Thursday Oil Market Round-Up

Let's start with the charts.On the daily chart, notice the following:-- Prices have twice broken through resistance to make new highs.-- The shorter SMAs are above the longer SMAs-- Prices are currently at the 20 day SMA. Prices have dropped through this number before and rallied again-- Prices have consolidated their gains are each advance.On the...

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Today's Markets

The big news today was the Fed, whose statement had the following paragraph:The substantial easing of monetary policy to date, combined with ongoing measures to foster market liquidity, should help to promote moderate growth over time and to mitigate risks to economic activity. The Committee will continue to monitor economic and financial developments...

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Anatomy Of Fraud

The WSJ has a great story on how fraud at Countrywide started and spread. It starts with the Fast and Easy programFast and Easy borrowers aren't required to produce pay stubs or tax forms to substantiate their claimed earnings. In many cases, Countrywide didn't even require loan officers to verify employment, according to an October 2006 presentation by Countrywide's consumer-lending division. That left the program vulnerable to abuse by Countrywide loan officers and outside mortgage brokers seeking loans for customers who might have been turned...

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A Great Explanation Of the Current Market

From the WSJ:Whenever the Fed eventually ceases its series of rate cuts that began last year, it will effectively stabilize the supply of dollars sloshing through the world economy. In particular, analysts say much of so-called "cheap money" available in recent months has flowed into speculation in various assets, including commodities, which many investors have used as an alternative to the volatile stock market.Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Avalon Partners, said many of those commodity bets seemed to be unwound Tuesday as speculators...

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Commodity Wednesday's

Let's take a look at the charts to see what they say.The overall CRB chart is bullish. Notice the following:-- Prices have bounced off the SMAs for the last 4 months, using them as support-- The shorter SMAs are higher than the longer SMAsHowever, also note the possible top forming; I have circled both tops. On the weekly chart, notice the following:--...

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The Falls Continue

House prices continue to fall, Nationwide's measure of house prices has shown the first annual fall in 12 years.Prices are now 1% lower than this time last year.For those who already own property, and are seeking to move, the fall should not affect them as the effects of a reduction in selling and buying prices will cancel each other out.However, first time buyers may not be helped that much by this fall; as mortgages are now proving very difficult to obtain and many lenders now require a 10% depos...

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Today's Markets

First, the QQQQs are clearly in a rallyNotice the following:-- Prices are above the SMAs-- All the shorter SMAs are moving higher-- The shorter SMAs are higher than the longer SMAs-- Prices have been in a clear uptrend since mid-MarchHowever, we're still waiting for the two other averages to confirm.Notice the IWMs are still looking to break outAnd...

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Read This Now

Over at Econbrowser there is a great piece on tax policy, the dollar, interest rates and the deficit. createSummaryAndThumb("summary3711370545121796669...

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Son of We're Nowhere Near the Bottom in Housing

From the APHousing prices dropped in February at the fastest rate ever, a widely watched index showed on Tuesday, reflecting that the housing slump is gaining momentum and showing no signs of letting up.The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index of 20 cities fell by 12.7 percent in February versus last year, the largest decline since its...

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We're Nowhere Near the Bottom In Housing

From CNBC:U.S. home foreclosure filings jumped 23 percent in the first quarter from the prior quarter, and more than doubled from a year earlier, as more overextended borrowers failed to make timely payments, real estate data firm RealtyTrac said Tuesday....."I'm more convinced that we haven't seen the peak of foreclosure activity yet, and the wave...

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We're Nowhere Near the Bottom In Banking/Finance

From the WSJ:Deutsche Bank AG Tuesday reported its first quarterly net loss in five years, reflecting additional asset write-downs, lower revenue and a trading loss in a deteriorating market.Germany's largest bank by market capitalization said its net loss was €131 million compared with a net profit of €2.12 billion a year earlier. Reflecting fallout from the global financial crisis, quarterly revenue tumbled 52% to €4.6 billion from €9.6 billion, and the bank swung to a trading loss of €1.58 billion from a €3.97 billion trading profit in the year-earlier...

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Treasury Tuesdays

The bottom line story of the last few weeks in the credit market is traders are moving into riskier areas of the bond market.The major U.S. indexes have been rallying since hitting a trough in mid-March. The difference between corporate bond yields and ultra-safe Treasurys has narrowed, as has the spread between mortgage agency bonds and Treasurys....

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Northern Rock Broke The Rules

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) review of the Northern Rock fiasco shows that Northern Rock breached capital rules six months before its collapse.That in itself is a damning indictment of the way that the bank was run. However, to compound its guilt, Rock also failed to tell its shareholders about it whilst the FSA dozed in the background.Northern Rock reported a capital ratio of 9.74% at the end of March 2007, which was "in breach of its capital requirements", and told the FSA on April 19 2007.Yet, the FSA did nothing.Why?Seemingly they...

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Today's Markets

Problems from a technical perspective are developing:The 139/140 area is providing strong upside resistance to the SPYs.Today was no exception. The markets could not advance beyond these levels.On the IWMs notice, the markets need to move beyond 72.But today (again) they couldn't.The QQQQs are still strong.Looking at the daily charts of all the averages,...

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Mortgage Misery

The mortgage misery continues with an announcement by Nationwide and Abbey that will dampen the ardour of those borrowers who do not have a deposit of at least 10%.As from Thursday, Nationwide will offer loans for 95%t only to existing borrowers or people taking out a three-year, fixed-rate mortgage. A from tomorrow, Abbey will have only one deal left for homeowners with 5% equity — a five-year, fixed-rate deal charging 6.99%. In other news it seems that the EU will be taking a close look at the Bank of England's attempted rescue package of £50BN,...

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Housing Is Nowhere Near the Bottom

From Bloomberg:A record 18.6 million U.S. homes stood empty in the first quarter as lenders took possession of a growing number of properties in foreclosure.The figure is 5.7 percent higher than a year ago, when 17.6 million properties were vacant, the U.S. Census Bureau said in a report today. The vacancy rate, the share of homes empty and for sale, rose to 2.9 percent, the highest in a series that goes back to 1956. About 2.3 million empty homes were for sale, compared with 2.2 million a year earlier, the report said.The worst U.S. housing slump...

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Before We Start Thinking This is Over....

From the WSJ:"We established that the Fed was going to backstop the markets, keep things stable and slowly but surely nurse the markets back to health," says Daniel Shackelford, a portfolio manager at T. Rowe Price Group Inc. As a result, "risk-taking has come back in the market."There remain significant trouble spots. The market for short-term loans...

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Some New Things On the Blog

So welcome back from the weekend to some new things. If you look at the right hand side you'll see that each day of the week I'm going to post a longer piece on that topic. (I couldn't help my late night TV/cheap AM radio self on this one. "Market Mondays", "Treasury Tuesdays" and "Forex Fridays" just wreaked of super-cheapness so I had to do those). The reason is it really focuses me not only on that particular area of the market, but it also makes me pay more attention to the inter-market relationships that exist between, well, all the markets....

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Market Mondays

Let's take a look at the market last week. But first, let's provide some context my looking at the SPYs from a long-term perspectiveFrom the really long-term perspective, we're coming down from a double top formation. The first top occurred at the end of the last bull market and the second top occurred in 2007. Remember, there is no firm rule as...

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