{+++}The major averages finished higher on this holiday-shortened week — S&P 500 +3.6%, Dow +2.7%, Nasdaq Comp +4.9%, Russell 2000 +5.0%. It was an extremely light week in terms of news flow and volume, with the biggest volatility due to gyrations in the bond market on Wednesday and Thursday.
For the first time since another Democrat occupied the White House, investors from Beijing to Zurich are challenging a president’s attempts to revive the economy with record deficit spending. Fifteen years after forcing Clinton to abandon his own stimulus plans, the so-called bond vigilantes are punishing Obama for quadrupling the budget shortfall to $1.85 trillion. By driving up yields on U.S. debt, they are also threatening to derail Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s efforts to cut borrowing costs for businesses and consumers. The 1.4-percentage-point rise in 10-year Treasury yields this year pushed interest rates on 30-year fixed mortgages to above 5 percent for the first time since before Bernanke announced on March 18 that the central bank would start printing money to buy financial assets.
Edward Yardeni, a money manager and analyst coined the phrase in the mid 80’s to describe investors who protest monetary or fiscal policy that they think is inflationary. He goes on to say that $10 trillion over the next ten years is proof that Washington is out of control and there is no fiscal responsibility whatsoever. No argument here.
The government and Fed are trying to repair the damage from the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in 2007, which caused credit markets to freeze, led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September and was responsible for $1.47 trillion of write downs and losses at the world’s largest financial institutions.
The initial progress Bernanke made toward reducing the relative cost of credit is in jeopardy of being unwound by the work of the bond vigilantes.
Right now inflation isn’t a cause for concern but commodities and materials would tell a different story and have had a very strong rally off the weak dollar. The question is how long can these sectors continue to run? There isn’t much organis demand for these products and not so long ago they were being stored on tankers for that very reason. But, as you know, the market doesn’t need a reason as perception is often times reality in the market.
What is so sad really to me is that a Communist country like China really is doing a stimulus of there own that is actually working, they are cutting capital gains taxes to encourage investment and attacking unemplyment head on, I think we’ve hired a few census workers. Nothing is being created here and I hope for everyone’s sake it doesn’t get worse. We all know this shovel ready plan is a joke and is at least two years away.
Here is a review of closed and open positions:
CLOSED- CREE, PRGO, CLF, CRM, IMA, MON, GS, FSLR, EOG, CHK, UTHR, AXP, SLB (LONG)
OPEN- KRE, GLD, DGP, T, TECH, ESL( sold half) SLB ( stop 58) SLB ( SHORT) was another gap down in first 15 minutes, then ran higher, always avoid firt 20 minutes first hour. Yet another example on why to avoid openings.
I’m working on trying to imbed something permanently (WATCHLIST) on the blog but in the meantime please just keep a record of trigger prices and stops. If you are long or short and I left one out please let me know and I will respond to you just as soon as I can. Thanks.
The text above was finished about four hours ago, the last four hours I have been working with new software to show a video, it came out spectacularly, but for the life of me I cant embed it on the blog and I can’t spend any more time on it tonight and you guys need a few names. I will hopefully have the glitch out tomorrow for a replay, in the meantime here are some names that should have been on the video :
ALL LONGS:
IBM over 106.50 stop 103
XME over 38.28 or 38.90 to validate the breakout, watch volume stop 36
MEE over 23.80 stop 22
DO NOT BUY AT THE OPEN-WAIT 20-30 MINUTES-IF YOU MISS IT, IT’S OK AND YOU PROBABLY WON’T.