http://finance.yahoo.com/intlindices

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










http://www.kitco.com

Energy futures

Currencies/Au/Ag

The market moving a bit more freely today. All Ords +2.4%, Energy leading, +3.5% followed by the miners, +3.4%. Telecomms is the only red sector, -1%.

Miners very much in favour today: BHP +2.5%, RIO +3.6% with golds also performing strongly, Newcrest +2.2%, Newmont +1.7% and Lihir +6.3%.

Oils also looking pretty good: Woodside +3.5%, Santos +1.8% and Lihir +6.3%.

The Big Bounce continues...All Ords closed +5% with most sectors doing a rocket launch. IT pushed into the lead, +7.3% followed by Energy +6.6% and miners +6%. Telecomms had the least gain, +1%.

A huge day for the big miners: BHP +5.7%, RIO +9.2%. The golds not quite so sparky, Newcrest +1.9%, Newmont +0.7% and Lihir +3.6%. Juniors mostly up.

Oils did very well: Woodside +6%, Santos +4.1% and Caltex +1.2%.

Da bullz running in Asia: Honkers +5.3%, India +4.2% and Nikkers +3.2%. China still not joining the party, -0.2%.


Over to UK/Europe:








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

The newest spin is, that DAX went down so much on monday because of the bad trades of the SocGen guy. What seems to could be true is that SocGen closed his bad postions from monday till wednesday. On monday the US was closed so futures volume wasnt that high, so on a day like this you move the market more with the same amount of money. Sure, it was a bit weird that DAX was down 7%, i thought "hm, thats a bit much", but well, why shouldnt it happen. Maybe we will hear the truth about that story some day.


DAX hit 7002 in the opening minutes, now trading around 6925.

All Ords weekly

what a mega monster candle! Technically spoken this setup is MEGA bullish: It almost hit the 200 weekly EMA and made an monster style upmove.

[attachmentid=95040]

Could read a possible head & shoulders formation into it, in which case we go up for a while to make the right shoulder, indicators are all v Dover Sole at the moment.

Oz real estate still heading up. Melbourne leads:




http://data1.reiv.com.au/trendchart/


Kalgoorlie-Boulder is 10th highest gainer in WA for the past year, +35% (thanks to mining).

yes, right. This would mean up more than 10% from current levels. I had not in mind to say that All Ords will go to 10k now, i only meant that the setup isnt that what a bear wishes a setup to be. Bears have to work very hard to "erase" this weeks very bullsih candle in the Ords.

Here's an interesting blurb on FED (Socal bank, 33 branches, hold all their own mortgage paper), which i have been PUTting in and out of. Their headline beat by two cents, which will probably ream me a new one, look at some of the numbers:

"loan charge-offs totaled $9.2 million and $14.1 million for the fourth quarter and the year of 2007 compared to $90 thousand and $190 thousand for the fourth quarter and the year of 2006. The Bank’s non-performing assets to total assets ratio increased to 2.79% at December 31, 2007 from 1.40% at September 30, 2007"

What a mess...and this is just one lender. There is interesting lanuage in their report about Negative Amortization loans too. 2007 they had 1600 ARM's hit maximum allowable neg-am, requiring increased payment. In 2008, they are expecting 2800 to do the same. What an unbelievable mess.

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080125/20080125005160.html?.v=1

The thing is, they recognize negative am as earnings, even though they aren't collecting it, right?

It looks like the UK is about to wake up to it's own financial nightmare soon, until now people here have been pointing at US subprime as the cause of all our worries...



UK - From The Times - January 25, 2008
Mortgage approvals hit by credit crunch
Grainne Gilmore and Rebecca O'Connor

The number of mortgages granted to new home buyers plunged to a record low last month as banks struggled with the credit crunch and potential buyers hesitated in the face of higher mortgage rates. Only 42,088 mortgages were approved for new buyers by banks in December, lower than at any time since records began in September 1997, figures from the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) showed.

The Times

I do believe so, Doc.

UK - mortgage rates are going up here...


UK Nationwide becomes the latest lender to raise mortgage rates
By James Daley, Personal Finance Editor

The cost of borrowing money is continuing to rise this month, despite a cut in the Bank of England base rate at the start of December and a sharp reduction in Libor, the rate at which banks lend to each other, over the past few weeks.

Yesterday, Nationwide, the UK's largest building society and fourth-largest mortgage provider, became the latest lender to announce price rises across its tracker mortgage range. It will increase rates for new borrowers by up to 0.15 percentage points as of tomorrow.

Brokers said Alliance & Leicester is gearing up for a similar move this week; Woolwich, which is owned by Barclays, announced price hikes for new customers only last week. Other lenders are expected to follow suit in the coming weeks

http://news.independent.co.uk/business/new...icle3359118.ece

I thought they had already pre-booked all profits and sold the servicing rights into off-balance sheet SIVs.

In a bit of a shocker, Dennis Kucinich dropped out of the Presidential race today.He was evidently not of Presidential stature.

You probably know more about it than I do. I remember yours, or someone else's posts on this, but I was fuzzy, so I assume that you're correct. Either way, I'd have to guess that their "earnings" were not what they appear.

Good Morning!

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

You can join the discussion by registering (PG rated user names only, please) and posting here as well.

Registration is easy. Just click the Register link above, enter your email address (which you have the option to keep confidential), and enter a user name. To keep out spammers and scammers, I'll send you an email with a few Monty Python type questions. Just reply with your answers, and I'll approve your registration as soon as I receive your reply.

If you have questions about how to register and post, use the Help link in the menu bar at the top of the page.

If you know others who might be interested in joining us, use the email to a friend link above the thread.

Many tanks for joining us!

Doc


Try the Professional Edition risk free for thirty days. If, within that time you don't find the information helpful, I'll give you a full refund. It's that simple!Click here for more information.

Subscribe to the Wall Street Examiner Professional Edition Precious Metals Daily, just $39 quarterly. Try it risk free for 30 days!

Get this indispensable daily analysis and support the Stool!

from the A.P. (NOT)

FRENCH TRADER WAS FORCED TO WORK 30 HOURS A WEEK

FRIENDS of rogue trader Jerome Kerviel last night blamed his $7 billion losses
on unbearable levels of stress brought on by a punishing 30 hour week.

Kerviel was known to start work as early as nine in the morning and still be at
his desk at five or even five-thirty, often with just an hour and a half for
lunch.

One colleague said: "He was, how you say, une workaholique. I have a family and
a mistress so I would leave the office at around 2pm at the latest, if I wasn't
on strike.

"But Jerome was tied to that desk. One day I came back to the office at 3pm
because I had forgotten my stupid little hat, and there he was, fast asleep on
the photocopier.

"At first I assumed he had been having sex with it, but then I remembered he'd
been working for almost six hours."

As the losses mounted, Kerviel tried to conceal his bad trades by covering them
with an intense red wine sauce, later switching to delicate pastry horns.

At one point he managed to dispose of dozens of transactions by hiding them
inside vol-au-vent cases and staging a fake reception.

I don't know much. In fact, it seems impossible to know anything, given how well they have "dispersed" risk. I have read some the academic research (including Bear Stearns magic CDO papers in 2005).

I can only assume they have a magic model for it. The SIVs are required by FASB to preform all actions algorithmically according to a formula established BEFORE it disappears into the SIV. Since the limit was pre-established they must have some magic percentage of people they expect to hit the limit. There are so many freakin' made up numbers in banking.

I don't think so Faux...I'm pretty sure they hold 90%+ of them.

(unless i am inserting my comments into the wrong conversation here and not re FED)

anyone buying AU or GFI on the power outage news?

I have no clue as to the percentage they hold. If I was scamming the pension funds and the public, I'd keep the prime IO/ARMs on the balance sheet and shuffle off the dreck to the SIVs.

Was it on the Gloomberg terminal?

I like to repost humorous stuff on the WSE, but can only do it if it's our own original writing. If it's third party stuff I suspect the publisher wouldn't mind us reposting, but we would still need the attribution link.

Looks like 1410 resistance to me on SPX cash.

I got it by e-mail, forwarded from yet another e-mail... it's going around the street. Pretty funny stuff.

I grabbed som DROOY, but only for a quick pop and a trade

Almost there.

If it's from anonymous, I doubt he'll sue.

On the other hand, I would not want to be accused of anti-French bias.

In France anything less then a two hour lunch is cruel
I bet he got no Pastis and no Blanc ni Rouge

qqqq new 3 day cycle projection same as the 5 day from last night. 46.15

spx 3 day cycle projection now looks 1372 as it gaps above resistance on the open.

dow 3 day cycle projection now 12550

5 hr cycle projections 12515, 1368


qqqq 5 hr cycle on sell signals. pulling back to 3 day cycle ma 45.36.

DJ Fed Accepts $3.75 Bln In 3-Day RPs

Type of transaction: 3-Day RPs
Total accepted: $3.75 Bln
Total submitted: $42.5 Bln

Agency Collateral Operation
Total accepted: None
Total submitted: $13.95 Bln
Stop-Out Rate: N/A
Weighted Average: N/A
High-rate submitted: 3.51%
Low-rate submitted: 3.25%

Treasury Collateral Operation
Total accepted: $3.75 Bln
Total submitted: $17.7 Bln
Stop-Out Rate: 2.73%
Weighted Average: 2.74%
High-rate submitted: 2.75%
Low-rate submitted: 2.5%

Mortgage-Backed Collateral Operations
Total accepted: None
Total submitted: $10.85 Bln
Stop-Out Rate: N/A
Weighted Average: N/A
High-rate submitted: 3.54%
Low-rate submitted: 3.3%

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

gdx 3 day cycle projection looks 52.75-53. 5 hr projection of 51.85 has been hit.

Breadth is much better today. At least so far. Right now it's about 5 to1 positive.

Goodness gracious. The Fed does another drain.

This is the craziest thing I have seen since I began following the Fed every day 6 years ago.

The Fed actually had negative growth in the monetary base (not including cash in circulation) over the past year. The SOMA is even worse. It's down over $50 billion. More coming up in the WSE Pro Fed report.

qqqq 3 day cycle indicators tick to the sell side.

qqqq edges below the 3 day cycle MA at 45.37. Next is the 5 day at 45.

The question is why did they do it (i.e., what could be THEIR thinking leading to this decision).
Any ideas?

55 users. Hmmm. Tops are usually in the 40s. I wonder if we need to adjust that.

trendline and support level at 1354. IF they fall below that after gapping above trend resistance around 1360, that would be bearish.

I try to avoid asking why. I don't think it matters. Aaron Krowne, in our podcast yesterday said he thought it was because the Fed is afraid of inflation. I just don't know why. I suppose we won't know until Ben retires and writes his book.

Listen to a free 10 minute preview of our most recent podcast.

http://media.libsyn.com/media/wallstreetex.../rf012408pv.mp3

Then visit http://radiofreewallstreet.fm and subscribe to hear the whole thing and all the podcasts.

The follwoing i saw on a german business channel this morning:

Societe Generale closed the bad deals of that guy on monday and tuesday. It was worth 50 billion euros. So their was selling pressure of 50 billion on the DAX on both days. That is quite a lot. It was also reported that the FED didnt no anything about that fiasco at SocGen before they made their rate cut.

The question is: SocGen knows that they put much pressure on the market if they close deals worth 59 billion in just 2 days. Why didnt they choose a other way? Asking the ECB for help or assistance or something like that???

My impression is the FCBs or oil sat someone down and said slow down or we dump our trillions of pesos. Maybe Bush went begging Saud for an interest rate cut. 75 points for 15 fighter jets. Flashbacks from the 70s.

USD/CAD daily

uptrend broken, tried to regain it today, failed. Below parity --> woosh!

[attachmentid=95041]