This week in Barrons - 09-26-10

This Week in Barons – 9-26-10:

Recession or Not – the Market Keeps Rising – How is this Possible?
Something very interesting happened last week on CNBC. President Obama did a "town hall" style meeting the very same day the NBER came out and said: "The recession ended in June of 2009". Now, this is only interesting because CNBC also interviewed Warren Buffet and by his own "common sense" definition, said that the United States is "still in a recession. I think we're in a recession until real per capita GDP gets back to where it was before. We're not gonna be out of ‘this recession’ for awhile." But wait this gets even better. Jack Welch (who was the CEO of General Electric for years and CNBC’s parent company) also comes on CNBC and says: “High unemployment may last for a long time because of the sluggish economy, bad politics, and advances in technology. President Barack Obama's administration has an anti-business bias, which manifests itself through intimidation, trade, taxes and regulation. The facts are in most businesses there's 20 to 25 percent excess capacity that they can fill in without adding any new people.” Now – who do you believe?

If you’re in a 10-foot hole, and you climb up 4 feet, you’re still 6 feet under – yes? With the economy, because of TARP, War spending, Cash for clunkers, etc. – we climbed up the hole a bit, but we never got out. Jobs never came back, work weeks never expanded, and capacity utilization never grew. All we did was pump up some economic activity (purchasing) and get a few quarters of sub par growth. BUT, despite the horrid headlines of increased first time unemployment claims, more banks being taken over in Florida – the market keeps going higher – AND – Gold and Silver are also climbing. How is this possible?

Normally gold goes up for protection from inflation. So if gold is going up because people are afraid of inflation, should stocks be going up too? Some will say - because inflation raises the prices of everything, including assets – stocks should be going up as well. Well, after listening to David Tepper on Friday – over the next 3 months – we’ll either recover on our own, or Bernanke is going to unleash a lot more quantitative easing. Which is simply another word for "print (and spend) a lot more money". When you print more money - it lowers the value of the existing dollars in circulation, and what we see is the dollar falling against other major currencies. The single biggest reason Gold is going up – is because the dollar is becoming worthless. Gold does not create wealth; it simply preserves the purchasing power of your currency. My son pointed out that there are ATM machines in Dubai that will now exchange currency for gold – right there – on the spot! The reason gold is going up, is that people the world over know that our administration and our Federal Reserve are going to effectively devalue the dollar – and effectively inflate away our debt burden.

But is the falling dollar any good for stocks? Now some will say it helps our export situation. When we were a manufacturing powerhouse and exported more than we imported, then yes, devaluing the dollar made tremendous sense. But today what really happens is that every working person is (in essence) getting taxed for our over-spending. For example: If you are currently making $1,000 per month (on somewhat of a fixed income) – and are making ends meet on that – and due to inflation – you need $1,500 to make ends meet – aren’t you going to cut back on what you might spend on TV's, clothes, etc – of course you will. Therefore – because we have a large number of people on fixed incomes (at least in proportion to those that will benefit due to increased exports) - the net net is that "we" lose purchasing power as the dollar falls. Now because China pegs their currency right below ours – believe me when I tell you – the currency wars are just BEGINNING.

The destruction of the dollar is sure. The currency wars are going to rage. And gold will probably just quietly keep rising. Stocks are the real "wild card". You see - two weeks ago the ratio of company insiders that were selling their shares, compared to those buying their shares was an astounding 650 to 1. So they are signaling that the stocks are going down. And, we’re also showing 22 consecutive weeks of mutual fund draw downs equaling $38 Billion. So with insider selling, the public selling, the news hitting new lows daily, high unemployment, lousy prospects – how does the market rise? Well, in Bernanke’s last FOMC statement he said: "We are prepared to provide additional accommodation if needed to support the economic recovery and return inflation, over time, to levels consistent with it's mandate." What this means is that QE2 (
Quantitative Easing #2) is in the ‘on-deck’ circle – warming-up. The idea behind QE2 (printing money) is that you push a lot of cash into the system, banks fill up and decide they'd better lend it out, and soon our credit economy will bloom and we're back to party mode. Unfortunately in the past the banks – hoarded the cash – borrowed more from the Fed at (0.2%) and lent it right back to the US Gov’t for 3.2% and were very happy making the 3% guaranteed. Well, if you shift your attention to stocks – and you’re able to buy so much stock that it forces the market higher – then you again get free money with no risk AND market gains. So the banks and Wall Street want QE2.

But again, no matter how much money they print, it still lowers the value of the money in circulation. So we have this "Gold". People are buying it because all the currencies of the world are being simultaneously taken down - on purpose. So, just as Mr. Tepper said: “It's real easy – if we recover stocks go up, if we get QE2 – stocks go up, and gold goes higher as well.” And (oh) Silver will tag along for the ride.

I tend to think the over riding difference however is that with stocks, you have to assume the underlying companies are going to be making money. Just bidding up the price of stocks will not last, if indeed the company’s earnings don't match the stock price with a P/E that is at least reasonable. There comes a tipping point, where prices exceed valuations to such an extreme we will crash. With Gold however, the price will only rise in relation to the destruction of the currency, "for the most part".

The Market:

- The market has shrugged off the dreaded "death cross" (when the 50-day moving average and the 200-day moving average cross).
- The market has shrugged off the mighty "head and shoulders" pattern that many said would plunge us lower.
- The market has shaken off the repeated "Hindenberg Omens" and Europe's sovereign debt.
- Free money will do that.

I think I know that at "some point" they're going to manufacture a pull down and take a lot of money from the people that are jumping onto this bandwagon. But, after that – do we just turn up and run higher again – if the Free Money spigot is open – probably. There’s a “smack-down” lurking out there – because nothing goes straight up (like this market has) without the wise guys yanking the rug now and again to "shake out the weak hands".

Everyday – my finger creeps closer and closer to that sell button.

Tips:
Let’s review our holdings:
GDXJ – a basket of gold miners
GG – IAG – NG – individual gold miners
GLD – PHYS – pegged to the price of Gold itself
SLW – SSRI – silver miners and indexes
All are up nicely from our original purchase – in fact I recently purchased more NG thinking that it could run to $10 if it can get over $9 – and we’re thinking of putting ‘trailing stops’ on these – so that we don’t lose all of our gains.

We’re still in VXX for the long haul.
We’re in and out (mostly out these days) of TZA, DXD and SDOW on a daily basis (these are ETF’s that allow you to invest directly in the market going ‘down’ – for those that do not like to ‘short’).

If you’d like to view my actual stock trades - feel free to sign up as a twitter follower – “taylorpamm” is my nickname on Twitter – fyi.

If you’d like to see me in action – teaching people about investing – please feel free to view the TED talk that I gave a 4 months or so ago now:

Remember the Blog:
Until next week – be safe.

R.F. Culbertson

This week in Barrons - 9-19-10

This Week in Barons – 9-19-10:

Ripley’s Believe IT no NOT?
Each and every day, we have really bad news hitting the wire:
- The Empire State Manufacturing Index fell by 40% - from 7.2 last month – to 4.1 this month (which was less than predicted)
- Industrial production and Utilization fell once again,
- Personal investing is down 5% in the past month, 16% year over year,
- New orders fell by a whopping 21 points,
- Initial jobless claims came in at 450,000 again,
- Realty trac says foreclosures spiked yet again and home sales were off,
- AND CNBC is still telling us about buying the housing dip – and consumer discretionary stocks!

My first question is: “What ‘discretionary’ income?” The part that the 8 million people on 99 weeks of unemployment are getting, or the part where demand has fallen off of a cliff for most products and services?

But yet – and here’s the “Believe IT or NOT?” portion - the market fearlessly holds up on lower volumes, less participation, and lousy economic news. With Obama’s popularity ratings hitting the equivalent of people's attraction to bed bugs, with the Democrats in a full blown panic mode, and with the Tea Party movement gaining in popularity – I guess they’re saying: “We must keep the market up, so it doesn't look like it crashed on our watch".

There’s no question that tons of people have just given up. Last week – when reviewing the New York pension plan – they found that it was insolvent and that their un-funded pension liabilities are just too large. Most states and insurance pensions are in the same boat, and without the ability to get ‘free money’ from the government they would be forced to completely fail and shut down. You see – from 1980 to 2000 the market experienced 8 to 10% returns, and all the pension and insurance fund managers have set up their projections and assumptions on the fact that they were going to take in 8% a year in stock returns. Well, since 2000, not only have companies lost more contributing workers (via the 8 million lay offs), they saw major recessions and major stock market declines as well. So, there's literally "thousands" of pensions that simply would not exist if not for regulators allowing “funny”.

To win in this market – you need to think like a computer algorithm – because that is what is causing all the volume. What I look for are stocks right at resistance. If the market is falling, you can short it but only for a very short time, as the FED will step in to reverse the fall. So, really fast short sales, and stocks leap-frogging over a resistance level will put money in your account. This week we recommended RIG and CTXS. These recommendations were not based upon fundamentals, sales or their P/E – but rather - by looking at the put/call ratio and resistance levels. With the market was moving sideways, and both were against their resistance – they broke thru and ran for nice gains.

Now one element to review is the VIX. The VIX is a volatility index – and when it moves higher - it that means that people are going to be more fearful, and that the market is going to be going lower (people would be more fearful as they saw the market decline). A quick review: The CBOE Volatility Index, also known as the "fear gauge" and commonly known as the VIX, (VXX) is best used to find market bottoms. It's more effective at telling traders when fear is so high that they need to sober up and become one of the few buyers of cheap stocks that nobody wants. Basically, the VIX reflects how over-priced or under-priced options are. When traders become more fearful, they buy options. When they are scared out of their minds, they are willing to overpay for options, just like a person who thinks they have a high risk of health problems or death would be willing to pay high insurance rates -- and the VIX goes up – which is why the VIX is currently around 20 (calm), and was approaching 100 during the 2008 crash. The VIX is better used to call market bottoms than tops because complacency and fear are more gradual, while extreme fear tends to be short-lived, creating an opportunity that you can trade. When the VIX spikes too high and reverses, that's a "market buy signal", but sometimes, we are able to use the VIX as a signal that investors are way too complacent. There is a VIX "buy signal" (stock market "sell signal") that happened last week – and typically, the market takes a week or two to begin to correct. Now the last time the VIX-BB signaled over-complacency was in January, 2010 (right before the sovereign debt fears surfaced again). Then once again in April, when investors realized the sovereign debt issue wasn't just going to go away. We recently started hearing about the sovereign debt issue again, and we got the same signal.

Due to this VIX signal – I’m not sure if the market declines from here or breaks out. But my feeling is that, if we get a breakout, it will be short lived (maybe a couple months -- MAX), followed by another sharp move down. If the market breaks down from here, however, taking out the 1,040 lows on the S&P 500, my feeling is it will a sustained move lower.


Now onto the market..
A famous trader recently summed up the market as thus: "the market has become self-referential, an algorithm playing itself out, almost the way you would run a self-recursive equation on a computer. You end up getting very unpredictable results from very simple equations. I’m afraid the market has degenerated into a joke."

Bottom line? "someone, somewhere" is pushing this thing up. Why do I think this? Well:
- The market is going up on lower and lower volume
- The market is going up when 38 billion in mutual fund money is leaving,
- The market is going up despite an undeniable slowdown in economic activity, and this can really only mean a couple things: 1) it is being propped up, or there’s a real possibility that Bernanke's going to launch Quantitative Easying – Part 2 – which will be another $2.5 to $5 Trillion in monetary injection. Wall Street simply loves free money, so they could be buying it up, knowing that more of it is coming.

Currently we are oversold – from being up "too many" days in a row. Even if we were in the depths of the greatest bull market of all time, it cannot go up every day. I stick by my feeling that we are awful close to at least a quick 400+ point sell off if not more. So we might have to start looking for a quick short side sale or two.

Oh by the way, lot's of people are really getting interested in gold and silver now. Understand that's the way it always happens. Something runs for years and years, yet it gets no attention. Then it busts free of historical highs and all of a sudden "everyone" wants in. We've been in gold and silver for over 10 years, and it's been the single best investment of our entire lives. If you look at an ounce of gold like a "share of stock" the stuff we bought in 2001, is now up 1000 dollars per share. There's a good chance it will pull back a bit, make the newcomers sweat and sell back out and then push forward again. I see 1500 dollar gold, probably by February.

For those of you looking for a gold play, and have none of the miners or aggregators, consider taking a look at NG. We took on a position a while back at 6.80 and it's now 8.72. If it can get up and over it's May highs at about 9.20 it could hit ten in really rapid fashion.

But what you need to really ask is - What happens the day after the elections? Honestly, I’m still in a couple of stocks – but getting more and more ready to sell them and "see what's next'.

Tips:
Let’s review our holdings:
GDXJ – a basket of gold miners
GG – IAG – NG – individual gold miners
GLD – PHYS – pegged to the price of Gold itself
SLW – SSRI – silver miners and indexes
All are up nicely from our original purchase – in fact NG has truly exceeded our expectations – and if it can get over $9+ it could run to $10 fairly quickly.

We’re out of RIG now – sold for a nice profit.
We’re in VXX for the long haul.
We’re in and out of TZA, DXD and SDOW on a daily basis (these are ETF’s that allow you to invest directly in the market going ‘down’ – for those that do not like to ‘short’).

If you’d like to view my actual stock trades - feel free to sign up as a twitter follower – “taylorpamm” is my nickname on Twitter – fyi.

If you’d like to see me in action – teaching people about investing – please feel free to view the TED talk that I gave a 4 months or so ago now:

Remember the Blog:
Until next week – be safe.

R.F. Culbertson

This week in Barrons - 9-12-10

This Week in Barons – 9-12-10:

Not IF but When Silver hits $50?
Remember Gold - I predicted in June of 2009 - we'd see 1500 by the summer – well, we only made it to 1261. We didn't get as far as I thought, but we are certainly headed in the right direction. I am pretty convinced we'll see that 1500 level by December or January. Now, in January of 2009 silver was $10 an ounce, and it hit $20 this past week. Not a bad return – aye?

Secondly – if I told you someone was committing a crime – over and over again – you’d potentially investigate and determine if I were nuts or potentially had some truth to it. Well, over the years I've told you over and over again that silver is the most manipulated metal on earth, and that organizations are making billions by naked shorting it. This past week, Ted Butler (a man who has been leading the charge to bring some justice to the silver market) noticed that JP Morgan again went “all in” naked shorting the silver market. Now, allow me to explain exactly what that means. Silver is a unique metal, and is used in so many areas of electronics, that its manufacturing demand has risen between 2 and 9% per YEAR for the past 45 years. Currently, demand outstrips supply. This means that someday we will run out of physical silver – at the current price. Now, we’ll never really run out because as supply gets short – prices will increase until equilibrium is reached. This week – the Bank Participation Report showed an increase in shorts in silver contracts, to the equivalent of 157 Million ounces of silver, and the top name on the list was JP Morgan. Currently JPM has shorted over 20% of the entire world production of silver. Do they have the silver to carry that short? Nope – it is "naked" – meaning not backed by anything. JPM was allowed to just push a button and produce billions of dollars worth of short interest. Now, could that actually move the price of silver – absolutely! And once the price of silver drops 2 dollars – guess who comes in and buys the silver – yes JP Morgan, and because it was a naked short – instant profits! We have to know that very high-ranking officials are allowing this to happen. The fact is that this same process has been going on for 35 years, but each and every day the pressure mounts. Each day there is less physical silver available, and more manufacturing that needs it. Each day the economy crumbles, people look for a way to preserve their capital, as savings accounts paying 0.9% don't cut it. What no one counted on was John Q. Public starting to buy silver. This new investment demand coupled with the manufacturing demand is exhausting the supply ‘at this price’. Remember, on January 15, 2009 - silver was $10.50 an ounce and today it's $19.90 after being over 20. That is almost a 100% increase in a little more than a year. So I think silver is a great investment – after all we discovered SLW at $3, and now it’s over $24.

The Market:
Last week, the Bank of Japan left its interest rate at 0.1% and the Reserve Bank of Australia left its rate at 4.5%. However, both central banks warned that a deteriorating U.S. growth outlook is making it harder for them to set monetary policy. Yes, the deteriorating US economy is causing problems for nations all around the globe. Last week, John Paulson's $3B Recovery Fund lost 9%, erasing its 6.5% gain in July and compounding its 12.6% Q2 loss. Bullish positions in Citigroup (C) and Bank of America (BAC), coupled with bets on an upswing in the U.S. housing market, have soured the fund. So the gent who had his pulse on the housing market – made billions guessing right on the housing bubble – is now betting wrong.

On Thursday we heard that the initial jobless claims had dropped by 25K and everyone was sure that things were getting better. Then a Bloomberg news item showed that because of the Labor Day Holiday, 7 states hadn't filed their unemployment data and the Government just "guessed" at the number. So what if the government guessed 4k light (by mistake) on each of the 7 states? And when was CNBC going to tell us this? And last week we learned that losses in the chip sector pressured the tech sector. It seems that third quarter many chip companies - citing weak demand for personal computers and other devices that use microchips, lowered guidance. This tells us that consumers are not spending as much as expected.

In any case, the market held up this week, on horridly low volumes, and as you know, on low volume they can do a lot of pushing, and despite being up just 12 points in the afternoon, they did their "weekend push" in the last moments and we ended with a 48 point gain. So, here we are in September, historically the worst month of the year, but we just had one of those in August – and is it possible that August will be the worst month in 2010 and we can go higher in Sept/Oct/Nov/December? Sure it is - the game is rigged – just like it is in silver.

We just came through 7 UP days in a row – and I’m thinking that on Monday we should start something of a pullback. We liked the looks of RIG if it could get up and over 55.50, and it did that on Friday. So, we bought and by noon it was up over $60, an incredible one day run. We sold half our position. I tend to think that this week we’ll see some backfilling; so short-term short positions sound about right for a bit.

Tips:

Let’s review our holdings:
GDXJ – a basket of gold miners
GG – IAG – NG – individual gold miners
GLD – PHYS – pegged to the price of Gold itself
SLW – SSRI – silver miners and indexes
All are up nicely from our original purchase.

We’re in RIG – but only half or a position.
We’re in VXX for the long haul.
We’re in and out of TZA, DXD and SDOW on a daily basis (these are ETF’s that allow you to invest directly in the market going ‘down’ – for those that do not like to ‘short’).

If you’d like to view my actual stock trades - feel free to sign up as a twitter follower – “taylorpamm” is my nickname on Twitter – fyi.

If you’d like to see me in action – teaching people about investing – please feel free to view the TED talk that I gave a 4 months or so ago now:

Remember the Blog:
Until next week – be safe.

R.F. Culbertson

This week in Barrons - 9-5-2010

This Week in Barons – 9-5-10:

Why Does It Still Go Up?
Considering that the economic reports are dismal at best, and horrid at worst - how and why does the market move up? The FED’s made it quite clear that they will use "every manner possible, both conventional and non conventional" to keep the economy from a deflationary depression. We all need to understand that the money the Fed ‘prints’ – is ‘chasing away’ real investment. This is why after years of bailouts, easing, and Fed maneuvers - we still have unemployment hovering at Great Depression levels. It keeps things afloat, but it's not real growth. The second the money flow stops, the economy stops.

Now – if a rising stock market makes people feel better (and study after study shows that it does) then doesn't it make sense that "Job One" of the current administration would be to make the market either go up, or at least hold steady? It’s interesting to note that most Americans have their stocks in 401K plans, and 97% of all 401K’s have NO PROVISION to go short in the market!

After the market crash of 1987, President Reagan created the "Presidents Working Group on Capital Markets". For the past several years, this group (which we call the Plunge Patrol Team (PPT)), simply buys tens of billions of dollars worth of market futures when ever they want the market to rise. We saw real evidence of this past Tuesday – when 2 minutes ahead of the close they purchased 200,000 S&P contracts. Interestingly, on Wednesday the market opened big and ran for 250 points – and the only real news was a pseudo-good ISM (manufacturing) number.
- FYI - the ISM manufacturing number actually gained 8 TENTHS of a point.
- The same morning the ADP employment report was looking to show 20k new jobs created – it showed 9k jobs lost! That number was ignored.
- We had a terrible jobs report on Friday – loosing 54k jobs – and that included a ‘birth-death’ model showing 115k ‘fictitious’ jobs had been added to the workforce!
- Then the ‘non-manufacturing’ ISM number was released (and remember we’re basically a service society) and it FELL by 2.5 points – and we ran on Friday for another 100 points to the upside!

Now remember 2 years ago when I wrote that the U.S. would be coming for each individual citizen’s 401k – well currently there is a bill in Congress that would require every company that has 10 or more employees to have a mandatory retirement program where 3% of each paycheck goes right into a government IRA – it’s called the Automatic IRA Act of 2010.

Now – if the U.S. ‘taxes’ each employee and forces them to ‘invest in’ / ‘buy into’ a ‘retirement fund’ / ‘Government bond’ won’t that be hundreds of billions of dollars instantly invested into the market – yes! And won’t that drive stock prices higher – yes! As Al Capone once said: “The stock market is more crooked than I am!” I have to think that if Al was alive today – he’d be CEO of Goldman Sachs. The point of all this was to show why and HOW the market can and will perform illogically.

Often I have a pretty good knack for guessing when they'll run the market up and when they'll let it fade – but this week caught me completely off guard. It started on Tuesday right before the close with the Fed pouring on the ‘juice’ and continued on into Friday. Interesting on Friday – we learned that individuals had taken another $5 Billion OUT of mutual funds last WEEK – going into bonds, gold and silver. I’m still waiting for a ‘junior congressman’ to ask the question – “If there are more sellers than buyers – How is the market going up?” So understand Wall Street has the capability of running this market to 12K before it goes to 8K and back to 11K before it falls to 5K. Honestly – Gold isn’t back to $1250 per ounce and Silver back to almost $20 per ounce because people like it’s shine – it’s there because it’s a safe hedge against inflation and against manipulated prices. I continue to buy gold and silver.

The Market
A wild week, and I'm not ashamed to admit I got the direction wrong. I said last Sunday we'd probably end the week lower than it started, and that was working fine on Monday and Tuesday. But then on Wednesday the FED took over and we ran for almost 500 points. So, what happens now – do we run to 11k, 12k, or even 14k? I don’t think so. Potentially the FED wanted to cover a bad jobs number, a bad ISM number, or any one of other conditions.

September is historically the worst month of the year; however, whenever a pattern becomes that exposed, it often changes. What I know is that in 3 days we went from ‘oversold’ to ‘overbought’. I imagine that Tuesday will be filled with weekend cheer – and we’ll go up some more, but I’m having a hard time believing they can pull off any more significant gains. Even for a ‘manipulated’ market, 500 points is a lot in a few days.

My guess is that we open big and fat on Tuesday and by mid-day Wednesday we start seeing some of the shine come off. Then it will be decision time, do they goose it, or roll it over?

I have started to accumulate the VXX. Down here at the 19+ and 20 level, it's showing that no one is afraid of anything – not war, bank failure, or even Europe collapsing. It's often times of complete calm and serenity that something usually pops up, and I just think people are a bit too complacent. It may fall further, that's fine, I'll just buy more. But to think things just go along without something going ‘bang’ in the night just sounds too good to be true to me.

A couple thoughts:
- DE (John Deere) closed at a high on Aug 8 at 69.29. Then it fell off and has rallied back. Friday they ran right up to 69.22 but couldn't bust that high. I'd be inclined to buy it if it got over that 69.25 close, and the market was flat to rising – I’ll put more of these ideas on Twitter this week (I promise!)
- On the flip side - if the market does start to pull back, I wouldn't be against shorting something really liquid like the SPY if it failed 110.00.

Have a wonderful Holiday.

Tips:

Let’s review our holdings:
GDXJ – a basket of gold miners
GG – IAG – NG – individual gold miners
GLD – PHYS – pegged to the price of Gold itself
SLW – SSRI – silver miners and indexes

All are up nicely from our original purchase – but we had to live thru some ‘red’ to get there. We’re in and out of TZA, DXD and SDOW on a daily basis (these are ETF’s that allow you to invest directly in the market going ‘down’ – for those that do not like to ‘short’).

We’re beginning to accumulate a position in the VXX because we see increased volatility coming. The metals we like for a long time – unless something dramatic occurs. The ETF’s we’re in and out of – depending upon the feel of the market.

If you’d like to view my actual stock trades - feel free to sign up as a twitter follower – “taylorpamm” is my nickname on Twitter – fyi.

If you’d like to see me in action – teaching people about investing – please feel free to view the TED talk that I gave a 4 months or so ago now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2Z9I_6ciH0&feature=PlayList&p=6F63374ED7A97658&playnext_from=PL&index=5

Remember the Blog http://rfcfinancialnews.blogspot.com/
Until next week – be safe.

R.F. Culbertson
rfc@getabby.com
http://rfcfinancialnews.blogspot.com

This week in Barrons - 8-29-10

This Week in Barons – 8-29-10:

How Do You Know What's Real?
From an academic stand-point, during every downturn of the last 25 years, one thing you could count on was that people would "huddle" – meaning that people would cluster around the TV instead of going out to eat, or to the movies. Well this week this piece of news came across my desk: “The number of subscribers to cable, satellite and telecom TV services in the U.S. fell for the first time ever, in the second quarter. The U.S. multichannel TV market lost 216,000 customers last quarter, vs. a gain of 378,000 a year ago. Now, is that because more are using the Internet, or is it because people in foreclosure, with no jobs - have no way to pay it – or both?

This week brought us a tremendous amount of horrid economic news:
- existing housing sales fall 27% month over month
- home "inventories" are at their highest levels ever recorded
- new home fell 12.4%
- durable goods orders were up 0.2%, BUT after you take out transportation, they fell 2%, AND after you remove aircraft they fell 5%.
- 34 out of our 50 states are showing deficit spending for 2011 – the worst are: Nevada at 54%, Illinois at 41.5%, New Jersey at 38.3%, Arizona at 36.6%, North Carolina at 30.3%, Connecticut at 28.9%, South Carolina at 25.6%, California and Colorado at 21.6%, Florida at 20.2%, and New York at 37.3%. And it gets worse in 2012.

How are the states going to get the money to plug those holes? Raise taxes or cut services or both. And wouldn’t that mean even more job losses – YES. Is unemployment still 9.5% - well the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that if you add the people that fell ‘off’ the unemployment roles – the figure is approximately 17% - and if we include the ‘under-employed’ that raises the bar to over 25%.

One element is clear is that John Q. Public is finally ‘scared.’ For the first 7 months of this year - individual investors have pulled $32 Billion out of mutual funds. Also the amount of people pulling money out of their 401k's for "hardship withdrawals" is moving up rapidly. This is the slow motion train wreck that I continue to harp on. Look at the market, on down days we’re seeing large volumes and on up days anemic volume. As the economy deteriorates, as more people cut back, how can Obama continue to preach recovery?

If you want a true barometer of economic activity – examine adult toys – for example power boats. Factually – outside of charter fisherman – no one really needs a boat – and when the bills begin to pile up – the toys begin to go. Right now – a boat that sells new for $130,000 – will sell one or two years old for $40,000. That’s right – less than 30 cents on the dollar.

In terms of what you should do: (a) don't over extend, (b) save your money, and (c ) learn how to short the markets. Gold and Silver won't make you rich, but they will protect you from inflation and deflation when they hit.

Oh and by the way, (2 years ago) when I originally stated my prediction of DOW 5,000 – I think I was alone. Now it’s becoming crowded down here because this week several big name "analysts" have come out with DOW 5K predictions. The latest came from Charles Nenner, a gent who has made some accurate calls in the past said: “Stocks are currently in a bear-market rally, and looking at charts and past trends, unemployment and leading indicators suggest the Dow will drop to 5,000 in the next two to two-and-a-half years, and things look really bad for the next 10 years.”

The Market:
It’s getting harder and harder to manipulate a market – as more and more people get out of it. With people taking money OUT of their 401k's just to live on, and $32 Billion coming out of mutual funds this year already – it’s becoming more and more difficult to pull off big rallies.

But Friday we had a nice rally. The street wanted to hear more about how Bernanke and the Fed would flood the world with liquidity. Well he didn't say that. He said he was standing firm, but if the economy got weaker then he would use more easing and "other tools" to stimulate the market. At first they market fell on the news – we were red by 50 points moments after the statement – but then we ended the day up 164 points.

Did Bernanke really say anything we didn't know? I don't think so. GDP was substantially revised downward. Unemployment is still a problem. First-time jobless claims came in at 473k rather than 500k the week before. Honestly, all Friday was - was a slightly over-sold bounce. On the 17th we were at DOW 10,480, then fell to 9,937 and now we’re at 10,151 – off 350 points for the week.

This time the problems that we face are different. This is a credit and balance sheet recession not a business cycle one. And the responses to this recession are going to be different as well. We've had overnight lending at 0% for YEARS now – that’s new. We gave out Trillions of $’s in bail outs – that’s new. We took over GM – that’s new. We gave people $8,000 to buy a house – that’s new.

The Fed is going to fight this recession with all that they have – and we’re going to see wild, massive runs higher – and in particular this bounce could last for another couple of days into Monday or Tuesday. But then it will fade and we will be looking at September – historically the weakest month of the year, with no earnings and nothing but infighting as the politicians fight over the elections – I think we can lean short again soon.

Tips:
We’re in metals and beginning to strengthen our positions in ‘short’ ETF’s: We’re back in TZA, DXD and SDOW (all 3 inverse market ETF’s. We’re also in the VXX because we see increased volatility coming. The metals we like for a long time – unless something dramatic occurs. The ETF’s we’re in and out of – depending upon the feel of the market.

If we see a continued run – you may want to look at CTXS over 59.5 for example.

If you’d like to view my actual stock trades - feel free to sign up as a twitter follower – “taylorpamm” is my nickname on Twitter – fyi.

If you’d like to see me in action – teaching people about investing – please feel free to view the TED talk that I gave a 4 months or so ago now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2Z9I_6ciH0&feature=PlayList&p=6F63374ED7A97658&playnext_from=PL&index=5

Remember the Blog http://rfcfinancialnews.blogspot.com/
Until next week – be safe.

R.F. Culbertson
rfc@getabby.com
http://rfcfinancialnews.blogspot.com

This week in Barrons - 8-22-10

This Week in Barons – 8-22-10:

If you own 10 stocks – 9 may got down … but not Gold
I’m writing from Chicago – picking up my oldest son from his summer internship – so this letter will be slightly abbreviated.

I caught a headline yesterday: “Fidelity Investment says 62,000 people tapped their 401K’s for "hardship withdrawals". And here I thought we were ‘recovering.’ At just Fidelity – 62,000 people are pulling cash out of their 401K’s (at a penalty) because they have absolutely no choice if they want to survive.

And how about this headline on Saturday morning: “'JERSEY SHORE' ratings beat most broadcast shows. Have you ever seen it – it’s an MTV show about some young people who go to the Jersey shore to party, date, get wild, chase girls and guys, get drunk, etc. That is what is beating out broadcast journalism?

I then found the following:
- Nearly half of the 1.3 million homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration's flagship mortgage-relief program have fallen out of the program
- ShoreBank of Chicago to Be Closed by FDIC
- USA DEBT = $13,310,379,000,000
- California faces issuing IOU’s again
- Experts say that the U.S. can no longer afford tax breaks for Housing
- Philly Fed reading plunges to -7.1
- Initial jobless claims exceed 500K for first time in months
- Personal bankruptcy ties the 2005 record
- Food stamp usage up, now 41 million need help

What’s really going on in America is that the ‘Jersey Shore’ ostrich is sticking his head in the sand. What can you do? First à I tend to think you better get some gold, silver and some related stocks. Second à In November you better “Vote the Bums Out!”

An old colleague sent me these thoughts this week: There are 535 people in Congress – each state has 2 Senators and 435 Representatives. How can those 535 say they hate inflation - yet vote for inflationary programs. The 535 say they hate debt - yet we're the most indebted nation the planet has ever seen. The 535 say they want what's fair for America – but THEY won't be using Obama's healthcare plan, they get unlimited pensions, and YOU get the bill. The 535 say they want jobs in America - then sign bills that favor elements exiting our shores. So job #1 is to not sleep thru the elections, and Job #2 is the gold silver lining.

Just this week we found out another 500,000 NEW people registered for unemployment. The only thing that keeps us from outright social meltdown are the social programs like food stamps, unemployment, etc. - but those programs are all being funded with debt – and you just can’t borrow yourself out of debt.

The Market:
Well, this week Wall Street said “the fight is on.” CNBC tells us that the weakness we saw this week was because of sagging economic numbers. Honestly, we’ve had sagging number for months on end. What's really happening is that Wall Street is telling the Fed that they weren't completely happy with Ben’s last statements about how much "re-inflating" Ben's going to do. Wall Street wants more – and the Fed held their ground. So, Wall Street decided to show the Fed what happens to the markets when they don't get what they want. Factually: there are certain levels the market has to maintain at options expiration where it will extract the most amount of money from the most people. The market (the casino) knows how many Puts and Call options have been purchased – and as their expiration draws near – it’s relatively easy to compute where to place the market in order to extract as much money as possible. That level for the S&P was 1090 – and on Tuesday we ended at 1092 and on Wednesday at 1094.

In a nutshell - I think that the market will continue to go lower until the Fed cries ‘Uncle’. And in more ‘normal’ times I’d say that the Fed would cry ‘Uncle’ fairly soon; however, this time we have the November Elections coming, and it's pretty certain that most people have had enough of Obama's Democrats (the incumbents). That means we could see a Republican take over – and that is gaining Bernanke's ear. In the past the party in power would simply pull Mr. Bernanke aside and explain to him that in order to keep his job – he’d better do the ‘right thing’ to keep John Q. Public’s 401K above water. But now the Republicans are saying – if the 401K’s go further ‘underwater’ - that may guarantee us the November Election! So between The Street’s actions and Ben being caught like a ‘deer in headlights’ (not doing anything) - this fight could get interesting.

I think we’re going lower and I'm leaning short. Until the Fed comes out and tells the world of some new stimulus programs – I don't see how they keep the market up – and between the technical patterns – the “death cross” and the "head and shoulders" pattern - it's my guess that if the Fed doesn't open it's mouth, all of these omens are about to come true and we're going down and potentially down hard.

Tips:
We’re in metals and beginning to strengthen our positions in ‘short’ ETF’s: We’re back in TZA, DXD and SDOW (all 3 inverse market ETF’s. We’re also in the VXX because we see increased volatility coming. The metals we like for a long time – unless something dramatic occurs.

If you’d like to view my actual stock trades - feel free to sign up as a twitter follower – “taylorpamm” is my nickname on Twitter – fyi.

If you’d like to see me in action – teaching people about investing – please feel free to view the TED talk that I gave a 4 months or so ago now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2Z9I_6ciH0&feature=PlayList&p=6F63374ED7A97658&playnext_from=PL&index=5

Remember the Blog http://rfcfinancialnews.blogspot.com/
Until next week – be safe.

R.F. Culbertson
rfc@getabby.com
http://rfcfinancialnews.blogspot.com

This week in Barrons - 8-15-10

This Week in Barons – 8-15-10:

Flush with ‘Cash’ – well – FLUSH ‘Something’:
CNBC keeps telling us about all the cash that Corporations have on hand and how that proves that they’re in great shape. And how with a $1 Trillion in cash – let’s stimulate growth and jobs? Do you know why the Corporations are sitting on a $1 Trillion in cash? It’s because they've borrowed $7.1 TRILLION dollars in nonfinancial industry debt loads. Quoting from Marketwatch: “Commerce Department data reveal that gross domestic debts of nonfinancial corporations now amount to 50% of GDP. That's a postwar record. The Fed data underline the poor state of the U.S. private sector's balance sheets," reports financial analyst Andrew Smithers. "While this is generally recognized for households, it is often denied with regard to corporations. These denials are without merit and depend on looking at cash assets and ignoring liabilities. Cash assets have risen recently, in response to the fall in inventories, but nonfinancial corporate debt, whether measured gross or after netting off bank deposits and other interest-bearing assets, is at peak levels."

So, these big wonderful cash flush companies - are really broke and in hock up to their ears. They owe $6 Trillion more than they have. My bigger issue is why anyone on CNBC isn’t telling us that? We also had David Rosenberg (chief economist at Gluskin, Sheff and Assoc. say on Friday: “The odds of a double-dip recession in the U.S. are "certainly higher than 50-50, and the economy could contract again by the end of this year – and is unlike anything we’ve seen in the post war period."

Very few of us remember the 1930’s – but in the 30's the US confiscated the nations gold and basically defaulted. The US pulled off the single biggest robbery of all time. It happened by Executive order - the same type of Executive order that President Obama has used 36 times already in his short career. Executive Order 6102 required all U.S. citizens to deliver on or before May 1, 1933 all but a small amount of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates owned by them to the Federal Reserve, in exchange for $20.67 per troy ounce. Most citizens who owned large amounts of gold had it transferred to countries such as Switzerland. Then, once they had everyone's gold, the government crushed the currency. They raised the price of gold from the treasury for international transactions to $35 an ounce. The resulting profit that the government realized funded the Exchange Stabilization Fund in 1934. Yes – they gave you $20.67 per ounce – and then instantly raised it to $35 an ounce. That was the single biggest outright robbery in the history of our nation.

Now we could go on and on about what has happened without a gold standard – the 90’s run up and crash, the housing bubble, soaring inflation, 41 million on Food stamps, cities laying off police and firemen, millions in foreclosure – but the sad part is – that WAS the plan. There's only one way out of this mess and that would be to allow capitalism to run amok. You know - where the market prices everything, there is no ‘too big to fail’, no bailouts, no winks and nods. That system works perfectly, but it keeps the Central bankers on the sidelines (and since they run the world) that's NOT going to happen.

Now James Taylor contributed and Laurence Kotlikoff (a Prof. of Economics from Boston University) wrote - the way out is for the U.S. to cut entitlement programs and DOUBLE taxes. Yep – the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has pronounced the U.S. ‘broke’, and to narrow our fiscal gap - we need to ‘double our taxes.’ Such a tax hike would leave the U.S. running a surplus equal to 5% of GDP this year, rather than a 9% DEFICIT. So the IMF is really saying the U.S. needs to run a huge surplus now and for many years to come to pay for the spending that is scheduled. It’s also saying the longer the country waits to make tough fiscal adjustments, the more painful they will be. This actually coincides with a report the Congressional Budget Office released which says our ‘unofficial’ debt is $202 Trillion - more than 15 TIMES the ‘official debt.’ How can the fiscal gap be so enormous? Simple - we have 78 million baby boomers who, when fully retired, will collect benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that, on average, exceed per-capita GDP. The annual costs of these entitlements will total about $4 trillion in today’s dollars. Yes, our economy will be bigger in 20 years, but not big enough to handle this size load year after year.

This is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight, taking ever larger resources from the young and giving them to the old while promising the young their eventual turn at passing the generational buck.

Unfortunately, this will ‘stop’ in a very nasty manner. The first possibility is massive benefit cuts to the baby boomers in retirement. The second is astronomical tax increases that leave the young with little incentive to work and save. And the third is the government simply printing vast quantities of money to cover its bills.

I think we will see a combination of all three responses with dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices. Bond traders will kick us miles down the road once they wake up and realize the U.S. is in worse fiscal shape than Greece. The U.S. is broke and can no longer afford the ‘no-pain, all-gain’ solutions.


The Market:
We had a down week, pretty much as I thought we'd have, and was because the Street was mad at Bernanke for not flooding the system with even more money immediately. But now things get really interesting. The Street has knocked 400 points off the averages in two days. That was the shot across the bow to all the incumbent politicians - that if they would like to see a strong market heading into the elections in November, they better get Obama to tell Bernanke they want the entire Quantitative Easing #2 (QE2) of the highest extreme – NOW! When Ben only announced that he was going to play with some more mortgage paper, The Street wasn’t impressed at all. Now – what The Fed did was monumental in scope – Ben told the whole world that YES we are monetizing debt. That statement alone (in a different age) would have sent the market down by 40%, because that's an absolute decision to basically print unsterilized money. The Federal Reserve is the only major central bank to have specified that it wants to maintain the size of its balance sheet at a certain level, meaning that it is effectively now targeting the money supply. This is quantitative easing in its purest form and marks a significant change of tact. However, The Street wanted more and it didn’t get it!

Now on Friday, Thomas Hoenig (Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President) said: “We need to get off of the emergency rate of zero, move rates up slowly and deliberately, which will bring policy in better alignment with the economy's slow, deliberate recovery. While the markets may like the current stance of monetary policy, I wish free money was really free and that there was a painless way to move from severe recession and high leverage to robust and sustainable economic growth, but there is no short cut."

The problem is – the average consumer is ‘spent’ – money has been coming out of mutual funds for months – and The Street needs a gimmick to continue to get their $100 Million dollar paydays. When Ben didn't come thru on Tuesday, The Street pulled the market down 400 points on Wed and Thursday. Now the Fed comes back with something akin to saying "up yours, you'll get what we say you'll get". The real issue here is we have a boatload of Congressional people up for election in 2.5 months – and they’re out promising folks the moon, and here's the Fed telling Wall Street to go pound salt. The folks in Congress clearly want the market to go up, in order to point to it and say "see, we saved the world, re-elect us!" You have to know that in dark room sessions, the Obama people and the Feds are sitting at a table with Goldman trying to hammer out a deal. Now the only certainty is ‘If” the Fed sits tight – then Thomas Hoenig has become the spokesman for what the Fed really wants to do in the near term. If that’s true – The Street is going to press the issue once again by selling the market.

As we come into the new week, I feel that Monday could be an up day. But I think it's a set up. The street played their game on Wednesday and Thursday. Then The Fed came back on Friday and fired back a bit. But The Street knows that Monday is the "middle of the month", where mutual funds usually put their money to work (most funds put cash in on the first days of a new month and then the "middle" of the month) so it seems to me that the Street is going to let them come in – allow the market to go up – and then I think The Street yanks the rug and we go down again.

Maybe I'm wrong and they reach a back door deal this weekend, but Thomas Hoenig was a direct push back to Wally Street, and if they don’t settle their little dispute, I tend to think that by mid week we see another stellar market fall – right AFTER they invite the mutual funds to come in and place their money on Monday – crushing another round of John Q. Publics yet again.

Tips:
We’re in metals and in and out of a couple small positions in ‘short’ ETF’s: We’re back in (and out) of TZA, DXD and SDOW (all 3 inverse market ETF’s (that is to say these ‘Exchange Traded Funds’ increase in value when the market goes down)

We've been leaning short, but not by too much. Some readers have written and have said that they did well. We suggested the inverse DOW on Wed morning at 26.12 and it hit a high of 27.57. We liked the TZA at 35.50 and that hit 38.16. We also took advantage of the VXX mid-last week – and expect that to continue this week as well.

The metals we like for a long time – unless something dramatic occurs. I’m still looking at a fade thru August – the inverse ETF’s are a smart play – and potentially look for the ‘stimulus’ in September for the ‘insanity run’. Please be careful out there.

If you’d like to view my actual stock trades - feel free to sign up as a twitter follower – “taylorpamm” is my nickname on Twitter – fyi.

I’m going to take a trip to Chicago to bring my oldest son home for the remainder of the summer – it’s been too long – so personally I’m looking forward to that!

If you’d like to see me in action – teaching people about investing – please feel free to view the TED talk that I gave a month or so ago now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2Z9I_6ciH0&feature=PlayList&p=6F63374ED7A97658&playnext_from=PL&index=5

Remember the Blog http://rfcfinancialnews.blogspot.com/
Until next week – be safe.

R.F. Culbertson
rfc@getabby.com
http://rfcfinancialnews.blogspot.com