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The old Wall Street adage says:
"Sell on Rosh Hashanah and Buy on Yom Kippur."
Rosh Hoshanah begins at sundown on Wednesday, 28 September this year, and Yom Kippur at sundown on Friday, 8 October.
And the selling did come in today as stocks turned lower after a stronger open.
We are into the end of the month tape-painting period, and barring any fresh negative developments from Europe we *might* have seen a bottom to the selling. But...
There was a gathering of hedge fund gurus today, including the heads of Carlyle and Blackstone. And some of these wealthy and worldly wise sages are saying that the US needs a 'financial shock' to scare the politicians into action, presumably some action that they would approve. Some shock like back to back 1000 point down days, or several huge drops in the dollar.
And Europe is floating the idea of a financial transaction tax again, which would have a devastating effect on the HFT crowd since the amount, although slight at about .1% for stocks and bonds and .01% for derivatives adds up when you are doing thousands of transactions per hour and running trillions in derivatives. The Wall Street crowd is adamantly against it, almost Dimon-esque in its opposition. I suppose that a nice wide exception for the wiseguys would work, but Europe does not seem as inclined to pander as the Yanks.
More threats to the economy from the financial sector? Why not, it has worked every time so far.
So the US market is jittery, and it is hard to see them stick a rally with any conviction in this environment of high volatility and artificial money flows guided by a few hands.
A vote in Germany on the bailouts is coming so let's see how it goes.
Today was Option Expiration Day for the metals on Comex. Presumably the call holders have been beaten sufficiently, and now it is the turn of those holding puts.
This is a nice bounce, but as a caution the downtrends in the short term have not yet been broken.
In an earlier piece today about the gold market we discussed leasing of gold by central banks into the markets which certainly does happen. The only question is how often, how much, and for what motives.
Rob Kirby has written a comprehensive piece on the Gold Carry Trade a few years ago, which I link to here. If you have any interest in this it is a good place to begin.
We get the third estimate of US Second Quarter GDP on Thursday but otherwise the domestic news is light, and US markets are being dominated by sovereign debt concerns in Europe.
"We looked into the abyss if the gold price rose further. A further rise would have taken down one or several trading houses, which might have taken down all the rest in their wake.
Therefore at any price, at any cost, the central banks had to quell the gold price, manage it. It was very difficult to get the gold price under control but we have now succeeded.
The US Fed was very active in getting the gold price down. So was the U.K."
Sir Eddie George, Bank of England, September 1999
"That day the U.S. announced that the dollar would be devalued by 10 percent. By switching the yen to a floating exchange rate, the Japanese currency appreciated, and a sufficient realignment in exchange rates was realized. Joint intervention in gold sales to prevent a steep rise in the price of gold, however, was not undertaken. That was a mistake."
Paul Volcker, Nikkei Weekly 2004
“Central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise.”
Alan Greenspan, US Federal Reserve Bank, 24 July 1998
As an aside, the lease rates for gold went negative about four days before the recent bear raids in the metals markets began. This was most likely due to an excess of fresh supply being offered on the markets by the Western central banks. The bullion banks saw this and dropped their bids to take full advantage of the knowledge of this operation, or more properly, subsidy.
The central bank gold is leased to the bullion banks, like the market makers at the LBMA. Among these are JPM, GS, HBSC, BofA, DB, and Barclays. The gold is then sold into the bullion markets in London, or used as collateral for leveraged paper transactions. With a lag, this additional supply affects the futures and ETF trades with additional leverage in New York.
The week of Nov 21 may be one of particular interest to US investors in precious metals. The cross currents may make it even more volatile than this August with its 'Night of the Long Knives.' Or perhaps the banking metals bears have their eyes to the future and are pre-emptively striking now.
If this theory is correct, at some point this market operation will fail, and the price reaction, not to speak of the political scandal, may be memorable. It is not clear to me that we will see it coming on the charts, but one can hope. Personally I think China and Russia will use this as a bargaining tool if they are not doing so already. What's the old line about selling them the rope? Brought to the brink for the sake of a relatively few bankers' bonuses.
There is a an option expiration for December 2011 contracts that week, on November 22. December is a big delivery month, so fireworks are always expected. And we are entering a seasonally strong period for the precious metals.
The US 'Super-Committee' to resolve the debt crisis will be facing a November 23 deadline to vote on a plan which they will present to the Congress and the President on Dec 2. This will avoid triggering 'automatic cuts' to take place in 2013.
November will be the real kick off month for the US presidential elections.
On November 22 the US will release its first estimate of 4Q GDP.
On November 23 the Fed will release its latest FOMC Minutes.
The November Jobs Report will be released the following Friday on December 2.
And of course, November 24 begins a four day holiday weekend for Thanksgiving, including the famous 'Black Friday' for US retailers.
Super-Committee Timeline
Oct. 14: House and Senate committees must submit recommendations to the committee by this date.
Nov. 23: Deadline for the committee to vote on a plan with $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction.
Dec. 2: Deadline for the committee to submit report and legislative language to the president and Congress.
Dec. 23: Deadline for both houses to vote on the committee bill.
Jan. 15, 2012: Date that the “trigger” leading to $1.2 trillion of future spending cuts goes into effect, if the committee’s legislation has not been enacted.
