$$$..Dollar up...Gold down......Hedge Funds Collapse

All debt must be paid off, some debt paid off in a hurry and some paid off over time. But you pay off debt with dollars, and if there´s too much debt outstanding and there´s pressure to pay off that debt -- that´s going to create a demand for dollars.

The greater the debt, the greater the potential demand for dollars to pay off that debt.

Good or bad for US Gov bonds?

In the meantime, the hottest item around is the US dollar. Why is the dollar at a high for the year? Good question, and I haven´t read about or seen the definitive answer yet. Of course, the market answer is "more buyers than sellers," but how does that help us?

I´ve been saying all along that when everybody is invested on one side of the equation -- watch out. And it´s true, the biggest "given" around a month or so ago was that "shorting the dollar was the guaranteed path to profits." And it´s true, even Buffett and Gates announced to the world that the dollar had nowhere to go but down.

In this business, when everybody agrees on one thesis, it´s almost a certain that this "thesis" has been fully discounted by the market. Thus everybody followed what was "agreed upon" and took a position against the dollar. So yes, the dollar´s strength could simply be a matter of driving the dollar shorts to the wall.



Now I´m wondering if what we´re seeing is a sudden demand for dollars. I´m wondering if what we´re seeing is a short squeeze against the dollar brought on by hints of deflation. Remember, in deflation dollars become scarcer -- and in deflation debt becomes a dirty word.

If, in fact, deflation is in the wind, there´s going to be a mad rush to pay off debt, and that´s going to generate an urgent demand for dollars. Could that be what we´re seeing now, as the dollar rises to a high for the year? It´s sure got me wondering.

So do we have the two worst combinations -- a deflationary squeeze on debt and a huge short position against the dollar? Whew.


[link to 321energy.com]

Debt retirement grows like a stellar black hole. Once it gets started it sucks in everything and everybody. It´s money vanishing into hyperspace at expontially increasing velosity.

While the worth of your assets plummet and keep on going, the cost of your debt heads towards infinity. Yes Clarence, deflation is a "bad thing".

It will certainly be a bumpy road ahead.

A friend of mine....a retired widow has a nominal amount of her savings in gold mining stock, TGLDX. It´s been taking some serious drops lately....is she safe to hold on to it?....I´d hate to see it go down much further. Is it good for her to stay put? Any info is appreciated. Thanks.

Here is something to read, its short and to the point.

Good advice for anyone, jmo.

[link to www.gold-eagle.com]

In our fiat currency system, money is created when debt is created. Debt retirement destroys money - hence deflation.

short squeeze
gives plenty of money to the trading houses on long players
Isn´t it like Lost Vegus?
Make your play and see how they fall.
Fall they will says the till
Otherwise why does the house always win in the end

I just bought some good hedge clippers for for Laura!

Igor was running a few of the usual tests on the server prior to setting up for another series, and I had him use the test run spyders to bring back a few hints about the markets on Monday.

We found, in just about 42 minutes of searching, that 400 articles are available, mostly from EU/Australia/Asia, about the developing problems within the $1000 trillion dollar hedge fund industry. All of these articles are from May 12th (last Thursday) or later.

After analyzing these with a few of the prolog programs, we can report that MSM/Financial Media in both EU, and Asia zones are openly ´naming names´ about specific hedge funds and counter- party spread trade problems. There are even detailed analysis of individual, specific trades being discussed/dissected.

While only 21 of the articles found are on US centric media, nonetheless, ALL of the other 400 discuss the coming impact on US financial markets.

Many of the articles are using bespoke, conscious imagery with very weighty emotional values such as that a ´bank meltdown´ or ´bank run´, or ´Pakistani problem´ is developing within the hedge fund industry.

From just this small bit of testing, it would seem safe to conclude that pressures on the hedge fund industry will continue to manifest as we fire up the markets on Monday. Apparently many more eyes than usual will be keeping their focus on what is happening both within the hedge funds, and also within the exchanges themselves as continuing reports are emerging about ´oddities´ appearing within electronic markets.
[link to urbansurvival.com]

Wall Street is using every device known to man to squeeze out the shorts and to keep the longs comfortable in their positions. It has even engineered a “breakout rally” that is attracting new money to the ailing Nasdaq. Nevertheless, the bigger picture is one of declining tops and declining bottoms. The final rally this week is the piece de resistance. In the name of “sector rotation,” Wall Street has managed to take our attention from the declining transports and blue chips by creating some excitement with the battered tech stocks.



[link to www.financialsense.com]

May 19 (Bloomberg) -- Gold this year may surpass the 16-year high reached in December as the dollar falls, hedge funds bet on gains and jewelers increase purchases, Citigroup Inc. said.

``We expect gold prices to establish new multi-year highs in 2005, based on the likely resumption of the longer-term downtrend for the U.S. dollar,´´ said David Rinehimer, a New York-based commodities analyst at Citigroup, the world´s biggest bank, in a May 16 report. ``We expect limited downside potential´´ for gold.

Gold prices would have to climb 8.1 percent to beat the $456.89 an ounce 16-year high reached Dec. 2. Gold rose to a one- week high today as the dollar traded near the lowest in almost a week against the euro in Europe today.

The Caribbean buyers, not offshore hedge funds as many suggest, but the Exchange Stabilization Fund has increased its purchases of Treasury paper by 31% to a record $137 billion. The degree of monetization out of the light of day must be staggering, Trillions upon Trillions.

Maybe this is what is going on in the Silver Market........




May 16 - Financial Times (James Drummond): "Hedge funds are liquidating positions in the expectation that investors will be redeeming substantial sums in early July, according to prime brokers and fund managers. Many hedge funds offer only quarterly redemption and require 30 days notice that investors will be withdrawing funds. This means that fund managers are looking to find cash at the moment so as not to be caught short next month. The past two weeks have proved among the most testing times for hedge funds since the collapse of Long Term Capital Management in 1998. No well-known names have gone under since the debt of General Motors and Ford was downgraded to non-investment grade this month, but many hedge funds are on the defensive."

Week ending 20-May-05 : Weekly Recap - It was a great week for the stock market.

The indices were up strongly each of the first four days, and on Friday there was limited profit-taking in a mixed market.

The big news item of the week was that the core rate in the April CPI was flat. February had been up 0.3% and March 0.4%. The core PPI the day before had been reported at +0.3%, up from 0.1% the prior two months. So the market was expecting a 0.2% or 0.3% core CPI.

The flat number, however, indicated that inflationary pressures were not nearly as bad as the worst market fears. In fact, it suggests that inflation may not be picking up much at all. The core rate averaged 0.2% for the past two months, which is not that much above the 2.2% year-over-year increase in the core rate.

Additional good news on the inflation front came from broad declines in commodity prices. Oil ended the week at $46.80, down from $48.67 last week. Other commodity prices, such as grains and metals, have also been declining steadily the past few weeks since spiking in March and April. This suggests that inflation won´t pick up significantly in the months ahead.

The CPI data boosted the market much as the April nonfarm payrolls data did a few weeks ago. That data put to rest the fears of a significant economic slowdown. The CPI data put to rest the worst of the inflation fears.

The silly "stagflation" talk of a few weeks ago has been driven from the market.

The news this week wasn´t all good, however. Manufacturing data were disappointing. April industrial production was reported at -0.2%. The May NY Empire State manufacturing index was -11.1. That suggests contraction in that region. The similar Philadelphia index was just 7.3, down from 25.3 in April. The economy may not be stagnating, but it is no longer booming either.

More optimistic data came from a big jump in April housing starts. The housing sector continues to defy forecasts of an imminent decline.

There weren´t many earnings reports this past week. Retailers were the highlights. Lowe´s had a disappointing report, but Home Depot had a strong report that boosted its stock. JC Penney, Staples, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Gap also had good reports. In Technology, Hewlett Packard had a mixed report, while Applied Materials warned of weak revenue this quarter. Deere had a very good earnings report.

The 10-year bond yield fell slightly to 4.11% from 4.12% this week. The low CPI data helped keep yields surprisingly low.

Underlying sentiment has improved. This is due to the erosion of the extreme pessimism that prevailed in March and early April. The market has bounced back, but there are doubts about whether the recent rally will have legs. Valuations are at reasonable levels, but a significant rally would require increased confidence that the slowdown in economic and earnings growth will not be severe, and the inflation really is under control.

Hedge funds tend to be more pessimistic in their positions but are still limited as a percentage of holdings to short selling. It seems the GM/Ford bond degrading has hurt them as they must have gone long on their position. Since economies are based on growth at the expense of stability, common sense seems totally lacking. If the hedge funds are looking for ‘dollars’ with which to finance redemptions, we might think they are retaining their Euros as the currency of preference.

Since the US/Fed is running up massive deficits on spending and trade, the oil and natural gas outlays in US $$ is inherently adding inflationary pressures to which increased money supplies succeed only in deflating the real worth of the dollar itself. With real estate values rising in excess of inflation and of speculative origin, that perhaps is the source of deflation that will meet the day of reckoning in haste.

The problem with the US economy is the elimination of the middle class at the hands of multinational corporations, and along with it is the tax base. As long term growth is funded by savings, the increase of personal debt is the downward spiral so many Americans face as purchasing power erodes under inflation, lost wages, and an ever increasing tax burden from the Federal, State, and Local government.

Keep on praying for a $$ Collapse dude!

How far down are you in your gold/silver shares?

Just curious


HAHAHAH!!

“In extremis fiat money is accepted by nobody and gold is always accepted and is the ultimate means of payment.” [Greenspan]

It is impossible to pay off all debt, because our currency is backed by debt... when we try to pay it off, we will run out of money, and then the fun begins. Issuing more debt is the only way to create more money, unless the government prints money direct from the treasury, so what we have is almost certainly a deflationary situation... but will it cause a total collapse of the dollar? Only time will tell.

GOLD DOWN TO $252
User ID: 10077
5/22/2005

How far down are you in your gold/silver shares?



GOLD DOWN TO $252...


Well let me see........that would mean the the DOW would be at 6500

Last time gold traded in 250-260 range the DOW was above 11K

Energy is getting tighter and tighter; once people in China have a fridge they are not likely going to want to give it up (would you?). China is printing to grow their economy and the US must do so to secure energy reserves and allow their credit to expand.

Before the US raises interest rates, I believe they are going to allow their currency to decline to 72. Oil prices will rise, as will gold. This will put a hit on all aspects of the global economy, but it will make the US a cheaper place to do business. At this point, Europe will be bleeding and many global forces will force China to revalue their currency (or no oil etc.). China has the Remimbi pegged to the US dollar, so how ever much the US dollar declines, China still carries the same competitive advantage. Get out of Walmart stock while one has the chance, because the revaluation will translate into a 30-40% decline in their revenue.

This is why more time is needed (late 2006) before gold is really going to have a big move ($1200-2000/ounce, not including an expected move to $500-600 expected in the next year). Whether wave III in the HUI begins soon or simply a complex running correction with wave II finishing at a level well above the high of wave I in late 2006 remains to be seen. There is no way of knowing until 8-10 months from now, but I would not want to be left out of the coming base/bottoming period the HUI is putting in. Much of the above process takes time and the following must occur before gold is going anywhere. Resource stocks are going to go higher, because their simply is going to be not enough energy to go around and the large producers are going to have to buy out the smaller ones to keep their oil reserves up.

[link to www.safehaven.com]

This is a Gift......the buy snigle is in.....big time


While the continuing support immediately beneath the current price could yet reverse the current downtrend, it does now look set to retreat towards trendline and "round number" support at the $400 level. It is important to note that should this occur the gold stocks, which are believed to have largely discounted such a move, are quite likely to hold the all-important 150 support level on the HUI index, provided that gold bottoms in the $400 area and does not break down further towards the next important support in the $375 area. As already discussed elsewhere, a breakdown by gold below $400 and subsequent decline to the $375 area, would be expected to result in a breach of 150 by the HUI index and a rapid decline to the 100 area.



[link to www.safehaven.com]

ECHOES OF 1998
By Eric J. Fry

When GM bonds skidded last week, a few hedge fund managers ended up with tire tracks across their backs...and some nasty injuries.

According to the hyperactive Wall Street rumor mill, several large hedge funds are reeling from an ill-timed “capital-structure arbitrage” play: Buy General Motors bonds and simultaneously sell short the stock. We’ll review the particulars of this disastrous trade in a moment. But suffice to say that neither side of this arbitrage behaved as anticipated, which caused a few big hedge funds to suffer great, big losses.

If a few big hedge funds are in trouble, as CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo has been breathlessly reporting, are a lot of us little investors also in trouble?

Maybe so, but we have already been living in a state of perpetual peril for many years, thanks partly to the growing influence of hedge funds in the global financial markets. In other words, the GM debacle may have triggered a financial “red alert,” but “orange alerts” have become a near-permanent condition...And that’s both bad and good. Although the growing influence of hedge funds within the financial markets creates unnerving volatility, it also creates unique opportunity...

But first, let’s take a look at the latest “red alert” on Wall Street, stemming from wrong-way bets on GM securities. Many hedge funds had been loading up on General Motors bonds in recent weeks, while simultaneously selling short GM stock. “Their wager was that GM would limp along and be able to make the interest payments on its bonds,” the Wall Street Journal explains, “but that the continuing challenges to the giant automaker would keep a lid on its shares.”

The gamble may have seemed reasonable, but it produced disastrous results when both sides of the trade “blew-out” in the wrong direction. First, the stock spiked when Kirk Kerkorian offered to raise his stake in GM to about 9%. Next, GM bonds plummeted on word that Standard and Poor’s had slashed the automaker’s credit rating to “junk” status.
Because the GM stock-bond trade had seemed relatively tame, and because of the vast quantities of GM securities outstanding, we have no trouble imagining that many funds had crowded into a version of this trade. But are the resulting losses so large and so widespread as to be destabilizing to the global financial markets?

Probably not...but maybe so. Most likely, the GM debacle is something more than a non-event, but something less than a disastrous event. For perspective, let’s consider a worst-case scenario.

A few weeks before the infamous “blow-up” of the Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) hedge fund in 1998, the S&P 500 Index traded near 1,200. Shortly after the LTCM crisis hit, the S&P tumbled to 923, or more than 20% below its then-recent high. Similarly, on March 7th of this year, the S&P 500 traded a few points above the 1,200 level. If past were prologue, therefore, a second LTCM-style crisis could plunge the S&P below 1,000. Very few investors would enjoy that ride.

We would not rule out the possibility of a repeat, but we would assign a low probability to that outcome. Of greater concern is the growth of the hedge fund industry itself. There is nothing necessarily wrong with hedge funds, per se. Some of our best friends are hedge fund managers. But it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Van Hedge Fund Advisors estimates that there are about 8,500 hedge funds with about $900 billion in assets – twice as many as existed 5 years ago.

The parabolic growth of hedge funds over the last few years has introduced new – and often exotic strains of both risk and opportunity into the global financial market organism. As such, we individual investors should remain vigilant for both.

Hedge funds have become an outsized influence in the financial markets. In many respects they ARE the financial market. Last year, for example, hedge funds accounted for about 82 percent of the trading volume in the U.S. distressed debt markets and 70 percent of U.S. trading in exchange-traded funds. The funds also account for more than one quarter of all the volume on the NYSE. In short, they are everywhere.

In the early days of hedge funds, the pioneers tried to take advantage of stock market inefficiencies. But today, hedge funds often CREATE the inefficiencies because they often flock to similar strategies and trades. From time to time, therefore, certain pockets of the financial markets become cluttered with hedge fund managers jockeying for a competitive edge. In those moments, certain market sectors or asset classes can become irrational, volatile and frustrating to individual investors who utilize fundamentals-based investment strategies.

Our advice: don’t get mad, get ready.

We should remember that the very same volatility that injects risk into the markets also creates opportunity. While it’s true, for example, that the S&P 500 hit a low of 923 in the wake of the LTCM crisis, the S&P soared to more than 1,400 a few months later – a gain of more than 60%. In other words, the LTCM disaster contained the seeds of opportunity.

The Long Term Capital Management disaster of 1998 illustrated the infinite capacity of “smart guys” to do dumb things. (Having Nobel Prize winner on the payroll – as did LTCM – may be helpful for structuring hedge-fund-destroying arbitrage trades, but it is not an absolute prerequisite). If, therefore, a few brainiacs in Greenwich, Connecticut can cause a serious financial crisis, just imagine what 8,500 brainiacs could do.

In short, hedge fund managers, as a group, are no so different from most other groups of investors. As individuals, the managers may be brilliant – or not – but as a mob, they can be complete idiots. And when they are idiots, they can create opportunities for us individuals.
Returning to our central query, therefore, if some big funds are reeling, are we little guys in harm’s way? Maybe, but we are also in opportunity’s way...So why not be vigilant for both?



[link to www.dailyreckoning.com]

Deflation, I don´t think so. We have trillions upon trillons of debt floating out there, and you think everyone is going to play fair and try and pay it off just because Russell and the Elliot Wavers say so? Get real. Did the Argentinians all rush to pay off their debts when their economy caved in? Did Nazi Germany and its citizens run to pay off their debts when their economy caved in? This is a ruse to get you folks to sell what is actually worth something, for the "safety" of cash because "in a deflationary environment, cash is king." Bullshit. If we get deflation, kiss the Federal Government and all the municipalities around you goodbye because there will be insufficient revenue to continue these bloated pigs and their social, economic, and military programs.

People, the only way to "pay" off these debts is through making the amounts less than when they were initially created, and the only way to do that is to STEAL it through inflation.

Get real you stupid Precherites.

204 is correct. They have something called a printing press which can print as much money as necessary to prevent deflation. To confirm this as a thought experiment, imagine they were piling up dollars on streetcorners or dropping it from planes. What would it be worth? Nothing. So the point is that there is some amount of money they can print to prevent deflation. Further compounding that strategy is that if they print that much money, the US dollar goes nearly worthless against foreign currencies and imported goods go into the stratosphere. That said, all the major markets are either directly controlled or heavily influenced by the guys who print the money. Until and unless public confidence wanes, the game stays on and none of what I say above is relevent.

Keep praying pal.

There is "ALWAYS" a "BLOW-OFF" Top in any market. The DOW will see new highs over the next few years.

I still think gold/silver is a great investment.

Just dont get "Married" to gold/silver

Find a few good beaten down tech stocks, and a few good oversold DOW stocks.

Look for a strong CASH balance
Look for good + cash flow/net earnings
Look for 0 Debt
Look for a low short position.


Load the boat!

the markets are going way UP SOON!!

Let´s see, Laura goes to Israel on some religious trist to escape the pressure of Washington DC, and George is left in the White House with a Porn Star.

Hmmmmmmmm.

Did he visit a certain Embassy in Washington DC?

Hmmmmm.

Does Laura not do something that Porn stars love to perform?

Hmmmmmmmm.

;)

Get it?