Cash is king! Liquidity in the form of cash tells us that the company can meet its obligations. The Cash Flow Statement is the third and last statement that we will touch upon. The statement is filed quarterly and year over year in concert with the Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet. The Cash Flow Statement is a measure of incoming and outgoing cash from its business operations for a specific point in time. The statement further defines the cash flow of the company that is indicated on the Balance Sheet. There are two methods of accounting that are used 1) accrual and 2) cash. Most companies use the accrual method which accounts for goods delivered as sales regardless of whether they have been paid for or not. The outstanding balance is shown on the Profit and Loss Statement under accounts receivable.
The Cash Flow statement typically divides the accounting for cash into…
The quasi-communist / quasi-mercantilist nation’s state-run movie distributor, China Film Group Corporation, has pulled the film of the year from 1,628 2-D screens (what a humorously random #) in favor of a biography of the ancient philosopher Confucius.
Way to get around to that, after the fact, and then half-ass it by leaving 3-D … what other brilliant big screen gap management / market timing ideas might those genii have ?
” The communist nation’s state-run movie distributor, China Film Group, unexpectedly began pulling the blockbuster science-fiction picture from 1,628 2-D screens this week in favor of a biography of the ancient philosopher Confucius.
Paul Hanneman, co-president of international distribution for 20th Century Fox, the movie’s distributor, confirmed the move, which the studio learned about Monday evening.
According to the Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, the switch was made at the urging of propaganda officials who are concerned that “Avatar” is taking too much market share from Chinese films and drawing unwanted attention to the sensitive issue of forced evictions.
Millions of Chinese have been uprooted to make way
Pharmboy, member of our team at PSW, has been writing a book on Technical Analysis. Here is the first chapter for your enjoyment/educational experience. - Ilene
Understanding Market Cycles: The Art of Market Timing
Courtesy of Pharmboy
Experts and the main stream media say that market timing is impossible. That much is true, but when TA is used, timing market movement is very profitable on a consistent basis. As a technical trader, the purpose is to find the best trades and to time the entry and exit points. After all, any trader can find the best trade in the world, but if it is not timed well, it may turn into a loss. Every stock or asset class goes through a classic market cycle. Figure 1 is a diagram of the four stages of the market cycle:
When looking at the charts of any stock or index, notice that it moves in cycles. By observing cycles, what to expect next is easier to comprehend. Figure 2 shows two stocks that have completed each of the four stages.
For a long-term investor or trader, understanding market cycles can greatly benefit their portfolio.
Stages of a Market Cycle
Accumulation Phase – This is the bottom (or near the bottom) of a particular stock, sector, or general market. At this stage, prices do not move upward but rather stay within a neutral trading range. At this level, the smart money begins to buy up large blocks of shares to accumulate a large position for their portfolio. They are patient enough to wait years, if needed, because it is difficult to determine how long a stock or sector will be in this stage. Regular individual retail investors do not even consider buying at this level because, in most cases, they have recently sold into the lows. At PSW, this is the stage where stocks are nominated to the Watchlist and the biggest
And that is the nature of Goldman. Gather up as many customers as possible, aggregate the available information to achieve a superior market view and then relentlessly extract rents from the marketplace. Better yet, tell yourself you’re smarter than everyone else and you’ve earned the rents from the symbiosis."
James Rickards, former General Counsel of Long Term Capital Management
This is a nice, concise, albeit somewhat simplified description, from a more mainstream and highly credible source, of how the markets are operating today to the extreme disadvantage of the public and the real economy. Between front-running and naked short selling the banks have things pretty well under their control.
The market makers are the Wall Street banks are the prop trading desks, trading at high frequency slightly ahead of the markets while peeking into your accounts, gaining just enough unfair advantage to defy the odds of winning and losing in a fairly regulated market.
"Now consider another example of data mining, not done by retail firms, but by giant investment banks such as Goldman Sachs. These banks have thousands of customers transacting in trillions of dollars in stocks, bonds, commodities and foreign exchange daily. By using systems with anodyne names like SecDB, Goldman not only sees the transaction flows but some of the outright positions and whether they are bullish or bearish. Data mining techniques are just as effective for this market information as they are for Google, Amazon, Wal-Mart and others. It’s not necessary to access individual accounts to be useful. The data can be aggregated so that the bank can look at positions on a portfolio basis without knowing the name of each customer.
One need not be a market expert to imagine the power of this information. You can see which way the winds are blowing before the storm hits. You get a sense of when momentum is draining out of a trade so you can get out of it before the market turns. You can see when bullish or bearish sentiment reaches extremes, suggesting it may soon turn the other way. This use of information is the ultimate type of insider trading because it does not break the law;
"The banks must be restrained, the financial system reformed, and balance restored to the economy before there can be any sustained recovery."
We have been saying this for some time. The report below from Neil Barofsky says essentially the same thing.
"Even if TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff back in 2008, absent meaningful reform, we are still driving on the same winding mountain road, but this time in a faster car," Barofsky wrote.
The US is heading towards a double dip recession, and the next leg down may be more fundamentally damaging than before.
The reason for the decline will be the abject failure of the Obama Administration to address the roots of the problem, instead wasting trillions to prop up a banking system that is a useless distortion.
Worse than useless really, because it actually presents a huge negative influence by stifling the recovery, channeling funds to the crony capitalists and non-producing wealth extraction sector, who tax the people like feudal lords under license of a corrupt government.
So far, Obama has failed the people, but preserved the banks. A source of his failure has been his weakness in listening to Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, the Rubin-Clinton wing of Democrats, who have well established their incompetence and inability to act at a level suitable to their positions. They are captive to special interests, locked into the ways of thinking that brought the world to the point of crisis.
In response to the next leg down, Bernanke will monetize debt at an even more furious and clever pace, perhaps in alliance with the Bank of England and Bank of Japan. The ECB resists, and all who balk will be chastised by the monied powers and their demimonde, the ratings agencies and global banks. This is modern warfare of a sort.
We do not expect the corruption of the world’s reserves to be so blatant that the inflation will immediately appear, except in more subtle manner. At some point it may explode, especially if Ben is particularly good at concealing its subtle growth.
Monetary inflation is the growth of the money supply in excess of the demands of the real economy, not nominal growth of the supply. The US has been shifting…
The recent decline in Gold has not only caused mayhem in goldbug-land (especially those holding mining stocks), but also brought deflationists of all stripes – with, not surprisingly, Prechterites at the forefront – out of the woodwork shouting $400 Gold from the rooftops. Funny, all I remember is a deafening silence at $1200. Emboldened by the recent decline, Mr. Prechter has predicted a 40% decline in Gold prices from here. For those not in the know, Bob Prechter has been forecasting declining prices for Gold all throughout its decade long bull run. For example, in March of 2006 when Gold was about $560 he said, “Gold is in the final stages of a speculative surge…technical factors, in conjunction with a complete wave pattern and sentiment, point directly to a decline to at least $460 and probably close to $400″. It reached $730 in May and closed that year at around $650. In 2003 Alf Field – who beat Prechter at his own game forecasting Gold prices much more accurately than him using the Elliot Wave Principle – wrote, “In mid 1999, when the gold price dipped towards a low of $253, Bob Prechter forecast an extended rally in the gold price that would be followed by a final decline to below $253 to a low point approaching $200…he forecast (at the start of the move) that the peak would be about $360 and he recommended short sales in gold after the price moved above this level in February 2003. He now believes that the market is on its way down to new lows below $253“. Gold closed that year at around $430. What would have happened if you took his advice and shorted Gold at $360? You would have gotten reamed, that’s what. Ironically, for all his blathering about “sentiment” and being “contrarian”, Mr. Prechter has become a great contrary indicator for the Gold market. His long term stock market forecasting isn’t that great either (yeah, I know he’s made 4-5 correct predictions in the last 40 years), but we’ll leave that aside for now.
For those with a long-term horizon, the picture hasn’t changed at all and should keep buying the dips no matter what. But buy physical only and in your personal possession. I cannot stress this point enough. Even if you are a short term investor and…
So you gorged yourself on garbage, chased the china plays, munched on materials and binged on beta…
Now that everything on earth is breaking 50 and 200 day moving averages, your junk food holdings are producing the inevitable tummy ache.
The good news is, you’ve got company. Fight the urge to rationalize these holdings before they do more damage.
With the big leadership like Apple ($AAPL) and US Steel ($X) under enormous pressure, what hope do the trashiest stocks really have right now? The answer is that they will be sold even faster than they were bought should this market continue to sell off on both good and bad news.
Greater Fool had worked fairly consistently for months as traders learned that each afternoon, regardless of the news, positions could be turned over to their new owners at ever-higher prices.
The mantra was "follow price" and "it’ll work until it doesn’t work" and "don’t fight the tape". This led to a broadening rally that rewarded the worst of the merchandise – from small caps to functionally insolvent entities like $AIG, $FNM, $FRE to emerging spec stories to developmental biotech and cleantech companies.
Sitting in more defensive plays like Waste Management ($WM) and Wal-Mart ($WMT) and remaining disciplined with some cash made you look (and feel) like a chump while the dashing trader on the other side of the desk played Chilean fertilizer names or Peruvian silver mining names for triple digit gains on a regular basis. The temptation to say f&*% it and get in the game was pervasive.
If you dabbled in junk and were then caught blindsided by the change in this tape that began 12 days ago, consider this weekend your chance to make things right. Even if this just proves to be a dip and the rally resumes through February, at least this will have been your chance to take a hard look at some of the junk you’ve accumulated.
My belief is the benefits of TARP and the entire alphabet soup of lending facilities was not as stated by Bernnake and Geithner, but rather to shift as much responsibility as quickly as possible on to the backs of taxpayers while trumping up nonsensical benefits of doing so. This was done to bail out the banks at any and all cost to the taxpayers. – Mish
Inquiring minds are reading the SIGTARP Quarterly Report To Congress. The report is a massive 224 pages long. I will do my best to condense it down to the critical highlights involving Fraud, Money Laundering, Insider Trading, etc.
Let’s start with the SIGTARP mission, then the findings.
Mission
SIGTARP’s mission is to advance economic stability by promoting the efficiency and effectiveness of TARP management, through transparency, through coordinated oversight, and through robust enforcement against those, whether inside or outside of Government, who waste, steal or abuse TARP funds.
Let’s dive into the 224 page report and see how well TARP, and the alphabet soup of lending facilities met their stated goals.
On the positive side, there are clear signs that aspects of the financial system are far more stable than they were at the height of the crisis in the fall of 2008. Many large banks have once again been able to raise funds in the capital markets, and some institutions — including some that appeared to be on the verge of collapse — have recovered sufficiently to repay their TARP investments years earlier than most would have predicted. These repayments and the sales of the warrants associated with them have meant that Treasury (and thus the taxpayer) has turned a profit on some of the individual TARP investments; as a result of these repayments, among other positive developments, it now appears that the ultimate cost of TARP to the American taxpayer, while still substantial, might be significantly less than initially estimated.
Mish: The idea that there are "profits" is fictitious. It’s effectively praising making 10 cents on a dollar while not counting hundreds of $billions lost on AIG and Fannie Mae, and ignoring $300 billion worth of loan guarantees at Citigroup still in effect.
Via the Glittering Eye, I was directed to this post on the breakdown of the American employment model. It’s an inciteful piece of writing that’s going to leave you with a lot to think about. Here is the opening:
Here in the quiet precincts of the stately Mead manor in exclusive Queens, as the dew gently falls over the mist-shrouded lawns and the pigeons coo soothingly from the historic-landmarked eaves, it is sometimes hard to believe, but out there in the workaday world the long and graceful decay of the American social model is accelerating into a more rapid and dangerous decline. The core institutions, ideas and expectations that shaped American life for the sixty years after the New Deal don’t work anymore, and the gaps between the social system we’ve inherited and the system we need today are becoming so wide that we can no longer paper them over or ignore them.
In the old system, both blue collar and white collar workers hold stable jobs, a professional career civil service administers a growing state, with living standards for all social classes steadily rising while the gaps between the classes remain fairly stable, and with an increasing ’social dividend’ being paid out in various forms: longer vacations, more and cheaper state-supported education, earlier retirement, shorter work weeks and so on. Graduate from high school and you were pretty much guaranteed lifetime employment in a job that gave you a comfortable lower middle class lifestyle; graduate from college and you would be better paid and equally secure.
Life would just go on getting better. From generation to generation we would live a life of incremental improvements — the details of life would keep getting better but the broad outlines of our society would stay the same. The advanced industrial democracies of had in fact reached the ‘end of history’: this is what ‘developed’ human society looked like and there would be no more radical changes because the picture had fully developed.
I have tremendous respect for Mr. Buffett. But every word that comes out of his mouth should not be looked upon as prophecy, or the gospel truth. I get a feeling that Buffett has been canonized into a value investor saint – investors and the media worship the ground he walks on and the air he breathes. The media are unable to get any critical quotes from his investors, and nobody wants to be caught disagreeing with the Oracle of Omaha – after all he’s been right more often than wrong – and so we only get positive puff pieces. On the rare occasion when Berkshire Hathaway stock declines more than the market, you see an article asserting that “Buffett has lost his magic touch,” but these articles are usually followed by stellar performance by Berkshire. Though Buffett deserves admiration – he is brilliant and likable and he has achieved incredible returns for his investors over the last half-century – he should not be canonized, and not everything he does or says is the ultimate truth.
Most investors agree with Buffett’s criticism of Kraft’s decision to buy a fairly valued (or overvalued) Cadbury at 22 times earnings (over the past 15 years, its average price-to-earnings ratio has been 21), using Kraft’s undervalued stock. Cadbury runs a global, noncyclical confectionary business that, if properly managed, should have a very high return on capital. Buffett, a shareholder of Kraft, was very public about his dismay – he said he felt poorer when Cadbury accepted Kraft’s increased offer.
But though many agree with Mr. Buffett’s assessment of the Kraft/Cadbury deal, investors and media are completely ignoring Berkshire’s own, $30-billion-plus acquisition of a very cyclical, capital-intensive, not terrifically high-return-on-capital business – Burlington Northern. A railroad for which Mr. Buffett’s Berkshire will lay out 18 times earnings (over last 15 years its average P/E was 15); and to make it even worse, part of the deal will be financed by issuing what Buffett recently called “cheap” Berkshire stock. Burlington stock is not cheap, it is fairly priced at best, and likely overpriced. Also, Buffett owning Burlington Northern will not make the railroad business any more valuable. There is little value to be unlocked in this business, and Buffett will practice his usual hands-off approach.
Improvement in first time unemployment claims is slowing. Actual, not seasonally manipulated data, including an adjustment for the usual weekly upward revision, shows that the year to year rate of change is on the cusp of a possible upside breakout, which would be good news for stock market bears if it happens.
Initial Unemployment Claims Chart- Click to enlarge
Here’s why it’s mind blowing. I’ve plotted it below on an inverse scale with the S&P 500 overlaid.
Unemployemt Claims and Stock Prices - Click to enlarge
Major US Markets including (NYSEARCA:DIA), (NYSEARCA:SPY), (NASDAQ:QQQ), and (NYSEARCA:IWM) dropped over 3% each on Italian bond fears and an increased worry that Europe will not be able to bail out its 4th largest economy. Furthermore, the iShares MCSI Italy Fund (NYSEARCA:EWI) wiped out over 9% today, further illustrating the dire situation in Italy and the European Union: ...
The second economic disappointment of the day comes from the Dallas Fed, which dropped from -2.0 to -11.4 on expectations of -9.0- this was the 4th consecutive negative print month. The report was, in a word, horrible, with just 2 of the 15 constituent indices posting an increase, and the bulk solidly in the red, led by Unfilled and New Orders which dropped 16.8 and 11.2, respectively: not good for economic growth. On the employment side there was nothing good either, with both employment and hours worked declining by -...
Bloomberg reports that Diana Containerships (NASDAQ: DCIX) files to offer stock up to $172.5M. Diana Containerships says that Diana shipping will also buy $20M of stock.
Top 5 RisersStockRatingAnalysisVLOSTRONGBUYAn increasingly positive growth rate of past earnings, along with improving expectations for long term growth, make Valero a good prospect for high returns.KROSTRONGBUYKronos Worldwide has been gaining recognition from analysts as a good canditate for achieving higher than expected earnings along with higher overall projected valuation.SFIBUYiStar is one of the top candidates projected to achieve both higher than previously projected earnings in the short run and a higher earnings growth rate in the long run.AMATSTRONGBUYApplied Materials has been...
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February is now past, and the Biotech Porfolio is loaded with winners and a miss (PLX). MRK is down a bit, but I expect that trade to recover, and one could be more agressive and double down on it, or play another round at the Jan13 $30 options for roughly the same price. Below is the summary, and note the grey boxes are ones that did not fill. I am still a fan of BMRN, and like DEPO as well. Now let's look at a few others.
Table 1. PSW Biotech Plays Since January 2011
 
Our newest play is Momenta Pharmaceuticals (MNTA), who is pursuing a three-part business model which includes complex generic equivalents in partnership with the Sandoz division of Novartis, proprietary compounds, and follow-on- biologics (FOB). It seems that this company is tied up in competition/litigation wit...
Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
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Via the Glittering Eye, I was directed to this post on the breakdown of the American employment model. It’s an inciteful piece of writing that’s going to leave you with a lot to think about. Here is the opening:.jpg)
I have tremendous respect for Mr. Buffett. But every word that comes out of his mouth should not be looked upon as prophecy, or the gospel truth. I get a feeling that Buffett has been canonized into a value investor saint – investors and the media worship the ground he walks on and the air he breathes. The media are unable to get any critical quotes from his investors, and nobody wants to be caught disagreeing with the Oracle of Omaha – after all he’s been right more often than wrong – and so we only get positive puff pieces. On the rare occasion when Berkshire Hathaway stock declines more than the market, you see an article asserting that “Buffett has lost his magic touch,” but these articles are usually followed by stellar performance by Berkshire. Though Buffett deserves admiration – he is brilliant and likable and he has achieved incredible returns for his investors over the last half-century – he should not be canonized, and not everything he does or says is the ultimate truth. 
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(