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M2M Acadamy Awards.....


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Last night I scrolled through Marks openings and pulled a couple of my favorites from this year...Reading through his commentary was like riding the Verticle Velocity at Great America as this year had many twists and turns.

 

Eventually the herds gonna end up looking like a Stretch Armstrong Rubber Doll after some 6 year old gets through positioning its limbs where they shouldn't go... but for now, the free for alls in the subsectors continue to occur....

 

In and of itself, M2M created a new mania "language" that grows every day as things get nuttier, but as funny as some of the stuff is thats written...it's "really happening"...

 

So as I hashed through my own "stupid word" topic of "discounting", it was likely subliminally inspired by an open from March 4, 2004....right before the low...This one was a classic...

 

On Speculation

 

Anyone listen to Bloomberg Radio or read their news blurbs lately?

 

Seems like the new buzzword is "on speculation".

 

Note that "the anticipation of" or "the possibility of", or "an educated prediction" phrases have been totally dropped.

 

The HedgeFund Economy is all about blind speculation.

 

I've heard 24/7 non-stop bullhorning the last 4 days like:

 

"Dollar is expected to rise on speculation that the jobs report will show strong improvement in employment"

 

"Japanese exporters rise on speculation that the world's largest economy is accelerating"

 

"European semicondutor companies rise sharply on speculation of increased IT spending in the U.S."

 

"The Euro lost more ground today on speculation that the ECB will be lowering interest rates"

 

"Copper made a new high, on speculation that a global boom is fueling unprecedented demand for base materials"

 

"Residential housing stocks rose to new all time highs on speculation that severe supply/demand imbalances will continue"

 

"Key financial stocks like Merrill Lynch rose to new highs on speculation of increased merger/acquistion activity"

 

..........................

 

Maybe we should simply adopt this new catch phrase in everyday conversation.

 

"John has no interest in the Public Library, but he went in there anyway on speculation that he would find a 30-something librarian wearing frumpy clothes and eyeglasses, but has a secret insatiable desire for kinky sex."

 

"Jim purchased a silk blouse for his girlfriend, on speculation that the fragile buttons will be easily ripped off after a few glasses of wine."

 

"Michael makes repeated unnecessary visits to his chiropractor, on speculation that one day the hot receptionist will break up with her boyfriend and make for an easy kill on the rebound."

 

"Brian is serial dating, carrying on 3 dalliances at the same time, on speculation that the girls will never find about the other two."

 

Anyway, you get the picture.

 

..........................

 

All eyes are on the INTC mid-quarter update, to see if Kathie Lee gets a last minute casting call on "higher sequential order growth" to support her outlandish 6x sales valuation.

 

And of course, in the morning, we get the infamous jobs report.

 

Or maybe they'll stuff it like the PPI and delay its release "indefinitely, on speculation that the numbers need massaging".

 

Investor's Business Daily had some clues on what to expect. Some fairly strong outlooks from the temp industry:

 

"Staffing Firms See Brighter Signs"

 

"Some 70% of Stivers Temporary Personnel offices in 12 states saw better activity in February"

 

"Hire Strategy of Reston, VA said February job orders rose 22% from January and 58% from February 2003"

 

"Advanced Group of Companies in Chicago said orders grew from January and rose 5% to 10% from February 2003."

 

"Remedy Intelligent Staffing in Aliso Viejo saw mild gains in February"

 

So we have to watch and wait.

 

Never before has there been so much leverage riding on a few key data points.

 

Never before have there been so many eyeballs gaming and gunning the same ticks.

 

Never before has there been so much pyramiding of margin debt.

 

Never before has so much been held together by trillions of miles of fragile scotch tape cobbled together by the JPM/One Derivative Colossus.

 

Where anything and everything is hedged for a profit. Where there are no losers, only winners on every trade.

 

All systemic risk, credit risk, and trading risk has been offloaded into some myriad SPV Network somewhere in the Caribbean

 

But my favorite M2M for the year pretty which coincides with todays rocket shot in the Home Builders as it''s never let up and just as well may have been written today....but without question...the "picture" at the bottom symbolizes the lunacy we deal with every day..It could be the still photograph of the inside of that guy I knows brain right before he bought 10k of SIRI ....it could be any person any of us have run across that pushes the mania envelope too far...it's the guy who sits on your right shoulder and says "buy it at any price" right at the height of lunacy.....I think most here know what I mean

 

February 11, 2004 "Bottom Of The Barrel"

 

Everybody knows how the guys go out at night in search of someone like Katrina on ?The Apprentice?. A tall, exotic, thin, Large Breasted Wonder with long, straight hair.

 

The crowd is worked, rejections pile up. And of course, as the night wears on, standards are reduced.

 

By 2:00am, the Bottom of the Barrel girls are rounded up. Whatever it takes. Cannot go home empty handed. Must keep the momentum going.

 

As usual, Wall Struck is no different.

 

As shown repeatedly with graphs posted on various financial sites, the Credit Growth Curve is going Parabolic. The only way to sustain such momentum is to rapidly dig up the most marginal borrowers and get them to sign up and borrow some money. Loans later to be recycled and turned into AAA-Rated Exotica found on your Money Market Fund Prospectus.

 

And of course, the most high powered money is originated from the loans with the longest duration, such as 30-year mortgages.

 

As of today, anybody and everybody making over $150,000 a year is now in a $1.5 million McMansion with a $1.2 million mortgage.

 

As of today, anybody and everybody making over $75,000 a year has a $500,000 interest-only mortgage with payments of $1,800/mo.

 

As of today, anybody and everybody who is a self employed illegal alien who hasn?t filed a tax return is able to get a ?stated income? loan and buy a $350,000 starter home from Ryland.

 

As of today, anybody and everybody who resembles the 22-year old misfit, who plays in a rock band, has terrible credit, cannot round up first and last months rent for an apartment, has been pushed into a $240,000 condo with nothing down.

 

By now, it seems that most everybody has been sucked into the Credit Vortex, feeding up river like a Circuit Cable, with all tributaries eventually leading to the Intake Port of the Atomic Particle Accelerator, aka known as the Structured Finance Feeder Mechanism for the John Law II HedgeFund.

 

But there is one stone left unturned.

 

The Bottom of the Barrel.

 

The Cross-Eyed, Cross-Breeded, Moonshiner crowd. The hillbillies, drunks, the illiterate, the unemployable who live in the mountains, swamps, deserts, and by the railroad tracks.

 

They can?t afford a house.

 

They can?t afford a condo.

 

They can?t afford an apartment.

 

But they can afford a Trailer Home.

 

Fresh off the press:

 

Fannie Mae, Lenders Aim to Revive US Mobile Homes

 

NEW YORK , Feb 10 (Reuters) - Fannie Mae (FNM) and a consortium of lenders aim to revive a U.S. manufactured housing industry that has been battered in recent years by high loan defaults and a bloated inventory of repossessed homes.

 

"We want to strengthen the market for manufactured housing financing, and eliminate predatory and anti-consumer features that have contributed to instability in the marketplace over time," Fannie Mae Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Franklin Raines said on Tuesday in a statement.

 

Fannie Mae, the biggest buyer of U.S. home loans, and the lending group will make it more affordable to get a mortgage to buy a manufactured home, the company said. A consumer could get 30-year financing for such a home with down payments as low as 5 percent.

 

Manufactured housing encompasses modular, mobile and other types of prefabricated homes. Because their cost is low compared with standard housing, they tend to attract elderly and low-income buyers. These buyers tend be riskier borrowers because of their limited income.

 

Local banks and finance companies will screen borrowers and make the loans.

Fannie Mae will purchase the loans from the lenders.

 

Further, Fannie Mae said it plans to work with its lender partners over the next year to develop a pilot program to save consumers at least 10 percent of the cost of buying and financing a manufactured home."

?????????..

 

Notice how FNM is trading at a 52-week high. Franklin ?Mr. Potato Head? Raines is desperate to get some new loan volume going to jam his stock to all time highs. Unfortunately, FNM is still choking on mountains of Conseco manufactured housing paper. So he sent his Lobbying Machine to the right places and greased the skids to allow FNM to buy even more ?new? manufactured housing paper so the company could achieve growth rates which would allow it to ?outrun? its spiraling credit losses on the Conseco garbage heap.

 

The market responded favorably.

 

Champion Enterprises (CHB) and Fleetwood Enterprises (FLE) exploded to new highs on huge volume, anticipating a new boom in manufactured housing sales to the Hillbilly crowd.

 

After all, how could these two manufacturers lose? They have just been guaranteed to be paid for their product by Fannie Mae, which has the Full Faith and Credit of the John Law II HedgeFund, which in turn is fully backstopped by the U.S. Treasury Department and the tax collection power of the Internal Revenue Service.

 

Essentially, CHB and FLE have been just issued a license to print money.

 

Imagine this. A cross-eyed dude with an IQ of 81 selling used car parts out of his back yard by day and selling moonshine by night, able to buy a brand new double wide trailer home with 5% down and a 30-year mortgage. The guy has no education, no credit record, hasn?t filed a tax return, and probably pays $20/mo. child support to each of his 15 female cousins.

 

What are the odds that this guy makes 360 payments on time?

 

What are the odds that this trailer home isn?t wiped out by a mudslide or a tornado in 10 years?

 

What are the odds that this trailer home will be stench free after even 5 years?

 

What are the odds that this guy doesn?t lose his temper and punch a hole through the wall after 1 year?

 

What are the odds that when a payment is missed, the collector will be able to find a working phone number?

 

It doesn?t matter.

 

CHB and FLE will get a check for the purchase price, plus sales tax, plus closing costs, plus delivery, thanks to Franklin Raines.

 

Look for the following securities upcoming in your money market prospectus:

 

- Ex-Con Housing Shelter Receivables Unit III

 

- Tornado Alley Sardine Can Receivables Series IV

 

- HUV ?Home Utility Vehicle? Moonshine Master Trust IIa

 

- Oscar Meyer ?Weimar? Housing Portfolio Pool VI

 

Come see the Bottom of The Barrel yourself:

 

New Fannie Mae Borrowers

 

post-7-1076527728.jpg

 

"Word" Wndy...

 

Ag

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Daily OP - profit objective for crude was 40.55.  You don't think they'll hold their shorts too long do you?  Second retest of the 40 area.  The SPX responded with 100 points higher since it broke.  Nice election erection present George.

Crude oil tested $40 in 1990 and 2003. This year it broke out to $55. Now it's retesting $40. Pretty much classical technical action, visible in this long-term PDF chart:

 

http://www.mrci.com/pdf/cl.pdf

 

And you know what happens after the retest ... ;)

 

I mean, if you think crude's going back to $30 ... you ought to be long for Dow $12K. :mellow:

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Yep, standard return to the scene of the crime. You got a 20 YEAR base there. That will support a very long, very large move. It will take patience and forty tudes.

 

The chart kinda reminds me of the 87 crash. We know what came after, don't we.

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The intellectual property wars continue --

 

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal by movie studios and music labels of a ruling that found Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc., the firm behind the Morpheus software, to not be responsible for their customers' online swapping of copyright songs and movies.

 

It's somewhat unlikely that the U.S. Supreme Court would have accepted this appeal from the Ninth Circuit in California, if they didn't intend to modify or overturn it.

 

After all, the entertainment industry exerts a strong sway over the US govt, possibly extending into the Supreme Court (what DID Dick Cheney and Antonin Scalia discuss in that Lousiana duck blind?).

 

But now that the file-sharing genie is out of the bottle, it's going to be exceedingly difficult to put it back in --

 

"BitTorrent is more of a threat because it is probably the latest and best technological tool for transferring large files like movies," said John Malcolm, senior vice president of anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association of America. "It is unusual, perhaps unique, in that the moment you start downloading you are also uploading," he added. "It's what makes it so efficient."

 

BitTorrent has proven to be resistant to some of the countermeasures the entertainment industry has taken to sabotage file-sharing, including a process known as file-spoofing in which incomplete or decoy versions of songs or other material are uploaded to discourage piracy.

 

"Spoofing is very difficult on BitTorrent, if at all possible," said Mark Ishikawa, chief executive of online tracking firm BayTSP Inc. "There's no defense for this one."

 

Bits bite

 

Intellectual property has become another tool of plutocratic domination. The original 14-year term of copyright (when the US was founded) has ballooned as of 1998 to life of the author(s) plus 70 to 95 years. In other words, most books, music and movies of our time won't be in the public domain until our grandchildren are elderly. "Freedom of speech" is an empty concept under this tyrannical fencing off of the intellectual commons.

 

Mary Bono, speaking on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, noted that "Sonny [bono] wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever," but that since she was "informed by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution," Congress might consider Jack Valenti's proposal of a copyright term of "forever less one day."

 

Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act

 

Outrageous. Although I respect the sanctity of property, my sympathy under these abusive conditions is with the file sharers. Grab too much, and the universe fights back ...

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looks like a top, smells like a top, walks like a top, but is it a top? ;)

 

bands and ma's represent hurst by da book, the yellow pattern is a harmonic bearish butterfly...

 

"... The structure of the Butterfly pattern was discovered by Bryce Gilmore. In my experience, I believe an Ideal Butterfly Pattern, which requires specific Fibonacci in the structure - including a mandatory 0.786 retracement of the XA leg as the B point - offers more precise Potential Reversal Zones (PRZ). Also, the Butterfly pattern must include an AB=CD pattern to be a valid signal. Frequently, the AB=CD pattern will possess an extended CD leg that is 1.27 or 1.618 of the AB leg. Although this is an important requirement for a valid trade signal, the most critical number in the pattern is the 1.27 XA leg. The XA calculation is usually complemented by an extreme (2.00, 2.24, 2.618) BC projection. These numbers create a specific Potential Reversal Zone (PRZ) that can yield powerful reversals, especially when the pattern is in all-time (new highs/new lows) price levels."

 

when husrt and harmonics meet, it's sweet, if you're on the right side... :D :D

 

ps. been lurking for a while, new to posting - you guys are great! B)

post-1722-1102716197.png

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nice post, Machinehead.

 

I read an excellent Sci-Fi short story some years ago....where this is EXACTLY what happened....copyright taken to the extreme....

 

All tunes had already been written, and any time someone wrote a tune and submitted it, they'd be told it was already copyrighted.

 

The world grew increasingly unhappy and dejected....no art could be created without violating -some- copyright from who knew how long ago..

 

Finally, after identifying this as the root cause of the skyrocketing suicide-rate, declining-productivity, etc.; the supreme-court struck down all copyright and dismantled the "checking' office.

 

Voila! Whenever anyone had a spark of creativity, they could feel it was novel and their own. Earth flourished....

.

.

.

...and the markets fell every Friday and the bears lived happily ever after! :lol:

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howdy Street-Wize !

 

or SW for short, since...uhh....short is kinda popular 'round heah... :P

 

 

SW, that chart is only drawing the upper half. I just dragged it to another window to double-check it on its own, and it does seem to be missing the lower half.

 

So you think it's UP from here, eh??

 

Our parting gift from k-wave today was:

 

"95 effin % long, I tells ya....95 effin %...grumble grumble..." :lol:

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nice post, Machinehead.

 

I read an excellent Sci-Fi short story some years ago....where this is EXACTLY what happened....copyright taken to the extreme....

 

All tunes had already been written, and any time someone wrote a tune and submitted it, they'd be told it was already copyrighted.

 

The world grew increasingly unhappy and dejected....no art could be created without violating -some- copyright from who knew how long ago..

 

Finally, after identifying this as the root cause of the skyrocketing suicide-rate, declining-productivity, etc.; the supreme-court struck down all copyright and dismantled the "checking' office.

 

Voila!  Whenever anyone had a spark of creativity, they could feel it was novel and their own.  Earth flourished....

.

.

.

...and the markets fell every Friday and the bears lived happily ever after! :lol:

 

It's always been a source of annoyance to me that people can write anything, or make arithmetical calculations, without paying me royalties for the privilege.

 

I've taken care of that now, though.

 

I took out a copyright on the alphabet and the Arabic numerals.

 

I'll be PMing you about where to send the checks.

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It's always been a source of annoyance to me that people can write anything, or make arithmetical calculations, without paying me royalties for the privilege.

 

I've taken care of that now, though.

 

I took out a copyright on the alphabet and the Arabic numerals.

 

I'll be PMing you about where to send the checks.

 

That's nothin' ... I've patented the "reproductive organs."

 

Please review our simple "pay to play" terms ... :lol:

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Close: Market traded in a narrow range throughout the day and closed just below the unchanged mark as investors balanced a sell off in oil against a winning streak in equities (for four out of the past five weeks for the major indices) and a lackluster set of economic data... The November Producer Price Index proved to be a mixed bag as the PPI (actual of 0.5% versus the consensus of 0.1%) was counterbalanced against a core PPI that matched expectations at 0.2%... A surge in energy prices was responsible for the jump in the PPI...

 

The preliminary December Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index, however, checked in ahead of the consensus estimate (at 95.7 versus the consensus of 93.5) and helped corroborate growing confidence among consumers... Another bright spot for the market was a big reversal in crude oil futures ($40.71/bbl -$1.82), which actually traded higher in early trading after OPEC ministers trimmed oil production by 1 mln barrels, but then broke through a 200-day moving average and closed down 4%...

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