http://finance.yahoo.com/intlindices

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










http://www.kitco.com

Energy futures

Currencies/Au/Ag

No live feed today for reasons unknown so I'm relying on broker snapshots.

All Ords sailed down on open is now bouncing around on a daily chart support level. Currently the index is -1.6% with the big miners doing another swoon, down more than 2% and the oils dipping 1%.

That's about all I can say for the moment. Hopefully things will be fixed by the arvo...

EEYoww!!

If you haven't seen the latest from Bernard Ducalion right

.... _
..|\\
.....\\
.......\\
.........\\======== UP THERE ========<<<<

( wipe out on Wall Street )

you should. It's a great piece of research.

Centro securities plunge 70%

Centro Properties Group has become the biggest local victim of the US sub-prime mortgage crisis after higher funding costs forced it to downgrade of its distribution guidance, causing its shares to plunge by more than 70 per cent.

Australia's second largest shopping centre owner has downgraded its full year distribution guidance by 14 per cent to 40.6 cents, from 47 cents.

Centro has recently come under heavy criticism from brokers over its lack of disclosure to the market about gearing levels, particularly given the current parlous state of credit markets.

UBS Investment Research property analysts Simon Garing told AAP earlier this month that the company had a gearing level at one point as high as 70 per cent, although this was not obvious from the company's accounts.

Centro said it hadn't warned the market of any potential trouble earlier than Monday because in August, when the sub-prime crisis started to push up borrowing costs and drain liquidity in debt markets, it believed that long-term refinancing would be available when it needed it.


Classic double top...




5-day action:

Well, the live feed's sort of fixed but is running half an hour behind.. so I'll glean my info from other sources.

It was full-blown slaughterama today leaving All Ords -3.4% which is as big a down day as I've seen for a long time. Property Trusts was the main sector responsible for this, down a massive 11.4% with the Centro news making investors jittery. Most sectors took a big hit: Financials -2.6%, Materials -3.7%, Energy -3.5%.

In the miners, BHP and RIO had a rough day, both down over 3% and golds were down as well to a lesser degree. Most the juniors ended red.

Oils went into a slide, down 1-3%.

Asia seeing some happy bears: Taiwan -3.4%, Sth Korea -2.7%, Honkers -2.4%, China -1.8% and Nikkers -1.2%.


Over to UK/Europe:






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

About 2/3's of Centro's business is in the USA.

Pretty sure Liberty INT Reit (LII.L) has large shopping mall holdings in the USA also.

If Liberty cracks during London trading, could be a massive meltup in SRS in the USA on Monday.

By the way, did some holiday shopping at my local Centro Mall today.

Place was packed at 10AM on a Monday

Mish on Centro.

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

cash is king, for a time

2 hours into trading in London and LII is off 5%.

LII.L bouncing back, now down only 3%.

Centro can't find a loan for about US$1 Billion right now. Hence the tanking.

They manage/control/own nearly 1000 shopping malls in 3 countries and nobody will loan them a measly US$1 Billion?

That's ugly.

LDK's ex-CFO is proven to be a liar by the Board.

Stock up 25% premarket.

Missing inventory claim is false.

gov't PPT at work

gold slapdown, crude buckoff fer show

both were higher earlier

dollar and bonds back to green

both were red earlier

shlock fraudexes off their lows

I think they just want to slow the sell-off, not stop it

of course they can stop it anytime if they want

but I don't think they want to

they've gone to all the trouble of setting up the middle claSS, they're not gonna let 'em off the hook now

just finish 'em off nice and slow

so much more enjoyable that way

everything is a show for the top 1%

everyone else just pawns to be slapped around for amusement

hey, how 'bout that China akshun?

TPTB probably put out the word not to help them, let 'em die

Scottrade's server overloaded ... never had that messge before. I can get on Schwab OK.

Another coordinated "hacker" server attack by the Uzbekistan PPT regional office.

I can't get on Scottrade either. Bummer. Should have stayed with etrade.

Check negative divergence on the weekly

I am always skeptical of conspiracy theories. However, the ISEQ (Irish stock mkt - nobody would bother to fix it) is down over 30% this year. Banking and construction are the biggest sector in the index and both are now heading for 10yr lows. The economy is still strong here and the banks (at least up until now) are in good shape.

The economy does look like its headed for a dip (if not something more serious) but the problems are still not on the same scale as the subprime fiasco in the US. Irish banks are still run with a conservative bent.

Historically, the ISEQ would follow the US mkts and the FTSE in its performance. This time its leading. So it does surprise me greatly that the US mkts are holding up so well.

My Ameritrade Streamer says the SOW is down 245! Maybe it is a leading indicator!

Looks like the Quads wanna' dribble down to the 50.50 mark in order to get a better look at the 50 cent (or so) Gap left behind on 11/28 (Wacky Wednesday Open).

My guess would be that they'd fight pretty hard to avoid filling that Gap since it leaves 50 cent steps back down to $49.

AAV getting crushed for another 6%

They reduced their divi,but it's still over 14%





Reits getting bloodied as well

DJ Fed Accepts $9.5 Bln In Overnight RPs

Type of transaction: Overnight RPs
Total accepted: $9.5 Bln
Total submitted: $72.2 Bln

Agency Collateral Operation
Total accepted: None
Total submitted: $27.95 Bln
Stop-Out Rate: N/A
Weighted Average: N/A
High-rate submitted: 4.42%
Low-rate submitted: 4.2%

Treasury Collateral Operation
Total accepted: $7.5 Bln
Total submitted: $21.5 Bln
Stop-Out Rate: 3.95%
Weighted Average: 3.95%
High-rate submitted: 3.99%
Low-rate submitted: 3.8%

Mortgage-Backed Collateral Operations
Total accepted: $2 Bln
Total submitted: $22.75 Bln
Stop-Out Rate: 4.51%
Weighted Average: 4.51%
High-rate submitted: 4.51%
Low-rate submitted: 4.42%

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


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

Scottrade is history as far as I am concerned.

I've been trying for 50 minutes to access my trading account.

Got onto my homepage once, but tried to get on trading page and lost connection.

Repeated attempts to no avail.

I'm so effing pissed I could spit nails.

If the assholes at Scottrade can't get adequate server capacity to deal with market surges, they certainly aren't worthy of my business.

I pre-positioned last Friday, thank goodness, and I'm making money.

But had the market been going the other way, I'd have had problems.

Well, gotta get back to trying to access my account.

UFB!

Keep trying, I just got on...the streaming stuff is not working, but I can access the account.

Scottrade working fine for me all morning

Somebody just remembered to get into gold today..




Did GG make a ST bottom here?

I got in, but scottrade streamer ain't working.

boy...that will teach me to keep my mouth shut...I'm down too on Scottrade

I've been able to get to my Scottrade account homepage twice, but cannot access trading page.

I'm done with Scottrade.

They make enough money off my trading -- and this piss poor service is completely unacceptable.

I'll be closing my account with these sorry bastards when the market settles down..

Me too. I'm popped off again. Got in once, but as soon as I tried to execute a trade, I got that server notice...what a pisser!

Maybe the sheep got Shorty's GMTFO signal over the weekend?

well, I just went to my Interactive Brokers account - web access - no sweat - except they lost my settings. But the ran some upgrade so no surprise.
IB web edition sometimes can hang, when they cut rates on Sept 18 I could not do jack until the market close.

I will be interested to see how Scottrade addresses this.

PC --Thanx for the info.

So I take it that you have a current data stream with IB?

I need reliable access to trade; this morning's snafu has been an eye opener.

You must be satisfied with your IB account...

Would be interested if other traders are having access/data stream problems with other on-line brokers...

seems like the stream is current. and they are cheap, I mean the commission almost not existent.

sLAPPY
I have;and it reads very much like a telegram from the governor denying the prisoner a stay of execution.....

After digesting its content Im ready to shop for sandbags and bunker property...bunker to be provided with nuclear immunised porthole as well as an electronic arc of the Covenant...

All of this is a laughing matter once you get on your metaphysical bycycle....

And remember:Despite an apparent hopelesness Its never too late to dig one's own grave....

beardrech

The last time IB servers were down for few hours was Oct 29 (I just found my post on IB outage on another board dated Oct 29). So they have their own share of problems.

I've used OptionsXpress since their inception. They are not 'Trouble Free', as I suspect that no organization is. They do have the Primary WebSite and an additional Alternate WebSite that I've accessed when I couldn't use their Primary WebSite. They use Prophet Financial to provide Streaming Charts. On heavy volume days, the Streaming data sometimes gets out of sync but it's Time-Tagged, so if one watches the Time Stamps closely, sense can be made out of it.

They have telephone brokers as well but sometimes they are difficult to access as well.

The Quads are dallying with the 50.50 level again. The 20 Day Chart shows how that seems to be important to Traders. Let's see if they BreakDown from there.

As has been reported at the Stool and WSE:


Hold tight, the central banks have no plan

By Wolfgang Munchau

Published: December 16 2007 16:03 | Last updated: December 17 2007 05:09

This has been the year when many deeply held beliefs have been challenged. One such belief was that central banks have the toolkit to sort out any conceivable economic or financial crisis.

Last week’s co-ordinated liquidity action by five central banks taught us that this is not the case. The idea was that a co-ordinated response would reassure the markets, but it had the opposite effect. It turned out that market participants are not infinitely stupid. They know by now that this is not a liquidity crisis at its core. If it had been, it would be over by now.

It is a fully fledged solvency crisis that has arisen because two giant and interlinked bubbles burst simultaneously – one in property, one in credit – leaving banks and investors on the brink of bankruptcy, some hanging on by their fingertips. Yet there is nothing the central banks are offering at this stage to alleviate a solvency crisis.

So the message from last week is that central banks have no game plan. Expect continued stress in financial markets for most of next year and possibly beyond. Expect also further declines in property prices in the US and the UK and spill-overs to the real economy.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/233ae764-abef-11...?nclick_check=1

Me thinks the midcaps may be telling us something......

[attachmentid=93828]

Peek

I've repeated this it of nformation until my face is turning cyanic blue,

Just as the Minnesota Bridge had secret infrastructural infirmities which led to its collapse, so does the stock and bond markets suffer from similar afflictions

I am not a mavin about these things and am merely ventriloquising:All the markets of the world are bound together with a globally all encompassing communicating chain;and all are only as strong as their weakest communicating link...

Alll are vulnerable to the weaknesses of legacy systems whose codes are extremely idiosyncratic ,products of software artists whose ancient idioms are barely understoood.

Why they (the industry) chose to live with these dangers throwing their professional lives into mortal danger is probably the same reason that GSax is currently a walking Zombie,having leveraged its comparatively speaking,pimple sized pile of equity, against counterparty risklovers which are now ,for all practical purposes, defunct...

So,Imagine when the entire financial world wakes up sharing the same nightmare; can you imagine the pressues upon the system when everyone is tring to get their orders executed at the same time...

beardrech it'lll be more like a centipede, all feet and no brains..

FINALLY!

Only 2 effing hours after the market opened (around 8:30 am Pacific) I am finally looking at my Scottrade data screens...

hope you other Stoolies who have had problems are back on-line as well with your brokers...

My FXP is UP 6.34% from Friday's close and I've made money this ayem, but I hate to think what I would have lost had the market opened against me.

Had I needed to sell this ayem, I would have been screwed big time...

To hell with Scottrade.

If you're suggesting that the August Lows could be revisited, then the Quads could be saying the same thing ...

If you're suggesting that the November and then the August Lows could be revisited, then the Quads could be saying the same thing ...

triple witching end of week.Expecting a huge turn around at some point this week...

I think they just want to blow out the call buyers then take it up for a mini santa rally.




It seems to hapeen almost every options expiration...we'll see if they have any gas left

Schwab has working fine, in fact I closed an option trade at 0945est

Tend to agree...

Da Boyz may try to take the fraudexes even lower today, to put a good scare in the bulls.

But remember, fair-haired, golden boy Goldman Sachs reports tomorrow...

Likely GS's numbers may be juiced (really good) and maybe will be the catalyst for a nice, fat, put-holder-screwing bounce now that the call option holders have been effed last Friday and today.

I have a nice flag pattern on FXP, hope it breaks north.

SPX (5 min chart) showing a very weak bounce off support at 1456 level after 2 attempts to break below it.

Third try may be a charm...

Bears keep your fingers crossed.

I noticed months ago the lagging performance for scottrade and alerted their tech support to it. Apparently, they need a new system.