Monday, July 9, 2007

Summer Monday Ramblings

Gold looks interesting. It's a bit early for the seasonal physical buying, but the chart might be setting up a bottom. I see a budding H&S bottom in the December gold chart and this morning's pop puts it over the downtrend line. This might just be a beefer trying to run buy stops ...

But since my Krypto Fund asset allocation model is telling me to buy some gold & silver, I took a nibble in the futures. I'll average in, looking to convert to physical gold later this fall.

Year to Date -
Krypto Fund: +5.64% [held down by gold/silver, TIPs, bonds and real estate allocations - those total 50% of the assets in the Krypto Fund.]
Alpha Fund: +44.2%
Commodities: +27.2% [darn, high was 42%, that dumb recent corn & nat gas play cost $$$ :-( ]

I read an article in Barron's about mortgage and CDO securitizations. The guy was either stupid or being polemical using sophistry or was a plant by a bearish beefer. He seemed to make a big deal out of triple B classes losing money. Du'h. Read the definition of a BBB rating: obligations rated Baa/BBB have strong financial charateristics, but are subject to moderate credit risk. They are more likely to be affected by adverse business conditions than are higher rated obligations and as such may possess certain speculative characteristics. [I merged S&P and Moody's into an all-inclusive explantion].

He doesn't understand, or intentionally obfuscated, the diversification and other credit enhancements. The housing market is undergoing a severe downturn. The REALITY is that unless some of those structured bonds DO lose some principal, the ratings are overcollaterized, in my opinion. In 1,000 obligations, even a Aaa/AAA default rate of .1% produces one (1) bond with a loss of at least $1. And a lot more of the Baa/BBB security SHOULD lose something. That is statistics for a large sample. Why else do those Aaa/AAA holders get paid about 80 bps MORE than a US Treasury?

Otherwise, Barron's was full of bearish reasons to stay out of the market. More wall of worry. Good! :-)

The cash S&P does look like a bullish consolidation for new leg higher. The Nazz and Nazz 100 show much life - good up trends now after bouncing off their 50 DMAs. The Russell looks like a bullish consolidation pattern, too.

I still have my long futures so I'm about 200% long for the Alpha Fund.

37 comments:

Bud said...

Agreed. SPY looks good to me. Russell looks even better . Uh oh....am I getting too bullish?

Bud said...

CHAP BOOM HAYN my 3 favorite steel stocks. Unfortunately I don't own any HAYN. Buying that soon.

Bud said...

Watch a great match Federer-Nadal was. I was rooting hard for Nadal. I love his power game. Of course I bet on Rafa to win so that may be the reason he lost.

Bud said...

Quick review of saturday's live earth concert ( of what i saw). I thought Foo Fighters were absolutely phenomenal from London. I'm not a Bon jovi fan but they clearly stole the show in Newyork....Roger Waters was very good ( luv the flying pig ). Police and John Mayer get honorable mentions. Smashing Pumpkins were very dissapointing....seemed like Billy was just there to promote the new album. Linkin Park from tokyo sounded good too. One of the best songs of the concert was from the 5 scientists from antarctica.....i luv that raw garage sound.

mern said...

ROFL i shud have known bud had money on Rafa. he had the match, twice. knee injury took some momentum, but he had 2 break pts in both of federers 2 services in the 5th set, and never converted.

4 break pts, and nada, that was all the daylight rodger needed.

that was the best mens match ive watched in well over a decade. that rivalry is gonna get better and Rafa will probably push past rodger

mern said...

i watched some of the concert and recorded a lot. foo fighters do rock! bon jovi, come on bud, i was LOL thier hole performance. they have sucked for over 20 yrs and it didnt stop sat. rodger waters was my fave, but im biased. man does that guy look gud for 67. i thought smashing pumpkins were gud, but i dont know them well. the police were ok, and im being generous. madonna, playing guitar, LOL, she has that one cord down pat! dave mathews was very gud but played early, which doesnt make sense to me. genesis, pathetic, phil collins didnt even play drums. they have sucked since peter gabriel left them ("a lamb lies down on broadway" is one of the better albums around). melissa etheridge is a tool. Gore talking out of his wazoo.

watched the prime time news on ABC last nite for the first time in maybe 20 yrs. first i saw philly leads even NYC (with almost 5 times the population) in murders. the thesis is NYC has tougher gun laws than philly. in NYC u can only buy 1 gun a month, and if u buy more than 10 a yr, u go on some list. LOL, who needs a new gun every month?

2nd was, how drinking bottled water is not eco friendly and restaurants r starting to serve filtered water instead. ive been on that trend since 2003. i just filter our tap water and have jugs of it in the fridge. plastic is gross and u dont know if those bottles were ever hot, and if they were dangerous chemicals r released into the water, that not news to me. what was interesting is how much pollution is created by making all those plastic bottles.

that concert really did wreak of a "cult like" atitude.

still waiting for buds response as to why greenland was green 500k yrs ago, and ice today? im thinking its humans, somehow, some way have actually made the planet colder than it used to be, before we ruled the world.

mern said...

finally on meet the press. hildog seems to be losing some support with her attacks on bush over libby. bill didnt help either. alot being made of if hildog wins, two famalies controling washington ave for the last 20 yrs, and basically it wud just be more of the same old bs. Obama is now the clear choice for people who wanna elect someone thats not part of "the system" already.

also it seems even bush now realizes that iraq is lost. look for a new direction coming in sept. but he has already stated that the next admin will figure how to get out of iraq and he is stubborn, so he wont admit defeat. i guess its easy to be cavalier when u dont have anything to lose like your own life.

200 more dirt naps in iraq over the weekend. taliban and al queda opening new camps all over the place in pakistan and afghanistan, but we focus on iraq becuase saddamn tried to kill the prez's daddy.

NICE!

mern said...

u have gotta go to espn.com and watch the phillies help the rockies tarp crew. its funny now, becuase no one got hurt, but seems like the phillies really didnt want yesterday to be #10,000. no rockies helped the tarp crew. guys flying all over the place. really funny stuff!

Bunkerman said...

I got the CDs, mern. I think I'll play one this morning instead of the Bubblevision sounds.

Bunkerman said...

Typical ABC lying. Did they compare DC, the murder capital of the country, where handguns are illegal [for now hehe]

Or rural areas where everyone has gunds.

Nah, they fish around and find an example to support their proto-fascist thinking.

mern said...

enjoy! my guess is u will like the 82 accoustic show, at first, the most. but after 20 listens to "live dead" u shud begin to get the complexity of what was going on between those cats. the 2006 show is a fine example of how good they r becuase that band was only together for 2 weeks before that show. the 88 show, imo, pinpoints the dead at the hieght of thier success. they had it down to a science by then, which left less room for the jazzy improves but the adrenaline doesnt stop that entire show.

oh and snaps to metallica, they were gud on saturday. they r gud musicians, they just chose to the heavy metal route.

actually they catered to both sides, in the report. i just thought it was funny that murder is lower in NYC than philly becuase u can only buy 1 gun a month.

poor philly we lead the country in loses (baseball) and murder. thats it. its a dying city, and the state aint far behind. such a beautiful state but Pa needs to reinvent itself becuase the blue collar era is dead and isnt coming back.

Bunkerman said...

There are many fine colleges around Philly & Penn is a fine University. I wonder why they haven't gotten some traction there - or focussed effort there, as the "Research Triangle" in NC got.

Bunkerman said...

Don't succumb to contrarianitis, Bud.

mern said...

is LNOP finally ready?

np

mern said...

agree, great schools starting at the grade school level. u shud see the taxes in my old neighborhood. i wud pay at least 10 grand, versus the 6500 i bitch about down here. it all goes to education. the teachers at my old hs make like 70k a yr, most graduated from swathmore. but from what ive seen, unless u work for your daddies business, u need to bolt or u end up like many guys i grew up with. broke, strung out on heroin, oxys or crack. and these r guys with diplomas from schools such as lafyette, leheigh, and penn.

Bud said...

Does Chauck Hagel read this blog? He was comparing W to Johnson Meetthepress. I almost thought he was gonna call him 'Lyndon' for a moment. Lmaooooooooo

Bud said...

Roflmaoo....madonna playin the guitar. Now that was funny.

mern said...

did u notice she only played 2 chords? then at the end she tried to be jimmy hendrix. PATHETIC!

mern said...

come on bud, why is greenland ice now, green 500k yrs ago?

maverick said...

Tell me about the Alpha fund bunkerman

Bud said...

NVDA looks good.

Bud said...

Mern...........I'm not a fucking scientist.

mern said...

chili peppers were gud too

Spin-em said...

thar's gold in them there hills...Frosty's KRY lookin good

mern said...

so u r just taking gores, s crow, melissa ethridge, and stings word for it (they went to MIT, right) on y the earth is warming vs the k man (who is a scientist).

im not debating u on the fact the earth is warming. seems like bunkerman's thesis is a bit more well founded on fact than say non scientist gore. we humans rnt that big a deal, we probably dont control the climate as much as gore says, probably not even close

mern said...

oh bud, LMAO by the way. its called the mern/frosty tag team.

Spin-em said...

yes...and dont take merns word that the whole state is on crack..ppffttt

Bunkerman said...

Alpha Fund is what I call my individudal stocks. I'm mostly a long term player now. I've posted every holding for awhile now every month or so.

I repost them all in awhile, but they are now India, oils, deep water drillers, VLO, miners, select tech [AAPL - the biggest position, GOOG, ORCL], EDU, AMSC.

I had more in February, but sold many industrials and other big caps before the swoon.

Later this morning I'm post every name. I have some long-term gains now. By October almost all will be long term.

Bunkerman said...

We don't expect you to be a scientist, Bud. But being a creationist ...uh ... ;-)

mern said...

gore even had a pledge to the planet. another cult like trait.

i pledge to use flourscent lite bulbs (oh by the way, they r toxic).

i pledge to turn the lites off at nite

i pledge to plant a tree

i pledge to let no new coal refiniers be built that remit CO2.

i pledge to flush less

i pleadge to only abuse presciption meds

i pledge to poop less

etc etc etc

lol

mern said...

its not the hole state spin. weve discussed this before. but if u dont think pitt, philly and the valley dont have an enormously bigger drug problem than even 10 yrs ago, u aint reading the news.

ive got contacts in pitt, the valley, and philly. and none r in the lower class, all middle to upper income type contacts. there isnt one of them that isnt concerned about this situation. even andy reids kids (a devote mormon) got into heroin.

its crossed over from chester to the main line. thats is what is new.

PA is a big beautiful state with plenty of great people. id probably like to retire near where i grew up. i miss the seasons and other stuff.

but 10 yrs ago u didnt have 80 something kids (18 or under) die from heroin od in bucks counry alone.

im not far removed from the scene and have friends dying. i dont talk to them anymore but get constant updates. once oxys hit the streets, that was the gateway to getting the upper classes to use heroin.

and on a side note, that really plays into al queda hands, becuase i believe 93% of the worlds poppy is grown in afghanistan. and heroin is a huge revenue generator for al queda.

again great live state, great place to grow up, but its getting harder and harder for gud kids to stay away from the really bad stuff, becuase its so accessible.

Bunkerman said...

mav, I created a new post with all Alpha Fund holdings.

Bunkerman said...

Mern, I just read a paper in Journal of Archealogical Science that shows very large changes - rough cycles - in climate in Ireland over the last 10,000 years. The evdience is irrefuatble, coming from oak & pine tree remnants in peat bogs.

Recent changes are rather small compared to earlier ones. I don't think there were SUVs 5,000 years ago.

maverick said...

Thanks BM and congrats

maverick said...

I see Bud's early pump taking it's toll now

Bud said...

Well.............I did warn you guys.

Bunkerman said...

It's not exactly shocking that the beefers short any AM poparoo. And Bubblevision talking about all time highs again was like waving a red cape in front of them, goading them on.