World Of Wallstreet

Year-Over-Year Unadjusted: Monthly Department Of Labor Non-Farms Payroll Report

Here's my take on the Labor Department's monthly unemployment report:

• Labor Department News Release: click here and here and here.
• Key Numbers: Not Seasonally Adjusted Labor Depart Civilian Non-Institutional Population: 236,998,000 vs 234,913,000 year ago. Not Seasonally Adjusted Employed: 137,203,000 vs 140,105,000. Seasonally Adjusted Private Hours Worked Per Week: 33.1 vs 33.2.   
• My Spreadsheet (click Download 20100305yoy).

Here's my uneducated interpretation - This data series that things are still worse than a year ago, but are bottoming. The spread between the light green and dark green bars and the light blue and dark blue bars in the graph below is narrowing.

 Let me know where I've got it wrong.

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Unadjusted Year Over Year: Labor Department Initial Jobless Fall -27%

Here's a quick take the Labor Department's weekly initial jobs claims report:

• Associated Press Headline And Lead: "Jobless claims drop after rising for 2 weeks... New claims for jobless benefits fell last week in a sign that layoffs may be easing as the economy slowly recovers."
• Labor Department News Release: click here. 
• Key Numbers: "The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 471,720 in the week ending Feb. 27, an increase of 17,128 from the previous week. There were 645,827 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009."
• My Spreadsheet (click Download 20100218yoy).

Here's my uneducated interpretation - Quite a nice data point which puts us back on track for a bottoming of unemployment in June 2010. The bright green line looks a lot better than it has for weeks. At the current trend the initial jobless claims in June will be less than they were in June of 2003 when unemployment peaked for that downturn. 

 





 
 

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Here's a quick take the Labor Department's weekly initial jobs claims report:

• Associated Press Headline And Lead: "Jobless claims drop after rising for 2 weeks... New claims for jobless benefits fell last week in a sign that layoffs may be easing as the economy slowly recovers."
• Labor Department News Release: click here. 
• Key Numbers: "The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 471,720 in the week ending Feb. 27, an increase of 17,128 from the previous week. There were 645,827 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009."
• My Spreadsheet (click Download 20100218yoy).

Here's my uneducated interpretation - Quite a nice data point which puts us back on track for a bottoming of unemployment in June 2010. The bright green line looks a lot better than it has for weeks. At the current trend the initial jobless claims in June will be less than they were in June of 2003 when unemployment peaked for that downturn. 

 





 
 

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Next Week's Interventionals: Rain Likely, Especially Wed & Thursday

This week's interventional trading is working out quite nicely with the gold future longs I entered into last Thursday showing a very nice profit. The outlook for next week is "Rain Likely" as 3 year, 10 year and 30 year bonds have to be sold.

I expect I'll close out the gold future longs tomorrow at 1:30 to get out of the way of the Friday unemployment numbers customary gold-takedown and go short (by buying puts again) on Monday near the close. Will probably go long gold again after the 30-year treasury auctions next Thursday.

Here's my view of next week's scheduled market events (BOLD CAPs for events which the Gold Cartel traditionally uses as an excuse hit the price of gold).

• Mon, Not much happening.
• Tues, 3-year t-bond auction. Takedown may start for this and in preparation for Wed. 
• Wed, 10-year t-bond auction.
  
• Thu, 8:30, International Trade report
• Thu, 30-year t-bond auction.
• Fri, 8:30, Retail sales.

Leave me a comment if I'm missing something or if there are better data sources that you know of for this kind of thing.

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Sources: I like Bloomberg's economic calendar (click here) and little better than yahoo's (click here) because it covers the treasury auctions. The best one I've found for international is here, but I usually don't have the time to follow it.The next options expiration date is: 3/25/2010. Here's a link to a good 2010 calendar (click here).

• Mon, Not much happening.
• Tues, 3-year t-bond auction. Takedown may start for this and in preparation for Wed. 
• Wed, 10-year t-bond auction.
  
• Thu, 8:30, International Trade report
• Thu, 30-year t-bond auction.
• Fri, 8:30, Retail sales.

Leave me a comment if I'm missing something or if there are better data sources that you know of for this kind of thing.

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Sources: I like Bloomberg's economic calendar (click here) and little better than yahoo's (click here) because it covers the treasury auctions. The best one I've found for international is here, but I usually don't have the time to follow it.The next options expiration date is: 3/25/2010. Here's a link to a good 2010 calendar (click here).

Getting Started With Gold Investing

For me, the key to investing success has been to find resource companies that:

• are terribly undervalued at current prices and
  
• produce a resource for which I am bullish and
• have catalysts coming which will reduce the undervaluation.

Since the crash that has been Gold (and Silver to a lesser degree) Jr producing mining companies. Exploration companies are a whole nother kettle of fish that I am trying to spin up on.

Aside: I believe someone can make 50% a year (or more) if they don't have too much money to invest (say less than 5M$) and if they truly obsess over what they are doing and have paid, say, 3 to 5 years of dues (obsessing over investing) and are good at strategy games. That's me. It isn't nearly as much fun as my day-job and I'm not completely obsessing this year. It will be interesting to see how it impacts my results.

A friend of mine asked me how to get started spinning up on gold and precious metal investing.

Its a difficult question because there is a lot to learn and there is a lot of B.S. to wade thru.

I'll answer by listing the resources (in priority order) that I find and have found useful and try to dig up some "greatest hits". This post is probably worth more than anything I've posted in the last year. Finding the good information / analysis resources is probably the most important thing I do.

www.lemetropolecafe.com's daily midas column - covers the gold market every day in detail from the GATA perspective. This is the single best source for covering the precious metals markets in general. Costs $300/year. Worse than no help when it comes to stock picking. Cost is $299/year. For me, the most valuable part is watching whether they are importing gold in India or not. As long as the Indians are importing the price of gold is supported. The insights about the price suppression (and what days to look for it) are also turning (with some filtering) into a valuable futures trading resource.  

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.aspx?board_id=5834 - best stocking picking board I know of which is currently on gold and silver miners. Listen to anything Bobwins or Cl001 says. These guys make a tonne of money. 

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/ - who I want to be when I grow up. Analysis that is so true, so deep and with such a good spirit. And he covers precious metals occasionally. 

http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/King_World_News.html - does great interviews (with a horrible web site, google "king world news" and interviewee names if you can't find what you are looking for) often about precious metals. The Ted Butler weekly wrapup will introduce you to the commitment of trader reports and how to interpret them (look out below when the commercial shorts and longs develop huge positions). Here's some other good interviews that should provide a good introduction to gold and miner stock picking:

• Jim Sinclair
• Pierre Lassonde
• Rick Rule

www.goldseek.com, www.321gold.com - have tonnes of commentator posts to wade thru. You'll have to learn you brings value and who doesn't.

http://harveyorgan.blogspot.com/ - provides a long daily piece with material stolen from all over the place including most of the good stuff from www.lemetropolecafe.com (but for free). 

I don't have any books to recommend. I'm currently reading Jim Dines' Gold Bug (pretty expensive) which is probably the best book I can recommend, but I'm not thru it enough to really say.

John Doody has a nice, safe methodical way of picking gold stocks (which is pretty much what I use only with smaller, off the beaten path stocks). I don't subscribe. IKN provides some great insight and has a true edge with micro-cap Latin America stocks. I do subscribe. I also subscribe to Bob Hoye's Institutional Investors (great pattern-matching technical analysis) and, because I keep feeling dazzled, I just got a Jim Dines subscription. I also am subscribed to Gary Biwii's news letter to learn a new form of technical analysis (and to keep from going off a cliff if something unexpected happens). Biwii's letter is cheap and seems very much worth it to me.

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Next Week's Interventionals: Sunny With Friday Thundershower

This week's interventionals worked out well with a quite profitable long silver puts trade. I left out last week an important interventional: the COMEX option expiration. Will keep that in mind going forward.

Here's my view of the week's scheduled market events (BOLD CAPs for events which the Gold Cartel traditionally uses as an excuse hit the price of gold). I expect I'll go long some kind of leveraged gold trade (either RGLD options, COMEX gold options or COMEX gold futures today around 1:30) and hold until Thursday evening.

• Mon, 8:30, Personal Income
• Mon, 10:00, ISM Manufacturing Index
• Tue, Motor Vehicle Sales
• Wed, 10:00, ISM Non-Manufacturing Index
• Thu, 8:30, Initial Jobless Claims - gets extra emphasis on non-farms payroll week.
• Thu, 8:30, Productivity And Costs
• Thu, 10:00, Pending Home Sales
• Fri, 8:30, Non-Farms Payrolls (Unemployment) - gold Cartel nearly always hits gold for this report. Next week's report should be particularly bad as the week where the numbers were taken was the blizzard week.

Leave me a comment if I'm missing something or if there are better data sources that you know of for this kind of thing.

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Sources: I like Bloomberg's economic calendar (click here) and little better than yahoo's (click here) because it covers the treasury auctions. The best one I've found for international is here, but I usually don't have the time to follow it.The next options expiration date is: 3/25/2010. Here's a link to a good 2010 calendar (click here).

• Mon, 8:30, Personal Income
• Mon, 10:00, ISM Manufacturing Index
• Tue, Motor Vehicle Sales
• Wed, 10:00, ISM Non-Manufacturing Index
• Thu, 8:30, Initial Jobless Claims - gets extra emphasis on non-farms payroll week.
• Thu, 8:30, Productivity And Costs
• Thu, 10:00, Pending Home Sales
• Fri, 8:30, Non-Farms Payrolls (Unemployment) - gold Cartel nearly always hits gold for this report. Next week's report should be particularly bad as the week where the numbers were taken was the blizzard week.

Leave me a comment if I'm missing something or if there are better data sources that you know of for this kind of thing.

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Sources: I like Bloomberg's economic calendar (click here) and little better than yahoo's (click here) because it covers the treasury auctions. The best one I've found for international is here, but I usually don't have the time to follow it.The next options expiration date is: 3/25/2010. Here's a link to a good 2010 calendar (click here).

Unadjusted Year Over Year: Labor Department Initial Jobless Fall -23%

Here's a quick take the Labor Department's weekly initial jobs claims report:

• Associated Press Headline And Lead: "Jobless claims rise on snow-related layoffs... The number of new claims for unemployment benefits jumped unexpectedly last week as heavy snows caused layoffs to rise."
• Labor Department News Release: click here. 
• Key Numbers: "The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 452,468 in the week ending Feb. 20, a decrease of 25,767 from the previous week. There were 605,668 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009."
• My Spreadsheet (click Download 20100218yoy).

Here's my uneducated interpretation - I'm still looking at the recession over recession non-seasonally adjusted graph below which which continues to look ugly. I'm thinking the dark red line characterizes the trend and that we won't see a peak in unemployment until late 2010 if the trend continues. We are looking at an even more "jobless recovery" than the Internet Bubble recession's recovery. Yikes!

 




 
 

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Here's a quick take the Labor Department's weekly initial jobs claims report:

• Associated Press Headline And Lead: "Jobless claims rise on snow-related layoffs... The number of new claims for unemployment benefits jumped unexpectedly last week as heavy snows caused layoffs to rise."
• Labor Department News Release: click here. 
• Key Numbers: "The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 452,468 in the week ending Feb. 20, a decrease of 25,767 from the previous week. There were 605,668 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009."
• My Spreadsheet (click Download 20100218yoy).

Here's my uneducated interpretation - I'm still looking at the recession over recession non-seasonally adjusted graph below which which continues to look ugly. I'm thinking the dark red line characterizes the trend and that we won't see a peak in unemployment until late 2010 if the trend continues. We are looking at an even more "jobless recovery" than the Internet Bubble recession's recovery. Yikes!

 




 
 

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Next Week's Interventionals: Daily Thunderstorms

Here's my view of the week's scheduled market events (focusing on events which the Gold Cartel traditionally uses as an excuse hit the price of gold). I expect I'll trade out a few percent of my portfolio this morning as The outlook is for downward movement of stocks and gold (and upward movement of the USD) as Bernanke testifies twice and the treasury has to sell 100B$ of bonds and bills:

• Mon, 11:00AM, Bernanke Testifies
• Mon, 30 year TIPS and short term treasury bill auction.
• Tues, 2 year treasury auction.
• Wed, 10:00AM, Bernanke Testifies.
• Wed, 5 year treasury auction.
• Thu, 7 year treasury auction.
• Thu, Durable Goods and Order - this is the only economic news that comes out next week that I follow closely (other than the weekly initial jobless claims).
• Fri, GDP Revision - the GDP growth from Q4 will be revised downward (I expect) and the market will be unmoved.

I like Bloomberg's economic calendar (click here) and little better than yahoo's (click here) because it covers the treasury auctions. The best one I've found for international is here, but I usually don't have the time to follow it.

Leave me a comment if I'm missing something or if there are better data sources that you know of for this kind of thing.

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Unadjusted Year Over Year: Commerce Department Building Permits Down 8.5% And Housing Starts Up 18.5%

Here's the summary for the yesterday's Commerce Department's New Residential Construction release:

• Department Of Commerce News Release: click here.
• Key Numbers: New Privately-Owned Housing Units Authorized in Permit-Issuing Places Not Seasonally Adjusted, This Month=39,400, Year Ago=36,300. New Privately-Owned Housing Units Started Not Seasonally Adjusted: This Month=37,800, Year Ago=31,900.

Here's my uneducated (also not not spun by guys trying to make you a sucker) interpretation: There has been a recent recovery in housing (after some really dismal lows in Spring 2009). 

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

• Department Of Commerce News Release: click here.
• Key Numbers: New Privately-Owned Housing Units Authorized in Permit-Issuing Places Not Seasonally Adjusted, This Month=39,400, Year Ago=36,300. New Privately-Owned Housing Units Started Not Seasonally Adjusted: This Month=37,800, Year Ago=31,900.

Here's my uneducated (also not not spun by guys trying to make you a sucker) interpretation: There has been a recent recovery in housing (after some really dismal lows in Spring 2009). 

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Unadjusted Year Over Year: USA Retail Sales Up 3.2%

I'm catching up on my economics data. This is from 2/12/2010. Here's the year over year summary of today's Commerce Department's retail sales figures:

• Commerce Department News Release: click here. 
• Key Numbers: Commerce Department Retail And Food Services Sales Unadjusted 2009: $323,688,000,000 vs 2008: $313,593,000,000.
• My Spreadsheet (click Download 20100115yoy)

Here's my uneducated interpretation - A disappointing month pointing to a slowing recovery (see graph below).

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

• Commerce Department News Release: click here. 
• Key Numbers: Commerce Department Retail And Food Services Sales Unadjusted 2009: $323,688,000,000 vs 2008: $313,593,000,000.
• My Spreadsheet (click Download 20100115yoy)

Here's my uneducated interpretation - A disappointing month pointing to a slowing recovery (see graph below).

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

• Commerce Department News Release: click here. 
• Key Numbers: Commerce Department Retail And Food Services Sales Unadjusted 2009: $323,688,000,000 vs 2008: $313,593,000,000.
• My Spreadsheet (click Download 20100115yoy)

Here's my uneducated interpretation - A disappointing month pointing to a slowing recovery (see graph below).

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Unadjusted Year Over Year: Labor Department Initial Jobless Fall -23%

Here's a quick take the Labor Department's weekly initial jobs claims report:

• Associated Press Headline And Lead: "Jobless claims rise unexpectedly... The number of newly laid-off workers filing applications for unemployment benefits unexpectedly surged last week after having fallen sharply in the previous week. The gain dampened hopes about how quickly the labor market may improve this year."
• Labor Department News Release: click here. 
• Key Numbers: "The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 476,730 in the week ending Feb. 13, a decrease of 30,850 from the previous week. There were 619,951 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009."
• My Spreadsheet (click Download 20100218yoy).

Here's my uneducated interpretation - I'm still looking at the recession over recession non-seasonally adjusted graph below which is getting uglier. Which of the three lines looks like it best tracks the data? For me it used to be the green line where claims would match the previous recession around June (when unemployment bottomed for the Internet Bubble recession peaked). The dark red line looks like a better fit now and the bright red line looks like a contender. Both red lines indicate an even more "jobless recovery" than the Internet Bubble recession's recovery. Yikes!

 



 
 

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us