Saturday, December 31, 2011

A look at the Middle East and Oil

Some words for 2012...

It doesn't interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your hearts longing.

It doesn't interest me
how old you are.
I want to know 
if you will risk 
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me
what planets are 
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life's betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you 
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn't interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
Yes.

It doesn't interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know 
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone 
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.
 - "The Invitation"- by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

If ever there were words that we need to remember, thoughts we need to think, feelings we need to feel for our voyage into this new annum…the above poem says it beautifully. As for us market particiapants these words take on even more meaning and value - remember them…and live them.

Here’s to a healthy and happy new year.

Its not getting any better over there…or over here

Friday, December 30, 2011

Happy New Year to everyone - but to Trichet, Mario, BURNanke, Timmy, Merkel, Sarkozy and the FED, may you have the 2012 that you all deserve and earned

Well here we are, another year bites the dust and we are not better for it. To everyone who have had to put up with the clowns in charge and who have had to suffer the consequences for their choices - I  wish you a very successful, healthy and happy new year. However, to the clowns and manipulators who have mortgaged all our futures, have privatized profits and socialized gargantuan amounts of losses and wreaked havoc on our markets and the essence of capitalism and entrepreneurship…I wish you the exact thing that you deserve - Next Year…

I am far from a bitter person, I have had an extremely successful year this year and can only hope that next year is as bountiful and amazing as this one was. But all the good things that I have been fortunate to experience this year DO NOT detract from my downright DISGUST and ANGER at what BURNanke, G-Heist-ner, Obama, Merkel, Trichet, Draghi, Sarkozy and people of their ilk and echelon have done to our society and world. For that, YES, I am bitter.

And the bounce is over…and trouble this way comes...



Thursday, December 29, 2011

And the tension increases...

While we were, as of the close yesterday, in need of some sort of bounce to retrace the selling from yesterday…that will likely only be short and brief. The reality is that given yesterday’s activity, the internal dissension in the markets increased rather than decreased. So, yesterday ratcheted up the tension rather than eased it. Today’s rally is further dislocating risk assets prices versus the dollar and will likely end up exacerbating any further market action…in addition, note that Silver and Gold are leading the EURO lower…

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Testing 1-2-3...

Housing Prices - the real story...

Housing prices are just like any other market - highly symmetrical. In comparison to the flawed presentations of the prices in the graph at the bottom of this post…I propose a clearer view of what is plausible…if not likely - as I see the Ritholtz scenario as relatively unlikely and rather optimistic. Instead it seems to me that the unwind of commodities and hard assets like Silver, Palladium, Land and Real Estate will have MUCH further to fall and the rise in value of CASH will have much higher to rise than people seem to understand or able to imagine. I find the projection in the ritholz example to be highly unimaginative given the behaviour of prices on a percentage basis in the past. The key to understanding this is that most markets seek symmetry and in this case both the dollar and housing prices are in fact doing exactly that.

Below is the chart presented on the ritholz.com site which I think is rather in effective in telling the real story.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

The cup is empty and its poison has spilled...

I must say…this Christmas feels different. Parking lots at mall’s were nearly empty leading up to Christmas, Ron Paul is fighting off the scammer establishment who can only find a few newsletters to gripe about despite his voting track record indicating clearly that his actions and philosophy are pro human, pro liberty and pro-capitalist…no discrimination there. The markets of course have been so manipulated by the anti-capitalist central planners and government officials intent on throwing away our children's future and enslaving us in to permanent debt that they are not capitalist at all. Just take a look at what happened to the Spanish bonds last week. Apparently the ECB, as I indicated when it happened, pulled together all the muster that they could find and provided an offer for every single ask on newly issued Spanish bonds…bringing yields down to the low 2% area…this was roughly a 50% reduction in yield…not to be out done…the market has now answered and yields are right back where they were before the central planners decided that they are the market an know better than the market and they are the only true capitalists.

The problem is that Merkozy and Ben, Timmy and Mario are all taking way to many shortcuts. There is no short cut that can work when you give money to people who are only good at losing it. The debt orgy from the ECB last week only rewarded people who are already insolvent and who have already lost the money they borrowed…which is why they are not investing it in new bonds. The fact is, the ECB is willing to accept any kind of collateral, even collateral that has been pledged somewhere else. I guess they will just call that little issue a discrepancy or oversight or accounting error - rather than intentional accounting fraud.

Monday, December 26, 2011

Overshoots, breakouts and failures…welcome to the market

Here we are again with everyone trying to call and trade breakouts. Well I have news for you, breakout trading has been a relative disaster this year…most every breakout triggers just far enough to get everyone on board and then immediately aims for their stops…usually on the opposite side of the breakout where they stop & reverse to go the opposite direction to play the whole thing all over again. In fact, as a general rule, MOST breakouts become failures no matter what the market.

The strange thing is that though this is the case for most breakouts and though trendlines must be continuously redrawn people continue to try to trade them.  Breakout targets if trendlines are not redrawn are at 1.128 or 1.272 extensions before a reversal. This is likely again the trap that is setting up for many of the indices right now. And again, it reflects a real effect…the majority of losses do not come from people being wrong on trades but reversing and reversing and finally reversing again.

I will point you to my chart of the Utilities once again for a live example of one of these events in progress…you will hear CNBC and all the people who can promote it sharing the breakout status on a few indexes…the key is not to get trapped in the reversal of the breakout when it turns into a failure…the Utilties have overshot though ideally could move just a little bit higher (though this is not necessary) before it entangles its victims.


Ron Paul…coming to an electoral theatre near you

As momentum builds in america against the central planning autocracy and it political elites…so too will support for Ron Paul…
 
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