Moving Upward

I thought today was very bullish. Just like on the short side when moving down we may consolidate but I think the next big move is up. I think we have probably made an interim 2 to 6 week bottom and are headed for 1270 and then probably 1325 on the S&P. I sold the rest of my SPY puts today and actually bought SPY calls to help hedge my short exposure. Nothing huge but I am underexposed on the long side and so it is acting almost as a hedge. Oil continues to roll over and that will be the catalyst for a decent push upwards. Several of my shorts will probably continue to go higher but I am not covering them as fundamentally I like them. So the only trading I am doing is on the margin with some SPY options.

I am flying out of state on vacation tomorrow until August 3rd. I will have limited Internet access especially the first week of the trip and so will probably not be posting much the next couple of weeks. When you see interesting things, email it to me. I am going to need help to stay on top of things.

Quarterly Letter

I just emailed out the 2nd quarter letter for my investment fund. If you desire to read it and not on the distribution list, let me know what your email address is and I will forward it to you.

Interim Bottom?

Have we hit an interim market bottom? That is the trillion dollar question. The market got slaughtered after hours with MSFT, MER, GOOG, and COF all seeing large losses after earnings releases after the bell. The markets reaction tomorrow to these companies and Citigroup earnings release before the bell will go a long way I think to answering the question. If the market gets slaughtered tomorrow with selling intensifying I will say we are not at an interim bottom. If instead the market stabilizes and stays flat or moves up (say from a down 100 to finish down 50) than a bottom may indeed be in place in the short term.

I have said for awhile that I thought the next bottom will be made because breaks down and moves substantially lower. The reason is because the market has to be able to grasp something that things have changed fundamentally and will be okay now. August, January, and March it was the Fed. Fed made dramatic moves on oversold markets and the investors bought it thinking the day was saved. The Fannie and Freddie move by the Treasury showed the market was not going to buy it again. Way oversold and the market sold the rally. The market essentially said so what the government is going to help out, it will not change anything fundamentally. This was a dramatic separation from the previous government moves and why we were once again on the verge of a crash like move. If all of a sudden oil goes to 100 fairly quickly you will get the bulls feeling feisty again that now that oil has dropped by a 1/3 this will save the day, the consumer will start spending again, and earnings will be okay. The fundamental picture has changed. Sorry but to little to late in my opinion but I recognize it could cause for a multi week rally in the markets.

As a side note I read something that the last two day move in financials was an 11 standard deviation event that would happen once in every trillion years or something stupid. Two things, one - even if the rally continues the short term trade is to sell financials and two - these seemingly impossible multi standard deviation events happen every few years.

Energy Shorts

Calling all ideas for various energy companies you think may be overvalued. Energy has broken and it is still a risky short but working at finding overvalued energy companies. I will throw out First Solar as an example.

Prime Problems

This was on the calculated risk blog but it floored me and had I post it here. From the JPM conference call.

Analyst Mike Mayo: Can you elaborate more, you mentioned home equity might be a little bit better than you expected. But prime mortgage going from 48 basis points up to 91 base business points linked quarter, can you just elaborate more on what you're seeing there and why?

JPM: Mike, it's exactly the same risk factors and all the other things. It's high LTV, it's stated income, it's California , Florida , Arizona . I you agree with you they're track staggering numbers. It's just really hard for us to tell. Our current expectations of those losses can triple from here. We're prepared for that and we will reserve for that appropriately going forward.

Mayo: Prime mortgage losses could go from 91 basis points to 270 basis points?

JPM: Yes. We had 100 million a quarter and we could go to 300 million a quarter. Not next quarter. But if you look at current trends, maybe we're being overly conservative, that could be 300 million a quarter sometime in '09.

Yeah. If that is the case not only will you not have a 2nd half of 2008 rebound (I think only the most stubborn believe that now) but a rebound in the 1st half of 2009 would also be fairy tale thinking. 270 basis point losses from prime mortgages. Ouch!!

Short Selling Rules

Interesting write up about the new short trading rule. I was not all that aware of all the short trading talk the last few days while I was traveling. I still don't know all the details but on the surface the rule makes sense. Yes it has hurt some of my positions with the blitzkrieg in covering and I heard yesterday that getting a borrow was much more difficult but logically (few people can think logically if something works against their book) you should not be able to short something until you secured the borrow. That should have been the rule for eons. Of course the SEC is targeting certain stocks which seems ridiculous.

This new rule won't stop something from going down, it just probably makes the market more rational and creates technical reasons for a bounce (combined with the fact that many of those names were way oversold). You will not have traders piling on selling something that haven't already borrowed. The reverse would be buying something making the price go up before you take delivery. That just sounds absurd. Blaming short traders and limiting short trading is ridiculous. Making logical rules that should exist in an orderly market should be supported even if it works against your book. Information about these new rules could come out with added restrictions that do not make sense and change my opinion but on the surface it looks okay.

http://www.minyanville.com/articles/MER-GS-CS-C-db-jpm/index/a/18062

The rule changes proposed by the SEC for selling stocks short are meant to curtail “naked” short selling, selling stock short without locating a borrow. They tighten up procedure between lender and borrower through broker dealers. For example, in the past a short seller would sell stock and then call the broker for a “locate," a stock available at the dealer to borrow. And even if he called first and the dealer had no “available locate” at the current time, the dealer probably told the seller to go ahead knowing that the locate would come at some point.

It's still not clear how to interpret the new procedure, but it looks like now “the locate” must be currently in the box. This is going to raise the cost of borrowing. In other words, the rebate rate credit to the short sellers account (the interest they earn on the cash they generate by selling the stock) will be less.

Back in Texas

I am back, barely. Sleep has not been at a premium lately though fortunately I can sleep on a plane. I come back and the market greets me with an explosive move to the upside. This was to be completely expected. It was a matter of if not when. These things can be contagious. I still have 1325 as the next trigger point if we see a prolonged multi week rally. I personally do not think we will at this moment but who knows. The first trigger of course was Wells Fargo. I was tempted to short them today. Just another bank who is doing completely the wrong thing. How many times have I heard a company annouce a dividend raise just to be raising capital 6 months later at much lower prices. I am not saying Well Fargo is a troubled bank, I have never really studied them but it just seems reckless to even consider raising a dividend even if you wanted to unless you wanted a bump in stock price to raise capital. Even if you could haven't things kept getting worse than what people expected? Save the capital in case you need it.

Tomorrow is a key day. Volume seemed moderate today so there did not seem to be that much conviction on the buy side. If you have perceived okay numbers from Merrill and JP Morgan you could have a rally with some legs. We continue to be oversold so it would not surprise me at all.

Well I got more work to do and reading to do. If I see something interesting I will throw it up here but I have to get ready for my next trip which is on Sunday.

Very Scary

All the calls, all the effort, all the strategic meetings, and this is how the market responds to the government plans? This is scary. Have not made a trade today but you got to be thinking about puts. Market seems to be signaling they may be losing faith in the government and the FED.

Bear Stearns Rally

Are we about to repeat? Is the bottom in for the next few months set for a violent 4 to 8 week rally? I am going to say no, at least for now. We could be in for a very violent rally, especially in financials but I do not think the psychological aspects are in place for a long sustained rally. After Bear Stearns it was assumed that all was well. The government stepping in would end the fear and there was nothing wrong fundamentally with the economy. Obviously that ended up being a pipe dream. I do not think the same depth of optimism will come alive again in the minds of so many investors.

We are and have been so oversold and trying to predict anything for the short term at these extreme readings is nearly impossible. Because of the oversold nature if this is a short term 2 or 3 week bottom I could easily see us rally up to the 1325 area in the S&P. If you know why your fundamentally short something that isn't that big of deal. A more sustained rally could bring us up to 1370 and that would be very painful for the shorts.

Well I am in San Diego sitting in a hotel room watching the European markets. Need to go to sleep so I can wake up at 6:00 San Diego time before the markets open. Oh my!!! Horrible time for a business trip.

Hope Lives Eternal

What a frustrating day in the market. We almost did it. We almost had a wash and then maybe hopefully a lower open on Monday that you can play as a bottom for names you like on a fundamental basis. Instead we get gibberish. Huge midday buying spree indicated that people are to trigger happy to buy, there is still not enough fear. That there is hope that still abounds despite the lip service to we are all bearish. I am not saying we will not have a rally and even finish up next week. What I am saying is that I think there is little chance for a long sustained bounce based off of what I saw today.

The "news" that seemed to shoot the market up was that supposedly Bernanke indicated Freddie and Fannie could access the discount window. Two things, first we might as well open it up to anybody and everybody. The discount window seems to have become the popular hooker shared among Wall St bankers. Secondly and much more importantly, who cares!!! THIS IS NOT A LIQUIDITY PROBLEM!!! It has not been a liquidity problem since at least January. Freddie and Fannie have plenty of liquidity. Lehman probably has ample liquidity. There are major solvency issues that opening up the discount window does not help with. The fact that people would still buy on this shows that there is still a lack of understanding of the true problems in the system.

So this little piece of news sent the market skyrocketing and the VIX plummeting. The market then sold off after a massive 270 point rally and the VIX barely retraced its losses indicating people were okay again. The world was fine.

It is just frustrating. There is not a great way to play this. You know you are way way oversold. You also know the market (at least in my opinion) is still overvalued and that the market is not respecting the potential problems in the economy and the financial system. You stick with fundamentals but right now everything is getting bought at once or sold at once and fundamentals are not meaning all that much.

The battle becomes then to grind in motion avoiding losing money.

Sunday I am flying out to look at a company in San Diego. Won't be back until late Tuesday night. Not sure how much time I will have to post anything. Monday will be an interesting day though.

More on the Bill Gross Interview

One thing I love about blogging is it creates discussion. I did a post on Bill Gross interview yesterday and an investment friend of mine explained why he came to a different conclusion. As I have said before all this is an art not a science., just like investing. I figured it would be interesting reading for some of you.

His response

By way of background, in addition to the BIA training I was also an Intelligence Officer. Part of my training included 6 months of formal intelligence training, to include interview/interrogation techniques taught by acting CIA interrogators. Bottom line is we did not view is behavior to be deceptive and felt you may have "over-interpreted" a few of the signs. This is actually a very common occurrence that, unfortunately, can be left out of brief investor training programs. As you mentioned, this stuff is more art than science, and we are just as likely to be wrong as you are.

One thing to keep in mind is that the indicators taught are designed to be evaluated in the context of a structured interview. Specifically, it's important to establish a 'base' of behavior patterns by asking a series of unrelated, fact-based questions. This allows the interviewer to identify trends/changes in these behavior patterns as indicators of deceptive behavior (the trends would obviously be clusters). Not necessarily a hard and fast rule obviously. The Gross interview was obviously not structured that way, and in fact, the initial questions asked were more opinion-oriented in nature, thus it is very difficult to set the base and identify indicators. I would also argue there was a bit of ambiguity in a few of the questions that left the answers subject to interpretation. You would typically want to structure the questions such that there is a more clear answer. Specifically, he asked if pimco was reducing 'risk' or 'exposure' to Lehman. That could obviously mean from a counterparty or investment standpoint, which are both sources of pimco's exposure to Lehman (and Gross may not be as informed on either aspect given his high level role). That's obviously just one example of a couple. Any ambiguity in the question will likely be amplified in the answer. We also did not notice the non-verbal clues, but again hard to judge given lack of a base from which to judge. If anything, he maintained consistent anchor points and body language. These are just the thoughts of two people, so again, feel free to discount and/or take with a grain of salt.

My Response

A couple of thoughts. Completely agree that the best use of BIA is under structured questions. You have general questions and then a trap question. However, during training we reviewed several interviews that were not structured. Bill Clinton being an example. So though that is ideal it is not a requirement. You would also prefer to see the entire body. All we have is chest up. At the 3:00 minute mark when he is cornered I felt like there was an anchor shift. A shift of weight looking at him from left to right. I also felt there a short boost of serial movements with facial muscles, the weight shift, and head moving. I try to watch every Bill Gross interview he does and he is always very stoic and very still. Even in this interview the first 2 minutes there was hardly any movement where as at the 3 minute mark there seemed to be a burst or cluster to me. By any standards slight and maybe nothing but for Bill Gross it seemed like alot.
It is definitely an art and at this point I don't even know if is usable. I would be willing to bet though that PIMCO is doing something. Could be very wrong.

His Follow Up Thought

Definitely hear you on the movements at 3 minute mark. My buddy and I felt that it could have been frustration given ambiguity of questions and potential lack of awareness of the firm's specific trading and/or counterparty activities. Obviously lots of different ways to go with it. Definitely agree that structure is not necessary. In a real interrogation setting, different techniques would have been used if there wasn't opportunity to structure the interview and the interviewee exhibited signs of deceptive behavior….and no, I don't mean waterboarding. :)

Closing

So there are differing thoughts. Talk about intellecutally exhilartaing!! Like I said yesterday there is no way I would short it based soley off the PIMCO intereview. I do think think it adds to the overall probabilities in a downside scenario.

Oversold Bounce

So you had the ABX hit new all time lows, Freddie, Fannie, and Lehman all down 12% or more, oil rise by more than 3.5%, and the markets up .7 to 1%. Yep you know it is an oversold bounce. Unimaginable that the market could shake all that off. Shows you how oversold we really are and what happens if we actually have even a shred of good news. UP UP and AWAY we would go. If that trend continues tomorrow don't expect a repeat. Big news will be GE. I am not expecting anything pretty. We shall see how much of it is priced in.

Bill Gross and Lehman

Earlier today an investor friend of mine shot me an email asking me if I was shorting Lehman based on the rumors. My response was no the easy money has been made. I had been short Lehman since November and covered several weeks ago and I was happy. There is no way to verify or not verify rumors. It's a fools game to get involved unless you have some advantage or the stock is really overvalued. I just watched Bill Gross interview (now several times) from this morning with CNBC and my opinion has somewhat changed. After watching the interview I believe Bill Gross had all kinds of signs of deception.

I am not going to explain it all now but at my previous job we have several days of training for tactical behavior assessment by former CIA interrogators. They run a consulting firm for financial investors called Business Intelligence Advisers.

Look a the first question, in my judgment he is honest and very forthcoming. The second question he completely failed to answer the question but was still very honest. Red flag. The third question cornered him. Right at 3:02 minutes he answered. One he still failed to answer the question but more importantly there is what BIA calls a huge cluster that developed. Movement of what are called anchor points and other non verbal clues that at the least he is not being forthcoming. The fourth question asked it again. In my mind this was less of a failure but still showed signs of deception.

You can call me crazy and nothing is a science but I would be willing to bet big that there is truth to this rumor based on what I saw in this interview with the previous training I have had. That is different from making money off it by the way. I showed an MBIA interview in the WSJ months ago that the CEO in MBIA was using deceptive behavior based on this exact methodolgy and sure enough that is exactly what happened.

Does that mean I am going to run out tomorrow morning and short Lehman? No. So Pimco is reducing risk with Lehman, does that really mean all that much? No What I am going to do is start watching the trading of this stock very close now and determine if I there is an opportunity there. I haven't watched the tape in Lehman in weeks and so I will start watching it and see if I like the tape from a short perspective. If Pimco is indeed pulling in exposure others will follow and that is where Lehman is in trouble.

As an aside even if Bill Gross was pulling all of his exposure there is no way he could come on national tv and say that. That in itself would destroy Lehman.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=790815757&play=1

Buffett Interview

Thanks goes to Pete

http://www.cnbc.com/id/25611490?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS

Buffett: Well, I can tell you that from a certain amount of real-time information that I get from our businesses and elsewhere, things have, the decline has accelerated in the last, I would say, six weeks. So things are getting worse at a more rapid rate than they were two or three months ago.

VIX...Is It Broken??

Starting last week I started pondering the notion that to many people were looking at the VIX. As a result the indicator may not be a good indicator at a market bottom this time around. You can't watch CNBC for an hour without somebody mentioning it. Like anything in markets there are no rules!! Only guidelines. A VIX reading of 30 is no magic number despite every one's assumption that it is. It could be 25 or 40. 30 is just a number that becomes important because enough people believe it. Of course I am watching it but I am not convinced we have to see a VIX reading of 30 to start a rally. We may or we may not. I hear people talking about the VIX who didn't even know it existed 6 months ago and I have to wonder what that means.

Anyway a great article on online Barron's talking about this echoing alot of my thoughts.

http://online.barrons.com/article_print/SB121541263158032137.html?mod=djemBF

Because of this supply/demand imbalance, implied volatility typically trades at a higher level than the mathematics would predict for a perfectly efficient market. However, if the S&P 500 can only be expected to move -- up or down -- 15% over the next 12 months, isn't it odd that so many perceive a VIX of 25% to be unusually low? After all, a 25% VIX translates to a 67% premium over historical norms!

and maybe because we are not getting a spike is because short interest is up over 55% on the NYSE compared to last year causing investors to be more comfortable and less fearful about their portfolios.

Those who were overleveraged or overexposed to stocks have spent the last several months reducing their long positions. Indeed, this is confirmed by the latest readings from both Investors Intelligence and the ISI Hedge Fund survey, which show bearishness, and hence defensiveness, approaching historical extremes. If investors are in fact less invested than they were, they don't require as much insurance as they did during previous market declines, and this could explain why the VIX hasn't reached the relatively high levels of January and March.

Does this mean the VIX will pull back from here, and the stock market will rally? Not necessarily, but the premise that stocks are headed lower on a short-term basis because implied volatility is only trading at a 67% premium to realized volatility seems bogus.

Bill Miller Done?

Somewhat interesting article about Bill Miller. It argues that Bill Miller succeeded in a time era for a reason. That he isn't doing anything differently but that we are in a different era. Something I have thought about and briefly mentioned before that certain investors do better or worse in different eras (5 to 25 yr time frames) because of the way they are wired. So the 91 to 2000 was difficult for more inherent pessimist than optimist where as 2000 to 2008+ has been better for investors who are more pessimists than optimists. This is no moral right or wrong with the way individual investors are made up but it can make a difference in performance during that time frame. That is why the greatest investors have track records of 30 to 50 years. You know they can perform during many time periods.

http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/2008/08/russel_kinnel.html

Miller likes financial, technology and Internet stocks. And he typically holds some retail, media and health-care stocks, too. However, he hates most commodity businesses, including oil and copper. Those sector biases were perfect for the markets of the 1990s but have hurt results since oil prices started to spike three years ago. It makes sense that Miller did well in low-inflation environments and has fared poorly in today's world, with financial stocks in crisis and natural resources very precious.

Tanker Time

Thanks goes to Jody. He shot me this information in response to the post I did on China earlier.

tanker time

Arabian gulf - US = ~40 days
AG - China = ~20 days

this is one of the legs of the tanker short. U.S. demand destruction + gulf can't pump anymore.

The heavy demand is coming from shorter time routes

Plus you've got a fair amount of supply comign online late this year + Iran has been idling 14/15 tankers as its repaired some infrastructure.

For planning purposes you could add a couple of days to unload the fuel and bring it to the location needed. If it needed to be refined that would be another week. We are now 30 days until the start of the Olympics.

China and Olympic Impact

Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about the final preparation for the Olympics. I have wondered if the oil starting to roll over has to do with China curtailing purchases as the Olympics approach. How long does it take a tanker to get to China ports and unloaded to the various key points from the Middle East and from America? 2 weeks, 4 weeks? Life is all about what happens at the margin. To many people focus on absolute numbers but if China has been stockpiling oil, diesel, and unleaded gasoline in preparation for the Olympics and then all of sudden that demand disappears, it could be a small part of the equation in the world but have a large impact as that marginal demand suddenly disappears.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121546292477533481.html

Polluting factories across a huge area covering four provinces will be idled, reducing steel output by as much as five million tons, about 12% of the country's monthly output. They extend to the neighboring port city Tianjin, where 40 factories and 26 building sites will be shut down.

In Beijing, the government has suspended operations at two major facilities owned by Beijing Eastern Petrochemical Co. because it is near the Olympic venues. Rock quarries and cement factories in Beijing will also suspend work.

I do not think it is an accident that oil and other metals are rolling over. In fact metals started rolling over several months ago which would make sense under this hypothesis because the construction of the actual buildings needed this material months ago. The oil could still be stockpiled until the Olympics start. I think this is a much bigger market moving event than people give it credit for.

Another serious impact of the Olympics could be the increase of the Yuan after the Olympics. Some have speculated that after the Olympics the government will then allow the currency to appreciate much more quickly to help fight inflation. That would also have a far market reaching impact.

Rally - It is Coming

I am back and exhausted. Easily a top five weekend of my life. It involved a small Texas town rodeo, fishing, town square street dance, Cory Marrow concert, and fun all weekend with friends. Just incredible.

Turning to the markets I think we getting close to a rally. I do not think we are quite there yet but we are close. In the last two weeks I have sold 20% of the put holdings I have had on the S&P 500 at 1250. I bought these over a month ago and my belief we are getting close to an interim bottom is causing me to slowly scale out.

Jeffrey Saut had some interesting commentary about a potential for a rally.

http://www.raymondjames.com/inv_strat.htm

Meanwhile, it is session 33 in the “selling stampede,” our proprietary oversold indicator is more oversold than it was at the March 2003 “low” (we were bullish there as well), the spread between Lowry’s Buying Power Index (demand) and Lowry’s Selling Pressure Index (supply) is the widest in the 75-year history of Lowry’s (indicating that stocks are severely oversold), corporate insiders’ selling is at rock-bottom lows, and we are seeing numerous indices not confirming the D-J Industrial’s “downside dive.” It’s not that we are turning aggressively bullish, but we think that unless the markets are in “crash mode” it is time to consider a corrective stock market rally as B.J Thomas warms up in the wings with the song “Raindrops.”

Of course the problem is we may be in actual crash mode.

The 4th

Hey everyone, I am out for the 4th. I have been running around like crazy the last 48 hours.

Today didn't mean much in the markets though there was surprisingly heavy volume for such a short day. In general you are seeing people moving money out of oil and materials now. Next week it will be very interesting to see if that continues. We may getting close where it is time to start looking at shorting overvalued energy and agriculture names. Let the momentum guys verify they have had enough and then start shorting on the way down.

Have a great 4th and God bless America.

Psychology of the Mind

A great presentation on the psychology and different biases of the mind. This is one of the areas I find most interesting from an investing perspective. I highly recommend you spend some time going through it. Thanks goes to Nathan.

http://www.noisefreeinvesting.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/men-with-hammers_web_v2.pdf

When 100 residents of a neighborhood are asked to contribute to a city council candidate, most decline. But if they are approached about putting up a yard sign, many will agree. Then, having made a public commitment, the same people are far more likely to make a contribution, even with no new information. Once people take a stand publicly, they become more attached to it. Talking about it cements the idea internally and any new information is underweighted.

and

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries…and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.” Niccolo Machiave lli

Dear President Obama

Another superb writeup by Bill Gross where he writes a letter to a supposed President Obama suggesting policies decisions he needs to make. I typically agree with about 50% of what Bill Gross says and have no opinion or disagree with the other 50%. This is no exception but definitely thought provoking and definitely worth the time to read.

http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/IO/2008/IO+July+2008.htm

In the final analysis I wonder why you or anyone else would want to be President in 2009. But there’s the ego thing and a hope for a better tomorrow and all that.

Inventory Problems

A very good write up on the inventory buildup problems which I have I not been following. Manufacturing numbers came out today and at the surface they appeared good but if you dig into the numbers it seemed to go all to inventory. This is very concerning.

http://pbp.typepad.com/economy/2008/07/ism-is-up-but-it-isnt-good-news.html

The Chicago survey of Purchasing Managers (PMI) jumped from 49.6 to 50.2, meaning the manufacturing sector went from recession territory to positive. And keep in mind the survey was expected to fall to 49. That sure sounds like good news, and many in the media (USA Today) (NY Times) will tell you it's good news.

But unfortunately it isn't.

The guts of the index tell a very different story. Orders were down from a month ago and are still in negative territory. This is now the 7th month in a row that orders have contracted.

The market was all over the place today. The savior of the market appeared to be an unlikely source, General Motors with June sales horrendous but better than expected. This started the big reversal in the markets across the board. We also bounced hard off of 1270 in the S&P. I really think if it was not for Iran and European stocks getting killed the market would have been up over 200 points today. From bottom to top the market did post a 150 plus rally. The really interesting thing was what I referenced in the past couple of days. People buying beaten up stuff like banks and selling great performers like energy. It is so stupid that because the calendar says July 1st instead of June 30th they are willing to buy. Shows one of the many problems of Wall St. Anyway the rally today seemed to be a farce but there could be consolidation or move up around here for awhile. There was very heavy volume today compared to what I have been seeing for weeks. Interestingly Thursday will be the most important day with the ECB making a decision on interest rates and the June jobs number comes out. Considering how many vacations are planned it will be interesting to see the volume and violence of the markets based on those very sizable news items.

Scratch All That

Well it looks like there will be no new money flowing into the market (at least that is what pre market shows). That is the fun part of trading, you get to redo your probabilities and instead of buying at the open I will probably be watching. We are oversold and it looks like we will be more oversold. Maybe we will actually get a real buying opportunity with a large spike in panic selling.

Israel and Iran are getting alot of air time this morning. I know many investors who put it close to inevitable. We shall see. One viewpoint I have heard floating around is for the next few weeks there will be alot of saber rattling and posturing laying the groundwork for an attack. Then it will go quiet for a few months until after the election. If Obama is elected, between the election and inauguration is when you would see an attack. Israel would not attack before the election because they would not want to influence the elections over here but would have to do before Obama officially took office. So you have the groundwork being laid now for an attack down the road.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aqA166Do0cdw&refer=home

Israel is increasingly likely to attack Iranian nuclear facilities this year, a U.S. Defense Department official told ABC News.