It was only a few minutes ago that I blogged my suspicions about the futures turning bullish after a terrible jobs and unemployment report. I would have no problem buying into a weak open or strong move lower. However, I just didn’t trust the immediate, optimistic reaction from the futures market about the 8:30 AM employment announcement. As such, I was fully prepared to stay on the sidelines today, waiting for the bottom to fall out.

The first 30 minutes of trading (9:30 AM to 10:00 AM) validate my concern - the market opened strong…. for about two minutes. Then, it’s been nothing but selling, selling, selling.

What happened to all the bullish futures traders between 8:30 AM and 9:32 AM? Nothing happened to them… they never existed. That was a relatively clever (and fairly big) trader or trading team pushing the market up just enough to make everyone think it was going to be a bullish day so they could sell into your buying.

In short, we all got played.

The more you trade, the more you can recognize this tactic, and avoid it. I was burned enough early on in my career to spot that kind of crap now. If you’re not there yet, you’ll get there (nothing teaches better than a loss, eh?)

Now - after 10:00 AM - things look considerably different, for the better. Looks like whoever wanted to dump stocks is done. Now, I’m buying what they shed, and I’m buying it at a pretty decent price.

The lesson to be learned is not to avoid the market. The lesson to be learned is to beat them at their own game - don’t get suckered into a rally that just doesn’t make sense.

The other lesson to keep in your back pocket is that the first half hour of trading is almost always best avoided. It’s considered ‘amateur hour’, but really, it’s the pros taking advantage of the amateurs. If you can align your trades with the pros, then it’s great. If you can’t though, the best thing to do is wait for them to finish their morning activity.

Anyway, here’s the one-minute chart of the Dow. Stark, isn’t it?

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I don’t want to say that we ‘lost’ 2.6 million jobs in 2008, as - not unlike car keys - I hope we simply misplaced them, and will retrieve them later (and no, I’m not making light of the terrible situation). That said, I have to confess I’m a little shocked at the initial reaction… futures actually went from in the red to on the black after the news came out. I guess that’s all the proof you need that trading is more about expectations and perception than it is about actual results - the rally stemmed from the fact that losing 525,000 jobs in a month was better (or should I say “not as bad”) as the market expected.

Unemployment now stands at 7.2%… a figure that bugs me a heck of a lot more than losing 525K jobs in a month. Investors don’t seem to mind, or at least they don’t seem surprised. I’ll follow that lead for the time being, but honestly, I don’t trust the early strength in the shadow of what should be considered a reason to sell.

Had the futures plunged after the announcement, and had the market sank after the opening bell rang, I may have been inclined to buy at a low point. I really can’t get my arms around buying into a strong open though.

Regardless, where we close today means about ten times as much as where we open, so I may be on the sidelines today while other investors sort this out.

Oh, and just for the record, the last time unemployment was this high was 1992. The peak unemployment rate that year was 7.8% (Ouch!), though we clearly survived it.

However, I would caution anyone again comparing absolute unemployment levels at different points in time. It’s always a slightly different scenario from one recession to the next. That’s not to say this one’s better or worse - just different, and possibly not comparable.

Personally, I’ve found that the direction of the unemployment trend - from any level - is a better gauge of the market’s bullishness or bearishness than any particular level or reading (meaning rising unemployment is bad for stocks, whether it’s rising from 2.5% or rising from 6.5%). It does have to peak sometime though… and I can’t help but wonder if we’re now to the point where it really can’t get any worse. Guess we’ll see.

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For several weeks now we’ve been using the so-called ‘TED Spread’ as a measure of how healthy (or unhealthy) the credit market has been. Since the TED Spread indicates the perceived difference between the safety of lending to other banks versus the safety of lending to the government (which is basically considered risk-free), the TED spread is a decent indication of how likely or unlikely a bank is to make a loan to another bank…. which is how most banks get the money they lend out. [Lending out your own money is so passé. Putting someone else’s money on the table is the wiser choice in the new economy.]

That’s a rough, thumbnail sketch of the TED Spread. If you want the full-blown explanation, click here to revisit the October 8th edition.

Well, not that we’re putting the TED Spread on the shelf for good, but we now want to shift our attention to another measure of credit liquidity… how much cash is actually available for borrowing? Lower risk is great, but if the money’s not available to lend out, then it’s just not available. Thus, lending can’t fully thaw out.

To figure out just how much cash liquidity there is out there (i.e. cash available for lending), we can use the 3-month LIBOR-OIS Spread.

The what? The ‘LIBOR’ definition is still the same… the London InterBank Offered Rate, which is the interest rate charged for short-term interbank loans all banks need from time to time to meet short-term liquidity requirements. The ‘OIS’ is the Overnight Index Swap rate.

The difference between those two rates is the perceived (though generally accurate) availability of funds available for short-term loans. In this case, the spread would indicate the availability of funds for three-month loans, though that kind of available cash for lending would benefit all sorts of loan time frames.

Anyway, the higher the LIBOR-OIS Spread, the less money there is for lending.

Almost needless to say, the spread went sky high in September, peaking at 3.64 in early October. That was the highest reading I could find since the spread’s been tracked. (Let me know if you can find verifiable instances of a higher LIBOR-OIS Spread.) Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that there was just no lending money available to pretty much anyone in October - a problem that persisted through the better part of December as the spread was coming down.

Anyway, here’s the good news… it looks like TARP’s intended liquidity injection may finally be making a dent. Or, maybe it wasn’t TARP but just time that helped. Either way, the LIBOR-OIS Spread is now back to 1.24, which is the lowest (healthiest) reading since September.

That’s still not as strong as the sub-1.0 readings that were the norm prior to September, but I don’t think we’ll see those levels again, ever. Lending policies, as we know now, were just way too loose then. I suspect the LIBOR-OIS Spread will still sink a little from here, but 1.24 isn’t bad at all.

Here’s a chart… a pretty stunning visual.

Like I said above, the TED Spread still has a role going forward… it’s just not a complete picture. I think we’ll start looking at both in tandem as we study the credit market’s in the future. In the meantime, this is great ‘bigger picture’ news for the economy. It’s not a fix-all, but it’s a start.

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The first batch of feedback from yesterday’s ‘Top Ten Market Predictions for 2009′ has arrived. Since everything in it, and all the responses to it, are going to be broad, I’m going to post them here in the blog. As more roll in, I’ll add them in other blog entries.

Here’s the first one.

Interesting predictions but I am not fully persuaded. First, I am much more bearish. I do agree that the Glass-Steagall Act separating investment banking and commercial banking will not be restored in 2009. More likely investment banking will go the way of the Dodo bird. But I don’t see the Titans taking the Superbowl this time.

Editor’s response: Interesting. Who do you think might be doing investment banking going forward? I ask because someone has to do it….maybe. You make an interesting point though - how much investment banking do we need, and what will it look like in the future? They (all the IBs) seem to be disintegrating. I don’t think it will go away though. If not the Titans, who do you like?

Next up…

If you think Linux is worthy, look at Leopard. a fantastic OS!

Editor’s response: Thanks. I’ve never heard of Leopard, but I’ll check it out.

And finally, we got this e-mail, which touched on several topics.

Thanks for all the neat predictions. I had put off going from XP Pro SP2 as long as could. Probably still be with XP Pro if I’d guessed how bad Vista was to be. In the end tho with the Vista SP2 beta release things have been more stable. Any probs that do arise are generally from the occasional rogue program I try like an old chess game I might find from some years back. Running Vista’s disk check during the reboot required for that does return things to normal. Things that usually go wrong on a rogue s/w are loss of sounds and presence of DVD. But as mentioned that clears up. Someone else also mentioned Windows 7.0 is just more bloar for now as with IE 8 beta. Oh, also heard some others on TV liking Slumdog Millionaire. Couple clips I’ve seen were so so. Prob have to be there. Ben Button tho got some glowing recos. But then it took me forever to finally see In Bruges and Casino Royale. All the best for a better New Year. Doubt can be more shaky since now we know what can really go bad.

Editor’s response: Thanks for the note. In order….

1. I understood about half of what you said regarding Vista’s functionality. I’ll get my computer-guru friend to translate the rest. I’d really like to get away from Vista, but can’t find all the drivers I need.
2. Yeah, if the chatter is correct, Buttons gets the nod, but Slumdog will be a contender. It seems like the Oscars are always a surprise though.
3. Agreed; it may not be any better in 2009, but it sure can’t get any worse than 2008.

If you’ve got any feedback, you can add it below.

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Not that they’ve done anything right before this, but the Fed’s decision to lower interest rates last week - to unprecedented low levels - has indeed fostered a little more willingness to lend. It’s still not great, but it’s better than it was.

My basis for the assessment lies in the TED spread… the measure of risk banks perceive they’re taking on by lending to other banks. The TED spread is as low as it’s been in months, after peaking at record-breaking levels in October when the credit market was frozen solid.

(What exactly is the TED spread, and why does it matter? We explained it on full detail in early October. Click here to review that explanation.)

As of right now, the TED spread’s reading is 1.44. For perspective, that’s almost back to the 1.1 level we saw before the lending market fell apart, and it’s well under the October peak of 4.63. In other words, the credit market is almost on its feet again, as banks aren’t terrified to lend to other banks. (Nobody actually lends their own money… they borrow money form other banks to lend to their own customers.)

Just for the record, I think when/if the TED spread gets back to 1.1 - though it wouldn’t surprise me if it didn’t though - I don’t think the lending market will actually be the same “no holds barred/no questions asked” kind of industry.

Even people with great credit are struggling to get loans now, so the standards will be much healthier going forward. That’s a good thing though - the interest rates will now actually reflect the true risk, whereas they didn’t before. We all have to jump through a few more hoops to get the rates we deserve, but it’s better than going back to the way things were (which caused the mess in the first place).

I digress though…. my point was just to let you know that the lending market is getting healthy again. Here’s the chart.

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As George Castanza would say about the Bernie Madoff fiasco, “This thing is like an onion - the more layers you peel, the more it stinks!” We got another round of news regarding the scandal this past week, and it stinks even more than it did.
I’m not going to rehash that here though… I’m more interested in some of the remarks about the latest batch of investigations. Some of them are funny, even if they don’t mean to be.

Here are a couple of my favorites….

Felix Salmon of Conde Nast’s Portfolio.com stated about the resulting confidence crisis…

“if you’re an investor, yes, you should be worried about losing your money to fraud — but you should also be even more worried about losing it the old-fashioned way, by investing it with a hedge fund manager who blows up spectacularly.”

Comparing the SEC’s complete failure to a Keystone Cops shtick, Greg Newton rebutted:

“characterizing the SEC as The Keystone Cops does defamatory disservice to The Keystone Cops’ investigative skills.”

Those were the only two I found that were appropriately bitter but also funny. As more of these jaded quips arise though, I’ll be sure to post them here.

Anybody else have one I missed? Leave ‘em below.

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Do you wanna’ know where the market is going to close today? I‘ve got a pretty good guess….either it will be spot on, or way off (how’s that for non-definitive). Frankly, I hope the guess is way off, because reaching the ’spot on’ target would be a sharp move lower. More on that in a second. What I wanted to do first was update my chart of, and thoughts on, yesterday morning’s look at the S&P 500 and the VIX.

Below is the exact same chart I gave you before, only updated with yesterday’s closing prices. Two problems immediately come to mind. The first is, the S&P 500 slid back under its 50 day moving average line. The second is, the VIX appears to have found support at its lower Bollinger band line. Both suggest the rally is winding down. All hope is not lost quite yet though.

It could take a few days for the market to get comfortable with the idea of a recovery. As such, we might see several ‘retests’ of the recent upward thrust. That’s a good thing. As long as we can hold our ground, and the down days come on lower volume than the good days, we’ve still got a better-than-average shot at emerging on the bullish side of the fence. Take a look at the chart, but then keep reading for the less-optimistic reality.

Ever heard of the ‘max pain’ theory? As far as the market is concerned, it’s the somewhat-cynical (though not entirely untrue) idea that the market has a way of providing the maximum amount of pain - losses - for the majority of investors.

The options market has a way of showing you a potential ‘max pain’ effect by indicating at which particular strike price most calls and puts are owned. Wherever the market can close and cause most options to expire worthless, well, that’s likely where the market will close on expiration day… which is today.

There’s something of a quirk with the idea though…..it’s either dead-on, or waaayyy off. There’s no in-between. That ‘way off’ result still provides some pretty decisive pain, but only for most of the call owners, or most of the put owners. Point being, this isn’t the kind of thing you want to bet on too early… sometimes the outcome we’re headed towards doesn’t become clear until the last day of expiration week.

Anyway, right now most of the owned calls are at 850, while most of the puts are owned at the 825 and 875 strike…right between 850. The most pain would be created by a close somewhere below 850 (where all those calls would be worthless) and above 825 (where at least the 825 puts would be worthless). A close under 875 would still be profitable for owners of the 875 puts though.

Here’s the SPX option open interest grid from CBOE.com. Take a look, but then keep reading for the alternative possibility.

The second scenario is a close above 875. That would make all the puts - both the 825 and the 875 strike - worthless, though it would reward all those folks who own the 850 calls. Normally the odds of this outcome would be a distant second. However, there’s obviously a lot more open interest with the puts than with the calls here… so the ‘max pain’ could actually come with a bullish close. I prefer that scenario, but I’m not getting married to any guess.

The good news is, the futures are well up this morning, and we sold off sharply yesterday. That sets up a strong possibility for the second (bullish) outcome today. As always though, be diligent and keep an eye on this erratic market.

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Government bonds were never the sexiest of investments, designed more to provide safety and assurance than to offer growth. Now, they don’t even accomplish their primary goal. Indeed, they may not even accomplish their goal of reliable returns. One has to wonder if lending to the government is riskier than investing in publicly-traded stocks.

As it stands right now, the yield on 10-year Treasuries is a whopping 2.4% (annualized). What’s so stunning is that folks are still buying them – there’s a moderately active market. Why? Great question. The only possible answers I can come up with are habit, a lack of understanding, or insanity.

A couple of different times I’ve heard the argument “Well, at the very least they’ll fight inflation.”

No they won’t – that’s the point.

If you buy $100,000 worth of 10-year bonds, your annual interest payment will be $2400. You’ll get $100,000 back a decade from now, and you’ll have collected $24K of tax-free income in the meantime. Unless we enter a period of deflation, and stay in it for 10 years, odds are you’re going to lose ground to inflation.

My sensitivity to the ridiculous reality is heightened by the knowledge that the Fed is allegedly going to cut rates again tomorrow. All well and good, but this could conceivably make the low-yield problem even worse (though how much worse could it get?).

On that note, no matter how much of a rate cut we get, know that the effective overnight rate (not the stated rate we hear so much about) is already rock-bottom. So, a rate cut won’t make borrowing noticeably cheaper… it’s more for show at this juncture.

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By now you’re all well aware of Bernie Madoff’s $50 billion heist - you know the party’s over when the FBI comes a-knockin’. What I’m still not clear about is what actually triggered the investigation and arrest. I think one of his employees got suspicious and reported the oddities. However, I’d love to know the exact details of the red flag that got the ball rolling. I suspect somewhere in the ponzi scheme, someone was supposed to get “paid”, and didn’t. People don’t like it when they’re on the wrong side of the table. (And when I say ‘paid’, I don’t mean employees - the word was that his employees always got paid. I mean there was supposed to be money or stocks for someone, somewhere, but it wasn’t actually there when they tried to claim it.)

Anyway, I’m not here to rehash what’s been all over the news…. you can do that on your own. All I wanted to do was point out an article about Madoff that appeared in a 2001 edition of MAR/Hedge….. a hedge-fund-related publication that’s a little obscure even within the hedge fund world. Here’s a link to the PDF. I can’t find a web page with the article, so you’ll have to use/get Adobe’s Reader if you don’t have it already.

The article is something of a contradiction…. suspicious of the consistent returns and minimal volatility boasted by his hedge fund, yet also impressed by those same returns and minimal volatility. Nobody ever questioned whether it was too good to be true as long as everyone was happy with the results. There’s a lesson in the realization of the truth…. now.

Read today’s news, then read the 2001 article, then compare the two side-by-side. The red flags were actually there, between the lines. I suspect there are more Madoff’s out there, even with all the oversight we now have.

On the other hand, I want to be clear about something else - most hedge funds are completely legitimate. In the same vein, most financial advisors are honest and honorable. They’re not always right, but I’ll take that over something ‘too good to be true’ any day of the week. Keep the 2001 article and today’s news in your mental ‘back pocket’. The next time you hear about red-hot performance and next-to-no risk, pull it out to remind yourself that the best of crooks can fool even the best of journalists.

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So let me get this straight…. the Senate shot down the automaker’s bailout, and three hours later the Treasury steps up to the plate and says they’ll keep the industry afloat since Congress didn’t? I have about a thousand questions; I’ll only ask a few of them…

1. If the Treasury is authorized to do this, why didn’t they do it two weeks ago?
2. Is the Treasury actually authorized to do this?
3. Has our government - and rules of limits and procedure - just turned into one big free-for-all?

The answers are…

1. Don’t know
2. Technically yes, philosophically no
3. Yep - there was never a clear plan for the $700 billion, and any department can do whatever they want now

Frankly, I’m not sure why automakers weren’t lumped in with the first bailout package… the $15 to $50 billion they need is nothing compared to the $700 billion ear-marked in the original bill. And, considering some money from the first bailout was used to assist fisherman, a rum company, and a company that makes wooden bows and arrows, you’d think throwing some cash at Detroit would be palatable. Guess not.

My beef isn’t the money - it’s the complete pointlessness of the process. If the Treasury can do what the Senate won’t, why bother with a bill at all? Just go to the Treasury. On that note though, another question is raised…..who oversees the Treasury? It’s technically the Executive branch (i.e. the President), which as of this morning is apparently how that branch to get around the Legislative (Congress/Senate) branch’s decisions in certain cases.

I’m not here to pass judgment, nor am I going to start accusing anyone of jump-starting communism or working towards a monarchy…. two arguments that have been made quite a bit lately. However, I have no problem saying this mess has become more than a little worrisome for reasons beyond the amount of money and lack of control. The apparent ineptness in Washington isn’t just an opinion anymore - it’s the Wild West… where anything goes.

OK, I’m done venting. Thanks. You can vent too if you like - the form is below.

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I blogged the idea a little bit yesterday and some more today, but Yahoo! Finance made my point for me far better than I ever could have made it myself. For whatever reason, I opened a browser Window this morning and went to Yahoo! Finance to see what crap they were spouting off today. However, I didn’t ‘refresh’ the page all day long. As it turns out, the index tickers refresh automatically on the page, while the text/story feeds require a new view (or a refresh). So, the only thing that changed on the page all day was the market’s numerical/percentage change.

Take a look at the 4:00 PM EST ’snapshot’ below. What Yahoo was telling us this morning ended up being completely wrong by the end of the day.

I’m not blaming or bashing Yahoo - they’re just regurgitating what the AP and Motley Fool delivers to them. I’m just saying - once again - you’ve got to get past taking these daily opinions and cause/effect relationships as being the gospel. I’m not saying I knew the market was going to rally 2% today, but I sure wasn’t betting that it would sink simply because some search engine site said it would.

The best newspaper or website you can use is the one between your ears - trust it before you trust some journalist’s (expect me, of course).

Just to be fair, one day does not make or break a trend. On the flipside though, none of these AP or Reuters stories ever adds any context or timeframe to their data. They all tend to correlate the latest economic data with what stocks are doing over the following hour. So, they’re fair game.

I know I tend to make this “don’t let the media steer you wrong” point over and over again. However, I think I’m going to keep preaching it until we all truly embrace the idea.

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I’m sure many of you have already seen this video of Peter Schiff taking on the rest of the world, and ultimately winning. For those of you who haven’t it seen it, you might want to check it out - it’s kind of fun as well as funny (funny in a “ha-ha” and in a “are you kidding me?” kind of way). If the name Peter Schiff rings a bell, it’s because he’s one of the economists/forecasters the media puts on TV every now and then, mostly because he’ll be the victim of a severe bashing from other pundits. As it turns out, Schiff was also spot-on when it came to the ripple effect that sloppy sub-prime standards and over-leveraged financial institutions would have on the market.

What’s scary is (1) how many other so-called gurus laughed in his face and told him he was wrong because they were oblivious, and (2) how perfectly he described what was going to happen. It’ll definitely make you rethink whether or not you want to continue getting advice or guidance from anyone on television… it’s obviously not a guarantee of accuracy or forecasting skills for most of these dopes.

In the interest of fair play, this video montage was assembled by Schiff, or a huge fan of Schiff, as it obviously puts him in a very positive light without mentioning any mistakes he may have made along the way (and I’m sure he made some). So, take it with a grain of salt. Still, it’s funny to think that any of these conversations happened at all, even if Schiff is occasionally wrong. These guys just crucified him, and he ended up being exactly right while so many others were completely wrong.

Anyway, here’s a link to the clip … good stuff.

http://econvideo.blogspot.com/2008/11/peter-schiff-retrospective-on-fox-news.html

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Looks like the last hour of trading is also going to be the most interesting hour again. I can’t confirm or cite the resource, but I think I heard that 90% of the market’s ‘recent’ (which was undefined) intra-day net movement has occurred in the last hour of trading …. for better or worse. Personally, I believe it.

The implication for you is that you really may not have to check in until 3:00 PM EST. In fact, you may not want to check in - on anything - until late in the trading day. The media is having a field day telling us this-caused-that, or how the latest round of morning data is what’s causing the current selloff or rally. Much of that garbage lately has become irrelevant by the time the closing bell has rung.

Anyway, as of 3:11 PM EST on Tuesday, the market had been well up, back to break-even, then pushed off the lows again in what looked like will be an attempt to cut some of yesterday’s losses, then tapered off a tad. I’ll let you know how it turned out for the bulls … at 4 o’clock.

The bigger implication that I’ll add is just to warn you not to take any intra-day action at face value.

On the intra-day chart (below) of the S&P 500’s 10 minute bars I’ve highlighted the last hour of the trading day. Not that it’s where all the movement was, but it sure looks like that’s where most of it occurred. More stark is the number of times the market reversed course in the last hour of trading. Many traders who were getting bearish prior to 3:00 PM ended up getting hit with a bullish reversal late in the day. The same goes for the bulls - they’ve been hit hard with a few bearish reversals.

In a few instances, the market’s intra-day trend followed through - and even accelerated - in the last hour of the day. However, there was never any clear hint about which move was brewing. Point being, if you’re jumping in an out trying to time the optimal entry based on what’s happening in the middle of the day, you may be attempting the impossible.

Just something to think about.

I’ve got some interesting stuff on the way later this week.

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