Matt Blackman

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    • Mon Nov 10th 12:49 PM
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      President-Elect Obama and the U.S. Dollar
      Interesting analysis. It is certainly not technically based. You mention that jobs losses are a lagging indicator - with very few exceptions all fundamental indicators lag. But your average number of jobs losses per month is wrong, the actual number is 93,900 (see chart 2 at tradesystemguru.com/co...). Also not sure about what you mean about some of the secondary statistics showing improvement. The latest ISM number of 38.7 is well below the contraction threshold and the lowest reading in more than 2 decades (see chart 1 at tradesystemguru.com/co... ) .

      Another major challenge facing any sustained dollar rally is the deficit. If it soars to or above $1 trillion as projected, who is going to buy US Treasuries in sufficient amounts to finance it? Right now Treasury needs to sell more than $30 billion per month just to pay the roughly $400 billion annual deficit. That number will soar to above $80 billion/month in 2009 (based on the cost of the current crisis and Obama fiscal promises) and as you can see from the latest Net Treasure Income Flows, they are having trouble doing that now (see tradesystemguru.com/co... ).

      I also agree with the above poster. At this point, who is in the White House is relatively unimportant for the time being. But if he follows through on his many promises, most of which are pro-tax & spend and anti-business, it will mean any recovery will take considerably longer to take effect.

      Maybe the dollar will continue to rally from here but your article did little to explain how. With a target rate of 1% (with an effective fed funds rate of 0.30%) the US has the lowest interest rates of any OECD country with the exception of Japan and will bring that rate to zero based on the strategy in Washington.
      View article »
    • Thu Nov 6th 13:11 PM
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      Recommended Stock Allocation Continues To Tick Lower
      As your chart demonstrates, analysts recommendations lag the market by two years...
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    • Thu Nov 6th 12:52 PM
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      Highs vs. Lows: Market Continues to Show Strength
      Brett
      Just curious what a long-term chart of the above looks like during major bear markets like 1974-83?
      View article »
    • Thu Nov 6th 12:49 PM
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      Financial Meltdown: The Conventional Wisdom
      Felix, I agree with Stimpy. Your understanding of derivatives is poor at best. The only reason Shiller's book "is not working" is because housing derivatives are relatively new and volume low. Your argument falls apart as volumes pick up and I for one prefer to have the ability to short or go long the housing market without having to buy and sell property to do so. The only traditional way to make a bet to the short side on housing before housing futures was to sell property. Let's hope Shiller is successful in talking his book and increasing volume to a level that makes them thoroughly liquid.
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    • Thu Nov 6th 12:37 PM
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      Toronto Stock Exchange Displaying Strength
      Not sure where you learned your technical analysis but the TSX is not displaying any kind of strength from the charts you exhibit above. And I agree with the comment above, it is WAY too early to expect inflation to begin to play a part in propelling the TSX higher.

      But one other key point you miss altogether. My research indicates that the TSX performs even worse than the SPX or DJIA in the two US post election years. Since 1950 97% of TSX gains came in the 26 months leading up to US elections versus just 3% in the 22 months afterward. Not very good odds from an historic perspective and as a trader, probability is one of the best tools available.
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    • Wed Nov 5th 12:00 PM
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      'Full House' Buy Signal for European Equities
      Great, but 3 long signals and 2 short signals does not a statistically significant system make... Now if he had 50 or 100 trades and the success rate still looked good, then it might be time to give it credence.
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    • Tue Nov 4th 12:48 PM
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      Q3 Earnings Growth Not All That Bad
      I'm having a hard time reconciling this report with one from the Wall Street Journal this week that showed Q2-08 earnings were down 42% versus Q3-07 for the 1837 companies that had reported so far and the decline has been increasing as earnings season has progressed.

      So is that "not all that bad"??
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    • Mon Oct 20th 14:34 PM
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      Is Short Covering Really Propping Up the Markets?
      A longer term study by Bespoke Investment Group found that rallies over the last five years have been led by the decile of stocks with the highest short interest. The double-edge is that they also led to the downside when the market turned down...
      Takeaway, trade these stocks if we are in a bull market in rallies but its a tough game to try to play in bear markets...
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    • Mon Oct 20th 01:07 AM
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      The Difference Between 1993 and 2009
      Well done Anton. And then there is the problem with Obama's promise to raise corporate taxes and 'punish' US multinationals. The US is the only industrialized country that taxes based on citizenship instead of domicile and that has created a raft of headaches for US multinational corporations. His plan to scrap "tax breaks" that Congress has levied in an attempt to make them competitive will be very counterproductive to the ability of US corporations to compete.. but then few seem to care. For more on this see sfomag.com/article.asp...
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    • Fri Oct 17th 12:22 PM
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      Vouchers Against Forclosures?
      Why not just nationalize home ownership and become a socialist state? We seem to be heading that way anyway and ideas like Thoma's clearly take us further in that direction.

      Sure, everyone who bought a home in a rapidly rising market, mortgaged themselves to the hilt and are now seeing home values fall bear no responsibility for making a bad decision. I call it victim economics. Let's blame someone else for our financial woes. We are idiots and unable to make wise financial decisions on our own or take responsibility for those decisions. This approach is a pathetic indictment of where we have come. It does not bode well for our financial future as a nation.
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    • Wed Oct 15th 13:30 PM
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      Can We Prevent Asset Bubbles?
      Thoma;
      I find it hard to believe just how fiscally naive you can be. Your supercilious sermon and conclusions assume that government agencies like the Fed, do their level best to adjust indicators and economic monitors purely based on the data and completely and rather stupidly in my opinion, ignore the fact that there are external forces at work, like politicians wanting to get re-elected for example, that result in these indicators being grossly distorted. I think it is pretty much accepted among serious data-response driven market participants that the vast majority of economic indicators generated by government agencies are manipulated past the point of usefulness in any real sense.

      In other words, because these indicators (like GDP, CPI, PCE etc) grossly distort the true picture, relying on them to gauge the true picture is a fool's game. And any system based on these indicators to short-circuit the build up of bubbles will be virtually useless as a result.
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    • Tue Oct 14th 14:26 PM
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      Too Late to Short SPY? An Historical Perspective
      Has anyone found a reliable and timely source of S&P500 trailing-ten year data? Robert Shiller updates his excel spreadsheet from time to time but the latest data is to August 2008...

      According to the latest article about this topic at online.wsj.com/article... the TTY SPX PE was 15 as of Oct 10. It was 20 in August.

      Many thanks in advance..

      Cheers,
      Matt Blackman
      View article »
    • Sun Oct 12th 22:05 PM
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      The Case for a Bounce
      Kathy;
      Curious about your comments about that the insurers who bought the CDSs will now have the $270 billion to pay their Lehman claims. Where do you think this money will come from? The US government has already committed to more than $2 trillion, where is another $270 billion coming from?
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    • Thu Oct 9th 01:53 AM
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      California: Canary in the Economic Coal Mine
      I'd be curious to know what percentage of sales in California now are cheap foreclosures. With more than 300,000 every month nationwide and a lot of those in Cal, it has to be skewing sales data heavily....

      I have found that new sales generally lead existing homes and we certainly aren't seeing that yet.
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    • Thu Oct 9th 01:49 AM
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      Bailout Backfire and the Ticking Debt Time Bomb
      Interesting point about LEH Ed but then that wasn't a bailout in the traditional sense of the term - it was basically let go and got very little federal or Fed help...
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