Market Minds

“(Do The) Push and Pull (Part 1)” is a 1970 single by Rufus Thomas. This was the only number-one song for Thomas — Billboard Best Selling Soul Singles chart for two weeks in February 1971 — who hit the R&B chart in 1953. Thomas also found some success with the Do The Funky Chicken , and Walking The Dog . I previously mentioned the Stax 50th Anniversary Celebration back in 2007. Recently, Stax came out with a new album, Stax Number Ones (which Amazon sells for $7.97). I was surprised that this Rufus Thomas single was not in the prior Stax collection. Its a perfect groove for getting ready to go out on a rainy Friday night: > (Do the) Push and Pull (Part 1) Rufus Thomas, Stax Number Ones Stax Number Ones by Rufus Thomas Lyrics, live performance, and video after the jump . .

Yes.

Well, I’ve had better weeks than this one. I’m glad it’s over. Everyone enjoy their long Labor Day, and thanks for swinging by!  

One year ago the official unemployment rate was 9.7%. Today it is 9.6%. One year ago U-6 unemployment was 16.8%. Today U-6 is 16.7% click on chart for sharper image For more details on the jobs report, please see Jobs Decrease by 54,000, Rise by 60,000 Excluding Census; Unemployment Rises Slightly to 9.6%; A Look Beneath the Surface For all the trillions of dollars in stimulus and additional trillions of dollars in bank bailouts and trillions of dollars of expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet, this is all we have to show for it. Moreover, the economy is clearly slowing already by many economic reports including new home sales, existing home sales, the regional Fed manufacturing surveys, sentiment measures, and consumer spending trends. The only major discrepancy is ISM. This week, none of that matters. However, I would like to point out that bear market rallies end, not on bad news, but on good news

I was going through all the technical indicators in ProphetCharts today, and I found something rather interesting about the Ribbon Study. Looking at the daily chart, the ribbons (which are made up of sixteen different moving averages) tend to “harden” to show broad turning points, creating strong support or resistances for the price action. I don’t latch on to many technical indicators, but I confess that I found this was thought-provoking:

My pattern work is warning me that all of the action in crude oil off of the Aug 25 low at $70.76 is a digestion period of the major downleg from the Aug 4 high at $82.97 to the Aug 25 low at $70.76. If that proves to be an accurate description of the price movement, then it should be labeled as a “Bear Flag” type of formation, which when complete will resolve itself to the downside with the initiation of a new downleg. The downleg should break both the Aug low ($70.76) and the longer-term support line from the Jan 2009 low, which cuts across the price axis around $71.15. Such a violation of support should trigger serious long liquidation in crude oil. Originally published on MPTrader.com .

You ought to think that the bears have had enough by now – and based on what I’m seeing in the bear bashing blogosphere (BBB™) the bus is getting pretty empty at this point. Now we may see a short term reversal here as this is where retail traders usually start chasing – but anything more sustained is a completely different story. And this is not a disgruntled or discouraged bear speaking – after all I have contrasted bullish evidence with my bearish charts for months now. No, I’m dealing with the facts only – any emotions have long gone by the wayside. Trading this tape is like making it through Combat Marine boot camp – you know it’s gonna suck, so you better smile and enjoy it. But Mole – isn’t this exactly what the boyz want you to do?

Ever wonder which countries have the biggest gold reserves? Which countries produced the most gold? Now, via Money Hacker , you know exactly who and how much: > click for ginormous oversized infographic Source: Money Hacker

Ever wonder which countries have the biggest gold reserves? Which countries produced the most gold? Now, via Money Hacker , you know exactly who and how much: > click for ginormous oversized infographic Source: Money Hacker

This morning the BLS reported a decrease of 64,000 jobs. However, that reflects a decrease of 114,000 temporary census workers. Excluding the census effect, government lost 7,000 jobs. Were the trend to continue, this would be a good thing because Firing Public Union Workers Creates Real Jobs . Unfortunately, politicians and Keynesian clown economists will not see it that way.

I’ve been looking carefully at various charts and I would be sugarcoating it to suggest that the bears aren’t in significant trouble here. This move up from 1037 ES has been very powerful and there is every reason to think it may go higher. Looking at my SPX:VIX daily chart we failed to break the broadening ascending wedge from the May low, and the obvious next wedge target would take us to the 1130 - 1150 area on SPX, which would be little short of disaster for the bear case as the main declining channel from the April high would be convincingly broken: Here’s the main declining channel on SPX. I’m seeing the upper trendline in the 1106 SPX area today and that is close enough that it could be tested today: In the short term I was saying yesterday morning that I was expecting sideways to up chop yesterday and today. We had that yesterday and a small broadening ascending wedge formed on the ES 5min over the last day that could take us up to test that main declining trendline today: I’m still favoring more upside on ES and downside on USD today.

September 3, 2010

George Mobus teaches computer science to undergraduate and graduate students at the Institute of Technology, Computing & Software Systems at the University of Washington, Tacoma. His background is quite broad: He has a PhD in Computer Science, an MBA in Decision Science, and a baccalaureate in Zoology (with substantial coursework in math, chemistry, and oceanography) from UW Seattle. His academic focus has been Biology: Specifically, evolutionary, cognitive, neuro-psychology — how the brain works to produce the mind and how did it come about through evolution. He blogs at Question Everything , where this piece was originally published. Enjoy: ~~~ Sapient Judgment Has Weaknesses In my working papers on sapience I describe one of the components of sapience as judgment and provide a brief overview of what role it plays in wisdom. I briefly mentioned some weakness or limitations to ordinary human judgment in that work, but left it a little vague

George Mobus teaches computer science to undergraduate and graduate students at the Institute of Technology, Computing & Software Systems at the University of Washington, Tacoma. His background is quite broad: He has a PhD in Computer Science, an MBA in Decision Science, and a baccalaureate in Zoology (with substantial coursework in math, chemistry, and oceanography) from UW Seattle. His academic focus has been Biology: Specifically, evolutionary, cognitive, neuro-psychology — how the brain works to produce the mind and how did it come about through evolution. He blogs at Question Everything , where this piece was originally published. Enjoy: ~~~ Sapient Judgment Has Weaknesses In my working papers on sapience I describe one of the components of sapience as judgment and provide a brief overview of what role it plays in wisdom. I briefly mentioned some weakness or limitations to ordinary human judgment in that work, but left it a little vague. In this paper I want to go into more detail about how judgment works in the making of decisions and especially what some of the remaining problems with it are with respect to the current state of sapience in Homo sapiens . Sapient vs. Pre-sapient Judgment Sapience involves the capacity to influence good decisions (and give good advice) by applying judgment to complex situations. Decision making processing is the main job of intelligence as indicated in the working papers .

Now this isn’t good… “The NMI (Non-Manufacturing Index) registered 51.5 percent in August, 2.8 percentage points lower than the 54.3 percent registered in July, indicating continued growth in the non-manufacturing sector but at a slower rate. Still growth, so good, right?

I sold my SP position at 1104 for about 55 points profit. Before I return to the states in late September, I will be working on a financial establishment in Turkey. During the time, I won’t be able to maintain my focus on the markets. Therefore I exited my position after the open which I think is a good place to sell some. My latest projection on the markets is still valid. OEX 525 area, sometime in Sept-Oct should mark the next swing high. Good luck.

How Wall Street Made The Crisis Worse” by NPR’s Planet Money in collaboration with ProPublica This song, fondly entitled “We Didn’t See It Comin”, by The Gregory Brothers with some help from various titans of finance, not to mention the FCIC, scrutinizing in the key of B minor. Planet Money: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/ ProPublica: http://www.propublica.org/ Lyrics after the jump . .  . > Hat tip Financial Philosopher Were you pulling funny business while you were doing business, with everyone’s money on the line? Some of the activities we undertook .. contributed to the prevailing mood at the time. So did you know right then it would all come crashing in, that something funky was cookin? We didn’t know it then, or even today, when it actually crossed over into bubble territory. So you didn’t see it coming, you didn’t see it coming, well didya see it coming, did anybody see it coming

> Source: Bear Days of August Might be Over, Says Barry Ritholtz Stacy Curtin Yahoo Tech Ticker Sep 02, 2010 http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/bear-days-of-august-might-be-over-says-barry-ritholtz-535389.html