NYSE Short Interest Drops To Lowest In 2010

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NYSE November Margin Debt Rises To Fresh Post-Lehman High

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John Hofmeister on the Nightly Business Report 12/28/2010

BBC Panorama - Carry on Banking

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Following the Fund Flows Charles Biderman CNBC December 23, 2010

Reverting to the Mean Price

As gauged by an aggregate of housing indexes dating to 1890, real home prices rose 85 percent to their highest level in August 2006. They have since declined 33 percent, falling short of most predictions for a cumulative correction of at least 40 percent.[1] In fact, home prices still must fall 23 percent if they are to revert to their long-term mean (Chart 1). The Federal Reserve’s purchases of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac government-sponsored-entity bonds, which eased mortgage rates, supported home prices. Other measures included mortgage modification plans, which deferred foreclosures, and tax credits, which boosted entry-level home sales.

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Saxo’s outrageous predictions for 2011

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Weekly Insider Selling To Buying Ratio

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Wikileaks Next Document Drop May Target Bank Of America

Julian Assange has enough material to make the bosses of a major bank resign, he told a Times of London reporter.

Alexi Mostrous has been following the Assange case closely, and will have a brand new interview with the Wikileaks chief up tomorrow. He teased that bit on Twitter this afternoon.

We still don't know, for sure, which bank that would be, but still everyone suspects that it is on Bank of America. In 2009, Assange said in an interview that he had a 5GB Bank of America hard drive.

Of course, what Assange thinks is resignation-worthy, and what actually is resignation-worthy may not be the same thing. Following the latest Cablegate dump, Assange has called for the resignation of Hillary Clinton, and possibly Obama, though neither are going to.

Meanwhile, this weekend, Bank of America blocked payments to Wikileaks.

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The big, Institutional Index test

The big, Institutional Index test that is now going on ...

Last Tuesday, we posted the Institutional Investor "core holdings' chart. The core holdings are the collection of stocks that represent most of the investment money Institutional investors have in play.

The stocks making up the index change fairly often ... as often as Institutional investors change their strategies. Actually, that is one of the good features about the index because it reflects what is really going on relative to their investment behavior.

But ... what is interesting about the index, is that it gives one of the most accurate index pictures of what is happening in the stock market. And, since it is not really a public index, it can't be manipulated, toyed with, or otherwise be interfered with.

If you recall last Tuesday's update, we commented that the Institutional Index was facing a "double top" resistance test. This is really an important test, as it will be a deciding factor whether the current rally starts another leg up in January, or decides to retreat.

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The Kass Forecast

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Baltic Dry Index & Average Vessel Speed from Nordea in all time LOW

Click below for more:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/baltic-dry-dips-below-2000
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/nordeas-chart-week-collapsing-us-import-demand

Hindenburg Omen Triggers

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Bad Breadth

The McClellan oscillator is now showing a large negative divergence and has moved back below zero despite the market making new highs.

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George Soros Obama Glenn Beck Fox News America under ATTACK (3 Part)

Only 177 Times More Insider Selling Than Buying In Last Week

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Bernanke's Nightmare: Chairman Ron Paul

S&P 500's Most Overbought Close in More Than a Year

The chart below highlights the level at which the S&P 500 has traded relative to its 50-day moving average (DMA) over the last year (measured in standard deviations). As shown in the chart, today’s close puts the S&P 500 into ’extreme overbought’ territory (2+ standard deviations above 50-DMA) and at its most overbought level since November 2009.

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Williams Calls for 'Great Hyperinflationary Great Depression'; A Very Easy Rebuttal

1. Williams focuses on money supply, ignoring credit although credit is far more important
2. William ignores numerous global interconnections. Calling for hyperinflation in the US alone ignores happenings in Europe, Japan, and China. I remain amazed at how US-centric hyperinflationists in general are. Monetary printing in China far exceeds that in the US, and it is the Euro and the Yen most at risk now, not the US dollar.
3. Williams ignores relatively small changes in Social Security that can keep that system afloat for another decade or longer. Regardless, SS is a huge future problem that will matter at some point, just not now. Currently, collapsing consumer credit in the US is soaking up all the Fed's printing.
4. Williams ignores numerous constraints on the Fed and Congress
5. Williams ignores US gold holdings, the largest in the world
6. Williams ignores the massive influence of consumer attitudes and bank attitudes towards lending.

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Arms (TRIN) Index At Most Extreme Deviation Since 1956

Yet another distortion in this Fed-controlled market has been captured by SentimentTrader who has noticed that the Arms (TRIN) index is at its most extreme deviation since 1956. As a reminder the Arms index is an indicator of market breadth which essentially tracks lemming like momentum-chasing behavior with respect to volume. Sentiment Trader's commentary: "While influenced by some of the high-volume, low-priced stocks such as Citigroup, the Arms Index is showing an abnormal level of Up Volume versus Up Issues. The chart we show on the site uses bands around a six-month average to define extremes, and right now the 10-day average is more than 35% away from that average. With the S&P at a 52-week high, this is the most-extreme deviation in the Arms Index since 1956." For those who foolishly believe that technical indicators "indicate" anything anymore in a market in which there is just one player left, may want to be concerned - all the other times such an extreme deviation has occurred, any short-term gains were erased during the months ahead. Those dates were 4/5/43, 2/5/45, 6/20/45, 5/14/48, 4/19/50 and 3/14/56.


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The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

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The Big Bank Theory
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Institutional Buying and subtract

let's look at today's chart where we take the daily amount of Institutional Buying and subtract the daily amount of Institutional Selling to get a Net figure. If the Net amount is positive, then Institutional investors are in Accumulation, and if the Net amount is negative, then Institutional investors are in Distribution.

A quick look at today's chart show's you what has happened in the past few weeks. From November 16 to the first of December, Institutional Investors were in Distribution as seen on the green bars. And then, last Thursday (December 2nd.), Institutional Investors went back into Accumulation and were still in Accumulation at the close yesterday.

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The Jobs Analysis by David Stockman

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Sen Bernie Sanders Amazing Speech!

The Rough Road Back

There are roughly 14.5 million unemployed in the US, another 9.4 involuntary part-time workers, and 2.5 million marginally attached workers. The latter category is basically people who would take a job if they could find one but haven't looked in the past four weeks. Plus younger people who have gone back to school because they can't find a job.

For the part-time workers to get full-time jobs we need to create (guessing) at least 4-5 million full-time jobs to give them the hours they want. That is at least 11-12 million jobs we need to have to get back to the unemployment levels of 2007 (assuming that about 7.5 million jobs gets us to 5% unemployment).




Now, we need about 1.5 million jobs every year to cover new people coming into the labor force - or that is what history and economists tell us. I am not so sure that number is not itself history. What group of people has seen its unemployment level go down? People over 55! My generation is not retiring as planned and indeed is going back to work. Retirement is somewhere in the future in a world where stocks have gone nowhere for ten years and housing values have collapsed.

We may need more than 1.5 million jobs a year (125,000 a month) if Boomers aren't going to quit. But let's assume they do, for the sake of argument.

That means in the next five years we need more than 19 million jobs to get back to under 5% unemployment. That's almost 4 million jobs a year or more than 325,000 a month, each and every month. Or 27 million jobs to get back there in ten years, or almost 230,000 jobs a month each and every month.

No recessions allowed. No crisis can show up. And the economy needs to grow at 3.5% plus on average to really give us jobs. Below are the employment statistics for the last 20 years. Straight from the BLS web site into my Excel spreadsheet. Notice that with the exception of 1994 and the last quarters of 1997 and 1999, we had no consistent quarters of 300,000-plus jobs a month. Also note that the economy grew (if memory serves) at 3.3% in the '90s and at 1.9% in the last decade. That marginal growth makes a big difference.

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