Wasn’t it nice to find out there is NO inflation, via today’s CPI data? According to the Fed, gasoline and commodity prices went LOWER. Ha.
Something tells me the g-men are trying to save a few bad dollars in social security payments, via juking the inflation data to appear benign.
Forget about what the idiots with pocket protectors say. We have run away inflation. Trade accordingly.
Apparently, [[BSC]] is on the brink of insolvency. As you know, should the worthless assets of Bear Sterns be recognized for what they are (worthless), the world would slip into a black hole and be eaten by dinosaurs.
So, in order to prevent world destruction, the NY Fed, in their infinite wisdom, decided to save Bear Sterns. Very nice.
Let’s sum up the bullshit country we live in:
During the worst housing crisis in 100 years, we’ve learned, NO ONE is allowed to fail. Everyone is too big. From homebuilders to money centers to low-end brokerage houses to monoline insurers, if you need a little scratch, knock on the Governments door and they’ll help you out. This, as you know, is not capitalism. This is socialism heavy, not light, which is disgraceful.
However, none of my bickering or sharp spikes in interpersonal acts of violence will help anyone make money.
Here’s how I see it:
Fuck Dennis Gartman. Ride this sucker out. When I smell panic, there is bound to be some sort of shoe to drop. Just so you know, the Fed is panicking. If you’re the nervous type, hedge some of your downside plays, with a few longs. No big deal.
Inevitably, those betting on the downside will be right, as the recession deepens and little fuckers like Bear Sterns get washed out.
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i can’t handle these swings right now
Someone please tell me why it took 20 minutes before we dropped? Thank you.
All I can say is, “never act in the first thirty minutes”. I left to take a piss and now everything is red (or green if you’re short).
Banzaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!
(FXY)
Somebuddy is ryyyyyyyyyyyyyying!!
Crispy!
Forget about what the idiots what pocket protectors say.
_______________
Whut’s zat yah say, Guvnah??
More than Crispy.
Fly that could be one of your best posts ever. In the moment baby!
You lee-a-rize dat dah ancient samurai sword was designed to cut a man’s body flom cravicle to pehrvis, yes?
Dat is yen in my hand, light now.
Yen bleaking out, fuckels.
Fly,
Yes, I actually had a feeling that something bad was going to happen today, given today’s CPI # (total bullshit).
Jesus Fuckin Christ, BSC down 35%. ANYBODY GOT BALLS TO JUMP IN LONG? Definite capitulation today.
Wow…those fuckers that had puts all the way to 30’s, thought it was dumb money…hats off to them…Probably Bear Sterns insiders themselves.
One hunnelt, fuckels!
One hunnelt!
Fuck you, Fly. They hired me to save the country from the depression. You don’t think they saw this coming? Much like the 6 Million Dollar Man*, I was built and trained for this very reason.
Fuck J6P, too. I’ve got banks to save. Fortunately, a lot of these new buildings have windows that you can’t open….
*$1.29, CAD
P.S.: How’d you like that CPI number? Pretty nifty, huh? Har Har Har
Fly, I love you, I a non gay way of course. You teaching me patience has brought me big dick gains 😛
Those $25 puts were probably bought by the NY Fed, as a hedge.
This is a multi-cultural blog thanks to Jake.
I hope you fuckers are making out like high-end manhattan whores today, jesus. It’s like somebodies shitting money on my head.
Helicopter Ben is client #8, no doubt. He took the advice from his latest “trist” and had the CPI numbers fudged. Prices on Escort services last month were flat.
(in reality we know that they are steadily increasing. $5,500 by next week.)
update: I don’t know why I capitalized “escort”.
I can’t believe the market is tanking. After that awesome CPI number? C’mon.
…or do you think they just realized that the $200M creative financing plan I made up was implemented solely to save BSC….
Fly,
Were you specifically talking about this in your last “Late Night Thought?”
Hey Fly, do you want your flex capacitor back? HA! You can’t have it… You really think JP Morgan is funding Bear Sterns just for fun? HA! He obviously knows via time machine usage, that the most likely future is that Bear Sterns will turn around. It’s obviously an effort to buy them out, and own the largest bank in the wolrd by 2020.
I have the very sick and disturbing thought that judging from recent experience, the market could very likely end today’s trading day green.
Volitility is our new God.
Ah, I love the smell of panic in the morning… lmao.. money money money
own some straddles on Bear Sterns with more bias to the upside
“Bear said the rumors that it was facing liquidity issues caused its liquidity position in the last 24 hours to deteriorate.”
That’s right, we’re all fucking idiots! Who the fuck makes this shit up?
Fade, stop hanging around this capitalist blog and get back to work at your own.
Don’t ever forget your roots, or I’ll have your ass “gulagged” before you can say “Leon Trostky!”
Fly, hope you update your post soon, I need some advice, such as what options to get on the new S-class, and if I should keep it parked out on my driveway, or in the garage… my insolvent neighbors might throw eggs at it, or allow their dogs to defecate near it, knowing that I have just “withdrawn” from their 401k, “Fly-style”.
Keep in mind that a BSC going under is one of the pieces we need to get closer to marking a low, so don’t get all 200% beared up (no pun) on this kind of news.
It has bullish undertones.
This is a fucking joke.
The FED is the buyer of last resort.
By design – change of title of assets –
BONDAGE
PROBLEM – REACTION – SOLUTION
THESIS – ANTITHESIS – SYNTHESIS
FUCKED
Who just pooped on my chest?
It’s ONLY BSC like the NY Gov is the only politician to get his jolly’s.
What- these guys were the only ones with Ohio and CA on the books.
Juice, I agree, to an extent.
However, it sure did fuck with you thesis for today, huh.
I just ate all the food in my neighbors refrigerator.
Developing…
Pooper –please no more chest references.
With the Vix crossing 30, we will get more talk of “the bottom”, and we’ll set ourselves up for more “bull”shit later… tread lightly.
HOLDING SKF?
reminds of this one.
A guy over 47.5 was in bar. It got to be about closing time and he strikes up a conversation with this gal at the bar.
He’s says you want to go back to my place. She says OK…He say one thing though… I kind of like it KINKY…she say’s I can get with it… They go to his place for a round of plain vanilla missionary…She’s say’s this was really nice very sweet..but I thought you like it kinky….he say’s oh “I just shit your purse”
Shed, my thesis for today played out yesterday & with the up futes this am … that was it
however, now I am looking to get long again somehow
I’m gonna take a crack at the refiners … tso vlo
Juice, can you explain why the refiners have taken such a beating? I don’t know much about oil and gas, so I haven’t figured it out. However, it seems counter-intuitive that they would be down so much.
Anyone buying the Mar 30 or 35 calls on BSC for S&G’s?
I need to burn a little cash today, so I just might take a stab.
fm minyanville – interesting stat
‘
In the 56 years of history that I have for the U of Michigan consumer confidence survey, there have been 47 other months that have recorded a reading as low or lower than the current one.
The S&P 500’s returns going forward are as follows:
* 3 months: +4.8% average, positive 66% of the time
* 6 months: +8.7% average, positive 81% of the time
* 9 months: +13.3% average, positive 83% of the time
* 12 months: +17.7% average, positive 92% of the time
Something to consider over the weekend as the headlines blare about the recession.
mrkcbill, that punchline was great. I thought you were going to make a chest reference.
Shed – fm real money on the refiners
Refiners Could Catch Fire
By Daniel Dicker
TheStreet.com Contributor
3/12/2008 1:39 PM EDT
URL: http://www.thestreet.com/p/rmoney/oil/10407438.html
Either some of our domestic refiners are going to employ some pretty sneaky tricks this summer season in order to survive, or we might see some of these companies’ stocks continue to languish. I’m betting on the former and maybe finding a trade here.
Years ago, when I was just a trading babe on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange, we all knew who controlled the price of oil — the big oil companies. We’d see them run around TV, those iconic, great old wildcatters in suits, cowboy hats and cigars, clearly on top of the heap. When big orders from Exxon (XOM) and Shell (RDS.A) would come into the pits, we’d all hush and gauge just what these masters of the oil universe were doing, because you took you life in your hands if you had an opposing position to these titans and weren’t quick enough to see what these guys wanted to make happen.
A whole lot of that has changed now. Oil’s become more of a capital market and less a pure commodity. While the oil companies still have influence, their word is no longer the law in pricing oil and its end products.
In my early days, from the top of the world, the Houston boys looked down on everyone, particularly oil traders like me, but also the overseas suppliers of raw crude. Crude had no value, they reasoned — you can’t burn it for fuel — only the products that Chevron (CVX) and Sunoco (SUN) sold had any inherent value to anyone. They’re right — or at least they were then.
My, my … how things have changed. And the winners of that change — Middle East suppliers and their representative sovereign wealth funds — we’ll leave for another day. But domestically, the losers have become apparent: the pure refiners and to some degree some of those same oil barons.
Refiners such as Valero (VLO) and Tesoro (TSO) , who rely entirely on supplied crude oil and have no production of their own, have gotten destroyed by the high cost of raw crude. Despite the growing price of gasoline at the pumps, the relative increase in price of refined products has not kept pace with the moonshot of crude prices in the last month. That relationship between crude and refined products is called a “crack spread.” Look at the chart for gasoline crack spreads for May delivery and you’ll see what I mean:
May Crack
Click here for larger image.
Source: CQG
Since crude oil has consistently traded above the $95-a-barrel level in mid-February, the gasoline crack has gotten hammered, from over $16 to around $7.
One might think that gasoline is better sold in season, and you’d be right, but in the July forward crack, the story is pretty much the same: Margins have sold off from $16 to under $10.
Let me put some of these numbers in perspective. Again, a picture is worth a thousand words:
Crack (Monthly)
Click here for larger image.
Source: CQG
As you can see from this monthly chart, the last three years have run pretty similarly — cracks have been depressed in the winter and begin to recover in early spring, delivering enormous margins in the summer months. These summer margins have always been the lifeblood of our domestic refiners: They depend on them to make the year worthwhile and to keep their shareholders happy.
This year is substantially different than the last three, and this chart’s a bit of a fooler, as it consolidates monthly trading into one overall representation. Believe me, you’d go back a long way to see an in-season July crack trading under $10 with just three months to go until it expired.
Still, you’ve got to count on the domestic refiners to do whatever it takes to get some decent margins out of the market at some point this year. So, what can they do?
Maintenance, both scheduled and “unexpected” can cause shutdowns and badly hamper supply of refined products. And what’s this I see in Reuters? Tesoro is shutting down its L.A. plant for two days. Let’s see if the refinery restarts on Friday as they’ve promised, shall we? I wouldn’t bet on it. I’m expecting a lot more of these “scheduled” maintenance runs to begin to crop up soon.
Long term, the situation with the domestic refiners is surely bleak. Besides higher crude prices, the costs and efficiencies of refining have gotten less advantageous for domestic refiners. Foreign refineries, under less regulatory control, threaten to invade the U.S. marketplace. Indeed, Valero has recently announced that it has a number of refineries that it would like to sell, indicating that it feels its long-term prospects are not as rosy as they once were.
Still, the restructuring of these companies is a multiyear task, and surviving 2008 a more pressing one. I’m betting these guys will do what it takes to secure a $15-$20 crack level at some point this year.
If they do that, the price of a share of Tesoro at $33.50, Valero at $52 and, to a lesser degree, Sunoco at $55 as I write this column is going to look awfully cheap. I’m starting to build a position in all three, looking for a quality up move over the next several weeks. By early May, I’ll know whether they’ve succeeded in pushing refining margins to a healthy level.
And if they do, don’t blame the refiners for the crazy gas prices that will result. By a quick calculation, a $20 crack with $110 crude oil translates to about $4.05 a gallon for regular gas at the pumps. That might sound outrageous, but it wouldn’t represent any difference in the relationship between crude and refined products than we’ve been living with the past three to five years.
i wouldn’t doubt we end up in positive territory this mkt is so blind to reality. there are real opportunities to take advantage of momentum/blackbox traders and technical moves in this mkt.
I think it’s all about HCBK. That bank won’t go down… indeed it’s at its highs! The smart money is moving deposits there apparently.
-DT