http://finance.yahoo.com/intlindices

http://money.cnn.com/markets/morning_call/










http://www.kitco.com

Energy futures

Currencies/Au/Ag

An orderly pullback in progress. All Ords -0.6% with most sectors down to some degree. Energy is leading on the downside, -1.5% and Utilities is the only green, +0.1%.

The mining sector in decline: BHP -1.4%, RIO -0.8% and the golds down around 1.5% with the exception of Lihir, +1%.

Oils also pulling back from yesterday's rise: Woodside -2% and Santos -0.5%.

Japan's Machine Orders Fall 4.5%, Undermining Growth

May 15 (Bloomberg) -- Japan's machinery orders fell unexpectedly in March and companies said the slump will deepen, undermining growth in the world's second-largest economy.

Orders dropped 4.5 percent from a month earlier after declining a revised 4.9 percent in February, the Cabinet Office said today in Tokyo. The median estimate of 38 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a 1.5 percent increase.

Japan's economic growth probably slowed in the first quarter as investment cooled in anticipation of waning demand in the U.S. The world's second-largest economy expanded an annualized 2.7 percent in the three months ended March 31, half the rate of the previous three months, according to the median estimate of 36 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

Companies expect orders to slump 11.8 percent in the three months ending June 30, the biggest drop forecast in 20 years, after they fell 0.7 percent in the first quarter, today's report showed. The numbers exclude orders made by the government and those for shipping and utilities.

(Good work Aussiebear)

The mood turned a tad more sour this arvo. All Ords closed -0.8% with only Property Trusts (of all things) finishing up a meagre +0.2%. Six sectors dived a percent or more with Energy still heading the mob, -1.6% followed by Materials -1.4%.

Miners looked a bit ragged: BHP -2%, RIO -1.2% and the golds no better with Newcrest -3% and Newmont -1.6%. Lihir went against the trend, +1.6%.

In the oils, Woodside -2.1% on light volume and Santos -0.6% on heavy volume.

Over in Asia, China took a hit, -3.6% with the others down around half to one percent.

Over to UK/Europe:







http://finance.yahoo.com/intlindices?e=europe

China Retail Sales Rise 15.5 Percent as Wages Grow

May 15 (Bloomberg) -- China's retail sales grew 15.5 percent in April from a year earlier as rising incomes and a stock market boom encouraged the world's most populous nation to spend.

Sales climbed to 667.3 billion yuan ($86.8 billion) after gaining 15.3 percent in March, the National Bureau of Statistics said today. That was the biggest increase since May 2004 if the first two months of each year are combined to eliminate Lunar New Year holiday distortions.

Premier Wen Jiabao is trying to boost consumption to make China less dependent on exports and investment for growth. The world's fourth-largest economy grew 11.1 percent in the first quarter and the benchmark CSI 300 Index of stocks has soared more than 80 percent this year.

-------------------

Indonesia's Economy Grew Near Fastest Pace in 2 Years

May 15 (Bloomberg) -- Indonesia's economy expanded in the first quarter at close to the fastest pace in two years, as declining interest rates encouraged consumers and companies to boost spending.

Southeast Asia's largest economy grew 6 percent from a year earlier, after gaining 6.1 percent in the previous quarter and 5.5 percent in 2006, the Central Statistics Agency said today.

Bank Indonesia has cut its key rate 11 times in the past year, encouraging companies to borrow to fund expansion and meet rising consumer demand for new homes, motorcycles, and mobile phones. The International Monetary Fund expects economic growth this year of 6 percent, the fastest since before the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98.

German Economy Grew More Than Forecast in 1st Quarter

May 15 (Bloomberg) -- The German economy, Europe's largest, expanded more than economists expected in the first quarter as companies increased spending.

Gross domestic product grew 0.5 percent in the three months through March from the previous quarter, when it expanded a revised 1 percent, the Federal Statistics office in Wiesbaden said today. Economists expected growth of 0.3 percent, according to the median of 41 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey.

They are both right on different time frames.
I can't see gold make a lasting drop with the kind of inflation we are seeing. Heli Ben will come to the rescue, he must pump, the Fed rose rates so much so they have room to cut again, which should be around the corner.

More sub-prime problems for HSBC

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/4df63744-02b5-11dc...0b5df10621.html

Repossessions in the UK are also increasing, but with minimal press coverage here. I noticed a property auction here in London on Monday had several repos in prime central London (South Kensington) where property prices have increased over 50% in the last year.
When the oligarchs are defaulting .....

Oops! I keep forgetting to say thanks to everyone for such a warm welcome to the board

Welcome MS and many tanks for the great info from your side of the world!

Good Morning!

Welcome to Intraday Stool! Thanks to aussiebear for her daily opening!

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Many tanks for joining us!

Doc


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im just waiting for the mass pump this morning.... HD does not mean anything !

Wow, there's no inflation

"``It is now becoming more apparent that core inflation has peaked and is moving lower in response to anemic economic activity,'' Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., said before the report."

Will the core CPI become negative in some months time?

"Owner's equivalent rent, which makes up 30 percent of the core CPI, increased 0.2 percent after rising 0.3 percent. The cost of hotel stays jumped 1.9 percent."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...oH14&refer=home

ShangHai down a big 3.5% overnight.

*DJ US Apr CPI Unrounded +0.416%; Core Unrounded +0.177%


WTF ....HOw much bullshite can they really pull..... if the numbers are phony to begin with , do they acually beleive we will buy the exact unrounded hypothetical crap headline as well....

It's just noise.

No inflation = Gold to da Moon



Believe it

> Was reading about one aspect of AMD's technology in their upcoming new
> CPU release where the memory clock in timed to run faster than the core clock
> to assist in reducing cache latency. Maybe 2-10% addition of speed overall in
> CPU speed rating alone. Means more to a server farm or rendering rack but
> pretty cool none the less.

I think that this assumes that you have a massive amount of memory available
which may be the case for some applications. Typical applications read and write
to memory so you still have write latency to deal with.

At the moment, AMD reminds me of Digital Equipment Corporation.

> The new ATI high end cards do suck (the wattage) but the middle of the road GPUs
> for laptops and embedded uses are just what the doctor ordered for space(65nm)
> and power usage (passive cooling).

I think that those were delayed again, right?

> I wonder what the hell Intel is doing in their spare time.

It looks like Intel pulled in Penryn by six months as rumors that I've heard had them in volume production of Penryn. It will be interesting to see if they can pull in Nehalem by six months.

Intel is working on a new platform for ultramobile computing called Silverthorne. AMD has ceded this space, probably due to resource issues. They were working on their Geode processor but I haven't heard anything about it in ages. Silverthorne is an x86 architecture product and is aimed at small devices like subnotebooks, TV setop boxes, PDAs, phones, etc. These markets have traditionally been served by ARM processors due to the amount of power that x86 processors have traditionally used up. Silverthorne is a very small processor (2400-2500 dies per wafer) but has already demoed running with Vista Home Premium. It's designed to run from 800 Mhz to about 1.5 Ghz and should be a capable processor for a laptop of iPhone that costs far less than anything AMD can make. AMD has gone big with Barcelona which means that it will cost them more to manufacture chips. Intel is going small for the mobile market so that they can sell lower cost mobile chips and still make a tidy profit.

Intel's itanium product is doing quite well taking share from the other mainframe vendors. Itanium is still head and shoulders above x86 chips in terms of performance and the mainframe market is still a very profitable area. Main competition is IBM's Power architecture which itanium is slowly eating away at.

Intel's roadmap is pretty clear and they have been:

1) Executing ahead of schedule. In some cases far ahead of schedule
2) Delivering on their promises
3) Providing upfront information about their upcoming products including benchmarks
4) Earning profits
5) Cutting costs

AMD is getting into some really complicated technology to further improve performance. Their GPU/CPU integration is an example of this and it requires special programming tools to take advantage of this functionality.

99% of programmers out there don't want to have to use a new a non-standard API for certain kinds of programming. Especially when it isn't portable. AMD tried this with their 3dNow! extensions many years ago and it was a flop. Intel introduced MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3 and soon SSE4. These extensions are in use now because they found on most processors at a certain level. AMD copied the new instructions from Intel. The vast majority of programmers still don't use them though as vector programming isn't the easiest thing in the world and your code only works if the processor is new enough to support them.

Intel is planning different modules in Nehalem which will be a flexible architecture. They can make chips with up to 8 functional pieces in them with one of them a graphics card. I do not know if Intel is going to make a compute core an option but if they did, then it would likely have the same issues that AMD would run into as far as a new API goes. Intel definitely has more clout in implementing something like this.

It seems to me that AMD management and marketing have spent a lot of time telling the world how great Barcelona is for the past six months. Even diehard AMD fans are telling AMD to just shut up and deliver. Intel doesn't have that problem. They've already put the benchmarks out there and have a good track record (since Core Duo) of delivering on-time or ahead of time, the promised functionality and performance.

I guess the big question is will Cerberus buy out AMD. Probably not given the amount of stock that Fidelity owns.

> And then ATI/AMD came up with a new bus system called a 'hybrid ring bus' for
> wider bandwidth for the memory chips to feed the core. Nothing earth shattering
> but interesting approach again.

> I'm guessing that AMD's new CPUs will go to upgrades and super computers first. A
> few hundred thousands CPUs already committed thus delaying public launch.

AMD has an advantage in floating point but they've always had one there. Typical server, desktop and mobile applications are not big on floating point. If you take your typical algorithms book, you'll find little in the way of FP code.

Upgrades will most likely require a BIOS update. I guess that's not that hard with parts that you buy but HP and Dell are pretty crappy about BIOS updates for new CPUs. Which is why my Presario is still running the original chip.

Intel announced their fall price cuts yesterday. Basically take their current dual core prices and make them quad core. The 3.0 Ghz QC will be $266. I find that the 2.4 Ghz C2D Dual-Core to be insanely fast. Hard to imagine what the clockspeed boost will be like. For your typical business desktop, 2.0 Ghz C2D is probably all that you need. Even the 2.4 Ghz is overkill there. And this is why making smaller chips on smaller processes is so important. People really don't need the speed of the processors out there today. So a good strategy would entail making current performance CPUs at a lower cost.

> Bought a X2 @ 3800 ($82) and it lowered my rendering time from 3 to 2 hours
> when converting a DVD movie to XviD. (Compresses only the movie to 700mb,
> playable on HD screens and uses MP3 for sound conversion). I could have lived
> without the CPU upgrade.

I have two friends that upgraded from PowerPC Macs to the Mac Pro. They're reporting that new rendering times are one tenth the old rendering times. And they're ecstatic with the performance improvement. What's even more exciting is that they can buy current quad-core chips and do a dropin replacement to double their computing power. And what's even more exciting is that they will be able to drop in replace two Penryn quad core chips when Penryn starts shipping. I'm expecting Apple to start selling Penryn chips in the Mac Pro before they're available to anyone else.

*DJ Fed's Minehan: Inflation Still Challenging, Trending Down
*DJ Fed's Minehan: Derivatives Help Strengthen Financial System

then a minute later....
*DJ Fed's Minehan: Still Wary Of Derivatives' Untested Nature


(MORE TO FOLLOW) Dow Jones Newswires



one of the stupidest remarks I have heard in the last 4 years

STOOPID is..
STOOPID Does...

DJ Fed Accepts $8.25 Bln In Overnight RPs

Type of transaction: Overnight RPs
Total accepted: $8.25 Bln
Total submitted: $47.55 Bln

Agency Collateral Operation
Total accepted: $8.25 Bln
Total submitted: $20.35 Bln
Stop-Out Rate: 5.29%
Weighted Average: 5.29%
High-rate submitted: 5.29%
Low-rate submitted: 5.23%

Treasury Collateral Operation
Total accepted: None
Total submitted: $16.2 Bln
Stop-Out Rate: N/A
Weighted Average: N/A
High-rate submitted: 5.17%
Low-rate submitted: 5.11%

Mortgage-Backed Collateral Operations
Total accepted: None
Total submitted: $11 Bln
Stop-Out Rate: N/A
Weighted Average: N/A
High-rate submitted: 5.3%
Low-rate submitted: 5.27%

This market isn't about stock prices, it's about the availability and price of credit. For buyouts, stock buy-backs, RE, whatever.

HD and WMT are irrelevant to the whole indexed, derivative-based, leveraged-to-the-hilt mess to follow, when the credit markets fold.

Still not to late to go short here.

=DJ Amgen Down On Proposed Medicare Limits On Anemia Drugs >AMGN


Investors are sure feeling that one, ouch

Shorted ES at 1514.25.

Added more at 1515.25.

Last add at 1517.75.

mmoy: What you are saying is; Intel took 3 years to produce a core (with shrinks and extra large caches) that is 20% faster than AMD's and now they have to follow the lead again to produce a chip with on-die memory controllers just to stay current and get rid of that 20 watt consuming front bus.. SSE is a software tweak to make up for lack of power that you have to write for if Intel tells you to. AMD enhancements are actually easier to implement.

Intel relies on NVidia for decent graphic chips and I wonder why Intel decided to make drop-in replacement CPUs?

Hard to explain AMD share price movement but we will find out soon enough. Intel's shares are being rewarded for process they really haven't shown anything else being as they can't break out.

bought a few puts on da q's near the high....

CNBS, every thing is wonderful.

Do we live in an age of lowered expectations?

May 2007

Next stop: Dow 21,000

Yes, big-cap fever could spread and carry the Dow skyward. Here are my top picks to carry the big index to the 21,000 mark over the next four years.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Inves...opDow21000.aspx

May 1999

Dow 36,000?
Aired 5/28/1999

The rise in the stock market is becoming topic number one at the office water cooler. When will it hit 30,000 or will it come tumbling down?
Read the full transcript


James Glassman
fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, syndicated columnist for the Washington Post
Kevin Hassett
scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
Robert Shiller
Yale University

http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/show_722.html

This should be enough for another +1000 Sow points.

Mortgage Defaults Rise 62 Percent, RealtyTrac Reports

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...HFzY&refer=home

I believe this answers your question ...

Debt is a good thing.

The only way I can see how the SNOW man is going to make any money on Chysler is to bust the UAW retirement and health care plans. I wonder how he is going to do it?

Gold up, dollar down on the great inflation news.

There is no good reason for DROOY to be leading but it is (unless it is US$ sensitive). Gonna be at five bucks before it is taken seriously.

I suspect that Nehalem will put them far ahead of current.

Intel grew fat and lazy and that happens at big companies. IMC's have their downsides too. You get improved performance at the expense of flexibility.

Your comment about SSE indicates that you don't know what it is. I do SSE programming and perhaps have a better perspective. SSE is a pretty complex topic but I'll just state this: AMD's improvements in FP processing are only had via SSE.

Improving IPC via scalar instructions is hard. That's why Core 2 Duo's microarchitectural improvements were very, very impressive. I expect AMD copied some of the MA improvements from Core 2 Duo. Stuff like macro-ops fusion is such a clever idea that it's surprising that someone didn't come up with it sooner. SSE implements vector operations (btw, there's a reason as to why my website is called vector64.com) where you can operate on one, two, four, eight or sixteen objects at the same time. This is where all of the new x86 architecture instructions are headed to because x86 is such a confused jungle of instructions that adding to it is difficult. Multimedia and other compute-intensive algorithms generally can be programmed for parallel operations and if you can execute parallel operations efficiently using parallel or vector instructions, then you will improve throughput and IPC.

AMD's original K8 architecture processed 128-bit vector instruction as two chunks of 64 bits as they tried to provide SSE compatibility with Intel chips. This was a satisfactory answer as Netburst was a relatively high-frequency, high-latency machine. The K8 latencies are better than Netburst but that's not really something to brag about.

Intel made major improvements to SSE processing in Core 2 Duo. They generally reduced latencies on SIMD instructions while adding several additional instructions. These SIMD improvements are why Core 2 Duo generally clobbers AMD's K8 architecture in heavy Multimedia tasks. AMD implements the instruction set but with an old and outdated architecture. Intel also improved their FP processing in Core 2 Duo but the improvement is only seen if you use SSE instructions. AMD followed suit.

Architecturally, it was the only economical way to get such a big increase in FP performance. If you had to do it with General Purpose FPRs, you'd have to deal with the combinatoral explosion of possibilities with all of the registers. With SIMD, the FP objects are packed together so you know where they are and how you have to deal with them.

Apple, interestingly enough, has made the most use of SIMD instructions. They used IBM's Power chips which had good FP performance but lousy integer performance compared to Intel and AMD. So they were always looking for an edge. IBM's Power series has an SIMD instruction set called Altivec which was a richer instruction set than SSE extensions found on x86 chips. Intel's latest SSE4 instructions mostly look like they are implementing stuff that's been in Altivec for quite some time. They are useful instructions for improving IPC. But the programmer or compiler has to take advantage of them. Microsoft's compiler is autovectorizing at SSE2 and they are starting to use SSE code in their object libraries. On their 64-bit x86 platforms, they assume SSE and it's part of the OS. The coding model is quite different with the FP registers getting dumped in favor of the SIMD registers which use a register model instead of a stack model.

Apple is generally better with multithreaded software too. When you never had that much to work with, you work harder. Apple has always provided a better development environment and better tools to do SIMD than what you see on the Windows and Linux side. That their tools are free is an added plus.

Intel's compilers are generally more up-to-date and take better advantage of the new vector features in the latest processors.

Giant bull suck-in could go on for months. If they don't crash it before the end of the month everyone leaves for vacations.......

Just covered the 1517.75 shorts at 1513.75.
Holding the rest.

I think the Snowman got his upfront, like most deals today. With 19B in pension liabilities, the $7B purchase price sounds like a smokescreen. I bet Schrimpie actually paid $12B for the consotium of crooks to take the damn money loser off his hands.

A little volitility in the gasoline market Today.

RB M07 22936 23350 22740 23320 + 308

Nasd flat..
Oh boy.

Homies, XHB now RED. I guess the news was not so good for the homies.

closed out my puts....just enough $ for a nice dinner......











BY MYSELF

mmoy, you got me on that one because I don't write code or add instructions. Without SSE you have just a raw core and its power to process, unassisted. Scary thought, huh?

Just saw 1511.75 go by on ES.

Yippee Kai Yo Mofo.