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February 2010

February 25, 2010

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).

Posted at 09:33 AM in The Week Ahead | | Comments (0)

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

Posted at 09:10 AM in Year Over Year | | Comments (0)

February 19, 2010

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

Posted at 08:49 AM in The Week Ahead | | Comments (0)

February 18, 2010

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


Posted at 09:47 AM in Year Over Year | | Comments (0)

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



Posted at 09:14 AM in Year Over Year | | Comments (0)

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!

 20100218initial



 
 


MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Posted at 08:57 AM in Year Over Year | | Comments (0)

Chart Of The Day: Copper Inventory Levels

See anything seasonal in this chart?

Was that a 1 year fluke or does it happen just about every year this time?

How does that seasonal inventory drop affect the price of copper?

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Posted at 07:14 AM in Resource Investing | | Comments (0)

February 11, 2010

Unadjusted Year Over Year: Labor Department Initial Jobless Fall -29%

Here's the scoop on the Labor Department's weekly initial jobs claims report:
  • Associated Press Headline And Lead: "First-time jobless claims fall more than expected... The number of newly laid-off workers seeking unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week to the lowest total in a month, a hopeful sign the job market may be improving."
  • Labor Department News Release: click here. 
  • Key Numbers: "The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 504,661 in the week ending Feb. 6, a decrease of 28,640 from the previous week. There were 710,152 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009."
  • My Spreadsheet (click Download 20100211yoy).

Here's my uneducated interpretation - No change from last week. Still on track to have unemployment peak in June 2010 when comparing this downturn with the Internet Bubble recession. As you will recall, unemployment peaked for the Internet Bubble Pop recession in June 2003. BUT... another couple of weeks like this one and the trend will have changed to something more like the red arrow. That would leave the USA with rising unemployment for a lot longer than people are expecting.

 


 
 


MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Posted at 09:43 AM in Year Over Year | | Comments (0)

February 08, 2010

Greecian Crisis: Who Benefits?

I think this Greecian debt crisis is being managed. The result of this crisis has been:

  • The fall of the Euro - which benefits Germany's export economy.
  • The rise of the dollar - which benefits the USA's Federal Reserve which will need to announce further Quantitative Easing in March to keep the real-estate market from collapsing faster/further. This will certainly hurt the dollar.

I think the Greecian debt crisis is being managed to achieve these two ends and that Germany in particular will, at the time of its choosing, go soft attempting to prevent a collapse of the entire Euro Monetary Union. I think they may let Greece do an Iceland and completely collapse, but that they have to draw the line at Spain because a genuine crisis there would kill the EMU.

Where's the best place (other than Ambrose Evans Pritchard) to get coverage / analysis of this situation?

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Posted at 09:40 AM in General Market | | Comments (3)

February 06, 2010

Off Topic: Ebay Now On My "Avoid Whenever Possible" List

This may sound trivial, but I spend thousands of dollars a year on online purchases and expect good service. 

Every time I use ebay (pretty seldomly lately), I find a new reason (today two reasons) not to like them:

  1. The "you won" like is now automated to give you a lower resolution picture of the item purchased with no covenient way of looking at the original description of the item. The message I receive: Ebay wants you to hurry up and pay and doesn't care about what I want (which is to see the details of what I bought).
  2. Contacting Ebay - there is now no way to give Ebay general feedback about your shopping experience. They could at least have a little Internet bitch form where they could total up complaints but they just don't make the effort. The message I receive: Ebay really doesn't care about me, they just care about minimizing their customer care costs.

Prior items include:

  • Ebay owned paypal really wanting to get their hands on my bank account (and not letting me pay with my credit card which is my preference).
  • Ebay owned paypal has not added a "do you really, really want to use your credit card screen" even after making me expressly state my preference for credit card.
Message Received: Ebay really doesn't care about me the customer and is willing to intentionally hassle me when it suits their purpose.

Guess I'll just stay away whenever I can.

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Posted at 03:43 PM in Off Topic | | Comments (0)

Tobinator: Euro PIGS and Charts

"Editor's note: World Of Wallstreet welcomes a contribution from Tobinator the most highly rec'ed poster on the IV precious metals board (click here)and editor of the free, quarterly Heavy Metal Investor newsletter (click here). My comment on this is "What a bearish looking set of charts. I should have gone short Friday before the close."

Good Evening.  I certainly understand bbb's frustration with this emerging, grinding downturn we've been at the mercy of since early December.  That start corresponded to the US dollar's reversal.  Today's disappointment in the jobs (but not that much) sent the broad markets down to where by mid-afternoon are reversal took hold and rallied the index just into the green.  The late day rally probably was fueled by fat shorts taking profits and having a possible weekend rescue package that could stoke markets.  My feeling is the carefully crafted bull rally from Mar - Dec 09 needed to not have the mid-afternoon sell off take hold else have a technically damaging drop on Monday.  On the surface from a pure chart perspective, today's rally signals a reversal though I need much more data before I am convinced.  My gut tells me that the rally may be more of those with an interest in keeping markets up came in to support them and not that market sentiment suddenly changed to the positive.
 
What was refreshing was the HUI is even though the Dow was at its lows, the PM shares were barely down.  It could be that shorts decided to cover due to gold being in a real strong region of support.  There is also the element that if the ECB blinks and bails out the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain), the US dollar could fall significantly fueling a gold rally.
 

We have a real interesting situation brewing in Europe.  The ECB is talking tough about the PIGS but there is a real risk of turning the recent upset in an outright panic in the world markets.  I think if they bail them out, they will not do any real reform and consequently find themselves in the same situation.  The longer this thing festers the worse it's going to become.  Technically many markets are in tenuous positions and vulnerable for deep retracements of last year's gains.  Ultimately, I think European politicians are as spineless as US ones so a major bailout is probably going to occur soon.

Tobinator

 
Broad Market, Financial and Real Estate Indexes,
 
Dow - Short Term,
 
DJ Financials Index - Short Term,
 
S&P 500 - Short Term,
 
 
Select Commodities & US Dollar Index,

Gold - Short Term,
 
Gold - Medium Term,
 
HUI - Short Term,
 
HUI - Medium Term,
 
Natural Gas,
 
Oil - Short Term,
 
Platinum - Short Term,
 
Platinum - Medium Term,
 
Silver - Short Term,
 
Silver - Medium Term,
 
US Dollar - Short Term,
 
US Dollar - Medium Term,
http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$USD&p=W&yr=2&mn=2&dy=0&id=p80020589757&a=148768934&listNum=3

Posted at 10:17 AM in General Market, Technical Analysis | | Comments (0)

Next Week's Interventionals: Mostly Sunny

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). The outlook is mostly sunny with only one interventional event on the horizon:

  • Wed 2:30PM, 10 year treasury auctions - The interventional for this is dollar up everything else down.
  • NOTE: no unemployment numbers, no inflation numbers, no President speaks or Bernanke speaks.

Not much else coming up on the week's economic calendar:

  • Wed 8:30AM, International Trade report. Worth tracking.

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

Posted at 10:00 AM in General Market, The Week Ahead | | Comments (0)

February 05, 2010

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

Here's the scoop on the Labor Department's monthly unemployment report:

  • Associated Press Headline And Lead: "January unemployment rate drops to 9.7 percent... The unemployment rate dropped unexpectedly in January to 9.7 percent from 10 percent while employers shed 20,000 jobs."
  • Labor Department News Release: click here and here and here.
  • Key Numbers: Not Seasonally Adjusted Labor Depart Civilian Non-Institutional Population: 236,832,000 vs 234,739,000 year ago. Not Seasonally Adjusted Employed: 136,809,000 vs 140,436,000. Not Seasonally Adjusted Private Hours Worked Per Week: 33.1 vs 33.2.   
  • My Spreadsheet (click Download 20100205yoy).

Here's my uneducated interpretation - This data series shows an uneven change in the genuine employment condition. The employment population ratio continues to fall (the percent of non-institutionalized adjusts employed) and has hit a new low. The hours worked per employed person bumped up some so that the Full Time Employment Population Ratio which assumes that in an ideal world every employed person would get 40 hours of work popped up a bit but is bouncing along at a low level. I calculate the Full Time Employment Population Ratio = (Num Employed / Non-Institutional Adult Population) * (Avg Private Hours Worked Per Week / 40).


 

MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

Posted at 08:55 AM in Year Over Year | | Comments (0)

February 04, 2010

Unadjusted Year Over Year: Labor Department Initial Jobless Fall -22.25%, BUT... Potential Trend Change

Here's the scoop on the Labor Department's weekly initial jobs claims report:

  • Associated Press Headline And Lead: "First-time jobless claims rise unexpectedly... New jobless claims rise unexpectedly to 480,000 as layoffs continue, jobs remain scarce... The number of newly laid-off workers filing initial claims for jobless benefits rose unexpectedly last week, evidence that layoffs are continuing and jobs remain scarce."
  • Labor Department News Release: click here. 
  • Key Numbers: "The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 530,405 in the week ending Jan. 30, an increase of 28,234 from the previous week. There were 682,176 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009."
  • My Spreadsheet (click Download 20100204yoy).

Here's my uneducated interpretation - Still on track to have unemployment peak in June 2010 when comparing this downturn with the Internet Bubble recession. As you will recall, unemployment peaked for the Internet Bubble Pop recession in June 2003. BUT... another couple of weeks like this one and the trend will have changed to something more like the red arrow. That would leave the USA with rising unemployment for a lot longer than people are expecting.

 

 
 


MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us

P.S., I've been concentrating on my day-job lately. I have a chance to make a real contribution that could pull a 300 person division out of the fire. I do see that its affecting my posting and even my investing edge.

Posted at 10:10 AM in Year Over Year | | Comments (1)