More Bulletin Board Exotica

[wndysrf]

No commentary tomorrow. Taking the long weekend off.

 

More proof that the Stock Market Mania never really left us.

 

From today's Wall Struck Journal:

 

"Bulletin Board Is Making a Roaring Comeback"

 

"Volume Has Been Surging on Wild Market Where Small Stocks Trade"

 

"YP.Net, which trades on the OTC Bulletin Board is a Mesa, Arizona-based company which sells on-line yellow pages advertising. About 44% of the float is held by to shareholders operating out of the Caribbean. Antiguan secrecy laws bar disclosure of who owns the shares through Antiqua Management & Trust."

 

"The company recurites customers by mailing out $3.50 checks to businesses. If the businesses cash the check, they are automatically signed up for an online advertising account billed at $29.95/mo. The company is mired in several FTC accusations and lawsuits claiming "false and deceptive" marketing practices and other financial misdeeds."

 

"You know things are getting wild again on the OTC Bulletin Board when the shares of an obscure dot-com such as YP.Net soar more than 20-fold and spark a battle between two daytraders."

 

"YP.Net is involved in a rough-and tumble battle between Stocklemon, a Southern California daytrader buying the stock, and Andre Left, who is shorting the stock. In recent months, Bulletin Board business has been roaring back. In March, trading volume totaled $5.8 billion, more than triple the year-earier level. The average price of a basket of more than 2.500 stocks rose by 75%. YP.Net has surged from 20 cents to $4/share."

 

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

 

So now you have one guy gunning the stock, another trying to short it. At one point in January, over 4 million shares traded on YPNT, which barely moved prior to May 2003.

 

Everywhere you look, there are Giraffes, Dinosaurs, and Zoo Animals on the charts. Stocks which barely traded, suddenly getting gamed 40 to 60 million shares daily, like IPIX, up 800% in 3 weeks.

 

How will The Mania unravel?

 

How bad will it have to get to swear people off stock investing forever?

 

What kind of Epic Wipeouts will we see?

 

Clearly we haven't seen any pain yet.

 

Here are some excerpts from M2M from July 2002, in the midst of the Waterfall. As you will see, there was an extreme amount of fear. Fear of missing the rally. Dippers were buying the whole way down.

 

July 1:

 

"After the major rally off the September lows, nobody was going to be left behind on the next 45% rise on the Nasdaq, or a 75% rise in the semiconductor stocks."

 

"When we started declining off the January highs, we had a couple of huge bounces during March Madness and the May Cisco Squeeze. That sealed the fate of the market participants, who were now locked into the ?Now, More Than Ever? mode."

 

"Nobody was going to be the fool to miss the next 8% daily move in the QQQ?s."

 

"As a result, as each rally failed, the dip buyer?s resolve actually increased. Hope hysteria increased exponentially, as the dippers salivated at even deeper lows to trade off of. This hysteria caused the participants to buy the whole way down, evidenced by the large, immediate gap fills, and the repeated +1000 TICK readings."

 

July 2:

 

"It was only last Friday when the dippers and the hopers were crying ?bottom? and were aggressively buying stocks. Of course, the ordinary stocks wouldn?t do, so they chased the large breasted wonders like NVLS and KLAC. Later that afternoon, their grope attempt was slapped back, so they figured they really should wait until the selling exhausts itself before making another attempt."

 

"But, of course, the urge to get a front row seat on the James Glassman rally train proved to be too formidable."

 

"After yesterday?s 60 point Nasdaq selloff and another 40 point decline this morning, those 1365 prints looked too irresistable not to buy into. So rather than continue staring at that 36C bra label through the see-through blouse for another couple of days, the dippers went for it again."

 

"That resulted in another straight up move with a +900 TICK reading."

 

July 3

 

"I think everyone has been expecting or hoping for a summer rally. Unfortunately, the desperate dip buying has shown no signs of letting up, and the bond market is coming apart quickly. What is incredible is that these guys are making the same bets LTCM made in 1998. The mantra is to ?buy on the dip, and then have the staying power to wait it out.?

 

July 5

 

"The deeper we go into the decline, the more hysterical the buying. We seem to have even bigger TICK readings on these explosions as we work our way lower. And we have yet to have any meaningful unfilled gaps on the way down. Instead, we have the opposite. Giant upside gaps, and 300+ runs on the Dow."

 

July 9

 

"Maybe the Ameritrade dippers are the ones accumulating longs in these stocks, getting ready for what is going to be a sure upside explosion rally. The dippers have been heavy buyers for 4 trading days in a row now."

 

July 11

 

"First of all, the dippers came in again in the morning and tried to buy the weakness on the open. When that rally failed, we went down to new lows. Then we got the technical bounce. But the problem was, the action looked very tired near the end of the day, and we saw the usual maniacal chasing of the semiconductors and some subprimes."

 

July 12

 

"Since the March Madness highs, we have seen wave after wave of dippers buying into the weakness, evidenced by the repeated high TICKs, low TRIN readings, and lack of unfilled gaps. What has been shocking in this bear market decline is the seemingly unlimited number of lambs available to slaughter. But of course, any stock that gets crushed is viewed as an immediate buying opportunity, so once this stock hit the lows, the dippers piled in. As we have indicated before, the bear market continues to work backwards, with speculative intensity increasing as we get lower. I've never witnessed this type of bottom chasing or grand feats of knife catching."

 

July 17

 

"Today?s Wall Street Journal reported more action from the hopers. As we have repeated, the real selling hasn?t started yet, since most U.S. investors are still participating in the mania. Although many people are starting to sell, the vast majority feel that prices are too low to sell out now. And over 90% of young people?s 401(k) contributions are still going into stock mutual funds."

 

"So despite all the news about redemptions, most of America remains fully invested. Plainly evidenced by the staggering large number of mutual funds still in existence, and virtually no announcements of fund closings or failures."

 

July 19

 

"And Friday night, the Ameritrade Dipper Index came in at a shocking bullish ratio of 86%. That?s an all time high for this move, now going on 19 days in a row of steady bullish readings."

 

July 22

 

"And sure enough, we gapped down on the open, and an immediate flurry of buy orders hit the tape. That was enough to fill the gap and then some in the usual bottle rocket move, crushing the Nasdaq TRIN to the .35 zone again, and sending the VXN down towards the ?what me worry?? area. But the sellers showed up within minutes at the September lows, and the momentum chasers were once again knocked to the downside."

 

"Then we had the Bataan Death March going, where it was really starting to look ugly. Many of the shorts decided to cover, not taking any chances on another afternoon 400 point whiplash. And of course, the short sellers ran like cockroaches once the light was turned on, and sent us up towards the opening prices."

 

"That brief spite of ?upside euphoria? kept the dippers from panicking out, since they know that a 1000 rally on the Dow and a 125 point rally on the Nasdaq is imminent."

 

July 24

 

"The Greatest Squeeze of All Time"

 

"Approximately 4 days worth of shorts were blown out."

 

"This morning, my hope was that we would finally see that unfilled gap, followed by some acceleration. But as usual, the dippers showed up, and we bounced into another round of ?hope hysteria?. That hysteria morphed into the greatest short squeeze of all time, sending us out on near record high TICK readings and record low TRIN readings."

 

"Today, we got a confirmed bullish reversal candle on the Dow and the S & P. The QQQ didn?t quite make it. Needless to say, the action was quite spectacular."

 

"Volume came in near a record 2.7 billion on the NYSE and 2.4 billion on the Nasdaq."

 

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

 

We all know what happened after July 24.

 

What as really changed sentiment wise?

 

Nothing.

 

Its been a Full Blown Mania the entire time.

 

We have never had a Bear Market.

 

Especially with YPNT getting gunned up 800% from the lows.

 

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

 

Yearnings Preview for Next Week:

 

Companies reporting during the week of April 12th- April 16th include:

 

Mon: Apr 12th: GCI, NYT, NVLS, LLTC...

 

Tue Apr 13th: BBT, JNJ, MER, PBG, STT, INTC...

 

Wed Apr 14th: ASD, BAC, DAL, HDI, AMD, AAPL, CCK, DHI, PGR, SNDK, TXN..

 

Thu Apr 15th: C, CAL, DCLK, EMC, GPC, PEP, PPG, LUV, SVU, UNH, CDWC, IBM, SEBL, SUNW...

 

Fri Apr 16th: DPH, NOK, GWW.

[machinehead]

The fix is in:

 

The Senate on Thursday sent President Bush a stopgap pension measure that expected to save corporations tens of billions of dollars in funding costs over the next two years. The bill makes a change in the method used to calculate required pension fund contributions. It would replace the current 30-year Treasury bond interest rate that is used by many employers to calculate the amount of money they must set aside in their employee pension plans with a blend of corporate bond index rates. The new rates would be used through 2005. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. estimates the change would save companies around $80 billion.

 

It's not enough that SocSec and Medicare are going to implode.

 

They're taking down private pensions too.

 

Last resort is personal assets -- preferably outside the grip of the Matrix.

[Tchaikofsky]

4:05pm 04/08/04

U.S. stocks end mixed as Nasdaq ekes out late gain ($SPX, $COMPQ, $INDU) By Mark Cotton

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- U.S. stocks ended mixed Thursday as blue chips pulled back from heavy losses, and the Nasdaq eked out a late gain, helped by positive sentiment generated by strong earnings from Yahoo and an upbeat first quarter outlook from Dell. Traders said however that gains were being capped by concern over the upsurge of violence in Iraq and the threat of terrorist action going into the three-day Easter break. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU) was down 38 points, or 0.4 percent at an unofficial close of 10,442, but off an intraday low of 10,393.91. The Nasdaq Composite ($COMPQ) was up 2.62 points, or 0.1 percent at 2,052.86 while the S&P 500 was down 1.20 points at 1,139.33.

[thesun]

The fix is in:

 

The Senate on Thursday sent President Bush a stopgap pension measure that expected to save corporations tens of billions of dollars in funding costs over the next two years. The bill makes a change in the method used to calculate required pension fund contributions. It would replace the current 30-year Treasury bond interest rate that is used by many employers to calculate the amount of money they must set aside in their employee pension plans with a blend of corporate bond index rates. The new rates would be used through 2005. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. estimates the change would save companies around $80 billion.

 

It's not enough that SocSec and Medicare are going to implode.

 

They're taking down private pensions too.

 

Last resort is personal assets -- preferably outside the grip of the Matrix.

That will be the PROFIT that corp. USA will show.

 

A company could be lossing money and still show profits.

 

Some more vaporware to re-elect the bushman.

 

All this vaporware will cost Trillions to the grandkids.

 

Sad :cry: :cry:

[machinehead]

That will be the PROFIT that corp. USA will show.

 

A company could be lossing money and still show profits.

'Zactly.

 

Don't account for option expense. Don't account for full pension contributions.

 

Pretty soon -- voila -- you've "beaten by a penny."

 

All BS ... all smoke and mirrors.

[swedjap]

The fix is in:

 

The Senate on Thursday sent President Bush a stopgap pension measure that expected to save corporations tens of billions of dollars in funding costs over the next two years. The bill makes a change in the method used to calculate required pension fund contributions. It would replace the current 30-year Treasury bond interest rate that is used by many employers to calculate the amount of money they must set aside in their employee pension plans with a blend of corporate bond index rates. The new rates would be used through 2005. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. estimates the change would save companies around $80 billion.

 

It's not enough that SocSec and Medicare are going to implode.

 

They're taking down private pensions too.

 

Last resort is personal assets -- preferably outside the grip of the Matrix.

It's pieces of information like this that's making this such an interesting place

(and Marks priceless market wrap-up )

 

Thanks machinehead!

[Lock Limit Down]

The fix is in:

 

The Senate on Thursday sent President Bush a stopgap pension measure that expected to save corporations tens of billions of dollars in funding costs over the next two years. The bill makes a change in the method used to calculate required pension fund contributions. It would replace the current 30-year Treasury bond interest rate that is used by many employers to calculate the amount of money they must set aside in their employee pension plans with a blend of corporate bond index rates. The new rates would be used through 2005. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. estimates the change would save companies around $80 billion.

 

It's not enough that SocSec and Medicare are going to implode.

 

They're taking down private pensions too.

 

Last resort is personal assets -- preferably outside the grip of the Matrix.

Appalling MH

The Jekyll is closing in

[DrStool]

Happy Easter, Everyone! Have great holiday weekend!

 

I will be catching up on the Anals updates throughout the weekend. Now, gonna go play some golf!

[Soros]

They're taking down private pensions too.

Nobody use those things anymore,

http://edworkforce.house.gov/press/press10...onhrg060403.htm

only 21 percent participate in a defined benefit plan, while 46 percent participate in a defined contribution plan

 

http://www.legal-forms-kit.com/freelegalad...loyment/13.html

employers are not legally required to provide any pension benefits at all

PBGC coverage doesn't extend to defined contribution plans

[machinehead]

Never mind about the market:

 

Global dimming: The sunlight reaching Earth's surface is getting feebler. Assuming there's nothing wrong with the sun, some unknown atmospheric factor is steadily darkening the planet.

Evidence: In 1985, Atsumu Ohmura, a climatologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, checked sunlight records in Switzerland and discovered that solar radiation had declined a startling 10 percent in 30 years. Subsequent studies found the same effect in Ireland, Japan, the former Soviet Union, and at both poles, but scientists remained in denial. A 2001 metastudy confirmed Ohmura's findings.

Implications: This is an entirely unexpected phenomenon, even more off the wall than global warming. Who put out the lights? How will we eat?

 

Five reasons why the planet is going to hell

[Big Doo Doo]

The fix is in:

 

The Senate on Thursday sent President Bush a stopgap pension measure that expected to save corporations tens of billions of dollars in funding costs over the next two years. The bill makes a change in the method used to calculate required pension fund contributions. It would replace the current 30-year Treasury bond interest rate that is used by many employers to calculate the amount of money they must set aside in their employee pension plans with a blend of corporate bond index rates. The new rates would be used through 2005. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. estimates the change would save companies around $80 billion.

 

It's not enough that SocSec and Medicare are going to implode.

 

They're taking down private pensions too.

 

Last resort is personal assets -- preferably outside the grip of the Matrix.

MH:

 

You are sooooo correct about this !!

 

The handwriting is on the wall ... and we had better read it now !

 

When the baby boomer retirement/old age crunch comes ... it will be very ugly, indeed. Social security and Medicare unfunded liabilities boggle the mind. Watch out ... because your pension money may not be there. ALL IRAs and 401Ks are at risk ... if you have money in them ... you will either be paying taxes at 90%+ rate upon withdrawal ... or you will have your SS benefits reduced/eliminated because you have such funds ... or, possibly a little of both.

 

Says something important about greenbacks/tangibles under the floorboards ... out of the knowledge and reach of the matrix.

 

Thanks for your vigilence in monitoring this.

[Slothrop]

Scanning the "CCI buy signal" list over stockcharts, Slothrop is amazed to see 3 familiar symbols: JNS, KCS and KGC.

 

We report, you decide.

[Ags Nightmare]

Its been a Full Blown Mania the entire time.

 

We have never had a Bear Market

 

Yup.. a wipeout to refresh...the public has been completely brainwashed into taking 80 % where the sun don't shine without thinking twice about getting into the same polutted hot tub..

 

M2M was great trip down memory lane proving how insane things really are...Thats why I get so wound up when I hear poodits say while being interviewed.."well,,,in this "post bubble environment"....

 

Only thing thats different to me is price...we have plenty of disconnects and excesses to go around...

 

Have a great weekend stoolies...

 

Ag

[Captain's Log]

Never mind about the market:

 

Global dimming: The sunlight reaching Earth's surface is getting feebler. Assuming there's nothing wrong with the sun, some unknown atmospheric factor is steadily darkening the planet.

Evidence: In 1985, Atsumu Ohmura, a climatologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, checked sunlight records in Switzerland and discovered that solar radiation had declined a startling 10 percent in 30 years. Subsequent studies found the same effect in Ireland, Japan, the former Soviet Union, and at both poles, but scientists remained in denial. A 2001 metastudy confirmed Ohmura's findings.

Implications: This is an entirely unexpected phenomenon, even more off the wall than global warming. Who put out the lights? How will we eat?

 

Five reasons why the planet is going to hell

Maybe these guys know...

 

I'm scared.

[rog]

The fix is in:

 

The Senate on Thursday sent President Bush a stopgap pension measure that expected to save corporations tens of billions of dollars in funding costs over the next two years. The bill makes a change in the method used to calculate required pension fund contributions. It would replace the current 30-year Treasury bond interest rate that is used by many employers to calculate the amount of money they must set aside in their employee pension plans with a blend of corporate bond index rates. The new rates would be used through 2005. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. estimates the change would save companies around $80 billion.

 

It's not enough that SocSec and Medicare are going to implode.

 

They're taking down private pensions too.

 

Last resort is personal assets -- preferably outside the grip of the Matrix.

Otherwise known as shooting yourself in the foot. What portion of this rally has been fueled by underfunded pensions borrowing money to catch up? I don't know but I have heard estimates of up to 60% of the money that has poured into the market in the last year came from the likes of GM borrowing $15B trying a hail mary pass by doubling down on the SMH and HHH. Now GM is not only fully funded but their liabities have now shrunk.

 

The net result is three strikes against the economy:

1) Retiring employees get a smaller lump sum payment

2) Required pension fund flows will decrease reducing systemic liquidity (Are we already seeing this? April was suppose to be a banner month for liquidity with the IRA & pension fund flows.)

3) Eventually this market will implode, when it does and corporate spreads widen then pension funds will be fully funded (higher rates = smaller required asset base). However any outflows from pension funds will eventually bankrupt these companies that booked pension gains as profits.