RF's Financial News

RF's Financial News

Sunday, September 23, 2012

This Week in Barrons - 9.23.12


This Week in Barrons – 9-23-2012

What time is it – on Obama’s Watch?

"We don't pay taxes, only little people pay taxes." …Leona Helmsley
"It's a racket, those stock market guys are crooked." …Al Capone
"I simply do not know where the money is." …Jon Corzine

This week the SEC ruled that Goldman Sachs would receive no penalty for its role in the mortgage meltdown.  It didn't matter that they were selling their clients securities and then shorting those same securities because they were "junk".  It didn't matter that they were appraising things fraudulently, or that they were involved with robo-signings.  On Obama’s Watch, “When you're too big to fail, you're too big to jail.”

JP Morgan is currently shorting over 135M ounces of silver.  That's about 28% of the entire Silver market.  Regulators don't seem to think that this gives them an ability to influence the price of silver!  And with the top 4 silver players in the market controlling one half of the entire market – regulators contend that there is no collusion, ganging-up, or backdoor deals.

For as long as I can remember, it has been known that if you're big and powerful, you fall under a different set of laws.  Can JPM short half the world’s production of silver, and no one see a problem with it?  Can Maxine Waters call the Fed, and get $12M out of them to support a bank that her husband just happens to run, and no one finds an “ethics” problem with it"  How is this happening on Obama’s Watch!

Remember the flash crash?  Well, it seems that if you PAY the NYSE – they will supply you with market moving data AHEAD of what goes to the consolidated feeds that the rest of the trading floor gets.  It seems that the investing public gets investing data in about 3.7 seconds.  If you are a proprietary trading desk PAYING the fees – you get the data in 2 Milliseconds – virtually a life time (and tens of millions of trading shares) ahead of the investing public.  This shows (without a doubt) market manipulation and fraud.  Yet NO ONE goes to jail on Obama’s Watch.

Why do I buy gold?  When I started buying gold I was laughed at.  People wrote me and told me that it was “dead money”.   Gold has no counter party attachment, because there's no interest or derivatives against it.  While the crooks (the JPM’s, the NYSE’s, and the Obama Regulators) can:
-       manipulate the prices of stocks, and bonds,
-       co-mingle your funds with their trading desks,
-       devalue the dollar,
-       artificially hold interest rates low,
they cannot do a single thing to the gold coin sitting on my desk.

Every week we learn more of the rules:
-       Since we know oil isn't going up due to demand, we can work with that.
-       Since we know the value of the dollar is being systematically lowered, we can work with that.
-       Since we know that QE “To infinity and beyond…” does nothing for the economy, and only bails out criminal banksters, we can work with that.
-       And since we know that no one cares about the rigging of the most important financial benchmark on the planet – LIBOR, we can even work with that!

On Obama’s Watch why do we use the U3 measure of unemployment, instead of U6 that we used during the Reagan years.  The reason is simple: under U3 the unemployment rate is 8.1%; however, under U6 (that we used for decades) the rate is over 15% (and no President is getting re-elected with a 15% unemployment rate!)

Last week, on Obama’s Watch, more people were admitted to the Social Security disability program – than got jobs. 

The stock market isn't up because the economy is better.  The market is up because The Ben Bernanke has decided to print more and more money out of thin air.  That money goes to the banks, and the banks use it to buy risk assets (stocks).  This will end badly – with an economic melt down, hyper-inflation, and massive unemployment.  As they say in the movie ‘Taken’: “Good Luck!”

The Market:

We’re stuck in a rut and drifting lifelessly.  Is that the way our market is supposed to behave after the European and Federal Reserve announcements?  Many people would say no; however, the market is not here to make YOU rich, it’s here to make THEM rich.  Everyone knew that the Fed's printing of $40B a month would result in investors wanting to get back into the stock market.  So during the week the market did what criminals do – invite investors in, and then (via sector rotations) take their money away.   

I have repeatedly stated that I fully expect this market to drop by 50%, but when is the key.  Will The Ben Bernanke's open-ended buying spree be enough to put off or delay the crash for another year or two?  Logic says:
-       With the Baltic dry index scraping the 2008 lows (showing that companies are NOT shipping product),
-       With company after company warning that the global recession is in full force and hurting earnings, and
-       With unemployment still absurdly high – this market has run out of gas.

But (in the short run) fraud always trumps logic.  The Ben Bernanke has told us that he's gone "all in", and is starting with $40B a month, and that could turn into $100B in a matter of months.  All of the rules, modesty, and fiscal sanity are gone.  By taking the Fed's balance sheet from $3T to $5T, the chances of a true market crash are unlikely in the short run.  Think of it like this: If someone gave you ‘free money’, and you (and your friends) could manipulate a stock to go from $50 to $300 a share – you’d be a fool not to invest in that stock – yes?  And since the economy won't get better, and unemployment won't fall, The Ben Bernanke has little choice but to continue pumping in billions.  This all ends with a situation where inflation causes it all to implode upon itself.  In the meantime, we’re all going to be living thru a period of worsening economic activity, all the while accumulating risk assets (stocks).  With that in mind, the thought of a short-term market slide of 30% or more just doesn't seem likely.

Since the old highs are so formidable, it's going to take a bit of base building here before we can muster the attack on them.  But my guess is that this market will be higher into year-end than lower.

Tips:
I stopped out of NTAP last week for a $1 gain.
Currently I’m holding:
-       GDX – in at 42.50 (currently 54.82) – stop at 52.80
-       SPY – in at 142.54 (currently 145.99) – stop at 144.50
-       SBUX in at 48.88 (currently 51.10) – stop at 50.60
-       LOW – in at 28.02 (currently 30.25) – stop at entry
-       MRO – in at 28.13 (currently 30.73) – stop at 28.80
-       NTAP – in at 35.13 (currently 35.81) – stop at entry
-       IBM – in at 198.34 (currently 205.99) – stop at 203.00
-       MNST – in at 53.80 (currently 54.23) – stop at 54.20
-       BRCM – in at 36.80 (currently 36.42) – stop at 36.30
-       GLD (ETF for Gold) – in at 158.28, (currently 171.94) – no stop ($1,775.60 per physical ounce), AND
      SLV (ETF for Silver) – in at 28.3 (currently 33.45) – no stop ($34.57 per physical ounce).

To follow me on Twitter and get my daily thoughts and trades – my handle is: taylorpamm. 

Please be safe out there! 

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