Der Doomsday Bären-Thread

da kann man stöhnen, maulen, meckern und den Tag des jüngsten Gerichts voraussagen. Der Trend bleibt nun mal weiter bullish. Aber kauft ihr nur mal schön kurze shorts...

weil ich mir "string-tangas" reinlegen will.

mfg
ath

Mit BN0C47 50% sind ja im Streubesitz und ich glaub nicht dass die von den 33,5 € Dividende 11 € dem Staat schenken werden wenn man ne Woche vorher steuerfrei verkaufen (wenn ein Jahr gehalten) und dann wieder einsteigen kann.

Veröffentlichung des Philadelphia Fed Indices (Philadelphia Fed Survey) für Februar 2007

Der Philly Fed Index notiert im Februar bei 0,6. Erwartet wurde er im Bereich 2,0 bis 4,0. Im Monat zuvor hatte er noch bei 8,3 gestanden.  

doch der markt scheint auf so etwas überhaupt nicht mehr zu reagieren.
Mache mich mal kurz vom acker.

mfg
ath

Heute verfallen um 22:00 Uhr die Indexoptionen. Es gibt im SP-500 sehr viele offene Put-Kontrakte mit Basispreis von 1450 und darunter. Daher wird der SP-500 bis 22:00 Uhr nicht mehr unter 1450 fallen - selbst wenn das Weiße Haus brennt.

Many in the media (from Jim "El Capitan" Cramer to Sir Larry Kudlow to Bob Pisani) have opined that the bears "don't understand the conditions under which real estate markets collapse, and these conditions (suggestive of a broadening credit problem) are not present." And, in a series of perfunctory conference calls over the last week, the leading brokerages have supported their case that there will not be a credit contagion emanating from subprime lending and that the brokerage exposure will be contained and limited, even though none of the banks disclosed their involvement in the subprime market (as agents and as principals).

It appears that the principal reason these observers are ignoring the subprime problem and its ramifications is that the equity markets are ignoring them. Ergo, it must not be a problem. This is the definition of a Goldilocks mindset (see no evil, hear no evil), not a Goldilocks scenario.

The subprime carnage (like HSBC's nearly $2 billion addition to subprime loan losses in the fourth quarter 2006) is ignored as is the commentary from merchant builders like KB Home (KBH) (below) and others (perhaps because their stock prices are also rising).

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  - "We began 2006 with a strong backlog that produced record deliveries. However, as the year progressed, market conditions worsened, cancellations increased, net orders declined and margins came under pressure. The result was a 2006 year-end backlog substantially below the year-earlier level. At a minimum this will likely result in a year over year decrease in our unit deliveries through the first half of 2007 and potentially longer."

  - KB Home CEO Jeffrey Mezger (Feb. 13, 2007)

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Two Toxic Reagents

The credit containment argument ignores the parabolic growth and rising role of subprime lending (relative to total mortgage industry loans) -- never before have lenders relied more on the candor and integrity of borrowers, and never before have underwriting terms been so lax. These are two toxic reagents, especially within the context of the biggest housing boom in history, in which real estate mortgage receivables have mushroomed to all-time records at the major (and minor) banks.

The "dot condo" CondoFlip Web site that encouraged investors/speculators to day-trade condominiums (and proudly declared that "Bubbles are for Bathtubs") has been dismantled and is no longer operational, replaced by a Condo Super Center. The site now admits, in a mea culpa, that "the condo boom was driven by overly-ambitious speculators, many of whom had been successful in flipping condos in the past. As condo inventories grew and prices rose, many speculators realized that further purchasing was increasingly risky. So, buyers just stopped buying."

There is an emerging credit crisis and it will lead to rapidly rising charge-offs. Construction lending on land and condominium loans are the next area to implode (examples of exposed intermediaries are Fulton Financial, National City and Corus Bancshares).

As night follows day, the enormous securitization markets will shortly begin to demonstrate the same sort of delinquencies we have witnessed in subprime mortgage lending. Then a continued acceleration of subprime loan problems will creep into the prime market (where equally creative mortgage loans have been made to prime borrowers).

Restrictive credit practices are just beginning to unfold as a consequence of the poor underwriting standards applied over the last decade. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Richard Suttmeier
Street.com
Bernanke is an upgrade from Greenspan
2/15/2007 1:48 PM EST

I really like the way Dr. Bernanke is handling the House today. He is telling it like it is, and staying by the script of his testimony. I am even more convinced that there will be a shift in bias over the next two FOMC meetings leading to a rate cut on June 28.

On February 22, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will release its Quarterly Banking Profile for the 4th Quarter 2006.

I have been studying the FDIC data since the fourth quarter of 2005, and in my judgment financial stress in the banking system goes beyond sub-prime loans, and my main concern is the overexposure by regional banks to both residential and commercial real estate loans. The Federal Reserve is one of the three agencies he has referred to with regard to monitoring these risks - the other is the US Treasury.

In my judgement sub-prime loans are the tip of the iceberg, and the problems will propagate to the larger banks. The big financial institutions packaged and sold sub-prime loans and sold these to investors in the form of mortgage-backed bonds. Investors seeking high yields were attracted to these privately-issued securities. Just wait for the fall-out when hedge funds and other investors earn nothing on securities backed by defaulted sub-prime loans. Class action lawsuits against the big banks will surely follow!

Who else will do it with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reducing their risks in the clouds of their financial difficulties.

For as long as I have been at this game, it has taken a crisis for the Federal Reserve to move. The Fed is always reluctant to move because it needs the crisis as a cover so it doesn't look like it's soft on inflation. Maybe you think we have good growth in this country; I think we just have easy retail comparisons because of nat gas and gasoline bills being down but that in reality we're in a slump that the international portions of our great businesses are saving.

That's not enough for the Fed to cut on. That's not obvious enough.

Ah, but if all of the subprime lenders pull out of that market and if Merrill (MER) and Bear (BSC) and Lehman (LEH) -- big subprime lenders via acquisition -- start saying "it's a crisis" and New Century (NEW) goes belly-up or Accredited Home (LEND) takes down a big part of its book value or Countrywide (CFC) leaves the business -- then we'll have a crisis that can justify not one but maybe three or four cuts.

When you have the housing industry building a fraction of the homes it was building and credit hard to come by, you are giving Benanke the crisis cover he needs.

Some of my friends who read RealMoney are freaking out about the negative columns that are being written about how dangerous this subprime crisis is. I'm taking those columns very seriously, which is why I am growing more bullish by the day. The fact that the Fed chairman bought into it today in front of the House of Representatives shows me that the Congressional drumbeat -- remember, prime is Republican, subprime is Democrat -- could be building and building fast.

Am I Mr. Brightside? No, I believe that subprime's awful, even worse than the bears think. When I look at the cancellations that a KB (KBH) or a Toll (TOL) has, I know that the same rate applies to those who took these loans down. That's maybe 30%-40%, not the 7%-10% default that their models presume when employment is this low.

If anything, they're saying there might be a fire. I say it's raging, which is why I believe the crisis is about to give us that May cut that I am counting on to take the Dow up 17% this year.

AP
Housing Sales Fall in 40 States in 4Q
Thursday February 15, 11:25 am ET
By Martin Crutsinger, AP Economics Writer

Housing Sales Fall in 40 States in Fourth Quarter

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The slump in housing deepened in the final three months of last year with sales falling in 40 states and median home prices declining in nearly half of the metropolitan areas surveyed, a real estate trade group reported Thursday.

The National Association of Realtors report showed that the biggest declines were in former boom areas.

The biggest percentage decline occurred in Nevada, a drop of 36.1 percent in the sales pace in the final three months of 2006 compared to the same period in 2005.

In other former boom areas, Florida saw sales drop by 30.8 percent, in Arizona sales were down 26.9 percent and they fell 21.3 percent in California.

The Realtors said that while sales declined in the fourth quarter in 40 states, six states showed increases and one state, Utah, had an unchanged sales pace. Three states did not report enough data to make comparisons.

Nationally, sales declined by 10.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006 compared to the same period a year ago.

The median price of a new home, the midpoint where half the homes sold for more and half for less, was $219,300 in the fourth quarter of last year, a drop of 2.7 percent from the same period a year ago.

Median home prices fell in 49 percent of the 149 metropolitan areas surveyed in the fourth quarter, compared to the same period a year ago. That was the largest percent of metro areas reporting price declines since the Realtors began tracking price data in 1979.

David Lereah, chief economist for the Realtors, said he believed the data shows that housing, which had enjoyed a five-year boom, was bottoming out in the final three months of last year.

"This information confirms 2006 was the year of contraction and hopefully the fourth quarter was the bottom," Lereah said. "When we get the figures for this spring, I expect to see a discernible improvement in both sales and prices."

Realtors quarterly housing report: http://www.realtor.org

huihuihui...

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We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're called dreams.

Nicht-Amerikaner verkauften im Dezember US-Aktien im Wert von 11,6 Milliarden Dollar. Soviel wurde noch nie zuvor von Ausländern in einem Monat verkauft. Knapp die Hälfte dieses Verkaufsvolumens - 5,3 Milliarden - kam aus Deutschland! Ebenfalls sehr aktiv waren Briten und Irländer.

Der größte Teil der Verkaufserlöse floss offenbar in europäische (hauptsächlich deutsche) Aktien.

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Foreign Sales of U.S. Stocks Hit Record
By Tony Crescenzi
Street.com Contributor
2/15/2007 2:52 PM EST

Net foreign purchases of U.S. equities in December were -$11.6 billion, the biggest net sale ever and only the second month of net sales since September 2004.

A closer look indicates that the net sale was probably related to a shifting of capital from U.S. stocks to European stocks, particularly German stocks. In fact, the largest net sellers of U.S. stocks in December were German, with net sales for Germany at $5.3 billion during the month.

This fits with the divergent performances between German stocks and U.S. stocks during the month. German shares gained 4.6% compared to a 1.4% gain for the S&P 500.

The second-largest seller was the U.K., with net sales of $1.598 billion, a figure that likely reflects sales by entities throughout the world (more so than the data for Germany). Interestingly, the third-largest seller was Ireland, with net sales of $1.574 billion. The Irish sales fit with the performance of Ireland's stock market, which gained 8.2% in December.

Veröffentlichung der Zahlen zu den US-amerikanischen Wohnbaubeginnen ("Housing Starts") für Januar 2007

Die Zahl der Wohnbaubeginne ist in den USA im Januar um 14,3 % auf 1,408 Mio. zurückgegangen. Erwartet wurden 1,590 bis 1,600 Mio. nach noch 1,643 Mio. im Vormonat. Damit wurde der Vormonatswert von zuvor veröffentlichten 1,642 Mio. nach oben revidiert.

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Treasurys rise on sharp drop in housing starts
Tame core producer-level also is helpful to the bond market
By Leslie Wines, MarketWatch
Last Update: 9:09 AM ET Feb 16, 2007

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Treasury prices were higher early Friday, sending yields lower, after news that builders started the fewest homes in nearly a decade in January, suggesting that the housing market slowdown may not have reached a bottom yet.

"Yields sank after the weak housing print was accompanied by a tame core gain in the producer price index, which was seen as green light for discounting risk of a Fed cut once again," said Action Economics.

Signs of economic weakness create demand for low-risk instruments like Treasurys and raise the chances that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates...

Prices opened higher and extended their gains after the Commerce Department said housing starts last month plunged 14.3% from December levels to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.408 million, the lowest rate for starts since August 1997.

The fate of other publicly traded subprime specialists, such as New Century (NEW) , Novastar Financial and Fieldstone Investment (FICC)) may also rest in the hands of big banks that have helped finance their recent rapid expansion, analysts said.

Subprime mortgages are offered to home buyers who fail to meet the strictest lending standards. While these loans remain a small part of the home lending industry, they've helped more people buy homes who previously couldn't afford it, helping to fuel a surge in housing prices in 2004 and 2005.

That's why the credit crunch in the subprime market is being so closely watched by investors, economists and policymakers. By cutting off access to credit for these extra buyers, demand for homes may fall further, depressing prices and fueling a broader slowdown in the U.S. housing market.

"This distress in the subprime area is a significant concern," Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday. While noting that the contraction has yet to reach a point where it will affect overall economic expansion, the Federal Reserve chairman said he's monitoring developments.

"There are some loans that have been made that are not turning out well, and to the detriment of both the lenders and the borrowers," he said. "We will certainly be watching that carefully and trying to provide guidance and oversight to minimize that risk going forward."

Lifelines

Most subprime specialists sell the loans they've originated to big banks, which then package them up and sell them on again as mortgage-backed securities to hedge funds and other institutional investors.

[d.h. Hedgefonds löffeln die Sub-Prime-Suppe aus - A.L.]

It usually takes at least several weeks for subprime specialists to sell their loans. During that time, big banks provide a "warehouse" in which to store them. In return for passing the loan onto these warehouse lenders, the originators get cash equal to the value of the asset, minus a fee, called a "haircut", which provides a cushion against late payments and delinquencies.

The warehouse banks, such as Merrill. J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM), Citigroup (C) and Bank of America (BAC), are crucial to this process because they keep subprime lenders supplied with enough cash to help them make more loans immediately.

But as more subprime borrowers struggle to meet their monthly mortgage payments, cracks have begun to form in this system.

Warehouse lenders have started worrying about the quality of subprime loans that have been originated in recent years. Some are now asking subprime specialists for bigger haircuts, putting the originators in financial peril and forcing some into bankruptcy.

"Warehouse lenders are the lifelines for a lot of these subprime originators because they don't have the financial capacity to fund these loans by themselves," Ernie Napier, head of the specialty finance team at rating agency Standard & Poor's, said. "To the extent that these warehouse lenders go away, the whole process starts to unravel."

Pulling the plug

Mortgage Lenders Network USA, the 15th largest subprime company in the U.S., filed for bankruptcy protection this month.

As more borrowers defaulted early on the company's loans at the end of 2006, it tightened lending standards. It also introduced a new product, but mispriced it. After making at least $600 million in new loans with this product, Mortgage Lenders Network had to sell them at a loss in the secondary market.

Some of the company's warehouse lenders, which included Merrill and Goldman Sachs (GS), cut back their financing, forcing Mortgage Lenders Network to post more collateral. When it couldn't come up with the extra cash, some of these lenders refused to advance any more money and the company had to shut down, according to its bankruptcy filing.

"The impression was that the warehouse lenders put them up against the wall and then pulled the plug," S&P's Napier said.  Ownit, one of the fastest growing subprime originators which was partly owned by Merrill, filed for bankruptcy on Dec. 28.

In November, J.P. Morgan Chase, which had provided warehouse financing since late 2003, said it planned to shut down the facility by the middle of December. Merrill then made a margin call, sweeping up about $15 million of the company's cash, leaving it with roughly $7.4 million in liquid funds, according to Ownit's filing.
Later that month, J.P. Morgan Chase decided not to fund loans Ownit had recently made and froze the rest of its money, Ownit said. By Dec. 5, Ownit said it had to lay off most of its employees.

In recent weeks, warnings from banking giant HSBC Holdings (HBC) and New Century have shaken subprime confidence further, sparking speculation that a major bank is aggressively making margin calls.

Accredited Home Lenders (LENDmore) has had to come up with more cash after getting margin calls from some of its warehouse lenders, Stuart Marvin, executive vice president at the subprime specialist told analysts during a conference call on Wednesday. See story on Accredited's recent results.

"We have eight different warehouse lenders; I would say the majority of them are acting very rationally," Marvin said. "There is one that is acting somewhat irrationally, although I won't mention them by name. We have migrated the fundings away from that warehouse lender to one of the other seven until they begin to act more rationally again."

Industry publication National Mortgage News said this week that Merrill Lynch has been making margins calls. A Merrill spokesman declined to comment.
In late January, J.P. Morgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon noted rising defaults in some of its riskiest home loans and said the bank had largely exited the subprime business.

Repurchase redux

Big banks are clamping down on subprime specialists in other ways too. When originators sell loans on to big banks, the buyers have the right to send them back in certain circumstances, including when borrowers fail to make payments during the first month or two. In those cases, the originator is forced to repurchase the loans.

Early payment defaults have jumped for subprime loans made in recent years, forcing higher-than-expected repurchases by originators like New Century, Fremont and Accredited.

Big repurchases can threaten the survival of subprime originators because they can struggle to come up with the extra cash needed to buy the loans back. ResMAE Mortgage Corp., which had quickly become the 20th largest subprime specialist in the U.S., filed for bankruptcy this week and said it plans to sell most of its assets to Credit Suisse (CS) for $19 million.

By early 2005, loan originations began to wane, knocking ResMAE's profitability. By cutting costs and lifting the interest rates it charged on loans, the company said it was able to make a small profit last year "despite the industry collapsing around it."

But then Merrill Lynch, which had become the largest buyer of ResMAE's loans, asked the company to repurchase more than $300 million worth of loans. That "enormous" repurchase request, which ResMAE disputes, triggered a liquidity crisis and forced the company to put itself up for sale.

The repurchase demands "crippled ResMAE's operations by requiring the company to post enormous reserves, which dramatically reduced its capital and operating liquidity," the company said in its filing.

New Century, new problems

New Century shares lost more than a third of their value last week after the mortgage services provider slashed its forecast for loan production this year because early-payment defaults and loan repurchases have led to tighter underwriting guidelines. The company said it has to restate most of its results from 2006 because of mistakes in how it accounted for losses on repurchased loans. New Century got into trouble because its systems didn't predict the level of repurchases accurately enough, said Zack Gast, a financial sector analyst at the Center for Financial Research and Analysis (CFRA), a research firm.

The company was particularly aggressive in how it accounted for the cost of buying back loans, Gast explained. The conservative approach is to set aside money based on the assumption that if forced to repurchase problem loans, originators will likely have to resell again them at a lower price, Gast said. Instead, New Century only provisioned for the cost of repurchasing the loans. Once those assets were back on its balance sheet, the company recorded 100% of their value, Gast noted.
"The pool of loans sitting on their balance sheet has been valued at the wrong price," he concluded.

New Century's problems have sparked concern that the company could be next on warehouse lenders' hit list. "Investors and warehouse lenders could lose confidence in New Century," Merrill Lynch analyst Kenneth Bruce wrote in a note to clients on Feb. 8. "New Century's business model is highly reliant on liquidity, so if investor confidence deteriorates and credit facilities are constrained, a liquidity event could ensue."

"Finance companies that go out of business usually do so because of a lack of liquidity," Bruce reminded his clients ominously. New Century has financing agreements with lots of large banks including Bear Stearns (BSC) Deutsche Bank (DB), Morgan Stanley (MS), UBS AG (UBS) and Goldman.

The contracts include covenants requiring New Century to maintain minimum levels of liquidity and debt levels. If those are breached, the lenders can terminate the agreements and demand their money back immediately. New Century is currently required to keep liquidity levels to at least $134.4 million, according to its latest quarterly results filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company said last week that it had cash and liquidity in excess of $350 million at the end of 2006.

S&P cut its credit rating on New Century last week to BB- from BB and warned of further downgrades, partly because the company might breach its main warehouse loan covenants, triggering a liquidity crisis.

Who's next?

After the warnings from New Century and HSBC, warehouse lenders are probably now deciding which subprime originators to continue backing and which ones to drop, CFRA's Gast said. "If all lenders increase their margin requirements that would probably result in bankruptcy," he said. "If you can't come up with the extra cash, then the warehouse lenders will step in and shut you down."

But which other subprime specialists are in peril? Gast said that depends partly on companies' liquidity and how aggressive they've been in accounting for repurchased loans. Accredited Home Lenders has taken the most conservative in its accounting, setting aside money to cover the cost of reselling loans at lower prices, Gast said. That approach knocked its shares last year, but now investors are rewarding the company, he noted. "Their stock had been punished, but it turns out that they were the ones taking an appropriately conservative approach," Gast said. Accredited shares are down less than 10% so far this year, while New Century stock has lost 40%. Last year though, Accredited shares tumbled 44% while New Century fell less than 20%. Gast wouldn't comment specifically on other subprime lenders. But in a Dec. 19 report on the subprime shakeout, the analyst ranked originators based on accounting and liquidity risk.

New Century was the riskiest, followed by Novastar, Fieldstone, Fremont and Accredited. "In the current liquidity environment, CFRA does not believe any lender is at low risk," he wrote. "All lenders are showing signs of credit quality deterioration."

Meltdown underway

Gast was also reluctant to say whether things will get worse for the subprime industry, or estimate when the situation might improve. However, other experts are concerned about the immediate future. While most of Accredited's warehouse lenders have remained rational, Marvin suggested these big banks could take a tougher approach to rival subprime specialists with less liquidity.

"The long-awaited meltdown in subprime mortgage lending is now underway, and it likely has further to go," Richard Berner, chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley, wrote in a note to clients this week. "More subprime lenders may fold, and the supply of subprime credit likely will tighten further."

Alistair Barr is a reporter for MarketWatch in San Francisco.

die Runde, dass verschiedenste Banken und Finanzunternehmen versuchen schlechte Hypotheken los zu werden!!

Anscheinend stimmt es!!


Servus, J.B.
--------------------------------------------------
"If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both." (Horace Mann)

...und kann ein Riese mit zwei Krücken statt zwei Beinen überhaupt vernünftig laufen?

11:34am 02/16/07
General Motors down 1.2% at $35.99 - MarketWatch

11:03am 02/16/07
$ Daimler Opens Doors to Chrysler - [at The Wall Street Journal Online]

auf CNBC gebracht. Ich kann es mir allerdings nicht vorstellen. Für Daimler wäre es sicher gut.

wollen die so überleben?
Oder hoffen die auf staatliche hilfe, wenn es um den verlusst von tausenden  arbeitsplätzen geht?
Immerhin hat GM ca 350.000 mitarbeiter u. wenn es da finster werden würde, gehen sicherlich nicht nur dort die lichter aus.
Mit der chrysler übernahme, könnten sie noch mehr auf die "tränendrüsse" drücken.
Wäre der verein nicht in amerika, würden meiner meinung nach ANALysten die aktie zerreissen, dass das blut nur so spritzt.
Die würden short gehen, dagegen  wäre die Pfund-aktion von G. Soros nur eine kinderparty.....

Anders kann ich mir das nicht vorstellen.


mfg
ath

All Time High Dow Jones – Wie kann so ein ATH zustande kommen, wenn 2/3 der in dem Index enthaltenen Werte weit unter ihren Höchständen aus den Jahren 1999-2001 notieren ?

besteht aus dem Unterfangen weniger Marketmaker möglichst viele Leute auf dem falschen Fuß zu erwischen. Offenbar glauben private und professionelle Teams (hedgefonds), die dip buying betreiben (ich nenne es Volumenkäufe), diesbezüglich bei Trendwechsel maximale Gewinne zu erzielen.
Mein Glaube an die Lernfähigkeit vieler Leute ist 6 Jahre nach den Salami crashs
trotz der medialen Masseneuphorie erhalten.
Schaun mer mal...

um den Leuten das Rally Feeling zu geben, welches es de facto nicht gibt.
Wenn die MM´s der MEinung sind, daß die Euphorie greift und Volumenkäufe
ineffizient werden, wird der Hebel umgelegt.
Siehe Duden : Euphorie = subjektives Wohlbefinden Schwerkranker.
Überbetonte Heiterkeit auch vereinzelter Geisteskranker usw...

>As ISI has pointed out, most such crises have come about following periods of tight money, surging oil prices and an inverted yield curve. Past financial crises have included PennCentral (1970), Franklin National Bank (1974), First Pennsylvania (1980), Continental Illinois (1984), the S&L crisis (1990), Mexico (1994), Pac Rim/Russia/LTCM (1997) and the Internet bubble (2000). Many of these incidents were associated with significant market declines or recessions.

>It is highly likely that housing has not bottomed and that the malaise will spread. Although the market was relieved that the Fed probably won’t tighten, a combination of tougher regulations and lender restraint will reduce home demand for some time to come. Combined with an extremely high 35% increase in the vacancy rate and a 25% rise in foreclosures, the outlook for housing still remains bleak. It is noteworthy that home valuations as measured by price-to-income and price-to-rent are still as much as three standard deviations above the mean in much of the country.

>Housing and housing-related employment made up an estimated 40% of all the growth in payroll employment from November 2001 to April 2005. Since the February 2006 peak, residential specialty trade jobs fell only 104,000, a small fraction of the workers added during the rise. As prior announced housing starts reach completion layoffs will accelerate rapidly, taking overall payroll growth down with it. Consumers, already burdened by record debt and a negative savings rate will find it hard to continue their free-spending ways.

>The evidence indicates that, contrary to consensus opinion, the economic weakness is already spreading. January industrial production was down 0.5% and is off 0.4% over the last 6 months. The year-to-year growth in payroll employment peaked at a relatively tepid 2.1% in March 2006 and was down to 1.6% in January. In the last 40 years whenever employment growth came down from a peak to 1.6% a recession followed. The January ISM index was 49.3, the lowest level in almost 4 years. Readings below 50 correlate well with subsequent economic weakness. Retail sales were flat in January, and the year-to-year growth was the lowest since April 2003. The U.S. Business Activity Barometer is the lowest in over 2 years. Analysts’ S&P 500 earnings estimates for the first quarter have been revised down to 4.6% year-over-year.

>A large number of economists are now looking for a sharp downward revision of 4th quarter GDP growth largely wiping out the quarter-to-quarter growth previously reported. Preliminary growth for the quarter was estimated at an annualized rate of 3.5%, and new estimates range from 2.0 to 2.5%. This will also result in a substantial downward revision of productivity growth and a related rise in unit labor costs.

We believe that the facts listed above are completely inconsistent with a goldilocks scenario, and that current market levels are unsustainable. The atmosphere is highly reminiscent of early 2000 when the vast majority similarly believed that nothing could go wrong.

http://www.comstockfunds.com/index.cfm?act=Newsletter.cfm&category=Market%20Commentary&newsletterid=1289&menugroup=Home

Unlike the Dow, which is limping along to phony new highs on the strength of only a few of its component members (one of them being Boeing) and terrible breadth, the advance in the DFI is a healthy one from a technical standpoint. Twelve of the fourteen stocks are at or very near five-year highs. This is not a market that is being driven by liquidity, or simply adjusting itself to the realities of inflation. This is a market driven by fundamentals. Bullish ones. And it is not just American companies that are cashing in on the action. Just yesterday India announced that it would be buying 40 of a 166 new fighter jets in total, from Russia.

The Democratic paper tigers in the US Congress who were swept to victory on voter dissatisfaction with current war policy may talk tough about ending the war. But at the end of the day, a non-binding resolution is just that: Non binding. After all, the Democrats are also part of the established banking, business and government triumvirate that knows all too well that war is great for business, and great for expanding the powers of government.

The markets are speaking: the world is heading for more war. Adjust your life strategies accordingly. For a deeper understanding of the business of war, I urge you to watch the BBC documentary Why We Fight.

http://www.bullnotbull.com/archive/bullish-on-war.html

Still, Steinhardt sees greater risks now than in the past from the potential for stocks to decline ``in a meaningful way,'' defined as by 10 percent or more.

``Coming back to the area where the excess might be, I think it's in leveraged investments,'' including commodities and real estate, he said. ``The rules related to borrowing money have loosened up extraordinarily. This is something we should remember.''

The U.S. dollar fell yesterday to the lowest against the euro in almost six weeks on Bernanke's comments.

``I would say that the overwhelming conventional wisdom is that the dollar is headed lower, and there's good reason for that view,'' Steinhardt said.

``However, the thought that has occurred to me is that we have a deficit, and the deficit is related to our foreign policy,'' he said. ``I have the feeling that soon, in the not- so-distant future, we will be out of Iraq, and the deficit- created phenomenon that is Iraq will be dramatically reduced. I think that will be an extremely positive force for the dollar.''

Kompletter Artikel einsehbar unter

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=ajbnoPDo.ClQ&refer=home

Keine wesentlichen Veränderungen in der Gesamtpositionierung der Comms bzw. Large.
Comms sind minimal Short gegangen über die MiniFuts und haben BigFuts abgebaut.
LargeTrader haben ihre Longübergewichtung reduziert aber dafür die Smalls etwas deutlicher
ausgebaut was auf ein hineinziehen "ins Boot" der Smalls deuten könnte.
(deutliche LongÜbergewichtung gleich fallende Kurse)
Falls die Smalls für den Anstieg Di/Mi verantwortlich sind sollte diese deutliche
Long -Übergewichtung jetzt erreicht sein.
Anmerkung zur COT-Tabelle:
Die Werte in der COT-Tabelle habe ich überprüft und diese sind identisch mit den Orginaldaten
der CFTC-Commodity Futures Trading Commission welche die Daten ermittelt und
den einzelnen Gruppen zu ordnet.
CI%-Wert in der Tabelle ist eine private Statistik von dem User welcher die Tabelle erstellt hat
Der Wert CI% ermittelt und berechnet  den Bullenanteil der Comms über einen 15 Wochenzeitraum.
Anmerkung zur Wellenreiter-Grafik:
Die Darstellung weißt erheblich von der Tabelle in dieser Woche ab was ich mir nur so erklären
kann das Wellenreiter hier einen Rechenfehler gemacht hat und zwar bei allen drei Gruppen was
zu den Richtungsänderungen bei den Large/Smalls in der Grafik führt.
Deshalb habe ich die meiner Meinung nach richtige Richtung durch Punkte eingezeichnet.