The "up-to-the-minute Market Data" thread

reply to post by SpaceSilence


Interesting question. It brings together a number of issues.

I'm not sure if this will answer your question in quite the way you were hoping, but:

...in view of the scale of the profits being reaped by the pharmaceutical companies on the back of the 'pandemic', it could be indeed argued that they now form a kind of 'parallel economy' in which there is no sign of any recession — business is not just booming, it's astronomical.

The industry must be making a meaningful contribution to the economies of host countries in terms of given trade balances. Some have even suggested a possible conspiracy angle, discussed here, for example:

Pharmaceutical Companies = the New Banks

Defence-related industries are also clearly bucking the trend, and doubtless helping various economies to an enormous extent. But no-one could possibly suggest a conspiracy angle there, could they?

Originally posted by marg6043
Stocks Could be Led by Unemployment Claims
www.economyincrisis.org...

I have been saying for a very long time that this has been both an unemployment(Meaning led, not trailing) recession and an unemployment led Wall St. Recovery. The "Market" loves layoffs in bad times, it makes them a lot of money very quickly. Add government distortion fields(Fed printing presses), and bad news turns to profit. Doesn't last long though, eventually unemployment levels begin to seriously drag down every sector of the economy starting with financial, as government money begins to run out. Being tapped out, the next economic dip will NOT be prevented by the government.

reply to post by projectvxn


How twisted our markets has become that bad news means profits, I wonder, but this days anything is possible.

More on the news.

White House Alters How Stimulus Jobs are Counted Now, businesses will be required to report all jobs on projects funded by the stimulus, regardless of whether it was an existing job or not.

This will be more sugar coating the numbers, remember the mid term elections are coming.

“The update reflects important simplifications to the manner in which job estimates are calculated and reported. Specifically, recipients will now report job estimates on a quarterly, rather than cumulative, basis. As a result, recipients will no longer be required to sum various data on hours worked across multiple quarters of data when calculating job estimates,” White House budget director Peter Orzsag wrote in a letter to stimulus recipients.

www.economyincrisis.org...

No Signs of Robust Jobs Recovery

Despite the Obama administration’s efforts to create jobs and improve jobless reports each month, jobs growth in the U.S. remains anemic, and it could be some time before the economy experiences a robust period of growth, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute.

Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy should have created roughly 3.8 million jobs over that time. Instead, the economy shed 8.1 million jobs over that period, putting the U.S. economy 10.6 million jobs below pre-recession levels.

The massive number of unemployed Americans will be problematic even when the economy begins to create jobs. As those millions of Americans reenter - or attempt to - the workforce, it will cause the unemployment rate to rise even higher.

www.economyincrisis.org...

Now remember people that with small businesses accounting for over 90% of job creation mostly on minimum wage with only 3% coming from the corporate work that accounts for the highest pay roll salaries, we know that our nation is going backward rather than forward and is becoming very hard for any regular American to achieve the so call "America dream".

Just in case anyone needed cheering up:

Fake gold bars in Bank of England and Fort Knox

In October of 2009 the Chinese received a shipment of gold bars. Gold is regularly exchanged between countries to pay debts and to settle the so-called balance of trade. Most gold is exchanged and stored in vaults under the supervision of a special organization based in London, the London Bullion Market Association (or LBMA). When the shipment was received, the Chinese government asked that special tests be performed to guarantee the purity and weight of the gold bars...

What the Chinese uncovered:
Roughly 15 years ago — during the Clinton Administration [think Robert Rubin, Sir Alan Greenspan and Lawrence Summers] — between 1.3 and 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten blanks were allegedly manufactured by a very high-end, sophisticated refiner in the USA [more than 16 Thousand metric tonnes]. Subsequently, 640,000 of these tungsten blanks received their gold plating and WERE shipped to Ft. Knox and remain there to this day.

According to the Chinese investigation, the balance of this 1.3 million to 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten cache was also gold plated and then allegedly “sold” into the international market. Apparently, the global market is literally “stuffed full of 400 oz salted bars”. Perhaps as much as 600-billion dollars worth...

What’s going to happen now?
Politicians like Ron Paul have been demanding that the Federal Reserve be more transparent and open up their records for public scrutiny. But the Fed has consistently refused, stating that these disclosures would undermine its operation. Yes, it certainly would!

Read the entire source article

All you can do is hope it's all just a bad dream (or nightmare).

Except:





...So what's left to hope for? How about something totally revolutionary: honesty & transparency at the highest levels.

Till that day comes let's keep on peeling back the layers of the onion...

i think it is being pretty clear that the asset markets are being propped up

the middle class pension system may well depend on avoiding another crash....either in stocks or bonds....it is actually a national security issue to keep asset markets elevated IMO

fed buys equities..........then fed takes foreigners agency debt (fannie or freddie) at a nice price.....then foreigners show up at treasury auctions

the system is alot more delicate than most believe.........but that is not comforting

the monetary system requiring more mountains of debt to be piled high upon more mountains of debt will not due well when the still highly leveraged asset markets prices deflate......so you are left with a no brainer when you got larry summers and timmy (NY fed ) geithner at the helm and no political will to rein in big finance.

The bank people are really believing their own BS...

My mom's financial adviser : stock market going to go up 15-20% this year... economy on recovery... And he gives her a 8%/year return on her investment... 8%...what a freaking joke. I made 30% in a day earlier this year...

If she had followed my advice back in early 07, she would have made 40%-50%... but eh...

Number of unclaimed burials in Midlands rising due to economy

Over $300 Billion in Alt-A RMBS Face Downgrade
Yeah I'm sure this is good news... NOT.

Unemployment getting worse...not better...we're back to fall 2008 numbers...
Graph

When it's gonna come down, it's gonna be fast...IMO faster than october 08... or it may not even come down, only the dollar will go down fast, not the stock market... and people won't know that it's happening...then default...

vitchillo i don't think the fed/gov't can AFFORD to ALLOW the markets to go back down

there is untold trillions in gaurantee's out there to provide some sort of peace of mind to the finance markets and while the earnings picture doesn't look good ...nor the hiring picture....it is in the interests of everyone (nearly) to rig the market ("temporarily") for reasons of national security.

They need asset classes propped up .....and i think they have managed to accomplish this very well w/ coordination around the globe

Now some country will default on it's debt then the markets will get "spooked" but the fed's will step in and buy.....i'm not quite sure what risk there is in the market right now......they are not dumb enough to stop the emergency intrusions into the market....they just talk of this occasionally when bond prices go down (and inflation fears get high)

Well this is rich, all the big pony show this days because the banks and now the record profits are coming in.

Yes record profits at the expenses of gouging the consumers with higher interest rates, even the donations put on credit cards for the Haitian disaster is big money for the banks

Incredible.

And so it begins!

What Bob Chapman said back in November...

The following information may be the most important we have ever published. One of our Intel sources, highly placed in banking circles, tells us that on 1/1/10 all banks that have received TARP funds have been informed by the Federal Reserve that they must further restrict any commercial lending. Loans have to be 75% collateralized, 50% of which has to be in cash, which is a compensating balance.

The Fed has to do one of two things: They either have to pull $1.5 trillion out of the system by June, which would collapse the economy, or face hyperinflation.

And Today...

Policy makers are still studying ways to drain $1 trillion in excess cash from the financial system and debating how to signal a rate increase that economists say is at least 10 months away. The first test of their exit strategy will come in March, when the Fed’s purchases of $1.25 trillion of mortgage-backed securities are scheduled to end.

The economists who did not predict the crisis :

"The world’s largest economy will expand 2.7 percent this year, the best performance in four years, the Bloomberg survey showed. Consumer purchases will grow 2 percent, up from a December estimate of 1.8 percent and the first gain since 2007, according to the median forecast of 60 economists."

Totally insane.

reply to post by Vitchilo


Yep, the jigs about up. It's either let the Debt collapse and strengthen the dollar or go all in with monetizing the Debt. No country with a fiat currency has ever decided for deflation. FDR even managed to use inflation while on the gold standard by 'revaluing' gold after confiscating and criminalizing it.

So it's pretty obvious that big inflation is in our future.

Bonuses to be delay by the too big to fail, due to the increasing anger toward their institutions by the tax payer and perhaps the win in Massachusetts by a Republican.

Also the so call the banks repaid their TARP is nothing but a miss interpretation of what is really going on with the Fed the too big and the tax payer

Actually this too big to fail indeed pay the "TARP" but still they are getting billions more on 1% interest loans in the name of incentives, subsidies and other nefarious names that they and the Fed had concocted to keep it from the scrutinized eyes of the tax payer.

The amount already been transfered to in trillions, still they are making money almost interest free and they don 't have to repaid this type of money any time soon.

Been slow around here. What happened to the meltdown? This is my favorite part of the site.

I am still holding the short positioning from approximately Dow 9700.

I'm looking now for a much faster drop. The longer the market lingers up here, the quicker it has to drop. According to my theory it has to bottom out at the end of the 2nd quarter - late June just after summer solstice. I had figured on a top in September 2009 and a steady fall to late June 2010, but with more than 3 months worth of climbing added to those September levels I have to expect a fast ride down to the last week of June 2010. The market must make a bottom then. I am looking for a stomach turning plunge before finding the bottom and starting up all over again.

WOW, what a morning, And a waterfall is happening in the markets (look out below!)

Blaming a backlog of reporting, HUGE "unexpected" job loss numbers

Word that Bernanke confirmation vote will NOT happen this week

and

SCOTUS has overturned the restriction on Corporations contribution limits on political campaigns

Then there's Obama saying we will return to the "spirit" of Glass-Steagall

The markets don't likey, not at all

(disclosure: my trading book sure does though!)

Washington heard the mass voters vote for a real "change" you know more checks and balances...

and now they send obama up their to dance.....to placate the masses....and that is all an intelligent...rationale (not emotional) person will believe this is....after all we are talking about POLITICS...and no this doesn't warm the heart to let youself see thru the lines...but allowing them to get away with more crap...because it is to depressing to come to terms w reality just let's more people get screwed over.. .. we can hope that maybe we gave them enough "hell" to change...but let's wait for the financial forums and respected bloggers to tell us what the fine print says...and wether this is just more garbage

wall street is throwning a fit.....crying all the way down to 200 on the dow.....boo freak'n hoo


here's a guy that can read between the lines and lays out what to look for in terms of real reform...maybe he will have a new article out now that brown beat the dems (disclousure i dislike both political party's and favor a balance so neither can run buck wild)

www.marketoracle.co.uk...

reply to post by redhatty


I agree, when Obama yesterday morning signed the bill to go after companies that are evading taxes (most of them oversea while posting profits records that actually made the GDP and the productivity better) the markets didn't react much, but I guess job loses are heading to 17% if they are not there yet.

And then the record bonuses . . . you wonder.

Dow is down -205 points at the moment, they shed a hundred and some change yesterday.. interesting things goin on last few days eh..

reply to post by marg6043


I do not think for one minute that anything Obo is saying right now will actually be instated, and if by chance it is, nothing will have any "teeth"

There will be no "or else" provision, like Glass-Steagall had

The TBTF banks are already finding loopholes, surprising, since we the people haven't even seen written legislation on the Bank provisions yet.

TurboTax Timmy is openly "dissing" Obama over this proposed "Volker Rule"

gonna be some interesting fireworks over the next month or so, I bet on it

Yeah anything Obama says is lies and lies and lies...

I've done some calculations...

A few billions left on the credit card.. The present limit for US debt is 12.39 trillion...

According to www.brillig.com... the debt is at 12.332 trillion... there's 58 billions left...

And according to www.usdebtclock.org... the debt is at 12.305 there's only 85 billions left...

The average is a little less than 3.79 billion/day in debt expansion. (based on 2009 average)

So about three weeks (22 days) in the best case scenario... and about 2 weeks (15 days) in the worst case...

The estimated date of 100% debt/GDP reached (my own calculations, with current GDP staying the same (which it won't) and average debt increase based on 2009 numbers staying the same (which it won't) : June 4, 2011... if the debt ceiling is raised.

After that it'll be downhill from there... So hopefully the situation can be changed in January 2011 when the new congress/senate is in... if it's not already too late.

The other day Art Cashin of CNBC said if Scott Brown wins in Mass. then the market would have a knee jerk reaction to that political win by rallying in celebration. Oh yeah? I really like Art, too. He seems like a cool guy. But wow did he get that one wrong. In hindsight it seems like the market has been suckering everybody in with that whole Santa Claus Rally scheme and now is the time for slaughter. And how about Jim Cramer's buy recommendations? That guy should be giving out all sells instead of buys. The mainstream Media is not going to tell you how to make money unless you can recognize the rare coded message every once in a while.




[edit on 22-1-2010 by Cabaret Voltaire]

I am afraid to say this, but with the ruling of the Supreme court giving the corporations and unions the free range to keep buying whores in Washington without restrictions, is going to make Obama or brake it, propaganda paid by private entities against laws created against them will be the main course of prime TV.

Is Obama such a weak president that he is been targeted by all that is going on in Washington?.

We will find out soon.

Remember who write laws in Washington this days