ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
Dangerous Views of Volatility: Pay attention to the VIX, but don't just follow the crowd – Barrons.com The market remains schizophrenic. One day, stock prices tumble because Standard & Poor's questions the credit rating of the United States, and investors panic and sell and fret, and the front pages of many newspapers are apocalyptic. The … Read more
It seems the Federal Reserve may maintain some excuse to keep printing money. Hundreds of billions printed in the name of economic recovery and inflation can be seen almost everywhere except the housing market, one of two of the Fed’s main targets – the other being employment. (See “Inflation Watch” for running highlights of stories … Read more
Gillard Says Japan, Australia to Cooperate on Clean Energy – Bloomberg The two countries reaffirmed their commitment to implement a free-trade agreement under negotiation since 2007, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said today in a speech in Tokyo. Gillard met yesterday with Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and promised Japan steady supplies of liquefied natural … Read more
(The following news release is satire and reflects my own cynical interpretation of recent news events. But as they say, there is always some truth in humor.) On Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder introduced the country to the Oil and Gas Price Fraud Working Group to “…focus specifically on fraud in the energy markets” by … Read more
This is a quick follow-up to my piece three days ago summarizing the pre-earnings technical outlook on Apple (“Apple Teeters On Critical Support Ahead of Earnings…and the Next Sprint Higher?“). I thought I would be writing this commentary AFTER earnings, but it seems Apple (AAPL) may have already started its next sprint to higher prices. … Read more
Excerpt from an article I published on Seeking Alpha. Click here to read the entire piece (embedded video only here): Five years ago, I wrote an article titled “Despair Deep In the Silver Mines” to describe the sympathy selling in silver miners that owned property in Bolivia after the government there declared it would nationalize … Read more
Apple (AAPL) investors have had it relatively easy since the late 2008/early 2009 lows. As long as they were not stopped out (or panicked out) of positions in the May, 2010 “flash crash”, patience has paid off. Every stumble in the stock has marked a mere pause in the persistent stair-wise step upward to ever … Read more
The dollar has been one of the weaker currencies amongst the major industrial trading partners. Thanks to coordinated intervention, the Japanese yen has managed to take over the mantle from the dollar in the race to the bottom. The weekly chart below shows that the dollar’s rally against the yen stopped cold as it approached … Read more
On Wednesday, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency rendered punishment on Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS) and other financial institutions “…for unsafe and unsound practices related to residential mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure processing.” (See OCC Takes Enforcement Action Against Eight Servicers for Unsafe and Unsound Foreclosure Practices). The OCC now requires mortgage … Read more
In late February, I lamented that TBT, the Pro Shares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury ETF, was careening toward a retest of the 200-day moving average (DMA) that it would lose. After three more weeks, the anticipated retest finally occurred, and TBT survived. *Chart created using TeleChart: The retest of the 200DMA was a great reminder … Read more