Corporate “Cash” – Cheering the Asset and Ignoring the Liability

Monday, August 9th, 2010

This article is a guest contribution by John Hussman, Hussman Funds.

Just a note – if there is one weekly comment that I hope that regular readers of these comments will not miss, it is last week’s piece – Valuing the S&P 500 Using Forward Operating Earnings. Economic risks and credit strains will come and go, but one thing that will remain important to investors over the very long-term is the ability to properly assess stock valuations. I know that last week’s comment had more math than usual, which isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. But it’s nothing that you can’t do on a standard calculator, and even if you don’t use the equations, I strongly encourage investors to read the comments carefully.

It’s not always obvious to the listener when an analyst’s argument is full of holes, but you should always be on red alert when a single year of earnings is taken, at face value, as the basis for market valuation. If you passively accept that premise without training your neurons to revolt like little Frenchmen at the gates of the Bastille, you’ll be at the mercy of all sorts of false and misleading claims about valuation based on models that have absolutely no predictive reliability in historical data. In the absence of historical evidence, people can say anything they want without accountability.

If there is one thing that is singularly responsible for the abysmal returns of the S&P 500 over the past 12 years, it is the ludicrous set of valuation “models” that Wall Street has repeatedly foisted onto an uninformed public in order to sell them on the notion that dangerously overvalued markets were actually “cheap.” Knowledge is your best defense. Valuation matters.

Corporate “cash on the sidelines”

Four years ago, in There’s No Such Thing as Idle Cash on the Sidelines, I observed:

“Investors should not believe that the “cash on the balance sheets” of corporations might suddenly be used, in aggregate, for new investments and capital spending. That cash on their balance sheets has already been deployed as loans to the Federal government and to other companies. Now, yes, if the government runs a surplus and retires its debt, in aggregate, or the other companies that borrowed the money generate new earnings and then pay off their debt, in aggregate, then those new savings that retire the T-bills and commercial paper then make it possible for the recipients to finance new investment, in aggregate. So as usual, savings equals investment, and new savings can finance new investment. But what investors often point to and call “cash on the sidelines” is really saving that has already been deployed and used either to offset the dissavings of government or to finance investments made by other companies. Once those savings have been spent, you can’t, in aggregate, use the IOUs (in the form of money market securities) to do it again.”

Now, as then, analysts are pointing to an apparent pile of corporate “cash on the sidelines” as these holdings of debt securities somehow make new corporate spending more likely. In order to evaluate this argument, it’s necessary to understand that what is being called cash is actually a stack of IOUs for money that has generally already been spent by other companies or by the government.

Tags: Balance Sheets, Bastille, Bill Gross, Cup Of Tea, Economic Risks, Face Value, Frenchmen, Hussman Funds, John Hussman, Listener, Market Valuation, Misleading Claims, Neurons, Premise, Red Alert, Revolt, Sidelines, Stock Valuations, Strains, Uninformed Public, Valuation Models
Posted in Bonds, Commodities, Markets | No Comments »

Not All Oil and Gas ETFs are the Same

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

While there are numerous compelling reasons to invest in natural gas and crude oil exchange traded funds (ETFs), for buy and hold investors, returns can be diminished in a market environment known as contango. Contango exists when the price of future delivery is higher than the spot price. For an investor using futures there is no way to eliminate the impact of contago on returns, however using ETFs that track a deferred futures contract can reduce this structural decay.

In order to avoid taking actual delivery of crude oil or natural gas, many ETFs that track these important commodities need to roll over their contracts on a regular basis. If you’re an investor in oil for example, while the price of spot crude oil may increase, it will generally have to increase by more than the premium paid on the next month’s futures contract (the rollover contract) in order for the ETF to increase in value at the time the contracts roll over.

It is almost impossible for an individual investor in the futures market to eliminate the effects of contango – there is no free lunch in commodity investing. Contango takes into account several factors including, where applicable, storage costs for the physical commodity. Any mispricing between the spot price of a physically held asset and a futures contract is generally eliminated by market arbitrage.

ETFs that track the price of crude oil futures are designed to be a convenient and cost effective means to access the futures market for investors, limiting risk to the amount invested and not subjecting investors to margin calls.

Minimizing contango with deferred futures contracts

As an example, the following chart shows that at end-of-day trading on June 25, 2010, investors would have to pay roughly a 57 cent premium to buy the next month futures contract in crude oil. As the chart shows this is quite a low premium based on recent trading activity. Earlier this year, the premium to roll over into the next month’s contract was nearly $5.00.

Historical premiums for 1 month crude oil contract

Compare that to the premium paid to rollover the Winter-Term NYMEX® Crude Oil Contract which is tracked by the Horizons BetaPro Winter-Term NYMEX® Crude Oil ETF (TSX: HUC). HUC provides exposure to the Winter-Term NYMEX® Crude Oil con­tract which expires in December of each year. HUC rolls its posi­tions in this contract every June over several days. This annual roll can greatly diminish the premium the investor pays to have long term exposure to crude oil prices.

The chart from Bloomberg below highlights the premium that would have been paid to roll into the December 2011 crude oil contract. An investor would have been required to pay a pre­mium of $2.86 – a substantially higher premium than the near month contract rollover, however this is a one-time charge. HUC will not pay any premiums to roll over to another contract for 12 months. The investor could take that $2.86 premium and divide it by 12 to determine the monthly premium paid through the course of the contract.

Tags: Arbitrage, Commodities, Crude Oil Futures, Day Trading, ETF, ETFs, Exchange Traded Funds, Futures Contract, Futures Contracts, Futures Market, Individual Investor, Market Environment, Natural Gas, Oil and Gas, Oil Exchange, Physical Commodity, Price Of Crude Oil, Price Of Crude Oil Futures, Several Factors, Storage Costs, There Is No Free Lunch
Posted in Commodities, Markets | No Comments »

Macro Blues Overshadow Crude Oil

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

This post is a guest contribution by Dian Chu, market analyst, trader and author of the Economic Forecasts and Opinions blog.

Crude oil has been trading within the range of $75-$80 for the fourth consecutive week, with investors now focusing on a slowing economy and rising inventories in the United States, one of the top two oil consumers in the world.

However, the latest data indications from these two areas are not at all encouraging, and I will discuss some of them in the following sections.

Rising inventories
The latest EIA inventory report for the week ended July 23 showed a build of 7.3 million barrels in crude when the market expectation was for it to decline. The crude stocks level is now above the 5-year average, while crude product inventories including gasoline and distillate also increased. (See graph from the EIA.)

Even more troubling …
However, even more troubling is the fact that the inventory build has continued despite the following:

A refinery utilization of 90.6%, close to the three-year high of 91.5% hit the week before.

A recovering 4-week average gasoline demand of 9.632 million b/d, just about 282.000 b/d lower than the all-time high of 9.681 million b/d in July 2007 (Fig. 1).

50% OPEC quota compliance
Most of the build may be attributed to imports, which hit the highest level since August 2006. A Reuters survey shows OPEC quota compliance rate dipped just below 50% in July (mostly due to a big export jump from Nigeria), which is also reflected in the Gulf Coast region inventory numbers.

Although the extra OPEC production does not appear to have negatively impacted the price of oil yet, it is one of the major contributing factors to the rising stocks (Fig. 2).

GDP blues
The U.S. economy grew 2.4% in Q2, less than the consensus forecast of 2.5%, while Q1 GDP was revised up to 3.7% (from 2.7%). But excluding the business inventories rebuilding and adjusting, the true Q2 GDP growth would be less than 2%.

Of course, one quarter of less than 3% growth post-crisis does not look too bad on its own.  Nevertheless, considering the U.S. GDP went from 5% (revised down) in Q4 2009, to 3.7% in Q1 and 2.4% in Q2, a worrisome downward trend emerges − the economy is supposed to be getting stronger, instead of this fast deceleration seen in the past three quarters.

Labor market and consumer blues
Consumer spending drives about 70% of the U.S. economy, and the stubbornly soft labor market does not bode well for consumer spending.

The national unemployment rate is hovering close to 10%. With that, workers have no pricing power, are constantly stressed over job security and thus becoming thrifty. This is reflected in the rising consumer savings rate − 6.2% in Q2 − and the meager 1.6% year-over-year wage and salary increase in Q2 for all workers within the private industry.

On the other hand, companies, faced with high uncertainty in the economy and government policy, are reluctant to hire full time and rely primarily on “streamlining” and holding down headcount to boost profits.

Now, according to a Bloomberg survey, many economists are expecting unemployment to rise in July with the continuing cooling in the manufacturing and services sectors. This trend will likely keep a lid on household spending in the near to medium term.

Housing blues
No economy can stage a meaningful comeback without housing’s participation. The latest housing numbers are sending out quite the opposite message.

In June, new-home sales were 330,000 units, the second lowest on record, while new Fannie and Freddie foreclosures increased sharply− up 21% in June from May.

With the expiration of first-time buyer credit, and 25% of the nation’s mortgages underwater, a further fall in home values and more delinquencies/defaults could significantly increase the risk of a double dip in the real estate sector, with the second half of 2010 being the most critical period.

Credit blues
The level of lending is an important factor in economic recovery as consumers and small business rely heavily on credit lines to fund major spending.

However, billions of TARP infusion and guaranteed profits from the Fed’s almost free money have failed to incentivize banks to increase lending.  Instead, banks are hoarding cash to shore up their capitals for more future bad loans and/or seeking higher returns through equities and commodities vs. lending.

A WSJ analysis of the 19 biggest TARP recipient banks published in April concluded that:

“Excluding mortgage refinancings, consumer lending dropped by about one-third between October and February. Commercial lending slumped by about 40% over that period, the data indicate.”

China blues
China has been the main driver of the commodity price since the financial crisis. While Beijing says China’s full-year expansion in 2010 is still expected to be as much as 9.5%, recent data indicate China’s economy is slowing down mainly due to Beijing clamping down on property markets.

One indicator with more significant crude oil demand implication is that China’s manufacturing (PMI) grew at the slowest pace in 17 months in July.

A synchronized global slowdown
The macroeconomic indications discussed here suggest we could see a synchronized global slowdown in the second half, with developed nations mired with debt and emerging countries cooling off to prevent bubbles.

At the same time, the United States is undergoing a longer-than-expected deflationary cycle insufficient for meaningful job creation and true demand growth. This also increases the odds of another recession in the U.S.

With the U.S. summer driving season basically over for this year and a slowdown in China, crude oil is expected to be under increasing pressure through the rest of the year, unless there are new strong indications that the U.S. economy has truly turned the corner.

Nevertheless, as the world’s reliance on fossil fuel will remain at 46% by 2050 (IEA projection), any price drop should provide investors with a good level to get into long positions.

Source: Dian Chu, Economic Forecasts and Opinions, August 2, 2010.

Tags: Business Inventories, Commodities, Compliance Rate, Crude Oil, Crude Stocks, Dian, Economic Forecasts, Eia, GDP Growth, Inventory Numbers, Inventory Report, Macro, Market Analyst, Oil Consumers, Opec, Opec Production, Price Of Oil, Product Inventories, Q2 Gdp, Refinery, Reuters Survey, Rising Stocks
Posted in China, Commodities, Markets | No Comments »

Gold Market Diary (August 2, 2010)

Friday, July 30th, 2010

Gold Market Diary (August 2, 2010)

For the week, spot gold closed at $1,181.05 per ounce, down $8.15, or 0.69 percent for the week. Gold equities, as measured by the Philadelphia Gold & Silver Index, fell 2.13 percent. The U.S. Trade-Weighted Dollar Index decreased 1.03 percent.

Strengths

• The U.S. unit of ETF Securities, a global ETF issuer specializing in commodities, filed papers with the SEC to market a gold exchange-traded fund that would be the first to store its bullion in a Singapore vault.
• A poll of 55 analysts and traders showed expectations for gold prices in 2011 have risen by nearly 7 percent to a median of $1,228 per ounce, and 2010 gold expectations have risen 4 percent to a median of $1,197 per ounce.
• Jamie Sokalsky, the CFO of the world’s largest gold producer, recently noted the concerns that pushed the gold price to record highs above $1,200 per ounce have not been addressed despite the weakened gold price within the past weeks.

Weaknesses

• A congressional subcommittee has been asked to investigate the growing backlog in foreign procurement of U.S. bullion and collectors’ precious metals coin blanks manufactured by the U.S. Mint.
• The gold price fell to a three month low on Tuesday to around $1,160 per ounce due to fear abatement, central bank tightening, and ETF liquidation.
• Seasonally, the next natural catalyst for gold will be the return of jewelry manufactures as we close out the summer. In the mean time, the gold market may be relatively flat.

Opportunities

• UBS recently stated “We believe that ongoing pressure on sovereign debt markets, combined with persistent concerns over private sector credit contraction will raise the spectre of debt monetization repeatedly over the next few years. We expect that this background will remain very supportive for gold prices over the period.”
• Earnings reporting season for gold companies is in full swing. What is interesting is the number of companies that have established a dividend or raised their dividend payout, which should give these companies greater appeal to mainstream investors.
• The attraction of dividend payments along with gold companies starting to be compared on other fundamental valuation metrics such as PE ratios is not a sign that there is “bubble in gold company valuations”.

Threats

• The debate around the nationalism of South African mines has created “great uncertainty” with investors, and could even see the development of some projects essentially be put on hold, until after the ruling the African National Congress’s policy review conference in 2012.
• Deutsche Bank believes the “gold price weakness has been driven more by a liquidation in a net length among the investor community than a structural change in market fundamentals, and history suggests investor de-leveraging can persist for another month.”
• St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard commented that the economic outlook was unusually uncertain. He further noted, “The U.S. is closer to a Japanese-style outcome today than at any other time in recent history…”

Tags: Coin Blanks, Commodities, Congressional Subcommittee, Debt Markets, Dollar Index, Exchange Traded Fund, Gold Companies, Gold Equities, Gold Exchange Traded Fund, Gold Market, Gold Price, Gold Prices, Gold Producer, Market Diary, Natural Catalyst, Philadelphia Gold, precious metals, Reporting Season, Silver Index, Spot Gold, U S Mint
Posted in Commodities, Gold, Markets | No Comments »

Commodity Snapshot (Bespoke)

Friday, July 30th, 2010

This note is a guest contribution from Bespoke Investment Group.

Below we provide trading range charts of ten major commodities.  In each chart, the green shading represents between two standard deviations above and below the 50-day moving average.  Moves above or below the green zone are considered overbought or oversold.  As shown, oil is currently at the top end of its trading range, while gold has moved into oversold territory.  Silver is also at the bottom of its trading range, while platinum and copper are at the top of their ranges.  And wheat and copper have done exceptionally well recently.  Wheat has basically gone vertical, and coffee has made a significant breakout out of a long-term sideways trading pattern.

Copyright (c) Bespoke Investment Group

Tags: Bespoke Investment Group, Breakout, coffee, Commodities, Commodity, Copper, Gold, Green Zone, Guest Contribution, Platinum, Range Charts, Shading, Snapshot, Standard Deviations, Wheat
Posted in Commodities, Gold, Markets | No Comments »

Robert Shiller – A Cautious Outlook For Stocks

Friday, July 30th, 2010

Robert Shiller – A Cautious Outlook For Stocks

July 9, 2010 – Robert Shiller, Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics, Yale University, is interviewed by Dan Richards, ClientInsights.ca.

Highlights/Transcript

Robert Shiller: Valuations are on the cautious side.

Its hard to predict the market.

A) His work comes from long-term historical studies on price-to-earnings ratios,
B) The iffy situation in the world economy right now.

First, P/E ratios – on his website, Shiller has his P/E ratio plotted, which is Price divided by 10-year earnings, going back to 1881.

RS: Its [Shiller P/E] had many ups and downs, and it is a little bit on the high side, today.

Dan Richards: The normal thing to do is to compare the price to the last 12 months of earnings, or forecast earnings. Why does Shiller focus on 10-year of past earnings, adjusted for inflation?

RS: Twelve-month earnings are too volatile, and tied up with recessions – suppose we went a little further and went to quarterly earnings – as the denominator, then we would have blown up in many cases; recently they’ve been negative. We’ve never had a year of negative earnings on the S&P, but we sure could some time and then the isn’t even defined.

I think a ten year average is a sensible, conservative benchmark for what the fundamental value of earnings power of companies is.

DR: It takes up the short term fluctuations.

RS: In my work with John Campbell, we found that in going back to 1881, that ratio seems to predict future ten year returns; its not just predicting the next day or next month, it’s long term.

When the ratio has been very high like it was in 1929, or 2000, it did badly. And when it was low, like it was in 1920, or 1933, or 1980, 1982, those were times when the market did very well.

Its simple. What goes up, comes down.

DR: What’s the long term average price-to-earnings multiple based on ten years earnings?

RS: It’s about 15 times, depending on which period you’re looking at. If you raise your sample period up to [the year] 2000 it would be higher than that.

The ratio got up to 46 [times 10-yr. earnings] in 2000. That’s when he wrote his book, “Irrational Exuberance.”

I [Shiller] thought that something was amiss then; turns out, [he doesn't like to make forecasts like this all the time], when it gets so wild and crazy, its time to write a book.

The long-term average is about 15 times.

Our [Shiller's] measure currently points to 22 times 10-yr. earnings. It’s high, but its not super high.

DR: Wharton’s Jeremy Siegel contends that the earnings of the market have been dramatically altered by the financial crisis, in companies like AIG and other financial firms (i.e. banks). To what extent does that skew the results of the “Shiller P/E”?

RS: It’s certainly true that the market’s earnings have been exceptionally volatile recently, as he said, we just had a quarter of negative earnings, but he thinks it would be difficult to be systematic in correcting for that because going back a hundred years, its happened before; they’ve had write-offs, they’ve done funny things.

I don’t know that anyone can be authoritative, making judgements like that.

DR: The second point that Siegel made is in relation to the interest rate environment. His comment was that, based on his research, that periods that have high interest rates, the [market] P/E multiple, historically, has been much lower, and in periods of low interest rates, such as we have today, that multiples, the normal multiples, that is, would be significantly higher, and that we should be adjusting for that in terms of what a fair value is. What’s Shiller’s view on that?

RS: This is a complicated point. One thing is whether we look at nominal or real interest rates. He assumes that Jeremy Siegel is looking at real, like the TIPS in the US or the inflation index. But we don’t have a history of that before 1997.

Look at nominal rates. If you look at nominal long-term rates and you compare them with the P/E ratio back to 1881, there were periods where it looked Jeremy was right, but it hasn’t been consistently right. I think that’s a half truth.

The other thought is, okay, long term interest rates are very low now, so that would seem to say, the stock market is very high, and also commodities and everything else should be high. There’s some truth to that, but the other question is, how reliably are those long term rates going to stay low?

The real question that people really want to know the answer to is how do we forecast the market?

I don’t think that anyone has found that long term rates offer a significant way of forecasting the market.

DR: Last question. You mentioned that the long-term average multiple is 15 times 10-year earnings, currently its about 22 times, which you said, is a bit on the high side, not egregiously… Based on that, what kind of returns could investors expect over a 10 year period, coming from an environment like the one we’re in today?

RS: Based on our forecasting regressions, its a tough call, whether stocks or bonds will pay more over that period. Its not an inspired time.

The Campbell-Shiller forecasting regression suggests positive returns, but not teriffic.

Tags: 12 Months, Arthur M Okun, Benchmark, Cautious Side, Denominator, Forecast Earnings, Fundamental Value, Hamble, inflation, John Campbell, Little Bit, Quarterly Earnings, Rati, Ratios, Recessions, Robert Shiller, Term Fluctuations, Ups, Ups And Downs, Valuations, World Economy, Yale University, Year 2000
Posted in Bonds, Commodities, Markets | No Comments »

Another ETF Eye-opener

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

This article is a guest contribution by Frank Holmes, CEO, CIO, U.S. Global Investors.

Billions of dollars are pouring into exchange-traded funds (ETFs), but it seems there is still much for investors to learn about how these funds work.

We’ve written in the past about ETF liquidity issues that hurt investors during the May 6 “flash crash,” the trading costs that can drain away real returns for investors and the impact on investors when ETFs trade at a premium or a discount to their underlying net asset value.

This week’s cover story in Bloomberg Businessweek presents another eye-opener about ETFs. The story urges readers to steer clear of commodity ETFs, calling them “America’s worst investment.”

That could be something of an overstatement, but the article does bring up good points about the risks of investing in ETFs that invest in commodity futures.

One of these risks is “contango,” which is when the future delivery contracts for a particular commodity cost more than the near-term contracts. The ETFs don’t want to take physical delivery of commodities, so they sell their futures contracts before they expire and use the proceeds to buy more futures with more distant expiration dates.

Businessweek cites a contango example for crude oil futures affecting ETFs – in May, they sold June contracts with an average price of about $76 per barrel and bought July contracts with an average price of about $80 per barrel. The upshot is that the ETFs had to pay $4 per barrel more to replace the same merchandise – this represents an immediate loss to investors.

The crude oil market is still in contango: at midday today, the near-month September contract was $78, the October contract was $78.45 and the November contract was priced at $79.14. If contango is maintained, the ETFs that buy and sell crude oil futures are likely looking at more losses ahead.

Businessweek also points out professional traders know this weakness of these commodity ETFs and make a lot of money exploiting it.

ETFs can have a place in many investment strategies, but they are still not well understood by investors and that’s a big risk. Before buying, investors need to know what they are getting into so they can make the best decisions consistent with their investment goals.

Tags: Asset Value, Billions Of Dollars, Businessweek, Commodities, Commodity Etfs, Commodity Futures, contango, Crude Oil Futures, Crude Oil Market, Delivery Contracts, Exchange Traded Funds, Eye Opener, Frank Holmes, Futures Contracts, Investment Strategies, liquidity, Midday, Overstatement, Physical Delivery, Professional Traders, Term Contracts, U S Global Investors, Upshot
Posted in Commodities, Economy & Markets | No Comments »

Thoughts on the Long-term Outlook for Inflation (Rosenberg)

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

This article is a guest contribution by David Rosenberg, Chief Market Economist, Gluskin Sheff.

MARKET COMMENT

A whole 1 point decline in the S&P 500 and for the bears it was like winning in extra innings after a three-week losing streak (and in contrast to the rally days, volume on the NYSE expanded 10% yesterday). We received all sorts of emails yesterday that Barton Biggs had reloaded the gun and moved from 50% to a 75% weighting in equities. Maybe that was the kiss of death. Maybe we have again stalled out around the 200-day moving average. Or maybe the market is simply the most overbought it has been in nearly three months, according to some oscillators.

Perhaps, like Barton, everyone has gone long the market again and we recall a survey that we saw over the weekend that PM’s are now 68% weighted in equities in their balanced funds. We can also see from the CFTC data that the net speculative position (futures and options) at the Merc has swung from a net short position of 40,000 contracts in mid-June to a net long position of 3,300 contracts currently. That sort of move will certainly move the needle. Ditto for the 1.2% decline in NYSE short interest over the past month. In the past two weeks, Market Vane bullish sentiment on equities has moved up 5 points. It’s all good. Meanwhile, consumer confidence has rolled back to a five-month low (what does Main Street know, anyway?).

Earnings on the surface seem to be doing just fine but at the same time, we can see that the economy slowed visibly as Q2 came to a close and the July data are telling us to expect a slightly different tone to Q3 guidance. There was a nifty article on Market News yesterday showing how 82% of the corporate universe beating EPS estimates is standard fare and that only 68% are doing so in terms of revenues (a figure lower than we saw in the second quarter of 2008 when the economy was knee-deep in recession). Sales are up the grand total of 9% YoY and this being compounded off a -14% trend this time last year – so margins continue to stretch out to the limits and one has to wonder how long that is going to last. Who knows? Maybe profits end up going to 100% of national income and labour’s share totally vanishes.

I was asked yesterday in an interview how I respond to criticism for missing the surge in the equity market. Well, for one thing, those that were long in 2009 got their clients killed in 2008 and it’s still not even a wash. Second, I was recommending credit and commodities last year, not cash, and these strategies played out well. There are always ways to make money without having to go whole hog into the stock market (if you think I’m bearish, there are others who make me look like Jim Carrey – have a read of “Doomsday Shelters Making a Comeback” on page 3A of the USA Today).

More to the point – we can get 80% rallies in a secular bear phase, and to be totally honest, I have never billed myself as a market timer. There are others here at GS+A that do that much better than me. The Nikkei has enjoyed 260,000 rally points in the past twenty years and the market is still down 70%. If you partake of these bear market rallies, know when to get out – or at least sell call options and collect the premium. It is amazing how people are still stuck in this belief that the 80% rally off the lows is still somehow a prevailing market condition – the S&P 500 peaked on April 26th and even with the recovery of the past few weeks, the S&P 500 at 1113, with all due respect, is no higher now than it was on November 16th of last year.

Tags: Barton Biggs, Bullish Sentiment, Cftc, Chief Market, Consumer Confidence, David Rosenberg, Eps Estimates, Extra Innings, Futures And Options, India, Kiss Of Death, Market Economist, Market Vane, Nifty Article, Oscillators, Point Decline, Rally Days, Short Interest, Short Position, Speculative Position, Term Outlook
Posted in Bonds, China, Commodities, India, Markets | No Comments »