Global Market Comments for September 19, 2008

1) The Treasury announced a blockbuster rescue package which has triggered a global buying panic, but without the details. It is creating an RTC type entity which will buy distressed assets from the banks. Short selling has been banned in 799 financial stocks. Restrictions have been lifted on company stock buy backs. The Fed has started accepting commercial paper at the discount window. The Dow jumped 1,000 points from the Thursday low. Bonds had record down moves, the ten year Treasury yield soaring from 3.3% to 3.8% and the 30 year from 3.9% to 4.4%. The Treasury-Eurodollar (TED) spread vaporized. All of this has at the very least put in a short term bottom in the stock market. But the major problem remains in that there is still insufficient lending capacity to maintain home prices at current levels.?? And the plan is too late to save Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and 5 million home owners now delinquent or in foreclosure. There is the small matter of the fact that we are still going into a global recession. And if the Democratic congress does nothing on the Paulsen Plan over the weekend, the markets could give it all back on Monday.

2) The US government has now become the world's largest hedge fund, specializing in distressed debt, derivatives, credit default swaps, and insurance. Will it next add automobile manufacturing to round out its portfolio?

3) I found the article about Better Place very interesting. What I hadn't realized was that the replaceable batteries for cars have to be so big that they can only be moved with a fork lift. It is noteworthy that the two countries that have stepped up to this plan have small areas with an abundance of electricity generating alternative energy sources, wind in Denmark, and solar in Israel. Israel has the additional incentive in that all of its crude has to be expensively imported from the US. I suspect that there will be several alternative transportation systems on offer out there in a couple of years, much like existed in the early 1900s, when gasoline, diesel, alcohol, electric, and steam all competed equally. Gasoline won because it was the cheapest. It is not the cheapest anymore.

TRADE OF THE MONTH

The Goldman Sachs September $75 puts, which I recommended on Tuesday that you short at $1, expired worthless today, generating a paper profit of $150,000. The stock closed at $129, $54 out of the money. In fact, if I had been actively trading this week I could have made three round trips in these puts between $1 and $0.25, generating a total profit of $400,000. This shows you the opportunities that are begging out there.

Global Market Comments for September 18, 2008

1) Now is the best time ever to start a hedge fund. It is like going into the insurance business the day after the 100 year flood. All of the model busting worst case scenarios have happened. Dow up 450 on RTC type bail out rumor.

2) The global liquidity crisis accelerates. 90 day T-bills traded at 0% yield yesterday, which means that net after fees they yielded negative interest rates. Investors are solely interested in preservation of capital now and could care less about returns. The same thing happened in Japan for most of the nineties.

3) The Fed injected $155 billion overnight into the global financial system through a series of central bank swap lines. Eurodollar borrowing costs spiked up to an historical high of 3.20%, 120 basis points over the Fed funds rate. No corporate bonds have been issued since September 10. The yield on the 30 year long bond fell below 4% for the first time in history. They have to be a screaming short here.

4) The dollar fell back to the $1.45 level as traders figured out that the $1 trillion in Fed bail outs announced so far, will be highly inflationary down the road. I would have stopped out of my long dollar position at $1.39. See earlier recommendation to go short 30 year Treasury futures at 124!

5) Gold moved up $143 in two days, and it is not just the Indian wedding season that is doing this. Don't touch it here. Gold will collapse at the first sign of stability.

6) Dow Jones announced that it is replacing AIG with Kraft (KFT) in the Dow 30 index. The Dow is now heavily underweight financials, but Dow Jones is afraid to add any new names in these conditions. The world is running low on shorts in the financial sector because so many have gone to, or are close to, zero.

7) I met with some senior officials from Toyota last night. They are not going to bring out an all electric car, believing that the green trend in the auto market will stop with a plug in gasoline hybrid with a long range initial charge of 40-120 miles. A plug in Prius comes out next year.

8) The VIX volatility index hit 38% yesterday, up from 18% in July. The historic high was 48% in 1998 when Long Term Capital Management had a trillion dollar short volatility position to unwind. This is the most reliable

Global Market Comments for September 17, 2008

Note: If world ends, there will be no comment for September 18.

1) The government nationalized AIG, taking 79.9% of the stock in exchange for an $85 billion bridge loan. The trillion dollar company provides 18% of the life insurance in the US. This is a steal for the government, which will make tens of billions of dollars on the deal. AIG has huge exposure in California, taking in $3.7 billion in premiums last year. It insures 1.6 million cars and motorcycles, 12 million home mortgages, $750 million in workers compensation insurance, and one out of four aircraft. Some of the better known subsidiary names are American Home Insurance, 21^st Century auto insurance, and National Union Fire Insurance.

2) Housing starts for August fell a precipitous -6.2% to an 895,000 annualized rate, a 17 year low. Builders are obviously not interested in adding to already bloated inventories.

3) Lumber (LB) ($LUMBER) has been the worst performing commodity over the last three years, thanks to the collapse in the housing market, taking the CME contract from $400 down to $185. With a year's worth of new home inventory sitting out there, there are not a lot of buyers of wood these days. Industry capacity utilization is now down to 75% of its 77.35 billion board feet capacity. While plant closings and mothballing has provided some respite in recent months, there is a new threat looming. The collapse of the Canadian dollar against the greenback from $1.10 down to 93 cents is enabling imports to undercut US producers for the first time in years. This contract may provide the first hint to the recovery in house prices. Lumber closed at $2.14 today.

4) It's time to look at the wreckage of the BRIC markets to grasp the opportunities out there. Brazil's Bovespa ($BVSP) has vaporized 39%, from 75,000 to 46,000. Russia has melted 58%, from 2,500 to 1,038. India's Sensex ($BSE) has plunged 43%, from 21,000 to 12,000. My preferred China vehicle is the Hang Seng, and it has really been beaten with the ugly stick, down 45% from 32,000 to 17,500. (The Shanghai market, which foreigners can't buy, is down and astounding 68%, from 6,000 to 1,930). I always thought of these as 'roach motel' markets. You can check in, but you can't check out. Liquidity only exists on the upside. But going forward from these levels, these markets will generate far and away the highest equity returns.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

'People are saying these banks are too big to fail. That may mean they are also too big to manage.' Warren Buffet.

Global Market Comments for September 16, 2008

1) The fallout is still reverberating from the Lehman (LEH) bankruptcy. Wells Fargo (WFC) announced it took a $109 million hit on LEH preferred. Their initial investment was certainly a lot more than that. George Soros also took a hit. Banks all over Asia announced $100 million plus losses in LEH preferred, loans, derivatives, and open trades. LEH had a big options and derivatives operation in Hong Kong, and they have defaulted on everything.

2) Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America (BAC), does not see a real recovery in the economy until the first half of 2010. He should know, as he now owns a large part of the US financial system. He expects there will be many more bank failures over the next year, especially among smaller banks concentrated in commercial real estate.

3) New York City has just been thrown into a commercial real estate crisis. The end of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers will destroy 40,000 financial jobs this year and dump 10 million square feet of class ?A? and trophy office space on the market. The tax bases of New York and New Jersey are going to wither dramatically.

4) Crude hit $90.55 today, 56 cents away from my short term target, as rolling margin calls force hedge fund long liquidations. Each $1 drop in the price of crude is equivalent to a $1 billion tax cut for consumers. Right now Cash Is King!

TRADE OF THE MONTH

Goldman Sachs September $75 puts traded today at $1 and they expire at the Friday close, in three days. These were $40, or 35% out of the money. Sell 150,000 of these at $1 each and make an easy $150,000 when they expire worthless. If Goldman Sachs falls below $75 by Friday, it will only be because there has been a nuclear war and we are all dead, so we won't care if we lost money on the trade.

Global Market Comments for September 15, 2008

1) In last Friday's newsletter I predicted that Merrill Lynch (MER) would be the next target for the cloud of locusts. I had no idea that it would be gone in a few hours! The scary thing is that Bank of America (BAC) was willing to pay $50 billion for MER, but not $1 for all of Lehman. A year ago, people were laughing at BAC as a bunch of stupid, boring bankers who didn't 'get' complicated things like CDO's , mark to model, derivatives, and credit default swaps. News of the deal knocked BAC's stock down $5 to $28. Don't expect anything more from BAC as they will be choking on both the MER and Countrywide acquisitions for a couple of years. Do expect raging bull statues and posters to start appearing at Bank of America branches everywhere. The Dow was down 500 points on the day, but could have been down 1,000 without this transaction.

2) I have no doubt that creditors of the bankruptcy estate will get most, if not all, of their money back. The Lehman bankruptcy is solely the result of mark to market accounting rules, where the markets ceased to exist. Fully current securities originally sold to investors at 100 were marked down to 20 or even zero, when their true value is probably closer to 60 or 80. The bankruptcy court will allow a quiet, ??orderly liquidation over a long period of time in private placement form, allowing realizations to get closer to their true values. The sale of Neuberger Berman and the European real estate division could raise $15 billion as early as next week. Barclay's Bank, having passed on buying the whole company yesterday, is still trying to buy just the investment banking division on the cheap. However, creditors may have to wait years before they see their final checks.

3) The next domino to fall may be WAMU (WM), which may disappear by the end of the week. JP Morgan (JPM) is considering a take over bid. The stock traded down to $2 this morning, down 96% from last year's peak.

4) AIG is now taking its turn on the ropes, its stock down 80% in a week. The company's ten year bonds crashed from 95 to 60. It is trying to sell its car finance operation, its aircraft leasing unit, obtain equity capital from private equity firms or Warren Buffet, and procure a bridge loan from the Fed. The state of New York has offered $20 billion in short term loans.

5) China cut interest rates for the first time in six years. The government is having trouble restarting the economy after the Olympic shut down in the face of the new global recession.

6) Crude got as low as $94 today as the global recession spilled into the oil trade. Traders are using every tropical storm as a selling opportunity. Since crude hit $148, my short term downside target for crude has been the $60 handle, now not so far away.