iBankCoin
18 years in Wall Street, left after finding out it was all horseshit. Founder/ Master and Commander: iBankCoin, finance news and commentary from the future.
Joined Nov 10, 2007
23,428 Blog Posts

Attention Bulls: Time is Running Out

You’ve been warned.

More on this later.

Developing…

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32 comments

  1. punyandy

    About fucking time

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  2. JakeGint

    You do realize that your minions are in an almost full-out revolt w. regard to your market inclination here, yes?

    I mean, for all I know, they’ve got Gunners now too.

    I think it’s time to go all Captain Queeg on them. Maybe even “Billy Budd” the young guy as an example.

    Yard-arm hangings at dawn.

    That’ll teach ’em.

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  3. bullseye

    skf should get whacked on this news. how the fuck are they selling that garbage for 90 cents on the $??? has anybody seen the levels most of that crap trades at? realogy bonds trade in the 60s and the rest of the low cpn crap trades in the 70s 80s. the avg px doesnt make sense to me unless citi is guaranteeing it.

    WSJ: Citi to Sell $12B of Leveraged Debt
    Tuesday April 8, 8:15 pm ET
    Wall Street Journal: Citigroup Close to Deal to Sell $12B of Leveraged Debt to Equity Firms
    NEW YORK (AP) — Citigroup Inc. is close to a deal to unload $12 billion of leveraged loans and bonds to a group of private-equity firms, The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site late Tuesday.
    Citigroup would sell the debt to the firms — including Apollo Management, TPG and Blackstone Group — for an average price slightly below 90 cents on the dollar, the Journal reported, citing unnamed people who were briefed on the deal. The bank hopes to complete the deal by the time it reports first-quarter results April 18, the report said.

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  4. JakeGint

    It should, but it didn’t.

    At least not initially. I think when the market realizes they are taking a fat discount on good loans they have yet to write down, we may get some action on Skiffles.

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  5. Danny

    Jake – What you don’t know is that to me being long or short is not a stigmatizing thing. Accordingly, being bullish or bearish means nothing. I trade shit I think will move. I prefer going long to shorting, my success rate is higher. Right now I don’t see a lot of opportunities and therefore have minimal longs. I am still short term bullish. I do not have a diversified portfolio.

    So it’s not a fly mutiny. He is right. I trade differently and with myriad different constraints and less fiduciary obligation.

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  6. wow

    So…let’s get this straight… how quickly the bulls have adopted the bad news is good news mantra.

    CITI is taking a haircut on paper that is something like a year old… this is CITI desperate for cash…

    Hope that CNBC keeps reporting this as mortgage paper being sold…

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  7. JakeGint

    Bullseye — I’m not sure the reporting on the pricing is right either, we’ll see, I guess.

    One thing I know… I was just starting out in the biz when Apollo was making money hand over fist by picking up good debt selling at discount prices thanks to the fucktarded Congress barring S&L’s from owning “junk” bonds.

    Those guys know what the hell they are doing, so I can’t imagine this is charity for Citi.

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  8. WallStreetLurker
    WallStreetLurker

    I’d like to believe that it will Jake, but since traders as of late have been snatching up stocks like a manic depressive Las Vegas gambling addict on a week long meth binge , I’m not so sure about that…….

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  9. JakeGint

    Danny —

    Okay, maybe I was too harsh, advocating “Billy Budd” treatment for your obvious disharmonious action. (What is this “IBC Machine” btw, and why does Fly not use it?)

    Perhaps I would knock your sentence to a single keel-hauling and then “call it a day.”

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  10. mdawsz

    Danny 1
    JakeGint 0

    …as usual

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  11. Q4

    Until time runs out. I’m making

    Paper Planes

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  12. bullseye

    JakeGint: i think this is very significant b/c a lot of this crap has traded so low due to the overhang and supply of debt out there. if more deals like this are announced, the banks and their hung loans will rally. these p.e. funds are prob buying the debt of their own deals.

    i wouldnt assume that these guys know what they are doing all the time. did TPG know what they were doing when they bought univision for 16x ebitda. the bonds trade at 50 cents on the dollar and id say about 80% of their equity has been wiped out.

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  13. Woodshedder

    Jake, you’ll be happy to know I hedged my longs today.

    Although I will be buying/adding more longs over this week, assuming things continue to play out as I expect.

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  14. TraderCaddy

    Jake- Billy Budd and Captain Queeg are good examples. How about Ralph, Piggy, and Jack from Lord of the Flies?

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  15. Danny

    Jake – iBC machine measures the number of stocks meeting unusual criteria. The idea is that by examining the unusual, you will be better able to see when “unusual” readings are “unusually” high.

    So, for instance, you may say that if a stock is 2 standard deviations below its moving average, it should revert the the mean at some point.

    Now, if you measured the number of stocks in the market every day (my universe is all >$5, non adr, non pink-sheet stocks) that meet that criteria, over time you can draw some connections as to what the number means. Maybe 200 stocks out of 7000 is a high reading, maybe not.

    Worden has this indicator built into the telechart system.

    Mine is modeled in this vein. It really is a great idea.

    The problem with RSI and etc is that they are relative measures. RSIs can stay overbought or oversold for sometime.

    My indicators are not subjective. For instance, one is the number of stocks making bullish breakouts today. Another incorporates the number of high volume mover. By counting the number of stocks meeting what I consider unusual criteria, rather than judging a condition as overbought or oversold, I am allowed greater accuracy in comparing across timeframes.

    So, when a sentiment indicator (they are weighted) crosses over, or when it reaches an extreme, you either follow the signal or fade it.

    So after I had kinda built this thing and formed the relationships therein I studied every day of market data for the last 16 months to assess the reliability and strength of the signals on both a ST trading and LT basis.

    What I found was uncanny. I am trading own money on this system to really make sure it is satisfactory, but so far it works in every respect of the word.

    My fast signal trade account was opened March 10th and I made my first trade 3/20. So far I have completed 3 trades, with a $1448 return after commish on 22.5k account.

    If I am successful, I will put much more of my money in the fund.

    After 6 months, I plan on publishing the results and making the monitor available to others.

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  16. 90 cents

    90 cents buys decent paper.

    C must selling what they can.

    I’m sure the list of loans will find its way to the internets, but I interpret this as desperation.

    Close enough to the end of the quarter that they could find a way to spread the loss over Q1 and Q2.

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  17. boca

    Very interesting Danny.

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  18. gappingandyapping
    gappingandyapping

    I want to believe it but I really can’t until I see the market react. Sorry but I am right there with you but markets can stay irrational much longer than people can stay liquid.

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  19. JakeGint

    Yeah, that sounds interesting is right. I look forward to your results/analysis.

    ________________

    Sawzall — fuck off, ambulance-chasing hump.

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  20. 90 cents

    C has issues.

    Hard to tell which issues are priced in.

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  21. boca

    I’m always up for new ideas (or new ways of looking at the same old data).

    Jake are you working late?

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  22. PleaseKillMe

    C is selling LBO loans, not MBS. I say C got a good deal. With the recession, and probably a severe one, a lot of these LBOs are going to bust. I wouldn’t want to hold the bag here.

    C is doing what they say they would do – get all these leverage assets of their books. Losing 10% is better than losing 30-40%. How can you be worried about making money when you can’t even stop the bleeding.

    But it’s cool. The best thing about this real-estate bubble is that it’s causing the hedge fund bubble.

    Danny, Simon’s fund is down 12% from May 07 to May 08. This former MIT prof hires some of the brightest PHDs in the country. You think you can do better? Granted, you are not trading with billions of dollars so you have that huge edge there.

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  23. Dinosaur Trader

    Negative karma magnet test…

    -DT

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  24. WallStreetLurker
    WallStreetLurker

    Yeah, It’s so great that C was able to sell assets at a discount that under normal market conditions would have been securitized and sold off around par. It makes you wonder what its seriously impaired credit assets are really worth. The only thing that this sale does is give C a tiny bit more of breathing space. Until they (and practically every other broker out there) write down their worthless credit assets, they will do nothing more than gimp along as they are forced to hold risk capital against these “assets” thus tying up capital that could be put to more productive uses. Therefore global liquidity will remain impaired as banks hoard liquidity for this purpose (and others).

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  25. mdawsz

    Jake, you’re a tool, closet commie.

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  26. The Fly

    Hey, any of you overzealous type ever hear of the phrase “go away in May”?

    Well then, that makes for three more weeks of pain.

    Not too long for winning the lotto.

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  27. boca

    DT, too funny! I refuse to participate in your test by giving you karma of any sort hah.

    PleaseKillMe, why don’t you just throw yourself on your sword and stop asking other people to do your dirty work?

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  28. gappingandyapping
    gappingandyapping

    Sell in May and Go Away.

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  29. PleaseKillMe

    “Until they (and practically every other broker out there) write down their worthless credit assets”

    The banks are writing down their assets. They are not hiding these things. These derivatives (MBS, LBOs, CDS, etc.) are valued at mark-to-market. As every quarter goes by, the market price for these things goes down because nobody wants them. There is a liquidity problem in this intra-market.

    All banks are holding these things on margin. I read this week that GS is still operating at 16x margin. If the banks were to write all credit assets off their balance sheet, it would be in the 500 billion to trillion range…more than the bank’s market cap.

    Just read here that C might have to write down another 15-16 bil for Q1. BofA writedown could be 8-10 bil and JPMorgan writedown of 7.5 bil.

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  30. gappingandyapping
    gappingandyapping

    Ken L. Fisher is a douche bag strainer. I would not doubt if he hangs out in men’s bathrooms trolling for cock. Maybe that is why Doug Kass is always smiling.

    Anyway, so we have a cancer vaccine and the stock only pops 20%? What the fuck? A failing bank with the slogan WooHoo! and gay naked men in a bathroom went up 30% on news they needed fucking $7 Billion dollars of cash to stay afloat. Give me a fucking break. But then again all is well and normal in the market right?

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  31. AU CONTRAIR

    Traders won’t be going away in May this year…they have way too much work to do and the markets will be at a critical time….a time to make lots of money. Look for a more active than usual summer trading spree.

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  32. WallStreetLurker
    WallStreetLurker

    PleaseKillMe

    They are not hiding these things? They are writing down their assets? They are marking them to market? Are you even paying attention?

    Have you seen the ginormous amount of assets that have been reclassified as L3? Writedowns are puny relative to where they should be. We are no where near done.

    You truly have no idea what you are talking about. L2 and especially L3 assets are not market to market, jackass

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