http://finance.yahoo.com/intlindices

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










http://www.kitco.com

Energy futures

Currencies/Au/Ag

A jump up today but not across the board. All Ords +0.7% supported by Materials, +1.5% and Energy +1.2%. No red sectors but Financials, +0.3% and Property Trusts, +0.2% are looking pretty weak.

The heavyweight miners have gone bipolar: BHP +2.2% and RIO -1.8%. Golds are looking sparky: Newcrest +2.5% and Newmont +1.7%.

Oils are plugging along steadily: Woodside +0.9% and Santos +1.5%.

New Zealand's Retail Sales Rose 1.2% in May on Wages

July 13 (Bloomberg) -- New Zealand's retail sales rose more than twice as much as economists expected in May, buoyed by higher wages and a shortage of workers, as record-high interest rates failed to curb consumer spending. The currency rose.

Retail sales increased 1.2 percent from April when they fell 1.2 percent, seasonally adjusted, Statistics New Zealand said in Wellington today. The median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of 14 economists was for a 0.5 percent gain.

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

N.Z. Dollar Surges After Retail Sales Rise More Than Expected

July 13 (Bloomberg) -- New Zealand's dollar rose to near the highest in 22 years after a government report showed retail sales increased twice as fast as expected in May, prompting bets the central bank will boost interest rates again.

There is now a 40 percent chance Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard will increase borrowing costs by a quarter-percentage point at his monetary policy review July 26, according to a Credit Suisse index based on trading in interest-rate swaps. It was at 24 percent yesterday.

India's Industrial Production Growth Slowed in May

July 12 (Bloomberg) -- India's industrial production growth slowed for a second month in May as the highest interest rates in five years crimped demand and currency gains weakened exports.

Output at factories, utilities and mines rose 11.1 percent from a year earlier, following a revised 12.4 percent increase in April, the Central Statistical Organisation said in New Delhi. Economists were expecting a 12 percent gain.

Things tailed off in the arvo with All Ords coming in +0.4%. IT took the lead, +1.1% followed by Utilities +0.8%. Financials had the least gain, +0.2%.

In the miners RIO dragged the sector down, -2.5%, BHP +1.5% and the golds continued to do well, Newcrest +2.8% and Newmont +1.7%.

Oils faded: Woodside -0.4% and Santos +1.2%.

A bullish one in Asia: Sth Korea +2.8%, Nikkers and India +1.4% and Taiwan +1.3%.

Over to UK/Europe:







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

US GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS BEG CHINA TO BUY TOXIC SECURITIES

Link to Bloomberg Article



Does not sound good. Rings of desperation?

From last night's M2M, a snippet from a cnn report:

"BRIC is an acronym Goldman coined in 2001 reflecting the rising economic power of Brazil, Russia, India, and China"

I first heard this acronym back in the early 1990's if I recall right. GOldsacks coined it in 2001? Ala's weed kind of bullshit.

I sometimes refer to the "smartest trader I know" here and yesterday he went from 20% long the QLDs to 60% long the QLDs and trimmed his huge INTC position 20% for a 40% gain. I did have feelings in that direction yesterday afternoon but I was in a meeting and didn't get back to my desk until well after the market closed. I guess I'll have a look around at the open and decide what to do.

Don't forget they are holding wothless papers (Butt wipes) If they do buy the CDO then market is going to be very happy..IMHO

OMG

BQI UP OVER 10% in prehour.
RTQ 3.8

He got stopped out on the big drop on Tuesday, and then went 20% long on Wednesday. He's playing with 9 figures which is way more than I'm playing with and I figure that he had to do something right to get there.

Madness - ufb, got in yesterday at 3. Looks like it will run straight into the 200dma.

Oops, retail not so shiny like in yesterday's newz noize

Retail Sales - M/M change
Consensus 0.0 %
Actual -0.9 %

Retail Sales less autos - M/M change
Consensus 0.2 %
Actual -0.4 %

no more MEW to milk from J6P's house

edit: I remind you that these numbers ARE NOT ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION!

___

I love the smell of Inflation in the morning, smells like... stagflation

Import Prices - M/M change
Consensus 0.6 %
Actual 1.0 %

This looks like it's going to be a low volume, profit-taking day with afternoon chart painting for the weekend happy print.

Not much to get excited about.

If it takes out the 200 or that upper down channel. WATCH OUT!

The behemoth GE is up 2% in PM

This Indian Auto maker is gapping up above the 200 and on verge of breaking OUT of consolidation. I'm still long from the 17s.

Breaking downtrend.

Foreign central banks currently hold $745 billion of Agency Paper (Fannie, Freddie, and some Ginnie, I suppose) in custody at the Fed. That's 52% of Fannie and Freddie debt outstanding. Who knows, perhaps they hold more elsewhere.

They bought $4 billion last week, and over $500 billion since Fannie admitted its problems in October 2004. They are currently growing their Agency holdings at the rate of nearly 16% quarterly. At this rate, they will own all of Fannie and Freddie's outstanding debt within a couple of years.

I was the first to point out this sub rosa bailout back in late 2004 before anyone else was on to it. I was among the first to illustrate the correlation of and the critical importance of foreign central bank accumulation of Treasuries and Agencies to the US markets.

I continue to track and analyze this information every day, yet only a handful of you take advantage of it, or even know about it. To those of you who have recognized the value of this work and have thanked me for it, I send my sincere appreciation. You are among the very few.

Too few, unfortunately. The rest of you are missing out on some of the most insightful and honest "ahead of the crowd" research and analysis out there. How many months ago did the cycle work in the Wall Street Examiner Professional Edition begin projecting that the market would reach the levels it is at now? How many of you know what the current projections are?

I don't know why more of you don't subscribe and pay attention to the WSE Pro, but I guess that's the way it is. When there's an ocean of free stuff out there, it's human nature not to want to pay for something that's different and good.

The current analysis including the data released by the Fed last night will be in today's WSE Pro Fed Report.

From the ministry of truth:

"We show that the subprime mortgage market is facing substantial problems, as measured by delinquency rates, while the prime mortgage market is experiencing more typical delinquency rates, i.e., at historical averages (see figure 1). Within the subprime mortgage market, we observe a substantial increase in delinquency rates, mostly for adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs). Since the subprime ARM market is less than 7.5% of the overall mortgage market and a vast majority of subprime loans are performing well, we believe that the subprime mortgage problems are not likely to spill over to the rest of the mortgage market or the broader economy."

http://www.chicagofed.org/publications/fed...ust2007_241.pdf

So let me see if I got this right: Subprime ARM is less than 7.5% of the mortgage market, and only part of them are underperforming. But in a ponzy scheme housing market what happens if you can't get any more fools to buy in?
What happens when 7.5% or lets say 2% of the market has to sell, and I mean bank's GMTFO kind of selling?
What happens when people are buying houses to extract MEW based on increasing valuations that have turned into increasing devaluations?

I guess central banksters reflate another bubble somewhere, somehow, that's what happens.

Looks like a weak open today. GOOG and APPL showing a little life. They didn't really participate yesterday.

That note on Samsung's lower profits on memory sales was interesting. I didn't check if that was YOY or QOQ but I'm guessing YOU as it seems to me that DRAM has turned the corner.

Doc has one of the memory makers in his port and it has performed very well.

I'm guess that the big boys, happy and fat, left early for their beachhouses and left the second string in charge. Of course if the weather turns out nice enough, the second string will take off and leave the third-string in charge.

The third-string will have to be careful with the buttons.

The way the Fed has been going (stingy mode) I think that we'll see some backing and filling. My friend wrote last night: buy the dip?

Here we go!

I suppose 1540, the old high might be support now if we get a correction today

check out GILD....

New highs for AAPL and GOOG.

Well, there are just two lows left.


[attachmentid=85761]

They can't even make the last few pts to tag the old all time high on the SPX?

SPY on the threshold list again....this is unreal

Closed out my XLB (materials) short yesterday for a cheesy 10 cent gain. It looked like the crooks were gonna drive it higher to me.

Both XLB and XME (metals/miners etf) have now gapped up three straight days in a row in ramp/camp moves. All the volume has come on the open. XLE is starting to have the same look as well.
This reminds me of the many "escalator/elevator" patterns I've seen over the past few years.

If that's the case, these are distributive in nature and precursors to large reversals. Wyndy mentioned last nite he was looking to take profits in these sectors and I concur, based on this pattern.

The trick is, even if it is an escalator/elevator, you never know how far they'll take it before the shank appears.

Looks like the third-string is already in there playing around with the buttons.

BTW, XOM over $90. ATH I think. VLO doing nice too. And even PVX is up.

Net $1.75 billion drain.

The subscriptions to the WSE Pro help to pay for the costs of running the board. If you don't subscribe, you can always make a donation to help support the board.

A lot of one-sided trades out there, but they continue to work for now.

Everyone is bearish the dinar, yet it keeps going down. Everyone is betting against the yen, even the Japanese housewives, yet it keeps going down too. And everyone (including Prechter and McHuge) was predicting a breakout to new highs on the SPX, pointing to the "bull flag", and it broke out as well.

It's a rare moment where everyone, bulls and bears alike, can be right.

Actually, there was one guy who was predicting a SPX selloff: blogger Carl Futia.

Maybe he's the only contrary tell remaining.

Now he says the SPX is going much higher, BTW.

Trust NO ONE!

I'm showing oil and natural gas doing well today so maybe it's not just time. Energy has had a great run and it's been a lot of fun trading in and out and even holding for a while. The party has to come to an end but when? The fundamentals are still good. I am reminded of this every time I take our son to driving school. Countering that is that consumers are buying smaller vehicles (my observation).

A coworker mentioned that he wanted to get in to the Bank of Brazil and it popped about 7% on the day that he wanted to get in. He's pretty sharp with options, risk and emerging markets so I pick his brain from time to time. But I don't see him often enough to trade picks and ideas with him. He has the same risk averse approach that I do and we both discusses bagging the market for the rest of the year. Sell in July and see you next year as it were.

Looking toppy.
Might be time to bail and look for lower entry.

Homebubblers up 3% this ayem on "rumornoize" that Warren "Which Way to the" Buffett is taking a big position in HOV.

Don't you think we ought to chip in and get Carl an award of some sort from the Stool for his unprecedented achievement of a perfect record? Maybe some little symbolic thing.

Funny that we were wondering on the podcast yesterday where the bounce would come from, and you DID mention the dooblavay bottom.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WallStreetE...05/wse71207.mp3

Interesting how the BPSPX (bullish percent on the SPX) and the SPXA200R (percent of stocks above 200dayMA) keep making lower highs as the SPX climbs upward. I guess that's a sign of a rally that is losing participants on the way up.

The BPSPX topped at 80% at the Feb07 high. At the Jun07 high, it stood around 78%. At yesterday's new peak, it registered 73%. At prior bottoms over the past three years, it got down to 46%-51%. And going back over 10 years, we haven't had a year where the BPSPX didn't tag the 50%ish level at least once.

The SPXA200R peaked at 91% at the Feb07 high. At the Jun07 peak, it stood at 86%. Yesterday it was at 74%. At prior bottoms over the past three years, it has gotten down around 39%-45%. That was true of most past years as well.

So the internals of the Spooz are deteriorating as it moves up. But the participation remains extremely elevated from an historical perspective, even at the Mar07 and Jun07 lows. In fact, we are still at levels that have frequently been tops in prior years, not bottoms.

We saw a similar thing in 2006, when these indicators topped in Jan06 but the SPX didn't break down until mid-May. It took 4+ months to resolve. If we match last year's setup, given that these indicators topped in late Feb, a break down would occur sometime in July. No guarantees if will resolve the same way, though.

I don't know exactly what it means, other than that this year has been exceptionally bullish so far with very little technical damage to most SPX schlocks even during selloffs, brief as they may have been. But it also means that there is a long way to fall to tag traditional bottom levels on these indicators, if and when the SPX should choose to head south.

These indicators are poor signals for tops, but excellent ones for bottoms. No doubt that's because tops, as they say, are processes, while bottoms are events.

But consumer confidence Up trumps that, according to CNBS

I bet those chairs were designed for crazed poker junkies who can't stand to miss a hand during marathon gambling sessions.

Yowza! Just looked at my streamer for HOV and LEN. Talk about a short squeeze!

I had a look for Berkshire articles and didn't find the link but did notice that Berkshire
owned 21% of Hilton. Lucky dude that Buffett.

The chart pattern of HOV does look like something that he would buy in terms of tankage. But they'd better have decent fundamentals too. You may recall that he bough Clayton Homes (manufactured housing) many years ago when it was in the absolute toilet. The thinking went that manufactured housing had a problem as customers had trouble getting financing so merging Berkshire's financial muscle with a down and out manufactured homie looked like a good play.

Berkshire can probably get access to money for lending to those wanting to buy houses. And Berkshire owns or has a chunk of one of the big realtors too. I haven't done a lot of reading on Berkshire this week as I haven't owned it that much this year.

My gut reaction to Berkshire buying HOV is that this is blowing smoke but it would take more digging to see if it's something that he would do (in my opinion).

Agreed, that would be a very visible sign that the Ponzi scheme will continue

Some of the junk bond fund charts I follow bounced exactly where they had to. I posted one of SHIAX a couple weeks ago and showed how every selloff over the past 10 years had coincided with a schlock selloff. And every bottom coincided with a schlock bottom.

SHIAX needed to hold 6.81. The low yesterday: 6.81.

The curious thing is that every prior V-bottom in SHIAX after a strong selloff, dating back over 10 years, has coincided with a schlock bottom. But yesterday, SHIAX bottomed while the Sow made a new ATH. Something very unusual going on.

Everyone got their all time high SPX party hats on?

Yeah, the basturds. My HOV nov 15's were smoking, but today are croaking. I got 'em for a quarter, so no biggie. And there's time for the noise to abate and for Hov to continue on it's way to Doc's zero.

My manager just told me that we picked up a few more projects so my workload is headed north. To me, more work is a welcome thing given the hiring situation in my industry since 2001. We are hiring people too and I always consider that a good sign of business and where business is heading.

This looks like just a lazy summer friday for now. Maybe we just plop around and finished even or something.

I need to have a look at those new projects.

I think that most traders are hungover this morning from yesterday's party and are stumbling around looking for the coffee machine.

Some partied last night others drowned in their sorrows, either way the morning after feels the same