http://finance.yahoo.com/intlindices

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










http://www.kitco.com

Energy futures

Currencies/Au/Ag

A touch of uncertainty today. All Ords -0.2% with the only green sectors being Property Trusts, +0.5%, Utilities +0.2% and Energy +0.1%. IT, -1.8% and Telecomms, -1.4%, are down the most.

Not much happening in the miners: BHP -0.6%, RIO -0.4% and in the golds Newcrest +0.4% and Newmont -0.8%.

Oils looking ok: Woodside +2.2% and Santos +0.8%.

All Ords found some legs in the arvo, finishing +0.4%. IT was the only red sector, -1.8% and Energy galloped up to take the lead, +1.5%.

In the miners, BHP closed +0.7% and RIO +1.2%. Newcrest got a second wind, +1.3% although Newmont stayed in the red, -0.8%.

Big rises on the oils: Woodside +2% and Santos +3.4%.

Relatively modest rises in Asia apart from Honkers +2.7% and Taiwan +1.5%.

Over to UK/Europe:







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

Still expanding.........


[attachmentid=84618]

11AM CET smackdown in Euroland 2 days in a row....

Que paso?

These super long term charts are a visual trick obscuring the reality of what has happened in the numerous bear markets that have occurred over the last 80 years. Since most of us trade individual stocks, and didn't or couldn't trade the market as a whole for most of that period, the reality is that bear markets like those of the late 60s, mid 70s, and 2000-2003, have wiped out millions of traders. We live, work, and trade in the short to intermediate term when markets as a whole can get cut in half, and more stocks than you can count can go to zero and disappear.

Maybe we are or aren't on the doorstep of another bear market at this moment. But the idea that stocks always go up is disingenuous and dangerous thinking that will lead to ruin when this next bear market does begin. I'd rather not see that kind of optical trickery posted here, because it's just cheerleading and reveals a certain lack of depth. I think we as individuals, and as a group, should be above that.

The market may seem like a one way street at times, but it isn't.



Indeed! Permabears and serial crash callers like that are even more ridiculous. We don't need to see that stuff posted either, other than to poke fun at it. In fact, the most interesting and intelligent work posted here is your own.

Agreed. Even if you're not a doctor, MD.

I smell blood. Missed and stopped out on the last turn, which hurt. Bear Sterns PPT may yet save the day. But I'm betting not without a mini-dump in equities. Permabear that I am, I follow the bullish trends, just don't participate in them for more than a day or two. Often a little short (and I mean little), occasionally pretty large. I'm fairly large now at 1524ish.

Chacun a son gout.

What I want to see posted here, above all else, is honest thoughtfulness. That, along with having some good clean fun, is what sets Capitalstool.com apart from the crowd.

As the board's proprietor, I will guide things in that direction when they go off course.

Store Sales - W/W change
Actual -0.1 %

Store Sales - Y/Y
Actual 1.9 %

W/W negative even in nominal terms
Y/Y negative in real terms

I guess it has been raining or snowing in the US



Absolutely unrelated to MEW

Best Buy is a Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde situation from my point of view. I really hate them because their customer service is so godawful lousy, but they do generally have the best prices, and occasionally some specials that are so good I think they are a mistake.

I just had a $29.95 XM satellite radio installed in my car for free (usually $81), plus I got a $6 dollar rebate, because I bought the in-home installation kit as well for 59 bucks.

But when I bought an open box computer at a great price, that supposedly had been fully inspected and was good to go out the door, I found out that the operating system had a password that prevented me from using it. They had never cleaned the hard drive and reinstalled the programs. I had the same thing happen with a home theater system, which had supposedly been inspected and was good to go out the door, but it was missing a bunch of parts. My advice would be not to leave the store with the item unless you can verify piece by piece that everything is there and working. Given the time involved, it might not be worth the savings on the open box.

Anyway, because we were leaving for Quebec, I returned the computer. I found a small chain of computer service stores here called Ordinateur en gros (Ordigros.com), where I can have one built to order to my specs, for a very good price. They have an outlet in the next town over from us, Grand Mere. They will move my old hard drive into the new machine for no charge. I'm installing my old operating system on the new machine, because my version of Metastock won't run on Winders Vister. (What a ripoff. Rhoiders has taken the opportunity to force a $129 upgrade on Metastock users who buy new compukers.) Since XP runs everything I need, just the way I want, I said no thanks to Uncle Bill and Rhoiders.

The major chain retailers here in Canada are not passing on the savings on to the consumer from Chinese and other components from Asia as the Canadian dollar soars against those currencies. Their smaller competitors are passing along the savings, which gives them an advantage, but most consumers don't know enough to take advantage of that. They are still buying name brands from the chain stores and major internet retailers.

What's W/W? Week to week? Is that significant?

I generally have the opposite experience at Best Buy in that I find them to be the most expensive of the electronic stores in my area. As far as computers go, if they have to OEM disks, then you can just reinstall yourself. Though reinstalling Vista may not what you want. I think that Microsoft has a big problem on their hands when they make it much harder to get XP at the end of 2007. I still prefer XP and even though I have a free Vista CD, I haven't used it yet.

You can still run XP on Vista if you wish by using a virtual machine but you have to buy a new XP license.

Housing was soft so the market is too.

Some house dropped AMD revenue estimates for Q2 as analysts start to realize how dire AMD's situation is. I suspect that they are already in breach of license agreements with Intel on how many chips they can produce from third parties but it appears that Intel doesn't care at the moment. Still, there are a lot of cheap AMD chips to be had. You can do that when making a profit doesn't matter.

Yes weekly. No it isn't significant. I don't even know why they put it out instead of M/M.

What I do know is that these values aren't inflation adjusted.

I got them from gloomberg:

http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/ecalendar/index.html

"This weekly measure of comparable store sales at major retail chains, published by the International Council of Shopping Centers, is related to the general merchandise portion of retail sales. It accounts for roughly 10 percent of total retail sales."

I wish Linux had a chance, software houses are pressed to develop only for Mr Softy so they get to keep their knee caps.

I wonder what it is like to wake up in the morning and see the company's stock up after you have just been sacked.

YHOO

To add to the discussion of what will be the investment next decade let me profer this. Nano tech and REAL alternate energy not the junk we now see. Investigate NewCyte, private company, as an example.

When was the last time we had a double top that held?

I do see some negative divergence.

DJ Fed Accepts $3.75 Bln In Overnight RPs

Type of transaction: Overnight RPs
Total accepted: $3.75 Bln
Total submitted: $30.55 Bln

Agency Collateral Operation
Total accepted: $3.213 Bln
Total submitted: $15.1 Bln
Stop-Out Rate: 5.22%
Weighted Average: 5.23%
High-rate submitted: 5.23%
Low-rate submitted: 5.19%

Treasury Collateral Operation
Total accepted: $537 Mln
Total submitted: $6.75 Bln
Stop-Out Rate: 4.92%
Weighted Average: 4.98%
High-rate submitted: 5%
Low-rate submitted: 4.8%

Mortgage-Backed Collateral Operations
Total accepted: None
Total submitted: $8.7 Bln
Stop-Out Rate: N/A
Weighted Average: N/A
High-rate submitted: 5.23%
Low-rate submitted: 5.21%

(Data was provided by the New York Federal Reserve Bank).

DBA had a huge increase in volume as it it was topping--probably qualifies as a volume reversal yesterday. As I said, the buyers did not even pay attention to NAV which can be easily computed.

Today its down big 2% as futures in ag commodities are falling. It was touted on Fast Money by Eric Bolling, pigman extraordinary couple days ago.

[attachmentid=84621]

Open gap down and gold up? some thing's wrong with the matrix.

Gap and crap on Yhoo.

Double top? who where?



Who said anything about a d. top?

Rotation into banks. I think we will see several days of playing the rotation game before any meaningful selloff occurs

I would buy any pullback on LEH. The "no pigmen stock left behind" rule will be enforced.

The "no pigmen stock left behind" rule will be in full force with this guy too.
I am long this morning at 78.

According to Morningstar, DBA had a 0.89% premium on the 15th.
The Ag futures are in weather market now, it usually starts after the 4th of July, but ethanol has completely screwed up the price structure this year IMO, plus a mixed picture on dryness in the main US ag areas and low carry over stocks should make for a wild ag market for the next couple of months.



http://droughtreporter.unl.edu/

"i guess 1965 to 1985 looked like a crap time to won stocks... just very flat but selling covered calls would have worked out."

Real returns over that period were severely negative, given inflation. I believe Shiller calculates that real returns from the local nominal bubble high in ~1966 wasn't re-attained until 1991.

Further, I'm not sure to whom you think you'd have been selling call options for the first eight to ten years:

1973
* CBOE is founded as first U.S. options exchange and trading begins on standardized, listed options.
* April 26, the first day of trading, sees 911 contracts traded on 16 underlying stocks.

1975
* Computerized price reporting was introduced.
* The Options Clearing Corporation was formed.
* The Black-Scholes model was adopted for pricing options.

http://www.cboe.com/AboutCBOE/History.aspx

Added some ERF back at 47.13. I sold these at 48.5 a few weeks back.
Will add more on any dip below 47.

Here is one our own LW called at the time. It sure looks like the top is in.
How did Sam Zell know?

Looking good.
Got my dividend over the weekend.

Not going to overtrade or overthink this guy.

The question for today's class is....which gap gets closed first?

[attachmentid=84626]

As Jimi mentions options didn't start trading on the exchanges until 73. For the first few years great money was made writing them because a pricing model had not been available to the public and the pigmen way overpriced them.
Also most of us have forgotten how expensive commisions were in those days. something like 1 to 2% on a rt. It didn't take long for retail fish to run out of money.

Borkers spent most of their time trying to catch new fish.

A rather benign P/C at .78 but SPX running at an astounding 3.2

edit: now at 4.7

Incredible, wonder what is going on here?

New high on this move for PWI.
Just printed 22.40.

1 day and a half of sideways action! oh no, something is not right!!

My dad bought some REITs back in the 70s. Lost every penny. He also bought bond funds. Lost a fortune on those too. And he was TRYING to be conservative.

Funny thing is, first stocks I ever bought back in the early seventies were EMI, Fisher Scientific, and Whitehall Electronics., which made products used in oil exploration. Another stock I liked a lot back in the early seventies was Pall Corp. when they converted their business model from producing permanent to disposable filtration devices. I bought the first three, and sold them all for significant losses. Never bought Pall. I guess if I had just bought 100 shares of each and held for 30-35 years, I would have done ok.



Fisher got bought out last year by TMO. It was up about 100 fold since the early 90s, but they had been taken over by Allied back in the 80s before being spun off again. I don't know the history of the stock from the early 70s until the takeover. I just know that I lost money on it in the seventies.

Back on the horse down in Lima



Ready for another Chinese body blow.

DJ Blackstone IPO Expected To Price Thursday -Morgan Stanley
By Yvonne Ball
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES


NEW YORK (Dow Jones)---Private equity firm Blackstone Group's initial public
offering is expected to price on Thursday, according to underwriter Morgan
Stanley's (MS) Web site.

The $4.75 billion offering was expected to price next week.

If the stock prices Thursday it will more than likely begin trading on the
New York Stock Exchange on Friday.

While underwriters were tightlipped, IPO analysts had already placed
Blackstone on the calendar for this week.

"It was confirmed to us this morning the deal will price Thursday and trade
Friday," said Ben Holmes, publisher of Morningnotes.com, a research company
that tracks IPOs.

Holmes said the offering was well oversubscribed.

Scott Sweet, managing director of IPOBoutique.com, an IPO research service
in Tampa, also said the IPO was on the calendar to begin trading Friday.

Blackstone intends to raise as much as $4.75 billion, making it one of the
largest IPOs in the US in years. The company plans to sell 133.33 million
common units to the public at a price range between $29 and $31 a unit.

Fertilizer is hot.

Found the cite:

"The third instance of a high price-earnings ratio occurred in January 1966, when the price-earnings ratio... reached a local maximum of 24.1. We might call this the 'Kennedy-Johnson Peak,' drawing as it did on the prestige and charisma of President John F. Kennedy and the help of his vice-president and successor Lyndon Johnson. This peak came after a dramatic bull market and after a five-year price surge, from May 1960, of 46%. This surge, which took the price-earnings ratio to its local maximum, corresponded to a surge in earnings of 53%. The market reacted to this earnings growth as if it expected the growth to continue, but of course, it did not. Real earnings increased little in the next decade. Real prices bounced around near their January 1966 peak, surpassing it somehat in 1968 but then falling back, and real stock prices were down 56% from their January 1966 value by December 1974. Real stock prices would not be back up to the January 1966 level until May 1992. The average real return in the stock market (including dividends) was -2.6% a year for the five years following January 1966, -1.8% a year for the next ten years, -0.5% a year for the next fifteen years, and 1.9% a year for the next twenty years."
-- Robert J. Shiller, Irrational Exuberence, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 10.

Hmmm... surge in real earnings, expected to persist, corresponding with a 5 year run in equity price levels?

Now where have we seen that before?

Never ______ a dull market.

Doc adjusted for inflation. you might be even minus dividends if any.

I'm guessing that today's gap gets filled first...

[attachmentid=84627]

People talk about the long term bull market, but everything is relative. The long term nominal compound rate of return on stocks is around 5-5.5% not including dividends. The long term inflation rate is almost that.

Hell, you coulda bought 30 year Treasury bonds in 1982 yielding 15%.

Yep, these bull markets aren't all they're cracked up to be if you consider the alternative.

Looking at today, everything is overpriced, so I'd have to conclude that all asset classes will lose ground over the next couple of decades. Maybe the best and only place to be is in Treasury only money market funds. Or do it yourself in Treasury Direct. No fees.

But on the other hand, default risk by the US government may become a non inconsequential concern over the next couple of decades. By that time, interest rates should be around 15-20%.

Just noticing T bill rates jumped 10 basis points today. I guess the 4 week bill auction is going to look ugly. Rates had fallen by SEVENTY basis points since late February, thanks first to massive FCB buying, then when they pulled back to massive debt paydowns by the Treasury.

None of this has anything to do with the economy.

Well, bubble financial profits do inflate tax reciepts, which lead to larger Treasury paydowns. It's a virtuous circle until it isn't.

MRVL rcvd a de listing notice today .... up as usual on the bad news !

c'mon now, roll over now you SOB

the canroys doing well today AAV in particular....

lots of fed speakers and Sec. Paulson tomorrow, Volatility coming?