Автор Дилберта об инвестировании

I have a theory that you should invest in the companies that you hate the most. The usual reason for hating a company is that the company is so powerful it can make you balance your wallet on your nose while you beg for their product. Oil companies such as BP don't actually make you beg for oil, but I think we all realize that they could. It's implied in the price of gas.

---snip---

Apparently BP has its own navy, a small air force, and enough money to build floating cities on the sea, most of which are still upright. If there's oil on the moon, BP will be the first to send a hose into space and suck on the moon until it's the size of a grapefruit. As an investor, that's the side I want to be on, with BP, not the loser moon.

---snip---

The argument goes that if Warren Buffett can buy quality companies at reasonable prices, hold them for the long term and become a billionaire, then so can you. Do you know who would be the first person to tell you that you aren't smart enough or well-informed enough to pull that off? His name is Warren Buffett. OK, he's probably too nice to say that, but I'm pretty sure he's thinking it. However, he might tell you that he makes his money by knowing things that other people don't know, and buying things that other people can't buy, such as entire companies.

---snip---

Let's talk about morality. Can you justify owning stock in companies that are treating the Earth like a prison pillow with a crayon face? Of course you can, but it takes some mental gymnastics. I'm here to help.



If you buy stock in a despicable company, it means some of the previous owners of that company sold it to you. If the stock then rises more than the market average, you successfully screwed the previous owners of the hated company. That's exactly like justice, only better because you made a profit.

---snip---

Recently I bought something called an iPhone. It drops calls so often that I no longer use it for audio conversations. It's too frustrating. And unlike my old BlackBerry days, I don't send e-mail on the iPhone because the on-screen keyboard is, as far as I can tell, an elaborate practical joke. I am, however, willing to respond to incoming text messages a long as they are in the form of yes-no questions and my answer are in the affirmative. In those cases I can simply type "k," the shorthand for OK, and I have trained my friends and family to accept L, J, O, or comma as meaning the same thing.

© Dilbert's Scott Adams on Betting on the Bad Guys in Investing - WSJ.com

Ох как замечательно... наезд на Джобса в конце в особенности доставляет... :)

\/\_n_/^|... o_O

Just like all those who are buying Apple at these stratospheric prices are in essence selling life insurance on Steve Jobs (sorry, someone had to say it), all those buying into the market here are betting the Fed is apolitical when it comes to monetary policy decisions: a proposition so naive and ludicrous, it is not surprising that only the momos continue to buy into the rally, which is driven purely by Primary Dealers recycling money they lend to the treasury which in turn is repoed back by the Fed, so that the banks can buy 100x P/E risky stocks with the same money used to keep the treasury curve diagonal. This is nothing but Fed-sponsored monetary pornography at its NC-17 best.

© Jeremy Grantham: This Is Nothing But The Greenspan Legacy's Latest Bubble, America Is Now "Thorougly Expensive" | zero hedge

И в догонку замечательная подборка криков трейдеров на недавнем выбросе S&P вот здесь. В особенности вот такое:

7th-May-2010 01:20 am - Хмм...
Жером Кервель II ?

© alex_k: Фондовый рынок США во френд-ленте трейдера

Gold as just another Ponzi scheme

This is a stunning revelation. Mr. Christian confirms that the “physical market” is not in fact a physical market at all. It is a loose description of all the paper trading and ledger entries and some physical metal movements that occur each day on behalf of people who believe they own bullion in LBMA vaults but in fact they don’t. They are told they have “unallocated gold” or “unallocated silver” but that does not mean the LBMA has physical metal set aside for those customers and has just not given specific bar numbers to the customers. No, it is the most cynical and corrupt definition of “unallocated”…the customer has NO bullion allocated to him. NONE! The LBMA defines the owners of “unallocated accounts” quite clearly as “unsecured creditors”. That means they have NO collateral. NONE. Can it be any clearer? It is a giant Ponzi scheme.

© Former Goldman Commodities Research Analyst Confirms LMBA OTC Gold Market Is "Paper Gold" Ponzi | zero hedge

Thought it may be helpful to your investigation if I gave you the heads up for a manipulative event signaled for Friday, 5th Feb. The non-farm payrolls number will be announced at 8.30 ET. There will be one of two scenarios occurring, and both will result in silver (and gold) being taken down with a wave of short selling designed to take out obvious support levels and trip stops below. While I will no doubt be able to profit from this upcoming trade, it is an example of just how easy it is to manipulate a market if a concentrated position is allowed by a very small group of traders.

I sent you a slide of a couple of past examples of just how this will play out.

Scenario 1. The news is bad (employment is worse). This will have a bullish effect on gold and silver as the U.S. dollar weakens and the precious metals draw bids, spiking them higher. This will be sold into within a very short time (1-5 mins) with thousands of new short contracts being added, overcoming any new bids and spiking the precious metals down hard, targeting key technical support levels.

Scenario 2. The news is good (employment is better than expected). This will result in a massive short position being instigated almost immediately with no move up. This will not initially be liquidation of long positions but will result in stops being triggered, again targeting key support levels.

Both scenarios will spell an attempt by the two main short holders to illegally drive the market down and reap very large profits. Locals such as myself will be "invited" on board, which will further add downward pressure.

The question I would expect you might ask is: Who is behind the sudden selling and is it the entity/entities holding a concentrated position? How is it possible for me to know what will occur days before it will happen?

Only if a market is manipulated could this possibly occur.

© A LONDON TRADER WALKS THE ‘CFTC’ THROUGH A SILVER MANIPULATION IN ADVANCE By Andrew Maguire

But before buying into this story on either side be aware that when this was attempted by the Hunt Brothers with silver (and it was nearly the same path that Janet outlines in her article) the CFTC and other "regulators" in the market came in and changed the rules. The danger here can be extreme, as most people with physical metal (the only people who will benefit if there is a monstrous spike in price - if you're holding an ETF you will in fact likely get nothing!) cannot dispose of it fast enough to take advantage before the inevitable collapse on the back side of the cornering attempt occurs.

© Don't Invest In Ridiculously-Rigged (And Thin) Markets - The Market Ticker

China rick-aversion

A Communist Party directive leaked to the Chinese-language edition of the Asia Times said dollar reserves should be limited to US Treasuries or agency mortgage debt such as Freddie Mac that enjoys Washington's implicit backing.

BNP Paribas said the move has major implications for global risk assets. "The message from Beijing is that we don't like this environment," said Hans Redeker, the bank's currency chief.

"When the world's biggest investor turns risk-averse, that is something you take notice of. We think this could become the new theme for the markets in the medium-term," he said.

© China orders retreat from risky assets - Telegraph

Не стоит рассматривать как утечку китайского риск-менеджмента, скорее это вброс - на очередном этапе развития межгосударственных торговых/геополитических/военных противостояний, прям как в депрессии 30-х годов.

Non-stop market rally?..

What if Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, and the head of one or more Wall Street firms decided that creating a stock market rally was the only way to rescue the economy? After all, after-tax income was down more than 10% y-o-y during Q1 2009, and the trillions the government committed or spent to prop up all sorts of entities was not working.

One way to manipulate the stock market would be for the Fed or the Treasury to buy $20 billion, plus or minus, of S&P 500 stock futures each month for a year. Depending on margin levels, $20 billion per month would translate into at least $100 billion in notional buying power. Given the hugely oversold market early in March, not only would a new $100 billion per month of buying power have stopped stock prices from plunging, but it would have encouraged huge amounts of sideline cash to flow into equities to absorb the $300 billion in newly printed shares that have been sold since the start of April.

This type of intervention could explain some of the unusual market action in recent months, with stock prices grinding higher on low volume even as companies sold huge amounts of new shares and retail investors stayed on the sidelines. For example, Tyler Durden of ZeroHedge has pointed out that virtually all of the market’s upside since mid-September has come from after-hours S&P 500 futures activity.

If we were involved in a scheme to manipulate the stock market, we would want to keep it in place until after the “wealth effect” put a floor under the economy of, say, three quarters of positive GDP growth. Assuming the economy were performing better, then ending the support for stock prices would be justified because a stock market decline would not be so painful.

We want to emphasize that we have no evidence that the Fed or the Treasury are throwing money into the stock market, either directly or indirectly. But if they are not pumping up stock prices, then who else is?

© TrimTabs Asks: Who Is Responsible For The Non-Stop Market Rally Since March; Gives Some Suggestions | zero hedge

Странно. Я почему-то думал что давно уже скупают. Что-то там такое пролетало насчет праймари дилеров. Уже почти год тому назад.

Goldman's Prayer

Our chairman who art at Goldman

Blankfein be thy name

Thy rally’s come, God’s work be done

In the Dow as it is in the Nasdaq

Give us this day our daily gain

And forgive us our frontruning, as we punish those who frontrun against us

And bring us not under indictment

But deliver us from regulators

For thine is the cashflow, and the power, and the bonuses,

forever and ever.

Amen

© Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: God's Work and Goldman's Prayer

В каждой шутке есть доля шутки...



;)

Gold Naked Shorts : Snapped

On Tuesday morning, gold derivatives dealers, who had sold short in the face of a fast rising gold price, faced a serious predicament. Some 27,000 + contracts, representing about 15% of the April COMEX gold futures contracts remained open. Technically, short sellers are required to give “notice” of delivery to long buyers. However, in reality, buyers are the ones who control the amount of gold to be delivered. They “demand” delivery of physical gold by holding futures contracts past the expiration date. This time, long buyers were demanding in droves.

In normal times, very few people do this. Only about 1% or less of gold contracts must be delivered. The lack of delivery demand allows the casino-like world of paper gold futures contracts to operate. Very few short sellers actually expect or intend to deliver real gold. They are, mostly, merely playing with paper. It was amazing, therefore, when March 30, 2009 came and passed, and so many people stood for delivery, refusing to part with their long gold futures positions.

On Tuesday, March 31st, Deutsche Bank (DB) amazed everyone even more, by delivering a massive 850,000 ounces, or 8500 contracts worth of the yellow metal. By the close of business, even after this massive delivery, about 15,050 April contracts, or 1.5 million ounces, still remained to be delivered. Most of these, of course, are unlikely to be the obligations of Deutsche Bank. But, the fact that this particular bank turned out to be one of the biggest short sellers of gold, is a surprise. Most people presumed that the big COMEX gold short sellers are HSBC (HBC) and/or JP Morgan Chase (JPM). That may be true. However, it is abundantly clear that they are not the only game in town.

Closely connected institutions, it seems, do not have to worry about acting irresponsibly, in taking on more obligations than they can fulfill. Mysteriously, on the very same day that gold was due to be delivered to COMEX long buyers, at almost the very same moment that Deutsche Bank was giving notice of its deliveries, the ECB happened to have “sold” 35.5 tons, or a total of 1,141,351 ounces of gold, on March 31, 2009. Convenient, isn’t it? Deutsche Bank had to deliver 850,000 ounces of physical gold on that day, and miraculously, the gold appeared out of nowhere.

(c) Avery Goodman, Did the ECB Save COMEX from Gold Default?

Sideline cash

There's that sideline cash nonsense again. Sideline cash does not come into the market except at IPO time and secondary offerings. Otherwise there is a seller for every buyer. If someone buys $50 million of Microsoft with "sideline cash" someone else will have $50 million in "sideline cash" to buy stocks with. I remain amazed at the number of people who manage money that do not know how the stock market even works.

(с) Michael Shedlock, Unrelenting Bullishness

Share prices do not move up because sideline cash comes in (because it can't happen in the first place). Share prices rise or fall because buyers or sellers are more aggressive in what they are willing to do. In other words shares are repriced and sentiment is the driving force.

(с) Michael Shedlock, Sideline Cash Theory Revisited

Стоки не всасывают деньги пока идут вверх, так как если кто-то умудряется продать дороже, то зарабатывает он не на акции как таковой, а на дураке который купил. Более реальная дефляция (тобишь высасывание денег из системы, разрушение богатства) начинается во время паники, когда дураков совсем уже нет, а деньги нужны.

О Украине

банки - ой; гривна - ой; металлурги - ой; политика - ой; девелоперы - мало, но тоже ой; страх - таки ой (из запорожья докладывают, что электорат начал волноваться, причем волноваться по поводу рабочих мест); макроэкономика - ой. вобщем, все ой, но пока терпимо. ждем очищения огнем.

в условиях когда в мире нарисовались таки условия для хотя бы отскока, откупоривать шампанское слишком рано.
украинский рынок уже начал умирать. и процесс этот, имхо, неизбежен и необратим.
пока мы зависли в неопределённости относительно того, что там у пфтс в головах, до сужения спредов и выхода Индекса к 400 лезть в рынок в попытке спекульнуть крайне рискованно. можно легко превратится в "инвестора".

(c) illashenko

LIBOR disregards FED rate

Рынки игнорируют попытки центробанков снизить процентную ставку LIBOR. Как некоторые заявляют - у нас на руках не только кризис кредитной системы, но уже и кризис доверия. Вызван этот кризис доверия попытками ЦБ фиксировать цены активов вместо того чтоб провести их переучет. Впрочем, те тоже это понимают - потому, возможно, после спасения AIG дали пойти на дно Lehman Brothers.

Это мне напоминает последние попытки связать воедино Римскую Империю перед распадом. Момент когда точность управляющего воздействия и оперативность получения информации уже не могут гарантировать адекватного ответа на изменения среды. Тогда начинаются вот такие неэффективные размазывания и структурные эскалации деструктивных явлений.

Глобализация - это не прямая дорога в светлое будущее, это циклический процесс. Наш момент - не только пик цикла глобализации, но и некоторое совпадение его с пиком международного кредитного цикла. Последний цикл сопровождался долго-долларовой экспансией, которая имела вид инфляционной волны. Волне этой уже не долго жить, и приведет она к массовым дефолтам (в товарном выражении) держателей различных бумажых активов, наверняка, докатившись назад до США как государства в целом.

К сожалению человек как вид в целом не умеет (пока что) создавать устойчивые и самодостаточные социальные и технологические структуры. Sustainability у нас непопулярна, в особенности в среде финансистов, которые жестко привязаны к экспоненциальному росту и расширению. Впрочем, теория сложных сетей нам поможет - на ум приходит что-то в духе "тяжелый хвост (heavy tail) спасет мир". 

8:00 AM - Trading desks (from the forum and a quick check) are reporting agencies being dumped by Chinese holders. Don't be too quick to call this "screw those evil Americans" - this smells like have to sell as opposed to want to sell. LOC seizures mean goods aren't moving which means you have to sell what you can, irrespective of price. Ditto for the price dislocation in the Treasury market. Say goodnight to what's left of the housing market - as I expected would happen - its done.

9:53 - Again, for the second day, no OMO (Open Market Operations) at The Fed. Read this report carefully. Note that there are no Agencies and no Treasuries left on The Fed's balance sheet. All gone. All that is left is $80 billion of crappy MBS. Bluntly, without printing raw money, The Fed is out of Treasuries with which to lend into the market, and thus cannot perform OMO any more; they must do "other things" (like print money.) We are now officially into the twilight zone and Fed Solvency is an issue on the table. President Bush spoke again but none one word about forcing transparency among financial institutions. Raise cash now and be prepared for potential essential good and service disruptions as the supply pipelines could begin to go dry on these as soon as early next week.

(c) The Market Ticker

Финдзя отжигает

"This market is worse than a divorce. I've lost half my networth, and still have my wife." -Over squawk this morning

(c) Financial Ninja

Также рекомендую к прочтению лог рабочей сессии (braindump) трейдера - весьма занятно почитать и сделать выводы о его IQ.

Doomsday humor

Если все обстоит настолько погано, можно открыть «Бюро деловых услуг. Бесплатная помощь при банкротствах. Billi.On и LMS.».
Снимите комнату на верхнем этаже (желательно с низким подоконником и окном, выходящем в переулок).
Найдите конкретного пацана, лучше бывшего боксера в помощь, девку в мини (или лучше бикини) мыть тротуар, и приступайте.
Обязательно побольше водки купите. Когда клиент расслабился, с ним справиться легче.
Зарабатывать можно на японских туристах, которые будут снимать вылетающих из окна.

(c) LMS

Predictably, all the confusion and anxiety already is leading to some doomsday humor. On the train Thursday from Chicago's suburbs into the city, two traders were overheard having this mordant exchange:

First: "Hey, good to see that you haven't jumped off a building yet."

Second: "Not yet. I'm waiting to move to a higher office."

(c) WSJ

Мысли о рынках

2009-й год -- это год массовых банкротств. Прежде всего, будут обанкрочены сотни банков -- просто потому, что не смогут выполнить нормативы по достаточности капитала. Банкротства инвесткомпаний на этом фоне будут смотреться жалкой насмешкой. Далее, будут обанкрочены сотни застройщиков и девелоперов. Просто потому что не смогут вернуть ранее взятые кредиты. 2009-й год -- это год падежа недвижимости. Этот процесс будет гораздо более долгим, чем на фондовом рынке, просто в силу низкой ликвидности этого рынка. Но пока будет падать недвижка, на восстановление фондового рынка надеяться бессмысленно. О том, что будет с валютным рынком, я судить не берусь, но есть мнение, что нас ожидает девальвация. Если вспомнить примеры стран ЮВА в 1997 - 98 гг., то этот сценарий не лишён смысла -- в тот период все экономики, попавшие под удар кризиса, испытали девальвацию. Когда она случится у нас -- не знаю, думаю, что этот процесс будет более плавным, чем в 1998 году.

Теперь о том, что делают власти. На мой взгляд, они спасают не финансовую систему страны -- они спасают свои активы. Борьба с инфляцией путём сжатия денежной массы, когда необходимо её расширение, запрет маржинальных сделок и шортов, когда над рынком висят нерезидентские продажи, избирательное кредитование отдельно взятых банков -- всё это заставляет меня думать, что смысл происходящего до финансовых властей не доходит. Он им и не нужен -- им нужно спасти своё. Поэтому вся риторика ответственных лиц направлена не на поддержание доверия к финансовой системе, а на запудривание мозгов. Видимо, они осознали, что спасти ситуацию уже не в силах, а в силах спасти то, что принадлежит лично им. С этого момента деньги миллионов можно считать приговорёнными.

В данной ситуации я считаю, что все модели цен и волатильности, которыми можно было пользоваться ранее, утрачивают смысл. Самым разумным было бы отказаться от торговли ВООБЩЕ вплоть до конца 2009 года, ибо те системы, которыми можно было пользоваться ещё в августе, в период полного распада всей финансовой ситемы окажутся бесполезными. Все, кто постарается ухватить удачу за хвост и купить "на минимуме", будут выброшены с рынка. Все, кто постарается "зашортить кризис", будут также выброшены с рынка. Характер волатильности отныне (во многом благодаря действиям властей) становится непредсказуемым. Главный вопрос стоит не в том, докуда упадёт рынок, а какие сегменты рынка останутся в живых. Я очень хочу надеяться, что выживут все площадки, но я бы не решился утверждать это с гарантией. Что касается участников этих рынков, то выживут ОЧЕНЬ немногие.

(с) Котауси, via alex-k

Акция при покупке акций

Купившему дно – второе дно бесплатно.

(с)