Community Chat -- Comments return!

a reminder: it looks like you can vote on your own post.
tsk tsk tsk.

Found this new ETF that started trading yesterday just passing bit of info. on that others might find useful.GDXJ Market Vectors Junior Gold Miners, could be useful in the future, I will be keeping an eye on it.
A summary here:
http://tinyurl.com/yjxswfl

Thanks, tis the giving season almost...this sector may keep on giving.

Agree, it's great to be back up. Thank you Bill.

It seems volume has been low even though the market has risen a lot over the past few days? I'm supposing that it depends on the periods to which you compare the volume.

I'm only slightly invested and am doing my best to avoid the bait and stay away from US market based stocks until I see a good reason to increase. But it's torture watching this market and it makes me wonder whether I'm with the masses who will be on the wrong end of this for a few more months even if it then ends. It seems unlikely that there won't be a substantial reversal, but it also seems like the market can be manipulated for a long time. The fact that the market can drop hundreds or maybe thousands of points in a matter of minutes is what makes the small guys so vulnerable to HB&Bs. It makes me think that a mechanism should be put in place where, in the event sell volume reaches a certain rate on a given day, all sales orders are held for prorata execution at an overall prorata price at end of day. This would take away a lot of the "unfair" advantage of the big guys making a killing off the smalls when they decide to pull the plug. I haven't thought this out yet, that's for sure, but I'm throwing it out there as an idea. I'm sure many would scream that this is more intervention, but maybe something like that is needed given where we stand today. I don't have a room full of super computers and 40 guys waiting to press the button on 40 holdings. What happened to investing? This is a joke.

reported by Marty Chenard.

http://www.stocktiming.com/Wednesday-DailyMarketUp...

Any thoughts as to what is going on, I agree with the author that this could have market moving consequences.

It's worse than all that, federico. We now have a 400-strong team of traders working for the Fed's super duper hedge fund according to the WSJ. Oh, and GS has captured all our phantom QE dollars and has bypassed 'guys waiting to press buttons' with a hyper nano fast computer trading system that allows it to make billion dollar gains every day, day after day. That's what you call a 'jobless recovery' in the MSM.

Watching JO and BAL etfs to add to my gold and silver hoard.

Thanks for keeping the chat open, Bill. Hope I don't get flung.

By the way, bankers have a new motto: "extend and pretend." In economics, is that like pulling demand out of a black hole and into the present? Anyone?

Everyone may want to do a virus scan, if this is timely because my AVG just caught one from, I am assuming this site, but could be other sites since I do have several tabs, as in four open presently; this AVG is awesome!
(edit: I am not saying it was caught in a self generated scan, but that the virus shield caught the virus attempting to sneak into my computer)

And thanks Korvus or whoever reinstated the spell check.

H-P to buy 3Com for $2.7B

From the conference call, HP's acquisition is motivated by 3Coms' position in Chinese Market. HP bought EDS a year ago which proved to be strategically favorable. I wonder if this move is more of a competition to IBM in the IT space than is to CSCO.

BRCD was once a potential take-over target and is now traded off 5%+- on the news after hour.

Yes, Thank you Bill for providing a forum to share.

Here is a page that I bookmarked today and that I will read on every 10th of the month:

http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/ContentArchive/Defaul...

The latest commentary by Paul McCulley is most interesting. Here are some key quotes from it:

"All risk asset prices are analytically the Net Present Value of expected growth in cash flows, discounted by the appropriate-duration risk-free rate plus a risk premium. Thus, expectations of a friendly-for-longer Fed policy would be supportive of risk assets, as they (1) tend to pull down long-duration risk-free rates, while also (2) pulling down the market-required risk premium (which moves inversely with investors’ animal-spirited risk appetite, which moves inversely with fears of Fed tightening).

Thus, ironically, the biggest intermediate-term risk for risk assets is not that the big-V doesn’t unfold, but that it does, inciting the Fed to bring the extended period of a near-zero policy rate to a close. But again, you retort, doesn’t that imply that in the absence of the big-V, risk asset prices could levitate into bubble valuation space? Yes, it does mean that. And that is a very, very uncomfortable proposition for those grounded in fundamental analysis, as I am."

This might explain why the "good" economic reports were recently sold, and the "bad" report of unemployment higher than consensus has propelled the market higher. If the same pattern keeps up in the future, do not be surprised..

I would also like to point out that Bill Gross, a colleague of Paul McCulley, wrote in his latest commentary a couple of days ago:

"Investors must recognize that if assets appreciate with nominal GDP, a 4–5% return is about all they can expect even with abnormally low policy rates. Rage, rage, against this conclusion if you wish, but the six-month rally in risk assets – while still continuously supported by Fed and Treasury policymakers – is likely at its pinnacle. Out, out, brief candle."

Here are some excerpts from yesterday's letter by David Rosenberg:

SOMETHING BIG IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN
Looking at the latest Commitment of Traders (COT) report, we can see some pretty interesting (and potentially disturbing) trends taking place (data for November 3rd):

- The only areas where the speculators (non-commercial accounts) are net short are in Treasuries and in the U.S. dollar. Everything else has massive net speculative longs and hence near-term vulnerable to a reversal.
- There is a significant net long position on the S&P 500 to the tune of 208,448 contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME).
- There is also a huge net speculative short position on the U.S. dollar (the ‘carry trade’). For example, on the CME, we have 24,389 net speculative long CAD positions; 50,264 net speculative long contracts on the Australian dollar, and 28,036 net longs on the Euro. These are huge numbers. What happens if/when the U.S. dollar ever undergoes a countertrend rally?
- The largest speculative long positions are in the commodity space (this is near-term bearish), 271,564 gold contracts (a record) on the Commodity Exchange (COMEX); 44,312 net longs on silver (near-record but not quite), West Texas Intermediate oil contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange (also a record); 10,871 net long copper contracts (a new cycle high); 5,538 net speculative long contracts on the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index.

Bill, for us lazy types, is it practical for you to post a link to the new Chat when you put it up?. Seems like you might have it readily available. I'm not looking to add to your workload, which never cease to amaze me.

I am not in favor of this system. It seems like additional work for the Cara Team and inefficient

plus, this against everything BC believes in.

Sorry, this is not a Free System and I have to support free speech

:(

vb

Hi All - Glad to see the comments are back up. Bill - my condolences on the loss of your good friend. Death makes life seem a lot more special. I've lost people close to me and it makes me really question my life. I hope you pull through things a clearer thinking person.

On a side note, has anyone looked at any of the regional banks at all? I know there are serious issues with commercial real estate loans, but with all of these smaller banks going under, a lot of them are getting lots of assets basically for free when they partner with the FDIC and the FDIC assumes a lot of the risk. I think some of these could be huge gainers over the next 3 to 5 years. I'm looking at RF and HBAN. Both of them have had nice pull backs, providing a cheaper entry point. And from a technical perspective, they look like they have the 200 DMA as some support and their 200 DMA is beginning to slope upward, finally.

Is anyone else following regionals? Which ones do you like?

TOF, UMPQ has always remained at the back of my mind cause the Motley Fool team had it on their buy list. West coast, well managed, approachable and honest CEO etc etc. But they sold it a month or so ago, citing fears of the coming commercial meltdown. Caution there mate. Perhaps once fear sets in (again) and blood is on the streets...