When the US Employment Situation Report came out Friday, the 41k private payroll print shocked the bulls. An interesting divergence appeared. Normally a weak payroll print in relation to expectations would cause the currency in question, the US Dollar in this case, to weaken substantially. But in fact the opposite took place. [...]

From the pre-harvest low near $5.25 in September 2006 to the monster blow-off high of $16.63 in July 2008, Beans more than tripled in price.   Then in a mere 5 months as the world was crashing in 2008, they lost more than half their value to a low of about $7.75, a drop of nearly [...]

There is no number to convey what I have perceived in the last couple of months but the signal nevertheless seems too strong to ignore.  I take my daughter to Tae Kwon Do near downtown Chicago two or three days a week from further north on the Interstate.  I do this after school so it [...]

In December the Fed announced that it would target Fed Funds at 0 to 1/4% and it also announced that it would be in the market for agency debt and treasuries, effectively monetizing the debt of the United States.  The dollar, which had been strengthening in the flight to quality as risk positions were eliminated [...]

I am not sure that stock prices ever bear much relation to the worldline that will ultimately play out over time, but the recent rally, now aged 55 days and counting, really highlights the fantasy world that typifies equity values (as so much else, but more on that later).  Recall that market indices made their [...]

It is alarming to hear gleeful democrats say that the mistaken policies of the last 30 years are now to be jettisoned.  What policies exactly?  In a nutshell it is the reduction of state participation in the economy.  As the chart below demonstrates, it is hard to view the policies that started with Reagan as [...]

UPDATE:  28 October 2008,  3PM Central.  Well That was wrong.  Stocks broke out the TOP of the wedge rather than breaking out the bottom and falling through the table.  Never fight the Fed.  The Fed is expected to set rates at or below 1% tomorrow afternoon.  Of course this in itself is nearly unprecedented; for [...]

Fridays trade had all the earmarks of a bottom. At the beginning of the day I felt strongly that the bottom would be seen that day. However the trade on Friday felt engineered. It had all the technical aspects one would look for; heavy volume, started strongly down, wild volatility, spike [...]

Two weeks ago (Sept. 26) the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a high of 11,168.10.  As of Tonight (Thurs. Oct 9) it closed at its low of 8579.19, down 23% in nine trading sessions.  That is a crash. The S&P 500 Dropped from a high of 1215.77 on the 26th to a low of 909.19 [...]

This weekend we drove all over Will, Grundy, Livingston and Kankakee counties in Illinois scoping out places to find Mazon Creek fossils (yes, we drove over the Mazon Creek or River several times but did not go into the town of Mazon). While we did not find many good fossil sites until [...]

Last July, the SEC retired the Uptick Rule. The rule was promulgated in the aftermath of the Great Crash of 1929 and requires that a short position in a stock may not be established unless the stock has most recently ticked up in price. People in general do not understand what shorting is (I [...]

An outline of what is in store for the next 6-8 months is starting to take shape.  The major issues are the US presidential election, the end game in the Iranian crisis and what the ultimate harvested crop sizes will be.  For stocks, it seems clear that we are in a bear market.  No not [...]

In early 2007 I wrote this entry about Bush’s State of the Union speech in which he very unwisely staked our nation’s future on corn-based Ethanol (and Congress obliged with the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 [loud guffaws and tears rolling down cheeks at the title]).  Well it is no secret that all [...]

It is amazing how much nonsense is thrown around by people on CNBC.  Dennis pleading with the president of NYMEX to raise margin requirements so speculators cannot take such big positions.  Congresspeople talking about curbing speculators (see below).  Can we really so stupid as to blame the messenger rather than attacking the causes?
It is very [...]

I have to address some silliness we have been seeing more of recently, people like Senator Byron Dorgan, saying things like we need to clean up markets to reign in speculators and only have the hedgers have access.  Dorgan isn’t the only one with an alarming lack of understanding of how markets work sitting in [...]

Though it seems counter intuitive, the best thing the Fed can do for the health of the American economy right now would be to announce an immediate inter-meeting 50bp rate hike, perhaps after telegraphing it for a few days first.  The immediate effect would be to inflict massive losses in oil and other commodity speculation [...]

This morning on CNBC, former Dallas Fed President McTeer made a very important point about the recent history of the Fed.  If you look at the fact that Crude Oil has just jumped by well over $10/bbl since yesterday mornings imprudent comments by ECB Governor Trichet, and that the Euro is now stronger against USD [...]

On Tuesday morning, Chairman Bernanke made a watershed appearance in which he stated that the Fed was aware of the delterious effect of the weak dollar and promised that they were on top of it.  This is the statement everyone was looking for after the April meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee but did not [...]

As a form of national protest at the high and rising cost of energy and food, everyone in the nation should stay home on Wednesday, June 11th.  This might help get the attention of the idiots in Washington and the ear of fellow citizens who – for whatever strange reason – are not thinking much [...]

I hate to gloat, but gloat I shall.  Here is what I wrote Tuesday afternoon in my daily chatter with the friendly ‘quants’ with whom I chat in Greenwich:
[4/22/2008 3:36:08 PM] t0mmy berg says: btw,  i believe there is a pretty high probability (like 70%) that the high in the eur/us rate was either today [...]