Quad Witching Expiration and a Pullback from the Long Term Trend
by ilene - March 19th, 2010 12:02 pm
Quad Witching Expiration and a Pullback from the Long Term Trend
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
The front month on the SP futures has now switched from March to June as a part of the Quad Witching Expiration. (Technically it switched last week, but for charting purposes I made the switch last night.) The June Futures have essentially the same formations as did March, it’s just that the earlier months have few trades to mark them.
This is the first serious test for US equities since mid-February, as it has been on a spectacular rally streak, no doubt fueled by excess liquidity applied to a selling exhaustion in the funds. Curiously not among corporate insiders who were selling at a rate of 57 to 1 in this latest rally, no doubt for diversification purposes.
The extent of this correction will be determined on the amount of actual selling that starts to occur. For now what we are seeing is more of a trading correction in response to an outsized rise in price, or as the Street likes to say, the market was getting ahead of itself.
Key levels to watch are 1135 and 1120. If we break those I would look for a consolidation around the 1080-1100 level.
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DiggInsider Selling/Buying Ratio At 62.3x To Start Off 2010; Insiders Can’t Thank The Fed Enough For Inflated Stock Prices
by Insider Zone - January 11th, 2010 3:06 pm
Insider Selling/Buying Ratio At 62.3x To Start Off 2010; Insiders Can’t Thank The Fed Enough For Inflated Stock Prices
Courtesy of Tyler Durden
2010 has started off with a bang. Insiders purchased $4.5 million worth of stock (and yes, this does not include the end year transaction by such individuals as Nelson Peltz who acquired nearly 10 million shares of Legg Mason on the last day of 2009, to validate his recent board seat standstill), in the period from January 4. It should, however, comes as no surprise that in the same period selling did not moderate, and insiders offloaded $281 million in shares (yes, this accounts for the double counting of trades between various ultimately identical corporate entities, which seems to have been missed by some of our peers). Net result: an insider selling to buying of 62x to kick off 2010. And still the quants are chasing momentum ever higher. There is no way this will end in anything but tears.
Source: FinViz
INSIDERS REMAIN DOUBTFUL OF THE RALLY
by ilene - December 9th, 2009 2:49 pm
INSIDERS REMAIN DOUBTFUL OF THE RALLY
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
Few things have been more confounding over the course of the 60% rally than the lack of insider conviction with regards to purchasing their own stocks. The latest data on insider selling and buying continues to show alarmingly low levels of buying accompanied by very high levels of selling. As we continue to see the very weak rebound in revenues and non-existent hiring it has become more and more clear why insiders lack conviction in their own shares – after all, without a rebound in hiring and organic revenue growth a sustainable economic recovery remains highly unlikely.
Yesterday’s Business Roundtable Survey confirmed much of this. Despite increased confidence over Q3 we continue to see very low confidence in future hiring and spending. Hence, the likelihood of a long and slow recovery remains very high:
“The economy is in the throes of a long transition back to health; recovery will be long, extending beyond 2010,” said Ivan G. Seidenberg, Chairman of Business Roundtable and Chairman and CEO of Verizon Communications. “The outlook of our CEOs reflects that reality: we see noticeable gains in sales and capital spending, but employment growth continues to lag.”
INSIDERS AREN’T THE ONLY ONES BOYCOTTING THEIR OWN SHARES
by Insider Zone - September 16th, 2009 9:45 am
INSIDERS AREN’T THE ONLY ONES BOYCOTTING THEIR OWN SHARES
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
Insiders aren’t the only ones who aren’t buying their own shares. According to S&P U.S. corporations have reduced buybacks of their own shares to levels that haven’t been seen since 1998. Bloomberg reports:
U.S. companies spent the least on share buybacks in the second quarter since at least 1998, S&P said, as the recession crimped earnings.Standard & Poor’s 500 Index companies paid $24.2 billion to repurchase shares, a 72 percent decline from the $87.9 billion they spent a year earlier and 86 percent less than the record $172 billion in the third quarter of 2007. That’s the least since S&P began tracking the trend in 1998, the New York-based research and credit rating firm said. In the second quarter, 169 companies bought back stock, compared with 288 a year earlier.
The worst recession in seven decades convinced companies to stop buying back shares even after valuations fell to their lowest level in two decades, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Executives use repurchases to lower the amount of outstanding shares and increase stockholders’ stake in profits.
“Weak economies, poor growth prospects, the credit crunch, all of those factors that pushed stock prices down were also impacting revenue, and cash on hand, and all the things needed to repurchase shares,” said James Gaul, a money manager at Boston Advisors LLC in Boston, which oversees $1.5 billion. “In a situation where you’re really strapped for day-to-day expenses, you’re not going to be buying back stock.”
The collapse of the subprime mortgage market spurred $1.6 trillion in bank losses and writedowns worldwide, dragged the U.S., Europe and Japan into the first simultaneous recession since World War II and froze credit markets.
Buybacks Drop
The decline in share buybacks came after the S&P 500 fell to its lowest price relative to profits in 24 years in March. The index traded at an average price-earnings ratio of 14.2 in the second quarter, compared with 16.9 a year earlier and 16.6 in the third quarter of 2007.
Companies in the S&P 500 hoarded cash in the second quarter to weather a record eighth consecutive decrease in quarterly profit. They held a combined $1.06 trillion in cash in the period, 21 percent more than a year earlier and 29 percent more than the in the third quarter of 2007,
…
INSIDERS AREN’T THE ONLY ONES BOYCOTTING THEIR OWN SHARES
by ilene - September 16th, 2009 3:22 am
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INSIDERS AREN’T THE ONLY ONES BOYCOTTING THEIR OWN SHARES
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
Insiders aren’t the only ones who aren’t buying their own shares. According to S&P U.S. corporations have reduced buybacks of their own shares to levels that haven’t been seen since 1998. Bloomberg reports:
U.S. companies spent the least on share buybacks in the second quarter since at least 1998, S&P said, as the recession crimped earnings.Standard & Poor’s 500 Index companies paid $24.2 billion to repurchase shares, a 72 percent decline from the $87.9 billion they spent a year earlier and 86 percent less than the record $172 billion in the third quarter of 2007. That’s the least since S&P began tracking the trend in 1998, the New York-based research and credit rating firm said. In the second quarter, 169 companies bought back stock, compared with 288 a year earlier.
The worst recession in seven decades convinced companies to stop buying back shares even after valuations fell to their lowest level in two decades, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Executives use repurchases to lower the amount of outstanding shares and increase stockholders’ stake in profits.
“Weak economies, poor growth prospects, the credit crunch, all of those factors that pushed stock prices down were also impacting revenue, and cash on hand, and all the things needed to repurchase shares,” said James Gaul, a money manager at Boston Advisors LLC in Boston, which oversees $1.5 billion. “In a situation where you’re really strapped for day-to-day expenses, you’re not going to be buying back stock.”
The collapse of the subprime mortgage market spurred $1.6 trillion in bank losses and writedowns worldwide, dragged the U.S., Europe and Japan into the first simultaneous recession since World War II and froze credit markets.
Buybacks Drop
The decline in share buybacks came after the S&P 500 fell to its lowest price relative to profits in 24 years in March. The index traded at an average price-earnings ratio of 14.2 in the second quarter, compared with 16.9 a year earlier and 16.6 in the third quarter of 2007.
Companies in the S&P 500 hoarded cash in the second quarter to weather a record eighth consecutive decrease in quarterly profit. They held a combined $1.06 trillion in cash in the period, 21 percent more than a year
…
Insiders Dump Shares at Fastest Pace in 2 Years
by Insider Zone - June 22nd, 2009 7:19 pm
Insiders Dump Shares at Fastest Pace in 2 Years
Courtesy of Mish
Bloomberg is reporting Insiders Exit Shares at the Fastest Pace in Two Years
Executives at U.S. companies are taking advantage of the biggest stock-market rally in 71 years to sell their shares at the fastest pace since credit markets started to seize up two years ago.
Insiders of Standard & Poor’s 500 Index companies were net sellers for 14 straight weeks as the gauge rose 36 percent, data compiled by InsiderScore.com show. Amgen Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Kevin Sharer and five other officials sold $8.2 million of stock. Christopher Donahue, the CEO of Federated Investors Inc., and his brother, Chief Financial Officer Thomas Donahue, offered the most in three years.
Sales by CEOs, directors and senior officers have accelerated to the highest level since June 2007, two months before credit markets froze, as the S&P 500 rebounded from its 12-year low in March. The increase is making investors more skittish because executives presumably have the best information about their companies’ prospects.
“If insiders are selling into the rally, that shows they don’t expect their business to be able to support current stock- price levels,” said Joseph Keating, the chief investment officer of Raleigh, North Carolina-based RBC Bank, the unit of Royal Bank of Canada that oversees $33 billion in client assets. “They’re taking advantage of this bounce and selling into it.”
If insiders don’t believe this rally, why should you?
Manipulation: How Markets Really Work
by ilene - May 31st, 2009 7:10 am
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Don’t miss reading this enlightening article. "Thank yous" to author Stephen Lendman ("we need a mass public awakening determined to change a very ugly system"), and Tyler Durden for finding.
Manipulation: How Markets Really Work
By Stephen Lendman, posted at Steve Lendman’s Blog and at the Baltimore Chronicle
Wall Street’s mantra is that markets move randomly and reflect the collective wisdom of investors. The truth is quite opposite. The government’s visible hand and insiders control markets and manipulate them up or down for profit – all of them, including stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies.
It’s financial fraud or what former high-level Wall Street insider and former Assistant HUD Secretary Catherine Austin Fitts calls "pump and dump," defined as "artificially inflating the price of a stock or other security through promotion, in order to sell at the inflated price," then profit more on the downside by short-selling. "This practice is illegal under securities law, yet it is particularly common," and in today’s volatile markets likely ongoing daily.
Why? Because the profits are enormous, in good and bad times, and when carried to extremes like now, Fitts calls it "pump(ing) and dump(ing) of the entire American economy," duping the public, fleecing trillions from them, and it’s more than just "a process designed to wipe out the middle class. This is genocide (by other means) – a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by the scoundrels of our history texts."
Why? Because the profits are enormous, in good and bad times, and when carried to extremes like now, Fitts calls it "pump(ing) and dump(ing) of the entire American economy," duping the public, fleecing trillions from them, and it’s more than just "a process designed to wipe out the middle class. This is genocide (by other means) – a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by the scoundrels of our history texts."
Fitts explains that much more than market manipulation goes on. She describes a "financial coup d’etat, including fraudulent housing (and other bubbles), pump and dump schemes, naked short selling, precious metals price suppression, and active intervention in the markets by the government and central bank" along with insiders. It’s a government-business partnership for enormous profits through "legislation, contracts, regulation (or lack…
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