This is far and away the world?s premier banking institution. Estimates of the huge trading losses by the London ?whale?, initially pegged at $2 billion, have since skyrocketed to $6 billion. I?ll ignore the Internet rumors that speculate about a $30 billion hickey. As you well know, almost everything on the net is not true,
My friend, Tom Dorsey of the technical research boutique Dorsey Wright, inundates me daily with a never ending stream of market sensitive data which has been helping me make some of my more successful market calls. For example, when the S & P 500 hundred broke 1,380 in April, he completely nailed the 1,280 bottom
I never wanted to join any club that would have me as a member. That is the little nugget of wisdom comedian Groucho Marx imparted to me during his visit to the UCLA campus 40 years ago. It is also what came to mind when I saw the shocking Commitment of Traders Report for Euro
The easy money has been made on the short side this year for a whole range of asset classes. While we will probably see lower lows from here, the risk/reward ratio for taking short positions in (SPX), (IWM), (FXE), (FXY), (GLD), (SLV), (USO), and (CU) are less favorable than they were two months ago. Of
This trade was an unmitigated disaster, and hopefully it will be the worst of the year. I?m glad we had one of these because it provides a wonderful opportunity to illustrate everything that can go on with a trade. Every loss is a learning opportunity, and a loss not learned from is an opportunity wasted,
This had to be one of the greatest change of life weekends in human history, endured by one Mark Zuckerberg. On Friday, he earned $9.2 billion with the flawed Facebook (FB) flotation. On Saturday, he married a Chinese doctor and longtime girlfriend, Pricilla Chan. Then on Monday, oops honey, I lost $1.2 billion. Talk about
I managed to catch my longtime friend, technical analyst, Charles Nenner, on the fly between London appointments yesterday. The must go to guy for big hedge funds, family offices, sovereign wealth funds, and high net worth individuals, says that the global markets are on the verge of completing round one of a major risk
They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words, so here are 4,000 words worth. My friends at www.stockcharts.com put together this series of charts establishing beyond any reasonable doubt that the ?RISK ON? trade is breaking down across all asset classes. Everything is breaking down, simultaneously and in unison, including the S&P 500 (SPX),
Panic is on deck, to use the baseball terminology that my foreign readers are often attempting to decipher. That is the only conclusion one can reach after getting gob smacked by the price action this morning. Copper got spanked for eight cents, oil burned $2, gold shed another $26, and silver puked 70 cents. The
Gold bugs are puzzled by the recent collapse in the price of the barbarous relic. Physical demand has been outstripping supplies for some time now and threatens to reach all-time highs. Demand for 100 ounce gold bars by the 1%?ers is as high as it has ever been. Negative real interest rates for almost all
While scouring the markets looking for great ways to participate in the current slide in the equity indexes, I discovered a real gem. The Advisor Shares Active Bear ETF (HDGE) offers a rifle shot at the true garbage in the market, low dividend companies with deteriorating fundamentals. Run by former Bass Brothers associate Brad Lehmansdorf,
A few years ago on the Old Square in Brussels, a delicious luncheon of moules marini?res paired with an excellent white burgundy with some European Central Bank officials ran far longer than expected. They were attempting to convince me of the long term viability of the Euro, to no avail. That seriously delayed my departure
That is what the head of Greece?s opposition party said this morning in the wake of elections where voters resoundingly rejected austerity in any way, shape, or form. Ditto for France, where the Socialists rode a wave of resentment against the incumbent conservative government. Looks like I will have to pack a red scarf and
Traders were sucker punched this morning with the release of the April ADP showing that private sector hiring came in at a flaccid 119,000, some 56,000 less than expected. This signals that the Department of Labor weekly jobless claims due out at 5:30 AM EST could be equally grim, and the Friday nonfarm payroll even
If I had a nickel for every time that I heard the term ?Sell in May and go away? this year, I could retire. Oops, I already am retired! In any case, I thought that I would dig out the hard numbers and see how true this old trading adage is. It turns out that
This certainly promises to be an interesting week for the markets. On Thursday, we get the Department of Labor?s weekly jobless claims at 8:30 AM EST. If we clock a fourth consecutive week over 380,000, or go even higher, then an exact repeat for last year?s summer slowdown will be in play. So will the
I knew that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was early for our meeting at the San Francisco Mark Hopkins Hotel, as the line of silver Secret Service GM Suburbans was illegally occupying some of the most prime parking places on Nob Hill. I?m glad they changed the color. I was getting tired of the perpetual black.
That was the judgment of the markets in the wake of the Federal Reserve?s latest economic forecast released today for at least two minutes. The asset classes most dependent on further monetary easing, like gold (GLD), silver (SLV), the Euro (FXE), and the yen (FXY), saw dramatic, sudden selloffs, and then recovered losses almost as
Traders like to refer to the red metal as Dr. Copper because it is the only one that has a PhD in economics. This year it has been proving its credentials as a great predictor of future economic activity once again. Copper has been leading the downside charge for all risk assets since it peaked
All eyes will be focused on the weekly jobless claims to be released by the Department of Labor at 8:30 AM EST on Thursday. You may recall that investors did not exactly run the last two weekly reports up the flagpole and salute them, which showed sharp increases in unemployment claims. At this point the