clean capital.
Current and future Government solution: Keep pumping new money in a tank of rapidly growing E-coli infested water and telling banks, corporations and consumers to drink from.
"DRINK UP DRINK UP" says the government!
Right, the banks are asking for clean water but refuse to lend it out.
Corporations are drawing down the credit lines and using up the clean water, the banks are desperately trying to hold on to. Treasury reacts by offering to invest clean money into bank capital but does little to fix anything as the toxic waste is deep inside the banks' books.
Consumers have no access to clean water and are trying to have the government sponge up their swamp upside down mortgage money...
Government has to stop trying to fix everything. It's not its job. If anything it has to reassure the people that the toxic stuff is segregated and keep putting it back in our taps!
OK enough with the imagery!

ENEMY NUMBER ONE
CDS, CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS , are the number one enemy of all. I, for the life of me, cannot understand why they are not made illegal like crack cocaine. The right to buy a death warrant on a corporation should be rendered illegal and anybody owning them or issuing them past a set date is liable for prosecution, jail terms and destitution... Explain to me why American taxpayers need to shore up AIG? IS that really doing much... DJIA will go to 5K on its own, the quicker the better...

ENEMY NUMBER TWO
PEOPLE WHO DO NOT FOLLOW THE RULE OF LAW: Nobody in Washington respects the laws. You can't get half the members of the administration to uphold the laws of the constitution they were sworn to uphold. Treasury doesn't answer the press which implies taxation without representation. Justice set a partisan agenda. Covert operations of dubious merit get secrecy seals. PACS will fund almost anything in 2009 , unchecked and undeterred


ENEMY NUMBER THREE
USING TAX MONEY TO KEEP DEAD COMPANIES ON ALF (Artifical Life Support): I listened to CNBC yesterday morning. The anchors were all saying that they needed their big SUVs to get their kids to school. They were all too happy to drive their gas guzzlers and lamenting that nobody wanted to buy a small car made by GM. Conveniently forgot to mention that Mercedes Smart car is on triple shift production. The ego of financiers are the worst enemy of taxpayers.
Meantime Corrupt Washington will write even dumber checks that will end up 30% inflation next year.

THE REMEDIES
Come on guys, have some cojones!

PICK THE LOSERS NOW! ANNOUNCE THE LOSERS EVEN SOONER!

STICK TO A GAME PLAN, KILL OFF THE BAD WEEDS

A ray of hope Paulson said something today tht made sense ( bet you he repudiates it tomorrow)

http://www.globeinvestor.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081112.wpaulson1112/GIStory/

PREPARE A POOL OF CLEAN WATER


PROVE TO THE PEOPLE that in 2009, they will be richer, that their currency will be worth something and EVEN if their houses are worth less, they will feel secure and that they will not have to hear partisan fear rhetoric at every turn. 8 years of fear mongering is enough!

Maybe in 2009 we can go for a nice swim with some friendly sharks!

DCW