Quick thoughts after the close

[solarbird]

My, that close was bracing!

I've been hearing rumours that a couple of mutual finds are falling over. Have some nightmare fodder. Hedgie also sees margin calls hitting gold in charts.

Look, people, this is not good. This was an accelerating decline into higher volumes, which is to say, as the market is falling, selling has increased. We're oversold like there is no fucking tomorrow, but people keep selling. We're below 2009 lows if you factor in the dollar decline, and all the talking heads are screaming BUY OPPORTUNITY on technicals. Maybe they're right, we violated some pretty nontrivial support levels today (like 1250 in the S&P - lol, BYE!) but we're closed just above another one now, and it's pretty thick. A lot of buy decisions got made around here back in November 2010, so maybe there's some substance here. I dunno.

Heh, remember how subprime was "contained?" Remember how that worked out? Well, the Euro debt crisis has been "contained" pretty consistently too, but, yeaaaaah, the EC president says it's not contained anymore. If we're going to have to keep adding letters (to PIIGS), it's gonna be hard to come up with another acronym. Europe is talking monetisation as the only way out. Will Germany put up with that? Will German taxpayers?

Nikkei futures trading is down around 2.5%. Hang Seng futures are only slightly down. Europe opens in... 11 hours, more or less. Good luck!

Comments

[gwendally.livejournal.com]

I've been waiting for some buying opportunities and found one today. I wanted to move $30K from the sidelines into equities today.

Can't. TIAA-CREF won't let me. I have a bunch of money in something earning 3% and they won't let me sell it. Can't do it online, can't do it by phone, either. I know damn well there were some restrictions on this fund, only being able to trade once a year or something like that, but this is the once a year. And they won't let me.

I have a weird sinking feeling that it's invested in Treasuries and the Gubmint simply INSISTS that I continue being invested in Treasuries... for my own good, you see.

So, no, I didn't buy any stock today. Meant to drop $30,000. Was prevented.

[solarbird]

A lot of people have reported this sort of thing since 2008. Dealing with these sorts of funds - particularly for responsive moves - is dicy at best. Be warned!

[gwendally.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm warning others, too. I tried again on Friday and they executed it for an amount 1/10th of what I requested. It's a huge WTF thing. If I weren't a CPA and extremely capable of dealing with obstinate bureaucracies I would not have been able to move ANY of my money.

(I blog about this on my latest open entry.)

[kensaro.livejournal.com]

Yeah, speaking from a Dutch viewpoint here (economically pretty much part of Germany although politically not,) I'm starting to wonder why the politicians here aren't starting to push for a N/S split of the Euro, they keep prattling on about how much good the Euro has brought, but I'm figuring that if that good (if it even existed) is turning to bad, it's time to split, however self-interested that may sound. Use the money thats currently being poured into prolonging the inevitable to support the losses of our own institutions that suffer from the effects. It may sound like protectionism or even nationalsim, but I'm really starting to loathe having to financially suffer for deliberate malpractice in other countries.
Mind you, I'm all for a more unified Europe, but it shouldn't be that several nations who have been deliberately taking the piss are being rewarded for past malfeasances by being bailed out just to preserve 'the union.'

[maellenkleth]

Well, I've gone all-cash because that's my gut instinct. I'm not sure there's much point to being in the algorithmic bubble-gum machine NAFTA stock market unless for some bizarre reason one wanted to lose money betting against computer systems.

If I hear one more marketroid going on about how Ayn Rand and trickle-down theory shall save us all, I should very likely choke on my own bile. Fah. :(

[silussa.livejournal.com]

I've been mostly cash since I rolled my 401(k) over in February. Which probably makes it one of the better moves I've ever made, even if it was on a hunch.

Given the one day lag on my mutual fund, it's probably time to roll back in a bit. I suspect the weekend is going to see a lot of developments to salvage the markets, as I expect it's going to be crisis city Friday.

[maellenkleth]

Now, that's the part I just don't see coming down the pipe, and that's the business about "salvaging" the markets. What I see happening here is a scramble to get cash, coupled with a flight back to the dollar from across the Canadian border (we're seeing the CDN fall, today, wrt the USD). There's right now only so much cash in play, and I have a hard time imagining that the Fed would go for another round of printing so soon again.

I also happen to think that the gold bugs are just plain nuts.

[silussa.livejournal.com]

Given Germany's history, there is NO way they're going to go along with monetizing the debt. They've been there, post World War I, and that's why the ONLY directive of the Bundesbank is to control inflation.

If the European Central Bank forces the issue, the German Government will either have to ditch the Euro, or the German Government WILL fall. Either way, it's going to be incredibly messy, and a helluva ride.

As for German taxpayers, while the German government has effectively been bailing out German banks that loaned money to the PIIGS, the taxpayers aren't seeing it that way. They're seeing it as bailing out the PIIGS, and see NO reason to do so.

It's going to be very interesting, and I don't mean that in a good way.