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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (31421)	3/20/2008 9:45:44 AM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 218673

I think they'll first scare the unsophisticated commodities speculators silly, giving us what we are seeing now. Indeed, indeed. The plan is obvious and I've outfoxed 'em, i.e., joined them, but only for the moment, see what is happening to SMN, the commodities ultrashort, today. SRS is winking at me, looking very tasty, very, very sexy, very cheap.

To: carranza2 who wrote (31421)	3/20/2008 4:33:32 PM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 218673

I am as before, in the main: - long cash (hkd/usd, yen, chf, sgd, cad) - long gold, plantimun, silver, palladium, energy (oil, gas, coal, uranium), food, and japanese real estate - short financials, china, real estate, russell2000, mexico, and oil/gas again I am not worried in the slightest. As funds shrivel, they must buy back what they shorted and sell what they went long on; after that, debacle, as in alignment with the primary trend, in tune with the Force

To: carranza2 who wrote (31421)	3/20/2008 8:47:08 PM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 218673

from the pen pal who uses no capitals as far as i'm aware, the biggest culprit in the commodities plunge was the ongoing increase in margin requirements for hedge funds. this forces them to sell what they can sell. combined with very stretched net long positions, this took its toll. as to whether the rise in e.g. metals prices is in accordance with fundamentals - probably not if the global economy slows down markedly. however, inventories of industrial metals like e.g. copper keep falling. in platinum group metals, there are no inventories at all (except maybe palladium in Russia). regarding the agencies being 'allowed' to buy more mortgages, this effectively means: insolvent institutions (they'd be insolvent if their portfolios were marked to market) will be allowed to stretch their already severely damaged balance sheets even more, in order to buy securities the performance of which continues to deteriorate at a fast pace. quote from Kevin Depew , after listening to a Fitch update on MBS: "The most stunning part was the Fitch update on the roll rate for Subprime mortgages. The roll rate is where performing loans move from current to delinquent. Intuitively, one would expect that as we get further out in time, say 12-18 months, we would begin to see a decline in the roll rate, some positive selection, a survivorship bias. After all, that pool should hold a better overall credit risk borrower since the weakest borrowers and risks will theoretically have already dropped out of the pool and turned delinquent and/or defaulted. Incredibly, what is happening is that the roll rate is actually getting worse. But let's look on the bright side. This probably is just indicative of the fact that almost all subprime borrowers were poor credit risks, right? No, I don;t think so. In fact, I think it's more indicative of a coming acceleration in the deterioration of the overall housing market. The reason can be found in the Alt-A update. Although non-performance rates for Alt-A borrowers are better than Subprime, naturally, they too are accelerating. Moreover, Fitch says they are seeing deterioration in loan performance for not just the ARM Alt-A loans, but also the fixed loans as well. "