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

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (73945)	5/5/2011 12:22:53 PM
From: 2MAR$	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 218645

Leveraged Silver ETF Plunges Nearly 40% from Peak ( the bounce soon ) A leveraged exchange traded fund (ETF) for silver has fallen nearly 40% from its record high last week amid the historic sell-off in the metal. ProShares Ultra Silver ETF (NYSEArca:AGQ) was down about 10% on Wednesday and has fallen sharply this week with silver correcting hard. The ETF aims for daily results that correspond to 200% of the performance of silver bullion and is a leveraged bullish bet on the metal. Its leveraged bearish counterpart is ProShares UltraShort Silver (NYSEArca:ZSL) , which has soared this week. ProShares Ultra Silver ETF topped out at roughly $382 a share last week, and was trading around $240 a share Wednesday afternoon, representing a 37% pullback. The largest ETF for silver, iShares Silver Trust (NYSEArca:SLV), lost about 5% as daily trading volume again topped 100 million shares.

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (73945)	5/5/2011 8:26:26 PM
From: TobagoJack	Respond to of 218645

just in in-tray, greed n fear GREED & fear - The new bond conundrum, 5 May 2011 · GREED & fear’s first thought on hearing the Osama bin Laden news is that Barack Obama is now much more likely to enjoy a second term as president. Still the interesting point is what effect, if any, the successful mission by US special forces will have on American domestic politics. · The issue is whether the President will exploit his renewed momentum to support existing bipartisan proposals on fiscal consolidation. Such an approach can only work if the Democrats agree to cut entitlements in return to Republican agreement to raise taxes. GREED & fear’s bet is that Obama will agree to do the former if he can get some Republican agreement on the latter, which is clearly a big if. · While GREED & fear’s base case would be a continuing failure to achieve a meaningful deal on the fiscal issue, the bin Laden news has improved the prospects at the margin. Any surprise bipartisan deal on the fiscal issue would be very bullish for the “oversold” US dollar. GREED & fear would continue to advise investors to keep an eye on the all-time low of 70.7 on the US dollar index which is the obvious area for the American currency to have a bounce. · There has been much talk that the US Treasury bond market will sell off in June when the Fed stops buying Treasuries. The end of Fed buying will be an interesting test case of GREED & fear’s current assumption that the US bond market is not yet trading on supply concerns. That this is the case is suggested by the fact that the bond market has been rallying into the end of QE2. · This bond market action tends to confirm GREED & fear’s view that the credit multiplier is still not gaining traction. The same conclusion can be gleaned from the recent underperformance of US bank stocks. The reality is that, while banks may be increasingly willing to lend money, there remains a lack of credit worthy borrowers who want to borrow. · If banks cannot lend money, their growing preference will be to buy bonds, including Treasury bonds. There is huge scope for the banks to increase their ownership of Treasury bonds further. · Ben Bernanke also has more room for manoeuvre to engage in renewed quanto easing, should he wish to, because of the process whereby banks’ demand for Treasuries can drive government bond yields lower. If the 10-year Treasury bond yield falls below 3% again, investors should assume a renewed initiative in unorthodox monetary policy is coming sooner or later. · GREED & fear would still not own US bank stocks in a global portfolio. But they are vastly preferred here to European financials given the far greater leverage of European banks and given the far greater near term systemic risk in Euroland as a consequence of the continuing failure of Frau Merkel to come up with a policy addressing what is a solvency crisis and not a liquidity crisis. Euroland is heading for renewed investor freak out unless policymakers act more pre-emptively. · GREED & fear is of the view that the ECB’s tightening last month will prove to be a token one-off move rather than the commencement of a tightening cycle. Macro investors are now advised to bet that the ECB will not raise rates over the next two years by as much as the money markets expect. GREED & fear would also be strongly tempted to short the euro against both the US dollar and a basket of Asian currencies. · GREED & fear has been of the view in recent months that India is the Asian economy most vulnerable to inflationary pressures. The RBI has finally decided to try and get ahead of the curve with this week’s 50bp rise to 7.25% on the repo rate. This is the right move since non-food prices have not come down with food prices as had been expected by the RBI and most Indian economists. The RBI is finally putting controlling inflation above growth. Still the critical issue is how much more tightening is coming. · GREED & fear’s base case is that the Indian stock market will re-test the recent low of 17,296 on the Sensex reached on 11 February. This previous low should hold if the forecast of CLSA’s economics team is right and the RBI raise rates only by another 50bps in this tightening cycle to peak at 7.75% by 3QCY11. · Equity investors are hoping that the Bank of Japan will get more serious about combating deflation. One key issue is whether the sharp pick up in monetary base growth in March will prove to be just a one off precipitated by the earthquake. · BoJ deputy governor Kiyohiko Nishimura formally dissented from the BoJ’s decision at last week’s policy meeting not to increase the purchases of JGBs and other assets. This is extremely unusual in the Japanese context and hints at the political pressures building on BoJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa to move to more aggressive monetisation of the debt in the cause of post-quake re-construction. · GREED & fear would continue to advise US dollar-based investors in Japanese equities not to hedge the currency. But the critical issue for the yen-dollar cross rate is whether the BoJ become more aggressive than the Fed in terms of balance sheet expansion and the like. Please consider the environment before printing this email. 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