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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (42553)	12/10/2005 7:50:48 AM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

Hi TJ, Don't you think gold might regress to about the $450 - $460 per ounce region some time, probably sooner or later? I feel confident that chartists will be used in abundance on the pm's. Pity I can't present volume data.. stockcharts.com[h,a]waclyyay[pb50!b200][vc60][iUb14!La12,26,9]&pref=G

To: TobagoJack who wrote (42553)	12/10/2005 1:03:05 PM
From: mishedlo	Respond to of 116555

High gas prices alter driving habits Record gas prices have put a dent in our driving habits. The growth in miles driven in the USA, a mostly steep climb for 25 years, has flattened in the past year as gas prices spiked, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Federal Highway Administration data. Driving in summer 2005 through August increased less than 1% - half the usual rate. Growth that slow hasn't occurred since the 1991 recession, according to the government's latest data, which are subject to revision. The population and workforce grow by a bit more than 1% annually, meaning more people drive to work, so annual gains of less than that indicate a decrease in miles driven per person. "There is a plateauing, or an extreme slowing of growth," says John Maples, research analyst at the Energy Information Administration. The $3-a-gallon mark was a trigger, he says. Americans are fighting high pump prices by combining a trip to the grocery store with business at the bank or taking a bus to work. Ed Olson, 36, who owns the bar Zella in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood, tries to schedule his errands together. "We try to make the dry cleaning trip and the trip to the bank on the same day." This mundane choice, multiplied millions of times each day, appears to be having an impact. The Urban Land Institute found that high gas prices, which peaked in early October after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, altered Americans' driving habits. The institute, a non-profit group that promotes innovative development, found that 81% of people it polled this fall combined errands and 45% eliminated some non-work trips. Nearly 90% said they'd driven to work the previous week, but 40% said they had carpooled or used mass transit in the past year. "Most Americans don't have a choice of how they get to work. They have to drive," says the institute's Ed McMahon. "So they've decided to eliminate optional trips (or) double up errands." Subway, bus and train systems saw growing ridership in the first half of 2005 as gas prices climbed, says William Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association. The rates of increase doubled in late summer and fall. "It seems very much associated with the rapid increase of gas prices at the end of August with Hurricane Katrina," Millar says. In the Chicago area, 3.4 million more people used buses and trains in August 2005 over the year before, says Scott McPherson of the Regional Transportation Authority. The Midwest had a 1.5% decrease in vehicle miles driven in August 2005 compared with 2004, the highway administration found. Will the changes be permanent? "It depends on what fuel prices do," Maples says. "We're hearing about the 'low' fuel price of $2 per gallon. Nobody would have said that a year ago. We're already being reconditioned to what's normal." news.yahoo.com

To: TobagoJack who wrote (42553)	12/10/2005 1:54:19 PM
From: mishedlo	Respond to of 116555

$5 Billion Hedge Fund Gets Clipped Millennium Partners reached a $180 million settlement with government officials to settle fraud charges. By Marcia Vickers The $5 billion hedge fund Millennium Partners, led by storied investor Israel A. Englander, reached a $180 million settlement today with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and the Securities & Exchange Commission to settle charges of elaborate mutual fund trading fraud. Millennium is the first hedge fund to reach an agreement with regulators regarding mutual fund timing since Canary Capital Partners in 2003. All of that $180 million will go toward restitution for the mutual fund shareholders, according to a press release issued by the attorney general’s office. "Millennium developed multiple schemes that cost mutual fund investors tens of millions of dollars," Spitzer said. "Restitution will be made to investors who were harmed." Millennium declined comment. FORTUNE first revealed the details of Millennium's schemes in its November 14 story, "Damaged Goods," about Englander, a 57-year old billionaire, and his gargantuan fund. Millennium has netted investors—including pensions and charities--an average of 17% a year since it started in 1989. But the complaint against Millennium—which was announced along with today's settlement--certainly brings some of those gains into question. Spitzer’s office alleges that between 1999 and 2003 the hedge fund used a scheme dubbed “flying under the radar” to open up numerous accounts at mutual funds and employ improper market timing and late trading strategies. (Late-trading is illegal; market timing is frowned upon by mutual fund companies because it hurts ordinary shareholders by diluting the value of their shares.) The trading netted profits in excess $100 million. To execute its scheme, Millennium created over 100 shell companies and opened some 1,000 accounts at 39 different brokerages or clearing operations, and used phony addresses to prevent the mutual funds from tracing the trades to Millennium. Also according to the complaint: Millennium used fake "family trusts" to illegally trade mutual funds. Some were named after employees, like the Andres Pillai Family Trust, named in part for a Millennium trader who was involved in the scheme. Englander was listed as a principal of one trust. Millennium’s chief operating officer Terence W. Feeney and general counsel Fred M. Stone were listed on other trusts. As FORTUNE reported earlier, employees at the hedge fund also purchased variable annuity life insurance policies that gave Millennium access to mutual funds through sub-accounts. That way, the hedge fund could camouflage its trading. The variable annuities had premiums as high as $35 million. Employees who purchased the insurance products had to be examined by a doctor and pass a physical. Englander rewarded them for their trouble with dinner for themselves and "a spouse or significant other," according to the complaint. Millennium Partners will pay $121.4 million as part of the settlement. Englander himself will pay $30 million in civil penalties and two management companies owned by Englander will pay a total of $26.6 million. Feeney, Stone and a trader will also pay penalties and receive regulatory sanctions. According to the SEC, Millennium has neither admitted nor denied the allegations. Some in the hedge fund community are wondering why Englander wasn’t charged with a failure to supervise his traders. Millennium, which employs upwards of 100 traders who incorporate a dizzying array of strategies, is known for its cowboy-like techniques on Wall Street. According to Spitzer’s complaint, a key Millennium investor who spoke with Englander after one of Englander's traders, Steven B. Markovitz, was convicted of securities fraud in 2003, noted that Englander more or less admitted he was “likely guilty of failing to supervise” his traders. The SEC declined to comment, and Spitzer's office says that this settlement supersedes any individual charges. In any case, Englander, Feeney and Stone have been barred from serving as officers or employees of an investment advisor or acting as an underwriter of a registered investment company for three years. But that probably won’t matter much to Englander, since hedge funds are largely unregulated anyway. Industry sources say Millennium is not registering with the SEC, although many hedge funds are now doing so. But according to the settlement, in order to keep operating Millennium must create new chief legal and compliance officer positions and retain an independent consultant as well as an oversight committee to manage legal, compliance and ethics issues. Separately, FORTUNE has learned that Millennium’s management fee is far higher than the 4% (a high number in and of itself) FORTUNE originally reported. Millennium traders say the hedge fund passes on all expenses to investors, and that the fee can be as high as 10% or more a year. According to experts, Millennium likely has the highest fees in the industry. Investors also pay a standard 20% fee on the fund's annual gains. Insiders say Englander’s annual salary includes around 4% of the total fees paid by investors. Last year he made $205 million, according to Institutional Investor. Given those resources, "The $30 million he has to cough up won’t make much of a dent in Izzy’s net worth," says an ex-Millennium trader. fortune.com

To: TobagoJack who wrote (42553)	12/10/2005 2:21:15 PM
From: mishedlo	Respond to of 116555

Changes effective 12/19: news.com.com "Besides Google, whose shares have soared 113 percent this year, the companies said to joining the index were: Activision, Cadence Design Systems, CheckFree, Discovery Holding, Expedia, Monster Worldwide, NII Holdings, Nvidia, Patterson-UTI Energy, Red Hat and Urban Outfitters." [...] "Besides Sanmina, whose shares fell 50 percent this year, the companies announced as being removed from the index were: Career Education, Dollar Tree Stores, Intersil, Invitrogen, Level 3 Communications, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Molex, Novellus Systems, QLogic, Synopsys and Smurfit-Stone Container."

To: TobagoJack who wrote (42553)	12/11/2005 2:03:45 AM
From: Taikun	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116555

TJ, Now you're talking sexy again! If we're only going to get meaningful pullbacks to $520 here might not be a bad place to add, now we've sliced through that resistance. I think hoping for a pullback to $470 when the Fed is near ending and helicopter Ben is being welcomed into office could be a smidgen unrealistic. Greenspans 25bp will not have an effect, and if China/Japan can't agree to continue to support Greenback, it will be nutz. BTW, I am noticing increased activity on ebay for gold pandas. I also phoned Panda America asking why I still don't have my order from 11/16 yet (usually quite prompt) and they said they were just getting ready to ship, on 12/9(!) Uh-oh. So I asked them "How's business?" "Crazy" and "Never been so busy" was the response. Ever feel like you still don't have enough gold? I do. Everyday I check the June 2010 Futures, and ask myself what Volker would say if asked to put a probability on a USD financial crisis between now and then. 70% odds? 80%? 90%? 100%?? D