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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ild who wrote (19880)	10/13/2004 11:25:23 AM
From: russwinter	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 110194

There also appears to be a general Asia slowdown trade (true and factual, in fact maybe worse). Of course the playbook says sell transport (stocks like YELL getting hit hard today), and by association metals. The cognoscenti hasn't figured out the real rerason why Asia is coming unglued, and that's shortages and sky high input prices.

To: ild who wrote (19880)	10/13/2004 11:55:26 AM
From: ild	Respond to of 110194

Date: Wed Oct 13 2004 10:44 trotsky (art_vandila@short position) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved your question needs to be rephrased, since there is an offsetting long position for every short position in the system. thus you should have asked something like 'has the amount of outstanding derivatives in gold declined on account of the miners covering hedges?' - and the answer to that would be no - it has increased further. that by itself doesn't tell one anything however, since one can e.g. cover a hedge like a forward sale by entering into an offsetting derivatives transaction ( e.g. the buying of calls, or some other forward buying mechanism ) . so in that case, the hedge would be 'taken off', and yet, the amount of outstanding gold derivatives would have increased. what one would expect to have decreased is the amount of outstanding gold LOANS, since at least part of the hedges have been taken off by straight-forward deliveries. as far as i know, this is indeed the case, although the data are largely estimates, and can't be independently verified. however, note that the WAG contains a clause that states that the CBs party to the agreement may not increase their gold lending volumes beyond the amounts outstanding at the time of the agreement coming into force. all of the above is a good reason to take GATA's claims with a big grain of salt, although i wouldn't go as far as declaring everything they say to be bunk. one claim that has been disproven in its entirety was the one about COMEX futures being used as a 'pre-emptive' selling tool ( by means of COMEX positioning data over time ) . the fact that outstanding gold derivatives have increased proves indeed nothing. it makes no sense whatsover to relate the size of gold derivatives trading to annual gold sales, as a speaker of Russia's CB has recently done. this is because the roughly 130,000 tons of gold produced thus far are all still in existence. the gold market is very different from other commodity markets in that respect. say for instance you're a wealthy oil sheik who owns 30 tons of gold bullion. now, the price of gold has increased from 250 to 410, so you have a profit to protect, but you don't want to sell your gold ( after all, it represents rainy day insurance ) . you may be tempted to e.g. buy puts, which means you forgo a little future profit potential for the sake of keeping your gains to date intact. that would clearly increase outstanding derivatives , but you'd hardly qualify for membership in a gold price suppression cabal.

To: ild who wrote (19880)	10/13/2004 12:06:04 PM
From: russwinter	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 110194

This coupled with your Orange County post, Message 20629690 gives the appearance of a market where people aren't selling, because they are still fantasizing about the old price, cracking? Rates are the key though, still too low to take this into freefall yet? We need the Great Asian Reflux for that IMO. CALIFORNIA Home Prices in L.A. Flatten By Annette Haddad, Times Staff Writer For the third month in a row, the median price of a Los Angeles County home was flat at about $407,000 in September as the annual rate of appreciation hovered at just above 20%. At the same time, the number of homes sold declined 7.8% from a year earlier, to 10,501, according to DataQuick Information Systems, a La Jolla firm that compiles monthly housing statistics. Last year's September was the strongest in 15 years. The latest numbers illustrate that "sanity" may be returning to the local housing market, Los Angeles economist Jack Kyser said. "Buyers aren't jumping at everything" that is put up for sale while "sellers have had to readjust their price expectations," said Kyser, who heads the L.A. County Economic Development Corp. Real estate broker James Joseph said price adjusting is a "healthy correction" to a housing market that was thrown "completely out of whack." Now, what he's seeing in the East Los Angeles/North Orange County neighborhoods where he works is a "classic stalemate" between buyers and sellers. "It's a matter of who's going to blink first," he said. "If sellers don't blink, they won't sell their homes." Still, Los Angeles County hasn't yet seen any "significant" price decreases, said John Karevoll, DataQuick's chief analyst. Last month, the median price — the point at which half of all homes sell for more, half for less — rose 21.1% from a year earlier. That followed a 20.7% year-over-year increase in August and a 23.4% year-over-year gain in July. Karevoll attributed the flattening median in recent months to a leveling off of price increases in higher-end neighborhoods, while lower-cost markets continue to soar. For instance, in the Antelope Valley community of Lancaster, the median price rose 42% to $235,000 last month from a year earlier. But in 90210 territory — Beverly Hills — the median price was $1.54 million, down 0.3% from September 2003. Karevoll said he expected the county's rate of appreciation to ease to the mid-teens before the end of the year. That would be a shift from the nearly 30% year-over-year gains seen earlier this year when the number of buyers far outpaced the number of homes for sale. September was the 15th consecutive month that the county's median had risen at least 20% from a year earlier. In September, the median price of a resale house rose 22% from a year earlier to $425,000 as sales fell 6.2%. In the condominium market, the median increased 25% to $331,000 while sales declined 11.5%. New homes rose 7.6% to a median of $442,500 while sales fell 13%, according to DataQuick. Housing data for the remaining Southern California counties are expected today.

To: ild who wrote (19880)	10/13/2004 3:12:03 PM
From: t4texas	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

i listened to that marathon mdc conf call from yesterday. no matter how positive mgt. was, they were peppered with lots of skeptical questions about backlog, margins, material costs, sg&a, etc. from the charts and data mdc presented the backlog of homes in their high growth areas (cal, las vegas, az) is negative (a minus sign). the slight positive for backlog appeared to derive from new areas that mdc got from another builder acquisition (texas, new jersey). i don't own or have this stock short, but i heard the conf call was worth listening to. the call was just too long!