SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - A Fibonacci Cha-Chi

Intraday commentary on stocks here.

Richard Fisher made some remarks about 'feral hogs' testing the Fed's will in the market, and stocks rallied from there.

I thought it was a nice touch that he did so when stocks were almost precisely at the first key Fibonacci retracement level. Nice technical precision.

Stocks are appearing to try and find a footing after last weeks quadruple witching option expiration.

SP 500 Futures Intraday - You Can't Follow the Opera Without a Libretto

This is from my post earlier today at 11:17 AM.

"I may adjust my outlook if the September SP 500 futures do not hold at 1518 which is the 50% Fibonacci retracement level. Right now we are at 1553 which is about a 38.2% retracement from the highly controlled, almost straight line rally that began at the beginning of the year."

Here is what the futures market looks like now in the chart below.   This market is trading on the technicals. 

Technicals is sometimes a euphemism for calculated insider manipulation, as in a 'wash and rinse.' You convince the small investor to get in despite their fears at some higher price, and then one pulls the rug out from under them since the entire rally has been manufactured, and buy the same paper back on the cheap, thereby skinning them once again.

Some of this is herd instinct with the smaller traders, but the big dogs at the Banks and funds are setting the tone in this trade with all the passion of a McCormick reaper.

This is the norm for deregulated or under-regulated markets, a far cry from the 'efficient markets theory' which is a canard. This was standard operating procedure in the 1920's before reforms were introduced.

If you do not believe this happens, if you do not believe that traders signal each other of their intentions, if you do not know that the big trading desks watch the structure of the market as in who is holding what and then act on it,  if you do not understand that the financial sector is being recapitalized by looting the real economy,  then you may be either a shill for the house, witting or not, or one of the suckers at the table.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Upton Sinclair

We may have more downside to the 50% retracement, and it could be more IF something real happens.  That means something real, something fundamental, and not a manufactured event off some mild Fed jawboning. 

But in my opinion everything that has occurred since Bernanke's non-statement last week has been the second act in this opera buffo known as the US financial markets. 

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

The disparity in premiums, albeit both still negative, between the Central trusts and the Sprott trusts is remarkable.

I think it can be attributed to the difference in their 'redeemability' for bullion.

The gold/silver ratio is now a bit over 65, showing that the markets are under some obvious and general liquidity stress, and as such, gold tends to offer a bit more 'safety.'

I am tending to view the selling in the equity markets as the effect of the Fed jawboning to let some of the air out of a growing asset bubble that was becoming overleveraged.

The professionals are using this as an opportunity to take the public and the real economy out for an old fashioned 'wash and rinse' in which they frighten people out of positions that up until recently they had been urging them to take.

There is money to be made in shorting, and then one buys the same assets all over again on the cheap. This is the fallacy of efficient market theory and the benefits of financialisation. It becomes, at its extremes of deregulation and moral hazard, little more than a wealth transferal scheme, which is a fancy word for a con game. And it can rise to and corrupt the highest levels of a society.

I may adjust my outlook if the September SP 500 futures do not hold at 1518 which is the 50% Fibonacci retracement level.  Right now we are at 1553 which is about a 38.2% retracement from the highly controlled, almost straight line rally that began at the beginning of the year.

Glenn Greenwald Interviewed by David Gregory on 'Meet the Press' This Morning

Not the finest moment for the national mainstream media.

Please know that Glenn Greenwald is a regular writer for The Guardian newspaper, and has been reporting on certain policy issues for years. 

I found it repulsive that David Gregory could question Greenwald's right to the title of 'journalist,' preferring to label him a 'polemicist.' Is that because Greenwald was never a stand-in for Don Imus' morning talk show like David Gregory had been?

Where are the journalism schools in this time of official assault on their profession?

Gregory resorts to the bullyboy 'questioning' style in which statements and assumptions are first put forward as if they are true, to provoke a reaction of the person being questioned.  It is often saved for those whom the network views as undesirable, and in a weaker power position.

Television national broadcast media often resembles entertainment and infomercials moreso than straight journalism.    And it is little wonder why so many are turning to alternative sources for real news.

“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”

George Orwell

This is like some bad version of The Hunger Games.





Here is a link to the complete show.

Obama's War On Whistleblowers - McClatchy