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Strategies & Market Trends : Waiting for the big Kahuna -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: robert b furman who wrote (92164)	1/5/2010 7:21:47 PM
From: GROUND ZERO™	2 Recommendations Respond to of 94695

The very FACT that there is such great nervousness and anxiety about the market at these current levels is more than enough proof to indicate that this is not a top, nor is the market anywhere near a top... a top will be near when everyone is bullish and when no one is left to be nervous or worried about the market... and when next month's unemployment numbers are released and that figure is lower than expected, these markets will already be much higher than where it is today... GZ

To: robert b furman who wrote (92164)	1/5/2010 11:48:16 PM
From: tdl4138	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 94695

I keep hearing about this upturn in the economy...but have failed to see it. The only exception are the continual stream of talking heads being paraded daily on CNBC. What business sector is hiring? I've been pricing out a new 3/4 ton PU and the dealers are dying. No business. Stopped in at one shop and the salesman said he had delivered 2 new units for the month. He used to average 18. Last week I spoke to the manager of a local John Deere shop. Asked him why they had no new inventory. He explained that they were cutting back physical inventory and trying to survive on "orders" and service. Should be interesting to see how well they do selling $200K tractors from glossy brochures. Last month had to take care of some business in the Tampa area. Hadn't been there in 2 years. The amount of vacant retail and light industrial space was scarry. Where is the economy coming back so strong? I agree that the rate of decline has slowed, but that's a far cry from an upturn.

To: robert b furman who wrote (92164)	1/6/2010 2:01:54 AM
From: ayn rand	6 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 94695

Who Is Responsible For The Non-Stop Market Rally Since March? "We do not know where all the money has come from. What we do know is that the U.S. government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to support the auto industry, the housing market, and the banks and brokers. Why not support the stock market as well? As far as we know, it is not illegal for the Federal Reserve or the U.S. Treasury to buy S&P 500 futures. Moreover, several officials have suggested the government should support stock prices. For example, former Fed board member Robert Heller opined in the Wall Street Journal in 1989, “Instead of flooding the entire economy with liquidity, and thereby increasing the danger of inflation, the Fed could support the stock market directly by buying market averages in the futures market, thereby stabilizing the market as a whole.” In a Financial Times article in 2002, an unidentified Fed official was quoted as acknowledging that policymakers had considered buying U.S. equities directly, not just futures. The official mentioned that the Fed could “theoretically buy anything to pump money into the system.” In an article in the Daily Telegraph in 2006, former Clinton administration official George Stephanopoulos mentioned the existence of “an informal agreement among the major banks to come in and start to buy stock if there appears to be a problem.” Think back to mid-March 2009. Nothing positive was happening, and investor sentiment was horrible. The Fed, the Treasury, and Wall Street were all trying to figure out how to prevent the financial system from collapsing. The Fed was willing to print whatever amount of money it took to bail out the system. What if Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, and the head of one or more Wall Street firms decided that creating a stock market rally was the only way to rescue the economy? After all, after-tax income was down more than 10% y-o-y during Q1 2009, and the trillions the government committed or spent to prop up all sorts of entities was not working. One way to manipulate the stock market would be for the Fed or the Treasury to buy $20 billion, plus or minus, of S&P 500 stock futures each month for a year. Depending on margin levels, $20 billion per month would translate into at least $100 billion in notional buying power. Given the hugely oversold market early in March, not only would a new $100 billion per month of buying power have stopped stock prices from plunging, but it would have encouraged huge amounts of sideline cash to flow into equities to absorb the $300 billion in newly printed shares that have been sold since the start of April. This type of intervention could explain some of the unusual market action in recent months, with stock prices grinding higher on low volume even as companies sold huge amounts of new shares and retail investors stayed on the sidelines. For example, Tyler Durden of ZeroHedge has pointed out that virtually all of the market’s upside since mid-September has come from after-hours S&P 500 futures activity. If we were involved in a scheme to manipulate the stock market, we would want to keep it in place until after the “wealth effect” put a floor under the economy of, say, three quarters of positive GDP growth. Assuming the economy were performing better, then ending the support for stock prices would be justified because a stock market decline would not be so painful. We want to emphasize that we have no evidence that the Fed or the Treasury are throwing money into the stock market, either directly or indirectly. But if they are not pumping up stock prices, then who else is?" -zerohedge TrimTabs Asks: Who Is Responsible For The Non-Stop Market Rally Since March; Gives Some Suggestions 12/31/2009