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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/10/2008
Midday Update: Wild Ride After The Open
Boy, was that a wild ride after the open today. I didn’t sleep much last night, after seeing the Asian markets reeling (Japan declined more than 9%), so I came in extra early this morning.The futures closed at their lows before the open, and once the regular trading session began, stocks immediately swooned. The Dow broke below 8000, but soon began to find support, and quickly rallied roughly +800 points to move back into positive territory.There was a load roar on the floor of the NYSE, but they may have celebrated prematurely. Ther[...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/10/2008
Do Links Even Matter Anymore?
Links are like a healthy addiction. And if you are to survive in the online marketplace you need lots and lots of links. Injecting Links!But links are like the U.S. Dollar (especially lately!). The Treasury keeps printing dollars and what happens to the value of the dollar? It goes down. Simple supply and demand right?So if Google bases its valuations of link value on who links to who link to who links to you (ad infinitum). And that is related to how many total pages are on the [...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/10/2008
Why Seo Is Dead
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Off Page Equity?Huh? Have you ever thought about what that means? Going back to its roots, SEO meant to optimize a page so an engine like Alta Vista would like it and rank it higher than the next guy or gal. Words like density, proximity, metas all were part of optimizing a page.Then along came Google at a time when the web was getting more and more tangled. Meaning it was ginormous! Realtors started building two and three websites in some cases. And non Realtors-SEO guys like me were building real estate websites for affi[...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/10/2008
Selling Fear & Entitlement To The Culture Of Me
With CNN in the background I hear an "expert" explain that Wall Street is based on "fear and greed. And fear is a much more powerful driver for investors."What does this have to do with real estate? Its about confidence.Mommy Congress and Daddy Bush have asked Granddad Paulson to give the markets a "loan". Seems we all overspent a little too much over the past few years and need some help to get by."Rock a bye Baby, it will be OK".Its also an election year. I ran s[...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/09/2008
It?s Not Armageddon. . .
NOTE: Please click on the charts below to enlarge them if they do not appear clearly.A positive earnings report from IBM helped stocks get off to a positive start yesterday morning, but the situation turned horribly dour late in the afternoon. A seventh straight day of losses saw the Nasdaq Composite plummet 5.5%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average 7.3%, and the S&P 500 7.6%. The small-cap Russell 2000 suffered a whopping 8.7% drop, as the S&P Midcap 400 fell 7.2%. All the major indices closed at their worst levels of the day.Volume receded a bit b[...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/09/2008
What Is It About My Birthday?
Today is my birthday. I was hoping to sleep in for once, but not in this market! At least the futures were nicely higher when my alarm went off at 5:30am. Small comfort.Maybe if the market gods are in a forgiving mood, today will mark the start of a new rally. On this day (October 9) in 2002, the bear market bottomed, and we went on to enjoy a 5-yr bull market. Coincidentally, it was also on October 9th last year that the bull market peaked. I don’t know what it is about my birthday.Today is also Yom Kippur, so I hope all of those credit derivativ[...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/09/2008
Scoop: IBM Considering Bankrolling Partner Projects Because Of Financial Crisis
IBM is considering financial support for key IT projects it is building with partners because of the financial crisis but it has ruled out equity investments in other tech companies.IBM has a large financial services group and it has the capital to help finance IT enterprise projects.I recently ran into Drew Clark, head of IBM’s Venture Capital Group, based [...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/09/2008
Is Your Money Safe In The Bank?
The Federal[...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/09/2008
Run And Hide Or Stay And Fight?
That’s a really good question right now, especially since the Dow finished today down 39.4% from last year’s peak. That’s worse than the 37.8% drop that the Dow saw from peak to trough during the post-Internet Bubble blow-up. It now only trails two periods of stock market malaise -- the Great Depression and the extended down market during the late 60’s and 70’s.During the Great Depression stocks declined 89% from summer 1929 to summer 1932, then spiked back up from 1932 to 1937 only to plunge another 52% from 1937 to 1942. In all it took 25 years for the Dow to recover its 1929 hig[...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/09/2008
Transaction Brokerage & Real Estate Licensees
Sept 30 2008 was the deadline for renewing real estate, mortgage and appraisal licenses with the regulator in Alberta.Not only was this the deadline for real estate licensees to pay up, it also meant they had to have their mandatory education in place. Sounds simple but this licensing period required the courses ’Understanding Agency’ and ’Transaction Brokerage’. As of October 1st , 2008 Alberta becomes the [...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/09/2008
NQ - 100809
I will post some stock charts over the weekend - I have had a few good gap trades this week (and hopefully a few more to come). Here is a chart of the NQ from yesterday - the volatility is presenting some great opportunities. But a chart is a chart is a chart, so it doesn’t matter if it is NQ, RIMM, WMT, or anything else - the same principles apply. Here is what I saw:1. A gap down and rally to the 50% retracement. Price broke through that level and immediately reversed with a bearish red candlestick that closed back below the 50% level. The next bar was narrow-range an[...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/09/2008
Mortgage Defaults Plummet, For Now
The number of homes entering the foreclosure process declined steeply in September -- but the drop is likely temporary.The blue line on the accompanying graph represents how many Notices of Default, which are the nastygrams sent to delinquent borrowers, were delivered in September. The orange line tracks Notices of Trustee Sale, which inform said delinquent borrowers that their homes are about to be repossessed.The graph makes it pretty clear that NODs dropped like a[...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/09/2008
How Far Could A Rally Go?
From the high of 128.00 on 9/19/08 to yesterday’s low of 96.81, the SPY has declined 31.19 points or 24.36% which is greater than the 18.85% average decline during the 2000-2003 bear market, but there were also two larger declines during that time SEE TABLEThe average bounce saw the market recover 73% of the average decline. IF yesterday was a low and IF the market saw a similar snapback rally, the SPY could be in for a rally up to ~ 119.51 (31.19 x.73= 22.7 points [...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/09/2008
Stock Market Video Technical Analysis 10/6/08
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/09/2008
Well, The Week Is Almost Over
I’m wondering (maybe that should be hoping) that yesterday’s action revealed some selling exhaustion.After a lot (a ridiculous amount really) of selling we know that the selling will exhaust.That will happen.It doesn’t have to signal a bottom (short term or otherwise) but it might. There have been past ins[...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/09/2008
Basic Materials Sector Forming Short-term Bottom
NOTE: Please click on the charts below to enlarge them if they do not appear clearly.A coordinated round of global interest-rate cuts in the pre-market led to a wild, indecisive session of trading yesterday morning, but stocks stabilized as volatility eased later in the afternoon. Thirty minutes before the closing bell, all the major indices were showing respectable gains, but a last minute pullback caused the broad market to finish in negative territory for the sixth consecutive day. The Nasdaq Composite, up 3.0% just one hour before the closing bell, finished 0.8% lower[...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/09/2008
History Lesson & Bear Market Advice
History tends to repeat itself. The economy and the stock market are no different. We have had, and will continue to have, economic expansions followed by recessions. To give you an idea of what to expect, consider the last recession.It was the result of another bubble bursting (in Silicon Valley, not housing). In 2 1/2 years (early 2000 through late 2002) the S&P 500 fell by 50.5%. Investors felt massive pain and many took dramatic action by getting out of the market. That was the right emotional decision in their minds at the time (because they didn’t want to take any more [...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/09/2008
Want To Get Real Funky?
How about this long term view of the Dow? Could this be the picture of an ongoing mega bull market despite two secular bears (one currently in force)? I am not trying to hand hold the bull[...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/08/2008
The Uptick Rule
A: I want to discuss the uptick rule, being that the ban on short selling expires today. I don’t listen to Fast Money as much anymore, but I just happened to have it on last night and overheard a discussion on re-instating the uptick rule as the ban on short selling expires. Assuming the ban does expire as planned, I agree with this 100% and actually argued on this side of the debate many months ago with a wall street insider who happens to be a compliance attorney working on short sale ban implementation! Now, my general feeling on short selling is that I think it has a place [...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/08/2008
Early Look: Fed Cuts Rates, Sparks Wild Trading
The trading so far this morning has already been fast and frenetic. The Fed announced a coordinated rate cut before the open, but stocks opened lower nonetheless. The Dow has already traded in a 400-point range in the first hour. Currently the market is flat.The Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of England, Swiss National Bank, and the Bank of Canada made an emergency inter-meeting 50 basis point rate cut. The fed funds rate is now 1.50%. China cuts its key rate by 27 basis points. And Britain anno[...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/08/2008
Understanding Bond Yields In This Market
Why are Treasury Yields Bouncing Back? Volatility from the expanding global turmoil has caused yields on Treasury Bills (T-bills) to fluctuate wildly—cratering when the credit markets seized up and rising again when the Fed announced it would buy commercial paper. The question is, why are yields changing? (Video Here) How Bond Yields Work Bond yields are a ticky concept for most investors to grasp initially because t[...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/08/2008
Option Collars For Volatile Markets - Part Two
This is the last of a multi-part series. To see the first part in this series, click here. In the market, the more you reduce your risk the more you reduce your upside and a collar is a great example of that principle. The structure of a collar consists of selling an out of the money call to finance the purchase of a protective put. Although the premium from the call will help to[...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/08/2008
Did The Solutions To The Last Credit Crisis Work? - Part One
Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part series. Click here for Part 2 and Part 3.There is a lot of talk about the fact that the current credit cr[...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/08/2008
Emergency Economic Stabilization Act Of 2008
Last week Nancy Pelosi announced that the completed version of the Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 is now available on the House of Representatives website. I spent a few hours reading through the bill and would like to highlight what I think are the most important parts. What was immediately clear from my review was that the bill sends us into a new period of financial regulation after a decade of deregulation and leverage. As most of you may already know, the bill was passed late last week in both houses and was signed into l[...]
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The Money Blogs
All about money.
10/08/2008
Nasdaq Technical Picture - Fresh Multi-year Lows
U.S. stock futures turned decidedly higher Wednesday after the Federal Reserve and other central banks stepped in with coordinated half-point rate cuts in a bid to stem the credit crisis that had locked up financial markets. Yesterday, stocks opened with a slightly positive bias, but the major averagers continually deteriorated throughout Tuesday’s session and ended near the day’s lows with large losses, showing no sign of ending their downward spiral. Volume totals were lighter on the major exchanges compared to Monday’s sessio[...]
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