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To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (54737)11/25/2011 8:42:08 PM
From: pcyhuang2 Recommendations  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 95353
 
U.S. Industrial Production Rose to a New Cyclical High



Despite the worsening financial turmoil in Europe, US industrial production rose once again to a new cyclical high during October. Manufacturing output rose for the fourth consecutive month. It is up 4.1% y/y and 4.4% (saar) on average over the past three months compared to the previous three months. Production of business equipment has been especially strong, with information processing at a new record high and output of industrial goods at a cyclical high. Motor vehicle assemblies rose to 9.3 million units (saar) during October, up from the year’s low of 7.9 million units during all three months of Q2.

Also moving along nicely in the US is railcar traffic. The 26-week average of car loads rose to a new cyclical high of 292.7 units during the week of November 5, the highest since the week of February 21, 2009. Intermodal loadings rose to a new cyclical high as well and are approaching the record high near the end of 2006. Both suggest that production remains strong, while the intermodal data also suggest that imports are strong as the holiday season approaches. Recent inventories data suggest that most of the production and imports are going to meet final demand.



To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (54737)11/26/2011 2:58:14 AM
From: FJB1 Recommendation  Respond to of 95353
 
Maybe he only looks for breakouts?



To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (54737)11/26/2011 11:28:32 AM
From: Return to Sender4 Recommendations  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 95353
 
I don't mind a solid fact filled disagreement with my assessment of the market or any particular investment. I know I make mistakes. We all do but some people simply come off as hecklers and/or cheerleaders without ever managing to do a heck of a lot more than saying I'm right because I say I'm right.

The S&P 500 may have a P/E now as low as something like 13.8. Historically that's not too high.

investorsfriend.com

Without suggesting that the actual P/E ratio here is accurate I refer to the relative scale which suggests that the S&P 500 could fall substantially before we hit a historical bottom:



multpl.com

At a time that ECRI is pointing towards another recession and numerous world economies are at risk of credit default I cannot personally believe we have hit bottom yet. Looking at a longer term chart of the S&P 500 it's hard not to look back and remember that until 95 we had not accomplished much in the way of a market advance:



RtS



To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (54737)11/30/2011 11:23:33 PM
From: pcyhuang1 Recommendation  Respond to of 95353
 
OT: The Face of Wall Street Arrogance

Jon Corzine’s unbelievably swift fall is a classic story of Wall Street arrogance.

Just a few months ago, the Obama administration was considering Corzine as a possible successor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Investors in the bonds of his firm, MF Global, demanded the right to an extra percentage point of interest if he left as its CEO and chairman.

Nobody else on Wall Street makes a promise like that to buyers of its bonds. Not even JPMorgan Chase, run by Jamie “King of Wall Street” Dimon. Corzine had come to be regarded as a demigod, a divinity in the mortal world. Hercules with a trading desk.

And no one believed the myth of Corzine as much as Corzine himself. When explaining to associates and investors that he wasn’t preparing to leave to become treasury secretary, he never for a moment let on that he had any doubts that he could — and probably should — be running the highest economic office in the land.

Meanwhile, Hercules was pushing his firm to take on more Euro-debt risk — even as most Wall Street firms were shrinking their exposure to the sovereign bonds of troubled nations on Europe’s periphery. In filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, MF Global claimed that the market was wrong about Europe — and MF Global knew better.

“Volatility in the European sovereign debt markets created occasional dislocations in the cash and repurchase markets for certain short-dated securities, providing more trading opportunities in the quarter ending June 30, 2011,” MF Global said in what turned out to be its final quarterly report.

Except those “trading opportunities” turned out to be deadly. To paraphrase the British economist John Maynard Keynes, the market in European government bonds stayed dislocated longer than MF Global could stay solvent.

Corzine & Co. thought they’d developed a genius method of investing in the European sovereign bonds. In a trade called a “repo-to-maturity” on Wall Street, MF Global would borrow money from big banks, use that cash to buy bonds coming due in the next year or so, then use those very bonds as collateral for the loan. The bonds and the purchase loans matured at exactly the same time, so there was no risk of having to find new financing for the positions. In Wall Street parlance, there was no “refinancing risk.”

The trade was also supposedly free of what Wall Street calls “credit risk” — the risk that a borrower will not repay its loans. All of the bonds were protected by the European Financial Stability Facility, which wasn’t due to expire until after the bonds were paid off.

In fact, the EFSF lacked the funds to make good on this promise. Arrogant European bureaucrats had simply assumed that merely making the promise would put a halt to the “dislocations” — and Corzine seems to have assumed exactly the same thing.

This works great — until it doesn’t. As part of the repo-to-maturity deals, Corzine’s gang had to promise to put up more collateral for the loans if the prices of the bonds fell too far. And, despite the EFSF, prices did keep falling — requiring MF Global to pony up ever-larger sums to its trading partners.

(The firm’s books are a mess, but it now seems that it actually resorted to secretly using $1.2 billion in customer funds to cover its shortfalls — an illegal and appalling violation of its fiduciary duties.)

Investors, customers, and regulators grew anxious about MF Global’s financial health, shattering the Corzine myth. This wasn’t the son of Zeus at the head of a trading desk. It was a guy who’d put his trust in financial engineering (still, even after the lessons of 2008) and the ill-conceived bailout plans of European governments. The mortal blow for MF Global was the realization that Corzine was just a mortal man.

It’s tempting to blame “Wall Street greed” for Corzine and MF Global’s missteps, but something deeper was at work. Corzine has described himself as an “unabashed liberal.” His liberalism included a faith in the effectiveness of government and a suspicion that the best and the brightest know better than markets.

The ancient Greeks would have recognized this as hubris — thinking that you are equal to or greater than the forces of nature and the Gods. For the authors of the Greek tragedies, hubris always ends in ruin.

The collapse of MF Global and the ruin of Corzine’s reputation have taught us that the old lessons of the ancient Greek playwrights are still true — even on Wall Street.

Source: http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_face_of_wall_street_arrogance_8XAZ7crBF3ZbQFUEr5SyPK