Last week, things looked bleak for equity investors.  As the Dow Jones and S&P 500 slid to historic lows, and the TED spread soared to a historic high (more on that below), it looked to many like the thing to do was pull out of stocks entirely, and enter safer assets like gold, T-bills, and steady bank savings accounts.  But on Monday, the market bounced, led by the news that the U.S. government will invest up to $250 billion to shore up the U.S. banking system in a plan similar to measures taken by several European powers, including Germany and the U.K.

Does this mean the crisis is over, and stocks will recover the trillions of dollars in market cap they lost over the past two weeks?  Unlikely.  Events of the past several months have shown that each time the market rebounds, a fresh bit of disheartening

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In his article: 10 Bullish Charts, Signals, Indicators, Barry Ritholtz gives 10 compelling technical reasons why were are close to a market bottom. I completely agree with his assessment as I stated in my prediction for the market bottom, we are close.

Notice I said CLOSE! I know today was an 11% bounce, and everyone is feeling giddy, but listen closely…

Friday, 10-10-2008 Was Not The Market Bottom!

Today’s huge gain is a great place to get short weaker markets. Look for stocks that bounced up near resistance, and then get short!

The Trend is Always Your friend

And the trend is still down. The following is a weekly chart of the S&P 500. Notice the 50 / 200 week ma cross, and the old support line becoming resistance. I’d expect the S&P to to continue through the 1000 level tomorrow before running into heavy resistance between

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Kind of difficult to see because the drop is so vertical but the BDI shows being more than 5000 points below its 200 DMA.Actually I just saw a quote on CNBC Asia that at showed BDI down another 10% from where it is on the chart.I'm not sure what to conclude but it clearly reveals how crazy the last couple of months have been.

As I peer out my window towards the Alpes and the northern entry point to Le Vallé du Rhône I am wondering whether the experiments conducted only 40 kilometers from my current habitat haven't gone terribly wrong? Consequently, it is getting decidedly difficult not to link the initiation of experiments to uncover the illusive Hick's Particle with the all encompassing black hole that seems to be disturbing the workings of financial markets.

One place where the crisis is fast making its presence increasingly felt is Eastern Europe as well as the Baltics; the latter being the immediate focus of this piece. This is not so strange. On many occasions since the credit crisis went global back in the summer of 2007 many analysts including yours truly have been flagging the risks for a hard landing in Eastern Europe. This situation has by and large materialised at this

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We've been waiting for this news, and we wrote about these two badly beaten ETF's that rip when the Banks do the same back on Sept 19th. We were early to the party with these ETF's, but now is the time. Today we got word that the U.S. Treasury official overseeing the $700 billion rescue of the financial system, said government equity injections will be aimed at 'healthy'' firms. So you play that two ways: You may remember our Highlander tribute (The SKF is dead, now its the XLF ...

“In my view, the oceans of new fiat money will chase scarce assets: energy and resources,” says Dan Amoss in The 5 Min. Forcast. “It will stave off the deflationary depression scenario, but not re-inflate the credit/housing bubble. This means the biggest reversal in resource stocks in history is likely soon.

This is not an endorsement of John McCain, I do not support either major party candidate.

I have had the opportunity to get on the floor of several exchange floors over the years and I always described it as organized chaos. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange was always my favorite. All the screaming and yelling, the hand signals and the energy at the Merc was always incredible every time I was there.

There is no way to sugar coat it or paint a rosy picture. This week could be disastrous for the market. Coming off eight straight down trading days, and the largest weekly percentage drop in the history of the Dow, the economic calendar provides no relief.