THE MARKET IS FACING HEADWINDS
by ilene - October 24th, 2010 10:43 pm
THE MARKET IS FACING HEADWINDS
(H/t Pragcap)
The current
“National economic activity continued to rise, albeit at a modest pace..consumer spending was steady to up slightly, but consumers remained price-sensitive, and purchases were mostly limited to necessities and non-discretionary items..Housing markets remained weak..Most reports suggested overall home sales were sluggish or declining..Home inventories were elevated or rising..Conditions in the commercial real estate market were subdued, and construction was expected to remain weak.Reports suggested that rental rates continued to decline for most commercial property types..industry contacts appeared to believe that the commercial real estate and construction sectors would remain weak for some time..Hiring remained limited, with many firms reluctant to add to permanent payrolls, given economic softness..Future capital spending plans appeared to be limited”
So there you have an outline of the anemic economic picture in the Fed’s own words. To be sure, they indicated some strong points as well. But the weakness in consumer spending, housing, capital expenditures, commercial real estate and employment pretty much accounts for some 85% of the overall
In addition some of the major problems that worried the market earlier have not really gone away. The sovereign debt problems of the weaker EU nations have been papered over without being solved and are still lingering just beneath the surface. The looming currency wars that were shoved down the road by the recent G-20 meeting are also a major threat to the global economy.
Furthermore the Chinese housing bubble previously highlighted by bearish investor Jim Chanos and others has now appeared on the front page of the New York Times. A new district of the city of Ordos,…
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DiggJobless Thursday – America’s Infrastructure Crisis
by Phil - September 9th, 2010 8:13 am
What a disaster!
Not only are our students failing to keep up with the rest of the World but America is close to getting a failing grade in Infrastructure. That’s right, what was once the World’s mightiest and proudest economy, this once great nation of builders has been given an overall grade of D in the American Society of Civil Engineers report on our Infrastructure.
The 2009 Grades include: Aviation (D), Bridges (C), Dams (D), Drinking Water (D-), Energy (D+), Hazardous Waste (D), Inland Waterways (D-), Levees (D-), Public Parks and Recreation (C-), Rail (C-), Roads (D-), Schools (D), Solid Waste (C+), Transit (D), and Wastewater (D-). Awful? Shameful? How about DANGEROUS? Deadly even…
For one thing, The number of high hazard dams—dams that, should they fail, pose a significant risk to human life—has increased by more than 3,000 just since 2007, when there were "just" 1,000 dams at risk and 3,000 to pro actively maintain but the administration refused to fund the project, now the costs have tripled as the situation deteriorates but that’s nothing compared to what happens if just a few of them break completely. 1,819 dams are now in the "high hazard" category and, with the current budget, for every one damn that is reparied, two more become an emergency.
In urban areas, roadway congestion tops 40 percent. According to the report, decades of underfunding and inattention have jeopardized the ability of our nation’s infrastructure to support our economy and facilitate our way of life. At risk of catastrophic failure besides the dams (including levees) are things like our drinking water, sewage systems, bridges, waterways, rail lines, airports, roadways (especially elevated ones) and, of course, our entire electrical grid. Additionally, 7 Billion gallons of clean drinking water is lost every day through leaking pipes – that’s 23 gallons per citizen per day WASTED for want of $11Bn in repairs – don’t bother worrying about it, the last Administration wouldn’t fund it in 2001 or 2006 so why bother now – 10 Trillion gallons later?
The ASCE calculates a 5-year $2.2Tn investment is needed to address the situation, that’s $500Bn (25%) more than it was 5-years ago, when they released their last report and nothing was done by the previous administration. So, rather than having invested in America, putting people to work and improving EVERYONE’s way of life, we spent over $1Tn fighting a war, another $600Bn a year on our regular military operations and gave over $1Tn worth of taxe breaks…
SUMMARIZING THE FED’S BEIGE BOOK
by ilene - September 8th, 2010 9:54 pm
Here’s Pragcap’s summary of the Beige Book. You can read Phil’s summary here. - Ilene
SUMMARIZING THE FED’S BEIGE BOOK
Here are the key takeaways from the Fed’s Beige Book:
- Reports from the twelve Federal
Reserve Districts suggested continued growth in national economic activity during the reporting period of mid-July through the end of August, but with widespread signs of a deceleration compared with preceding periods.
- Consumer
spending appeared to increase on balance despite continued consumer caution that limited nonessential purchases, while activity in the travel and tourism sector picked up relative to seasonal norms.
- Reports on manufacturing activity pointed to further expansion, although the pace of growth eased according to several Districts.
- Home sales slowed further following an initial drop after the expiration of the homebuyer tax credit at the end of June, prompting a slowdown in construction activity as well.
- Demand for commercial real estate remained quite weak but showed signs of stabilization in some areas.
- Reports from financial institutions pointed to generally stable or slightly lower loan demand and noted some modest improvements in credit quality.
- Upward price pressures remained quite limited for most categories of final goods and services, despite higher prices for selected commodities such as grains and some industrial materials. Wage pressures also were limited, although a few Districts noted increased upward pressures in a narrow set of sectors experiencing a mismatch between job requirements and applicant skills.
In sum, slow growth, increased downside risk, low inflation. Read the full report here.
Which Way Wednesday – Beige Book Edition
by Phil - September 8th, 2010 8:06 am
On June 9th we liked the Beige Book, which confirmed our bottom call.
On July 28th, we did not like the Beige Book and I said to Members in my review of the report: "Housing drives the market and housing and commercial construction are dead. How can commercial construction come back if we have less employees? How can housing come back if fewer people qualify for loans and the population doesn’t grow? How does anyone think that we can address these problems through capitalism (ie. without stimulus)?"
We got the GDP report that Friday (July 30th) and the low expectations there gave us the gap up we were expecting and Alan Greenspan went on Meet the Press that weekend and admitted I was right – both stealing my "Tale of Two Economies" economic outlook and blasting the Republicans, saying the party had "lost their way."
We couldn’t do anything about the Republican’ts but I was able to call a "Toppy Tuesday" on August 3rd and we drifted along that top until the next week, where we caught the action just right as we took our bullish money and ran on Monday and began grabbing downside hedges including the QID play I put up right in that Tuesday’s (8/10) morning post, where I said:
Yesterday we knew that the move up was fake, Fake, FAKE and we acted accordingly in Member Chat. We had a nice QID cover play right in the Morning Alert that was an easy fill as the Nas went higher and higher all day. It was the Aug $16/17 bull call spread at .42, and the $16 puts sold for .29 for net .13 on the $1 spread with a nice 669% upside if the Nasdaq heads sharply down on us. Our stops on the play were a combination of Nas 2,300, Dow 10,700 and Russell 666 and we got the Nasdaq and the Dow over their marks but, once again, 666 proves to be an ominous barrier for the Russell.
That hedge did, of course, return the full 669% as QID finished the expiration period at $17.80 and there was no doubt on the trade as we had a mild drop Tuesday morning, followed by a major drop the next day, where my opening comment was: "Wheeee - I told you this was going to be fun!" It is FUN when you are prepared to ride…
Which Way Wednesday – Beige Book Boost or Bust?
by Phil - July 28th, 2010 8:29 am
Our last Beige Book was June 9th and we liked that one. My comment to Members at that time was:
Wow, this is good stuff! Ben was not BS’ing - It’s a slow, tedious recovery but a recovery nonetheless! On the whole, a pretty good report! Not enough to support $75 oil but a nice, not too inflationary recovery is in the works. It’s no quick fix though, as it will take 2 good Qs before corporations will be willing to add staff so I bet not much until next spring unless the government steps in (and they’d better).
At the time, the S&P was at 1,055 and we flew up to 1,120 on June 21st before the next market flip-flop, which we have just flip-flopped back from and yesterday we tested 1,120 again and here we are, back at the Beige Book. So now, the market is about where it should have been based on the last BBook (and no government help so far). I thought yesterday was too early to pop through ahead of the data and it turns out it was. If anything, I’m a lot more worried that a deteriorating report tanks the markets this afternoon (2pm release).
We’ll get a clue this morning as we see Durable Goods at 8:30 and those are expected to be up 1% from down 0.6% in May. Oil Inventories are reported at 10:30 and don’t expect demand to be picking up and no one has even mentioned what a disaster this is during summer driving season (speculators are circling their tankers one more time as they pray for hurricanes to make their long bets pay off). If we do survive the BBook this afternoon, we have a 10% upgrade to Q2 GDP to look forward to tomorrow morning (to 3% from 2.7%) along with Chicago PMI at 9:45.
We know that Leading Economic Indicators turned down 0.2% since the last BBook, the Philly Fed has dropped from 21 in May to 8 in June to 5.1 in July, Construction Spending fell 0.2% with Commercial far worse than Residential, ISM fell almost 6% with a 10% drop in orders leading the downturn and a very deflationary prices paid, Factory Orders in general were off 1.4% (which does not bode well for today’s Durable Goods), Auto Sales slumped 5%, Non-Farm Payrolls contined to decline, Consumer Credit continued…
Which Way Wednesday – The Beige Book Boogie
by Phil - March 3rd, 2010 8:15 am
The last Beige Book report was on January 13th.
At the time the futures were flying and we were bullish but Dow was looking toppy and I thought we were going too far, too fast and called for caution – despite our "Meatball Market" at the time. Just like yesterday, I was not happy with the fundamentals to the point where I felt it necessary to keep pointing them out while the parade of analysts at CNBC et al told everyone to BUYBUYBUY at the 10,750 top. I don’t like to be Chicken Little but sometimes the sky is actually falling! The January book had very little "good" news to report (see my analysis for Members that day) and we took our money and ran on the long side. Although it wasn’t until the next Tuesday that we actually went down – it was a doozy and we fell over 500 points in 3 days, all the way to 10,165 (our 5% rule) and we continued weakly through 2/8, when we bottomed out at 9,900.
Whoever said this charting stuff was complicated? Just follow the 5% rule, draw some lines and PRESTO – we know what’s going to happen! Well, at least we hope we know what’s going to happen because I’ve spent a good portion of my week so far telling Members NOT to trust the rally we’ve been having and to expect a downturn with today’s Beige book a possible catalyst for a correction. From experience, we know there is not generally an immediate reaction to what is essentially a collection of anecdotal evidence about the state of the economy but it does give us an overview of the nation and I haven’t seen much news in the 6 weeks since the last report to make me think this one will be showing any great improvements.
It’s a tough call at the moment because there is clearly a determined effort to get the markets to move up but we are loaded up with bullish plays from our visit to 9,900 so it pays to be a bit more bearish with our short-term plays as we test the top of our MAYBE range. We have had some good news this morning with MBA Mortgage Applications up 14.6% as rates fell back under the magic 5% mark and, of course, that’s a rebound off of last week’s TERRIBLE showing, probably weather related.
69% of the activity was…
Which Way Wednesday – The Beige Book Boogie
by Phil - October 21st, 2009 8:14 am
The last Beige Book report was on September 9th.
At the time the Dow was looking toppy at 9,650 and we had poor consumer confidence numbers (just like yesterday) and poor consumer credit number (no change) and the book had very little "good" news to report (see my analysis) - Yet the market broke over 9,600 again that day and then took off all the way to 9,900 a week later. At the time, we were looking for any excuse to go higher on the hopes that this earnings period will look like last one but have we now come too far, too fast?
It seems we are finally hitting the point of diminishing returns for earnings. Expectations have finally gotten so high that even big beats aren’t enough to keep the momentum going.
Last earnings Q, we were down from 8,900 in June to 8,100 on July 9th as companies began reporting and we had a nice, 1,000-point relief rally over the first two weeks of earnings. This time, we went up an additional 500 points in the past two weeks, over our 9,600 line and that has been in anticipation of a repeat of last earnings but the circumstances are very different this time and it takes a lot to justify a 20% run off the July lows.
Keep in mind that, looking at the sector charts, Energy, Materials and Tech are leading us. Since semiconductors are simply another form of commodity – this is almost entirely a commodity rally in the midst of a recession with Consumer Staples, Financials, Health Care, Industrials, Telcom, Utilities and Transports all underperforming the rest of the S&P. As I keep saying – if no one is shipping anything, how the hell can we be having a proper recovery?
The Beige book is an anecdotal view of the economy gathered roughly through the middle of October and we’ve seen no improvement in Jobs since the Sept 9th report, Cash for Clunkers ground to a halt and, just this morning, we got a horrific 13.7% decrease in the number of mortgage applications from the previous week. That number includes "seasonal adjustments," without adjustments, morgage apps plunged 22.4% despite record low rates as government assistance begins to peter out. The Refinance Index, also adjusted for the holiday, decreased 16.8 percent from the previous week and the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 7.6 percent from one week earlier. …
Thrill-Ride Thursday – Playing the Patterns
by Phil - September 10th, 2009 8:22 am
Not much in the news today but the futures are way off at 7am.
I’m assuming that will, as usual change. They are already boosting the pound back to $1.66 and the Euro is at $1.452 but getting stronger and the Yen ran back down to 92 for a dollar long enough to give exporters and excuse to lead the Nikkei back over 10,500 (in an amazingly fake-looking finish after a major gap up in their futures) while the Hang Seng managed to close before giving up more than half of their 400-point gap up, making them look nice and green with a net 218-point gain on the day (up 1%).
I know you don’t want to hear this. You don’t want to believe that the markets are being manipulated and you don’t want to think you can’t rely on your charts or numbers you read in the papers (or the articles for that matter) as it might prove that you have as little ability to predict the markets as a soap-opera viewer had of predicting who will be the next character to have an affair. Like a soap-opera, the stock market is written for television, has a regular cast of writers (the MSM) and makes little sense to people who come in late to the game.
We, at Philstockworld, do not care if the game is rigged. As long as we can figure out HOW it’s rigged, we know where to place our bets and we can make money from it. So don’t take this as me being down on the market – we love this stuff! Yesterday I told you, before the market opened (in fact our Newsletter title at 8:30 was "Beware the Beige Book Blues") that the FACTS of the Beige Book would override the hype of market. We followed through with our plan to short the Dow into the BBook release and we were able to pick up the DIA $95 puts for .75 and sell them for $1.10, which is a 46% gain on the day. Even if you play conservative and risk just 1% on a day-trade, that’s still half a point added to your whole virtual portfolio’s gains for the year – that’s pretty good stuff!
Another conspiracy we drone on and on about is the good old "stick save." Perhaps it’s not a conspiracy aimed at propping up the markets on low volume, perhaps it’s a natural phenomenon…
Wednesday – Beware the Beige Book Blues
by Phil - September 9th, 2009 7:33 am
Is our economy really improving?
At 2pm we get the Fed’s latest Beige book, an anecdotal view of the economy gathered through roughly the end of August. Most of the good data we’ve been "celebrating" in the markets has been June data with a lot of disappointments in July and next week we get our first look at August statistics where we’ll see just how well Q3 is really going but yesterday’s data on Consumer Credit, which dropped $21.6Bn last month (a 10% annual rate) turned us bearish into yesterday’s close.
Not that we were all that bullish anyway but this was a last straw for us as the Dow was jammed up 50 points in the afternoon on very little volume, right up until the last 5 minutes when 45M shares were exchanged (1/4 of the day’s volume) as Mr. Stick ran headlong into a seller that took full advantage of an opportunity to get out near 9,500. Consumer credit is actually worse than it seems as the drops are accelerating RAPIDLY. The drops began in March at 0.5% but April was down 1.6%, May -2.2%, June – 3.1% and July -4.2%. Compare that to last July, when consumer credit was UP 4.9% and you can see how far and how fast we are falling. And that figure, by the way was BOOSTED significantly by July’s "Cash for Clunkers" program. Were were expert economists on this issue? They expected a $4Bn drop in July, a miss of 440% by 31 economists polled by Bloomberg – the same ones who expect a turnaround for the economy.
Out of 31 Economists who are paid to watch numbers like this for a living, just one had predicted a $12Bn decline with the rest missing by miles. Perhaps we can forgive them as the Fed missed too with their original report listing Consumer Credit as declining by "just" $10.3Bn in June. That number was revised up 50%, to a loss of $15.5Bn yesterday.
Ooops…. As we noted in last week’s Fed minutes examination, the actual data is MUCH worse than the Fed’s outlook would have a rational person believing. So the Beige book will be interesting this afternoon and we’re not expecting a good report. The Fed gets a bad report tomorrow too, with the release of Ron Paul’s new book "End the Fed." This is going to be fun and a few weeks later we get…
Which Way Wednesday – Beige Book Edition
by Phil - July 29th, 2009 8:30 am
Today we get the "anecdotal" information on the current economic conditions from each of the twelve Federal Districts, we find these reports very useful as they tend not to be sugar-coated and the last BBook release (June 10th) marked a clear top to the the last round of irrational market exuberance when there was no significant improvement in the Fed’s outlook despite the market having rallied 10% in the month leading up to it.
That’s all it takes to pop a bubble – the simple lack of additional air. Members would do well to review the comments of that day as we got a quick read on the Book, which backed up our generally toppy view of the market and we jumped right on POT $105 puts for $1.15 at 2:03 as I had been targeting them as the most ridiculously overpriced stock and my quick read from the Fed confirmed it. POT fell from $117.88 that day to $92.72 on expiration day and bottomed out at $82 on July 13th. This is the way to play the Beige Book, you need to have a premise that is either confirmed or denied by the facts and you can make a play accordingly but you can’t simply REACT to the information, it can quickly be too late by the time you figure out what to do. Having a plan and alternatives based on various outcomes allows you to take advantage of market data as it comes out. That’s why we get so excited when we get our Beige Book!
BBook days are often market movers. This year’s Books came out Jan 14th (down 250), March 4th (up 100 ahead of huge drop) and April 15th (up 100) and June 10th where we went down 130, up 100 and finished the day back down just 24 points. Going back to my June 10th post, I see a lot of similarities, including the China bubble – which I also said was overdone at that time ahead of a 2,000-point pullback that began on the 12th. Oil was $71.50 that morning and it’s "just" $65.50 now and that’s a ray of sunshine if it heads lower. That was also the day I called for a class action suit against GS for their blatant manipulation of the energy markets – something I still have not found a law firm brave enough to take on!
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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
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