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Here Comes The Grand Bluff

The next three months are crucial to the survival of the EU. If they are to make it out alive and into the future, the require support and cooperation of the markets.

Remember that the ECB and EFSF, along with the potential cooperation of the IMF, have hundreds of billions of euros on the sidelines. That’s not enough money to fix the crisis. It is potentially enough money to spark a rally in euro bonds just in time to absorb their auctions.

That’s what I would gather they have been doing throughout the past three days.

It started with CDS contracts being sold in size a few nights ago (the Fly posted the numbers in the news section). Then it spread to euro bonds the next day.

Today, Italy had a twelve month auction at yields near half of what they were going for at the time.

Who buys bonds like that, other than a government body? Why purchase that many one year bonds down to that yield level, when any investor could get them for the higher yield on secondary markets?

Now the Europeans are entering the end game, buying their own debt in size, determined to try and bring back the private money to the table with visions of huge payoffs. Will they succeed? Or is their bluff even now being called by Soros’ type investors shorting their debt as fast as they can get their trades cleared?

I guess the answer is: we’ll see, won’t we.

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Pick A Story

This game where my positions lose all ways is wearing thin. If the golden tale is that oil must go higher, can we at least get some follow through to other sectors.

Point of information: the Canadian dollar, as assumed to be backed by Canada’s vast fields of oil and other bountiful natural resources, is just a little below par with the dollar. This strength, at a time when the euro is collapsing and treasury yields have never been lower, is solely a product of the strength of crude oil at this point in time.

CCJ is a Canadian uranium mining company. Recently, CCJ lost a stupid sum of money. They did this because they hedged against (one might say they went so far as to bet on) renewed dollar weakness.

They blew that call.

So the company was shedding $3 million in profit for ever one cent move higher against the Canadian dollar. $1.10 would have resulted in all profits for the company vanishing.

So where are we now? Well, the Canadian dollar is much stronger against the U.S. dollar that it was back in November. The rally in oil that has so mercilessly bit my hand has simultaneously graced my Cameco Corporation, which no longer needs to fear about their ill-devised “hedges” ripping a hole the size of a cantaloupe out of their chests.

And how have the markets responded?

Nothing.

CCJ gets no love. The force that directly hammers me indirectly gives me no benefit, when it most definitely should. CCJ trades below $20, holding me at vast losses when it should be getting a reprieve. This isn’t the end of the world; I’m a long term holder of CCJ and this is probably a buying opportunity, if I hadn’t already bought at these levels.

My point is, if the world is going to be insane, be insane. But please, can it just be consistently insane?

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