Financial topics

[aedens]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/broken-ma ... -freak-out

Response: high volume and low average trade size suggests few want to position for it too aggressively

tomorrow's NFP

[Higgenbotham]

H the forensic aspects are starting early. The hft are eating themselves some have warned. Us included as we remember some are going to learn.

A common theme everyone has been picking up these past few days on the blogs is "don't be short" and "don't try to outwit HFT". I am position short and trading against HFT short term. Taking my best shot.

[aedens]

Yes they are aware of that upstairs as billions vanish from acounts.

[John]

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... olutionary

[aedens]

Regression dilutionist meeting

http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staf ... /sr512.pdf

http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/moneyclub3.htm

[Higgenbotham]

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... olutionary

The uncertainty won’t subside, he says, until market prices are allowed to find their true bottom without government interference. “Preventing liquidation of an unbalanced market will leave you in tears,” says the ex-chairman.

I've always believed what Greenspan has stated to be the case and have said so here.

The article starts out talking about the Fed's dual mandate. I think the mandate is stupid because inflation and unemployment can never be optimized by attacking them directly via targets. They can only be optimized in the long run by first going through the painful restructuring that Greenspan suggests.

Once it's understood what Greenspan is suggesting, then it can be understood why Bernanke is reluctant, or weary. More QE won't help unemployment much because the greedy bastards on Wall Street will only take the money and drive up "market prices", creating a more "unbalanced market", to use Greenspan's words. Bernanke probably realizes at this point that the stock market is overpriced relative to likely future conditions and the real risk of QE is a bigger stock market bubble. We may see another QE if the stock market comes down 20%.

[aedens]

Bernanke shadow: The nominal interest rate is the sum of the real interest rate and expected inflation. If expected inflation moves with actual inflation, and the real interest rate is not too variable, then the nominal interest rate declines when inflation declines--an effect known as the Fisher effect, after the early twentieth-century economist Irving Fisher. If the rate of deflation is equal to or greater than the real interest rate, the Fisher effect predicts that the nominal interest rate will equal zero.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja3LGFY1 ... re=related

The amount of money that the federal treasury is taking off of paychecks.
http://fms.treas.gov/mts/index.html
http://fms.treas.gov/mts/mts0612.pdf
Patience

[gerald]

A modest proposal to stabilize and instill faith in the stock market -- kind of outrageous like Jonathan Swift's, "Modest Proposal ' for the poor, http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

Very simple, bring the stock market back to what it was meant to be. --

That is, raising capital for business ventures, a two point program---
1- Stocks are to be paid for in cash.
2 -Stocks must be held for investment purposes, meaning they can't be sold unless held for at least a month.

[Marc]

A modest proposal to stabilize and instill faith in the stock market -- kind of outrageous like Jonathan Swift's, "Modest Proposal ' for the poor, http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

Very simple, bring the stock market back to what it was meant to be. --

That is, raising capital for business ventures, a two point program---
1- Stocks are to be paid for in cash.
2 -Stocks must be held for investment purposes, meaning they can't be sold unless held for at least a month.

Thanks for sharing, Gerald. With all the recent financial games, including those involving securities markets, I can understand the efforts to want to help rein things in. To respectfully add, I personally tend to feel that the key problem with securities markets is not, say, the day-traders and short-sellers and such, but those who use grossly unfair advantages (such as front-running or disseminating false news) to gain market advantages; I feel that the day-traders and short-sellers and such are likely providing valuable information in regards to stock selections as well as helping with market liquidity in most instances. I guess I'm really a contrarian in that, in certain highly judicious instances, would even support 100-percent margining as a convenience tool in, again, very judicious instances (such as in being allowed to charge a modest blue-chip-stock-fund or modest T-bond security purchase, or even certain more-complex but relatively safe security purchases that are "low-systemic-risk and low consumer risk" to a credit/charge card) if highly regulated based upon some sort of reliable risk-scoring metric. (I actually think that this sort of convenience would help lower-income people to be able to easily and smartly invest.) But again, the key here is "highly regulated"; we all know what happens when you have a free-for-all in the securities markets, which is not good. When a massive financial crash occurs in the not-terribly-distant future, I expect to finally see most of the worst securities-markets abuses properly curbed and watched for.

But again, thanks for sharing; I enjoyed the linked article and your perspective here. —Best regards, Marc

[aedens]

Only accounting casts a illusion that something actually existed.

advise from Ann
Net revs for the June quarter declined by 13% YoY. The Market-Making segment revenues were down 21% with pre-tax income down 84% from $39.2M to $5.9M due to trading losses related to the Facebook IPO. June quarter oper inc was down from $29.5M to $5.4M. We are downgrading.
So Penson collapses and within a matter of weeks the firm that bought Penson collapses. MF Global. PFG Best. Who will be next?
And there are people who are so stupid and so stuck in a normalcy bias....
Good point
Yes they are aware of that upstairs as billions vanish from acounts.
Let me phrase this as bluntly as I can to hopefully nip any further inquiries in the bud:
DO NOT call me asking for a broker referral. The markets are dead and collapsing, and only a complete moron would expose money to the markets, either futures or stocks, at this point.
If you are one of those truly stupid people who is still trading stocks or futures and you get your money stolen, DO NOT CALL OR EMAIL ME whining about it. You're not going to get ANY sympathy. Since MF Global, the situation has been crystal, crystal clear. If you haven't totally exited the financial markets, then you are simply stupid, and there are consequences for being stupid.
Girls who go to frat parties dressed like prostitutes and then drink until they pass out get raped.