ES Journal Archive (2006 - 2008)

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Quote from JSSPMK:

You wish to buy us subscriptions to Metastock for Christmas? :)

That chart is provided for free on a website, you just have to know where to look! :)

I think it is updated nightly...

Those 3 red arrows in June-July REALLY said sell oil!:

http://metastocktools.com/MACDH/Oil.png

Oil promptly dropped 60 bucks before any blue arrow showed up... :)
 
I'm sensing a move back to 1070 over the next week or two. A massive short squeeze to go along with one of the most massive drops in history. It could go higher, but this is the first area I'll be looking to get short for the next move down. Its important to remember that S/R levels work better for catching retraces than calling the end of a strongly impulsing trend.

IMO a long-term bottom is a long ways away for the US indices... but that's not to say there won't be plenty of playable bounces.
 
Quote from tommymoose:

I'm sensing a move back to 1070 over the next week or two. A massive short squeeze to go along with one of the most massive drops in history. It could go higher, but this is the first area I'll be looking to get short for the next move down. Its important to remember that S/R levels work better for catching retraces than calling the end of a strongly impulsing trend.

IMO a long-term bottom is a long ways away for the US indices... but that's not to say there won't be plenty of playable bounces.

I agree, consolidation and upwards drift over the next few weeks. But at some point there will be another big leg down. I'm guessing terrible holiday sales, along with a high-profile BK or two, could be the catalyst.
 
This week witnessed the continuation of the great decline of 2008, what many have
called the end of free market capitalism as we know it.
Historic Volatility characterized this week’s Market Behavior.
Five years ago, Warren Buffett commented that derivatives were 'financial weapons of
mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal. The
impact of the endless array of exotic derivatives has now created a freeze on global
credit.
One prominent financial figure, however, has long thought otherwise. And his views
held the greatest sway in debates about the regulation and use of derivatives - exotic
contracts that promised to protect investors from losses, thereby stimulating riskier
practices that led to the financial crisis.
For more than a decade, the former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan played
the role of the leading proponent for Wall Street derivatives, fiercely arguing before
Senate Banking Committee in 2003 whenever Congress questioned the nature and
regulation of derivatives.
Greenspan testimony:
1.) What we have found over the years in the marketplace is that derivatives have
been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn't
be taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so.
2.) We [the Federal Reverse] think it would be a mistake' to more deeply regulate
the contracts, he added.
Theoretically intended to limit risk and ward off financial problems, the contracts
instead have stoked uncertainty and actually spread risk amid doubts about how
companies value them. Many economists have stated that had Greenspan acted
differently during his tenure as Federal Reserve chairman from 1987 to 2006, the
current crisis might have been averted.

The current financial crisis occurred because the financial wizards of Wall Street believe
the most implausible idea. In what they thought was a moment of sheer genus, the
Wall Street wizards conceived that the financial sector could get rich by lending money
to people who couldn't pay it back and selling those loans to unsuspecting investors
around the world. In order to sweeten up the deal, they paid huge fee to the credit
rating agency to disguise their sub-prime loans as AAA rated paper and invented bogus
insurance policies, called credit default swaps to conceive institutional clients that if the
loans went bad they would get back their principle.
With the scheme worked out, they set about to market it, by luring the all to gullible
American consumer into to believing they could go on forever spending money they did
have on things they didn’t need. Why they ever got the President to tell the nation
consumerisms was downright patriotic.
And there you have it; simple stated the greatest Ponzi scheme ever portrayed on the
world stage. We the American people must take credit for this Ponzi scheme that our
financial system created and perpetrated. Denial of the facts will not serve our national
interest. Acceptance of the facts will make it possible for us to put an end to it.
The choice is ours. We either get our heads around what’s going on in our world and
figure out how we, its citizens can shape it for the better or Ogilvy’s view of our world
will prove right.
Ogilvy said power is in advertizing. Ogilvy worked with the Intelligence Service at the
British Embassy in Washington. He analyzed and made recommendations on matters of
diplomacy and security. Ogilvy extrapolated his knowledge of human behavior from
intelligence to nationalism to consumerism. Ogilvy research was picked up on by the
Eisenhower Psychological Warfare Board who used his techniques of field secret
successfully in Europe during the last year of the war.
In his book, Confessions of an Advertising Man, Ogilvy state the function of advertising
is to sell, and that successful advertising for any product is based on information about
its consumer. The principle is simple, figure out what the person wants to believe and
exploit it. Manipulate the person’s ego.
We American’s want to believe they can have it all. We’ve been programmed to believe
that all our lives. We are programmed to want instant gratification. We are programmed
to constantly desire more and more; to consumer; to shop till we drop. We’re been
exposed to more commercial advertizing than any other human beings in history. Our
life style, the fact that most of us spend hours watching TV then we do talking to the
members of our family’s, has shaped our minds into to a race non-critical thinkers; a
nation who have forgotten how to think beyond the sound bite.
 
All this has made us gullible; gullible enough to believe that we could give up our
manufacturing jobs and still live the good life. And now here we are; the baby boom
generation and we have let ourselves get skewed. This week the nation sat by and
watched as billions of dollars in equity disappeared before our eyes. The Blue Chip Dow
30, the NASDAQ Composite and the Broad Benchmark S&P 500 all sold off back to their
bear market lows.
The hallucinations of the Wall Street wizards turned into a bad acid trip. The immense
worldwide credit bubble they created has burst. Now a huge anti-bubble is forming – in
a Newtonian sense, it is likely to create an equal and opposite reaction. Those to whom
we owe money, and god knows we are the greatest debtor’s nation on earth, are not
likely to invest in our next sub-prime Ponzi scheme. I fear that we sown the seeds of
our own demise. If and when the economies of the world can figure out how to get
along without us, they will.
Ten years ago, the giant Cayman Island hedge fund, called Long Term Capital
Management hired a group of math wizards including several former university
professors, including two Nobel Prize-winning economists, who dreamt up an all
encompassing algorithm, a so-called the model of everything.
Long-Term Capital Management commanded more than $100 billion in assets. Between
1994 and 1998 the fund showed a return on investment of more than 40% per annum.
However, its enormously leveraged gamble with various forms of arbitrage involving
more than $1 trillion dollars went bad, and in one month, LTCM lost $1.9 billion. The
collapse of the Hedge Fund was American financial disaster, with significant
international monetary implications, that put the entire financial system jeopardy.
Prompted by deep concerns about LTCM's thousands of derivative contracts, in order to
avoid a panic by banks and investors worldwide, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
stepped in to organize a bailout with the various major banks at risk. Wall Street feared
that its unraveling could set off a systemic meltdown.
So, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York called in the big financial houses to help with
the rescue. It worked. The crisis was averted. LTCM's positions were liquidated in an
orderly fashion.
No firm had a closer view of Long-Term Capital than Bear Stearns, the broker that
cleared its trades. And it was Bear that sounded the first shot in the current mortgage
crisis. In summer 2007, amid a sharp rise in delinquencies on subprime mortgages, two
hedge funds sponsored by Bear that invested in high-rated mortgage securities
imploded. As foreclosures kept rising, other institutions suffered losses and the crisis
spread. The leveraged exposure eventually took down Bear Stearns.

However, the problem was much bigger than anyone expected or was willing to admit.
The problem wasn’t with one or two hedge funds. The whole financial system was
involved. Trillions of dollars of new cash and credit are being pumped in the system.
The result was that real estate prices were inflated to the point where genuine buyers,
hard working people able to save a down payment couldn’t afford to buy a home. All
the while, good loans were being mixed with bad loans and were sold as AAA grade
investment vehicles, backed by bogus overleveraged unregulated insurance policies, the
so-called credit swaps.
But this time, the fix doesn't seem to stay fixed. Bad positions can't be unwound in an
orderly manner; there are too many of them. And it's not just a handful of speculators
who are getting whacked: it's effecting the entire population of the United States of
America, Great Britain and Europe.
The Fed is buying assets that no one in their right mind would touch. Her majesty's
government is now proprietor of 50 billion pounds worth of banking shares; the Bush
administration, under the guidance of Treasury Sectary Paulson is preparing to enter
the banking business too. But as trillions go in, trillions more leak out. So far this year,
world equity markets have lost $20 trillion. U.S. property markets alone have lost $6
trillion over the last two years. It is not just a few investment decisions that are being
corrected, in other words, it's the delusions of an entire generation. And why? Because
after overleveraged liquidity comes the liquidation. After the outsized recklessness
comes the appropriate regret.
We have all lived through recessions (1973-74 and 1980-82). Recessions are simply
part of the business cycle and government cannot repeal the business cycle. At some
point the economic cycle will find a way to eventually get back to solid growth. This will
not be the last recession.
However, depressions are caused by governments. Depressions are the result major
policy mistakes. Our government, not republicans, not democrats, the government
made major policy mistakes some by deregulating mortgage lending. The government
made major policy mistakes by allowing the five large investment banks to increase
their leverage to 30 or 40 to one. The government made major policy mistakes by
failing to oversee the rating agencies.
Coming to terms with the cost of our mistakes is what we have to take away from the
financial crisis of 2008.
An immediate comprehensive plan is called for. Not to come up with a real solutions
risks a much greater problem. To not take actions to stem the credit crisis would be
that major policy mistake which would compound all the other mistakes.
 
Letting Lehman go under has brought to light just how pervasive the problem is. The
consequences of allowing Lehman fail demonstrated the severity of the credit crisis.
Based on the results of Friday’s credit auction it is estimated that current exposure to
risk will prove very costly. Many funds will be forced to dump assets to meet the
payment demands if they haven't hedged.
It may be too early to predict how much of that debt will eventually have to be
absorbed by various government programs and capital infusions. But you can bet it will
be a lot.
Many firms have already write-downs their losses. According to the International Swaps
and Derivatives Association Lehman’s CDS holdings are likely to be sorted out with no
failures. If that proven to be true then what the global financial markets went through
this week was just a near death experience.
Regardless, the CDS markets MUST be regulated. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange
would be a good place for the CDS market to publicly trade. While there are always
serious risk of loss in any exchange-traded market, there was no systemic risk. When
publicly traded the value of their various securities are known to everyone. The market
participants are assured by the exchange they will receive full value positions are
redeemed.
It was foolish to allow a market the size of CDS market go unregulated. Those who
were lured to play that game got what they deserved. John Mauldin suggests that in
the future the various main actors will look back at the failure of Lehman as the
proverbial "last straw" for the unregulated CDS markets.
The unregulated shadow CDS market has resulted in a credit freeze. The LIBOR index
has historical traded in lock-step move with the Fed funds rate. The recent spike in the
LIBOR rate has not responded to this week's Fed funds cut. The spreads are wider than
ever. As Mauldin’s notes, the problem is not just the price of LIBOR. There is no trading
at any price. The LIBOR market is a fiction today. And left unchecked, this lack of
dealing with other banks will spread to letters of credit and the international trade
markets.
The G-7 group of nations is holding emergency meetings this weekend and reports are
serious disagreements exist as to what to do. They cannot even agree on a press
release.
In an interview on PBS Television's Charlie Rose, Former Federal Reserve Chairman
Paul Volcker urged all the G-7 nations to admit to the fact their own banks are going to
need support.

It is absolutely essential that the world's largest economies act together, and act
together, says UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling. Governments must
guarantee lending between banks; either by turning central banks into clearing houses
for the loans or have governments take them over.
The idea of governments taking over the Central Banking System is a change of
dramatic portions. The suggestion indicates World Leaders acknowledge the system is
at the point of no return. It’s no longer about bailing out financial institutions.
Governments are literally talking about taking over the Central Banking System to save
the world economy.
The fact is continued bank failures would guarantee a worldwide recession. The
markets are not working. There are no signs that the markets will work. If this course
continues history is likely to repeat itself. The last depression produced severe political
backlash and a world war.
We are living in extraordinary times. We are witnessing the collapse of free markets.
Basically, the U.S. has had 30 years of Regan Style Milton Freeman laissez-faire
capitalism where the preemies had been, government is the problem, do away with
government regulation, stay aside and let the free market works. This week, what the
Senior Bush called voodoo economic came back to haunt the nation. The extreme
promise of supply-side economics has not materialized.
In his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman advocated minimizing the role of
government in a free market as a means of creating political and social freedom. This
week’s historical decline in the DOW proved that free market capitalism isn’t working.
Why has Free Market Capitalism failed? The simple honest answer is that those in
positions of authority, government and corporate leaders, have exploited the laissezfaire
capitalism, which have been implemented in monetary policy, taxation,
privatization and deregulation around the globe, especially the administrations of
Ronald Reagan in the U.S., Brian Mulroney in Canada, Margaret Thatcher in Britain, and
Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and recently in Eastern Europe, for personal gain.
Everything the neo-conservative Regan Style Milton Freeman free market capitalists
believed has failed. Those in positions to exploit the public trust have wiped out the
shareholders of America greatest companies, have taken huge sums of money and
bailed out with their golden parachutes.
While a few have becomes fabulously rich, the Milton Freeman Free Market Capitalist’s
have now turned to government to bail them out. After hearing for years that
government is the problem, that social programs don’t work, these neo-conservative
free market capitalist’s now tell us the only thing that can save the global economy is
economic socialism with them as its primary recipient.
You and I and our children and our children’s children will be paying for the cost of
cleaning up the mess.
This could not happen at a more inopportune time. At this time theirs is lack of
leadership. It is difficult for people to know who to have faith in. Government’s efforts
so far have had no effect. The FED’s policies have done nothing to correct the situation.
Most of us are inclined to think the markets should be allowed to work or simply want
those who created the crisis to pay. Those of us who saw this crisis coming are
frustrated that no one bothered to pay attention. There’s a lot of anger out there.
 
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