Since the March 9th, the Dow has had 30 “up” Mondays (or Tuesdays after a Monday holiday) out of a possible 43. That’s equal to 70 percent. And 16 of the past 18 Mondays being “up” (I just mentioned) equals 89 percent. Then incredibly, 80 percent of all the point-gains since March 9th came on those 30 Monday up-days - from evil speculatorMaybe the fed will try to do it again and get the market to blow off the few remaining shorts - 1150 to 1165 on the SPX could be possible...if they do rally it as usual. If they do not and are planning to surprise the bulls who have their planned or open monday trades as of today...then we could be in a very interesting day.
Dow 30 Enhanced Premium & Income Fund Inc. (the Fund) is a diversified, closed-end management investment company. The investment objectives of the Fund are to provide a high level of premium and dividend income, and the potential for capital appreciation. The Fund pursues its investment objectives principally through a multi-step strategy. The Fund will purchase the 30 common stocks included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA Index), weighted in approximately the same proportions as in the DJIA Index (the Dow Stocks). The Fund will also purchase other securities or financial instruments, primarily swap contracts, designed to provide additional investment exposure (leverage) to the return of the Dow Stocks (the Additional Dow Exposure). The Fund also will engage in certain option strategies, primarily consisting of writing (selling) covered call options on some or all of the Dow Stocks (the Options). The Fund’s investment advisor is IQ Investment Advisors LLC
Submitted by TrimTabs' Charles Biderman
Are Federal Reserve and U.S. Government Rigging Stock Market? We Have No Evidence They Are, but They Could Be. We Do Not Know Source of Money That Pushed Market Cap Up $6+ Trillion since Mid-March.
The most positive economic development in 2009 was the stock market rally. Since the middle of March, the market cap of all U.S. stocks has soared more than $6 trillion. The “wealth effect” of rising stock prices has soothed the nerves and boosted the net worth of the half of Americans who own stock.
We cannot identify the source of the new money that pushed stock prices up so far so fast. For the most part, the money did not from the traditional players that provided money in the past:
We do not know where all the money has come from. What we do know is that the U.S. government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to support the auto industry, the housing market, and the banks and brokers. Why not support the stock market as well?
As far as we know, it is not illegal for the Federal Reserve or the U.S. Treasury to buy S&P 500 futures. Moreover, several officials have suggested the government should support stock prices. For example, former Fed board member Robert Heller opined in the Wall Street Journal in 1989, “Instead of flooding the entire economy with liquidity, and thereby increasing the danger of inflation, the Fed could support the stock market directly by buying market averages in the futures market, thereby stabilizing the market as a whole.” In a Financial Times article in 2002, an unidentified Fed official was quoted as acknowledging that policymakers had considered buying U.S. equities directly, not just futures. The official mentioned that the Fed could “theoretically buy anything to pump money into the system.” In an article in the Daily Telegraph in 2006, former Clinton administration official George Stephanopoulos mentioned the existence of “an informal agreement among the major banks to come in and start to buy stock if there appears to be a problem.”
Think back to mid-March 2009. Nothing positive was happening, and investor sentiment was horrible. The Fed, the Treasury, and Wall Street were all trying to figure out how to prevent the financial system from collapsing. The Fed was willing to print whatever amount of money it took to bail out the system.
What if Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, and the head of one or more Wall Street firms decided that creating a stock market rally was the only way to rescue the economy? After all, after-tax income was down more than 10% y-o-y during Q1 2009, and the trillions the government committed or spent to prop up all sorts of entities was not working.
One way to manipulate the stock market would be for the Fed or the Treasury to buy $20 billion, plus or minus, of S&P 500 stock futures each month for a year. Depending on margin levels, $20 billion per month would translate into at least $100 billion in notional buying power. Given the hugely oversold market early in March, not only would a new $100 billion per month of buying power have stopped stock prices from plunging, but it would have encouraged huge amounts of sideline cash to flow into equities to absorb the $300 billion in newly printed shares that have been sold since the start of April.
This type of intervention could explain some of the unusual market action in recent months, with stock prices grinding higher on low volume even as companies sold huge amounts of new shares and retail investors stayed on the sidelines. For example, Tyler Durden of ZeroHedge has pointed out that virtually all of the market’s upside since mid-September has come from after-hours S&P 500 futures activity.
If we were involved in a scheme to manipulate the stock market, we would want to keep it in place until after the “wealth effect” put a floor under the economy of, say, three quarters of positive GDP growth. Assuming the economy were performing better, then ending the support for stock prices would be justified because a stock market decline would not be so painful.
We want to emphasize that we have no evidence that the Fed or the Treasury are throwing money into the stock market, either directly or indirectly. But if they are not pumping up stock prices, then who else is?
Equity Mutual Fund Cash Equal to 3.8% of Assets in November, Just above Record Low of 3.5% in Mid-2007. U.S. Equity Funds Get Estimated $5.1 Billion in December, First Inflow in Five Months.
The Investment Company Institute reported Wednesday that equity mutual funds held just 3.8% of their assets in cash and equivalents in November. To put this percentage into perspective, the record low was 3.5% in June 2007 and July 2007. While the amount of cash increased $8.1 billion in November, assets shot up $229.1 billion, leaving the ratio of cash to assets unchanged.
These are the same commercial mortgages that are about to go belly up, McCabe says. "Dubai may be the most massively overbuilt market in the world," he says, but it's not the only one, and the global nature of real estate investing means that the Middle East's woes could easily be replicated in London, Sydney, Prague or Barcelona. "Real estate financing is world wide, and that means we're going to have defaults on a massive scale," he says. If there's a bright side, it's that U.S banks have already taken most of the hits they'll suffer for their overextension into real estate, says Richard Bove, a banking analyst at Rochdale Securities. He calls this a rare instance of U.S banks learning from past mistakes.
The term quantitative easing describes an extreme form of monetary policy used to stimulate an economy where interest rates are either at, or close to, zero. Normally, a central bank stimulates the economy indirectly by lowering interest rates but when it cannot lower them any further it can attempt to seed the financial system with new money through quantitative easing.
In practical terms, the central bank purchases financial assets (mostly short-term), including government paper and corporate bonds, from financial institutions (such as banks) using money it has createdex nihilo (out of nothing). This process is called open market operations. The creation of this new money is supposed to seed the increase in the overall money supply through deposit multiplication by encouraging lending by these institutions and reducing the cost of borrowing, thereby stimulating the economy. However, there is a risk that banks will still refuse to lend despite the increase in their deposits, or that the policy will be too effective, leading in a worst case scenario to hyperinflation
Quantitative easing is sometimes described as 'printing money', although the central bank actually creates it electronically 'out of nothing' by increasing the credit in its own bank account.
Examples of economies where this policy has been used include Japan during the early 2000s, and the US and UK during the global financial crisis of 2008–2009.
Banks use a practice called fractional-reserve banking whereby they abide by a reserve requirement, which regulates them to keep a percentage of deposits in 'reserve'. The remainder, called 'excess reserves', can be used as a basis for lending. The increase in deposits from the quantitative easing process causes an excess in reserves and private banks can then, if they wish, create even more new money out of 'thin air' by increasing debt (lending) through a process known as deposit multiplication and thus increase the country's money supply. The reserve requirement limits the amount of new money. For example a 10% reserve requirement means that for every $10,000 created by quantitative easing the total new money created is potentially $100,000. The US Federal Reserve's now out-of-print booklet Modern Money Mechanics explains the process.
'Quantitative' refers to the fact that a specific quantity of money is being created; 'easing', according to Guardian, the British newspaper, refers to reducing the pressure on banks. However, another explanation of 'easing' is the Japanese-language expression for 'stimulatory monetary policy', which uses the term 'easing' (see the section below on the Origin of Q.E.).
A central bank can do this in a number of ways: by using the new money to buy government bonds (treasury securities in the United States) in the open market (this is also referred to as monetizing the debt), by lending the new money to private banks, by buying assets from banks in exchange for currency, or by any combination of these actions. These have the effects of reducing interest yields on government bonds and reducing interbank overnight interest rates, and thereby encourage banks to loan money to higher interest-paying bodies.
In very simple layman's terms, the central bank creates new money out of thin air. It then uses this money to buy what is essentially an IOU, usually from the government. This money is credited to the bank account of the seller of the IOU. The bank can then use this money as a basis for creating more new money by increased lending.
A state must be in control of its own currency if it is to be able to unilaterally employ quantitative easing. Countries in the eurozone (for example) cannot unilaterally use this policy tool, but must rely on theEuropean Central Bank to implement it.
The aim of quantitative easing and the follow on process of deposit multiplication is to increase the amount of money in circulation by an increase of credit and thus stimulate the flow of money around the economy by increased spending. The usual method of regulating the money supply is by setting interest rates. Quantitative easing is a solution when the normal process of increasing the money supply by cutting interest rates isn’t working. Most obviously when interest rates are essentially at zero and it is impossible to cut them further.
