Article Source The President's press conference yesterday was meant to buttress consumer and investor confidence. I will leave it to others to evaluate whether he was successful in this endeavor [0]. I will also ignore his disingenuous remarks concerning how allowing drilling offshore and in ANWR [1] would somehow affect gasoline prices today in a noticeable manner, and focus instead on his repeated emphasis on the fact that the economy is still growing (although he never mentioned at what pace). This statement is indeed accurate if one focuses on real GDP. I present the log of real GDP in Chained 2000$, normalized to 0 at the NBER-defined trough in 2001Q4. I also present for reference log GDP in the previous two expansions, normalized to 0 in the previous troughs in 1991Q1 and 1982Q4. (For those interested in output gaps, the mean WSJ forecast predicts output will be ...

Source Today we outsource with some interesting links on oil markets and housing. Lots of useful observations on oil supply and demand from Yves Smith, including the fact that BP's Thunder Horse, which promises soon to be pumping a quarter million barrels per day of crude oil out of the Gulf of Mexico, has finally started production. Ironman gives us another neat tool to calculate whether it pays to move closer to your worplace. Phil Miller describes what it's like to find oil in your backyard in North Dakota. WSJ Real Time Economics surveys various takes (all negative) on today's jobs report. And the always useful Calculated Risk updates graphs of the price-to-rent ratio and directs us to modern ghost towns among the would-be Los Angeles exurbs. Source: Calculated Risk

As today progressed it seems bulls wasted good buying power. I left for the airport at noon amid a strong rally, but when opening the laptop to check on things at the hotel the rally had fizzled despite a “stick save” into the close.

Yesterday I noted the McClellan Oscillator as oversold and it didn’t take much in the way of news to kick-start stocks higher. The retail sales data got Uncle Buck going too as bond yields rose which also hit gold hard early. That data was of course the result of refund checks Chucky was quick to spend. But, it also included higher food and energy prices that goosed the reading some. And, hey, we’re supposed to exclude food and energy prices according to Big Brother aren’t we? It’s only right. No matter how you …

We've been on this beat for a long time, but more and more the world is waking up to the crisis ahead. We need higher yields, immediately - worldwide. And will continue to need higher yields to support all these humans coming online, especially the ones moving to middle class. [Apr 30: Finally, a Year Late Fertilizer Hits the Front Page of the NYTimes] ... again, I state this planet is not well suited for 6.5 Billion people unless 4.5 Billion live in abject poverty. The more wealth in this world and the more people move from poverty to "middle class" (we wouldn't call it that necessarily in the US), the more strains on the globe. We will have crisis after crisis until/if/when technological breakthroughs happen... but I believe the next 1-10 years will be fraught with crisis after crisis as world governments ...

This is an amusing story from today's Wall Street Journal; but before we go through it let's review 2 specific type of "conventional wisdom" that was shoved down our throat by pundits in the late fall through winter - the "follow the smart money" thesis. We've had call after call after call (after call) about "it's time to load up financials since it cannot get worse and the bottom is in"' this started last summer in fact. All those pundits have frankly destroyed their clients accounts. They have used multiple reasons over the quarters. but one flavor of the day was "smart money is buying, so you should to".... smart money being mostly Arab money (but some Asian money as well). In fact after a sell off in November 2007, we set the stage for a December rally when Citibank sold a stake (at terrible ...

Beneath the bullish headlines market internals weren’t very pretty. The only impressive thing today is markets gapped higher rather than lower at the opening. Given the viciousness of Friday’s sell-off some follow-thru selling would have been expected. Oil prices fell back 3% and home sales data were above expectations. It would be absurd to characterize this data as the start of a trend. Nevertheless, taken together it was enough to give bulls some confidence.

Again, while volume was higher than recent averages, breadth was very poor indicating continued selling.

No one’s really providing the complete data [correctly at any rate] for volume and breadth. Let’s try the WSJ today.

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No surprise here - I mentioned in the fall the path for "no more house ATM for you" American consumers would be credit cards first, drain 401ks (whatever they actually invested, which is very little) second, beg borrow steal (pawn) next, and away we go to bankruptcy circa 2009 last. Real wages stagnant for a decade (using government inflation figures, far worse with 'real inflation') eventually will catch up to you. Keep in mind folks, we are not even "in a recession"; what happens if we "enter" one.Thankfully issues like this will be resolved in less than a month as the 2nd half recovery commences, and my scenario will not play out. Once July 1, 2008 arrives and the 2nd half recovery begins we won't have to deal with front page stories like this one in the Wall ...

2 interesting articles this week from WSJ and Reuters on the untamed and unaccountable dark pools in the market.What are dark pools?The WSJ defines them as "the secretive electronic trading networks that match buyers and sellers anonymously." These trades are done outside of the traditional stock markets like the NYSE and NASDAQ.The WSJ journal points to the dark pools at failing on their promise of making it easy to move large shares without affecting price. In fact with more dark pool firms competing for volume and their share of the business, the consulting firm TowerGroup reports that the average trade was just 260 shares at the beginning of 2008. A decade ago it averaged over 1,400 shares. Ugly shrinkage.The Reuters article observes that as a result of the competition for liquidity and volume, many dark ...

April 28, 2008

This was a pretty slow day and investors are going to mark time, absent other market moving news, until the Fed makes its next decision. The volume today was ultra-light.

Let’s face it; bulls have seized the tape with “the worst is behind us” line regarding financials and the credit crisis. From the WSJ was this quote attributed to T. Rowe Price portfolio manager Daniel Shackelford, “We established that the Fed was going to backstop the markets, keep things stable and slowly but surely nurse the markets back to health…risk-taking has come back in the market.” So, that’s the bullish spin.

And, things do look better, but hold on a second. Below is a …

The DNC unveils new ad highlighting McCain’s 100 years in Iraq statement.

Obama says he doesn’t recall meeting Iraqi-born billionaire at Rezko fundraiser.Who’s better at political comedy Colbert or Stewart?

Howard Dean says one of the candidates needs to drop out in June in order to unify the party.

WSJ opinion article sees the Clinton-Obama contest as Yale’s Lady Macbeth vs. Harvard’s Billy Budd.

Now McCain is stepping into the Rev. Wright issue.