Courtesy of MISH Calpers, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, is in deep trouble. Calpers got in trouble by not understanding risk. It still does not understand risk and thinks risk is the solution. Please consider the New York Times article California Pension Fund Hopes Riskier Bets Will Restore Its Health. Calpers, lost nearly $60...

The National Association of Realtors said about 31% of last month’s sales were of distressed homes, down from the 45-50% last month. Approximately 29% of June buyers were first-time homeowners, up nearly 12 percentage points since June 2008.

John Carney of Business Insider It was only a few months ago that a blogger calling himself Tyler Durden and writing for “Zero Hedge” started to call attention to a Wall Street electronic trading technique called “high frequency trading.” Now Senator Charles Schumer has called for a high-frequency technique called “flash...

Zero Hedge will attempt to categorize all the relevant players in FlashTradingGate. This is the initial focus of Senator Charles Schumer’s recent campaign for market equality and transparency. As we will undoubtedly miss critical connections between these and other pertinent industry players, we solicit readers’ insight as we develop this...

Crude oil closed higher on Friday extending Thursday’s breakout above the 20 day moving average crossing at 65.13. The high range close sets the stage for a steady to higher opening on Monday. Stochastics and the RSI are bullish signaling that sideways to higher prices are possible near term. If September extends this week’s rally, the reaction...

Courtesy of Jesse’s Cafe Americain The New York Fed is creating an ‘investor advisory council’ and packing it with the outer circle of insiders, the banks being the In Crowd. Its nice to hear that Pimco will now have greater access to the NY Fed. Maybe the Fed would like them to explain how they are going to move hundreds of billions...

Courtesy of Zero Hedge This is so much more than just a short covering rally. Oh wait, it’s not. 72.19% drop in Short Interest across securities, compliments of stock loan-cum-TARP bailout recipients. So you see, if you are a taxpayer, who believes that fundamentals are more critical than an artificially inflated market compliments of the biggest,...

Take sometime this weekend and look over Market Club the flagship service of INO.com. Researching and planning trades can take hours, and let’s face it, traders don’t have hours to waste. What you need is a tool to give you an edge on the markets and to help you make educated decisions based on the technicals and not your emotion. Market...

With the S&P 500 making new highs and as world equity markets following suit, the question becomes how high can we go? In this short video on the S&P 500, Adam Hewison outline some mathematical upside target zones that he is looking at for this market. Click the chart below to view the video

The September NASDAQ 100 closed higher on Friday as it extends this month’s rally above the 50% retracement level of last summer’s decline crossing at 1522.75. The high-range close sets the stage for a steady to higher opening on Monday. Stochastics and the RSI are overbought but remain neutral to bullish signaling that sideways to higher...

Courtesy of MISH Bloomberg is reporting U.S. Home Vacancies Hit 18.7 Million on Bank Seizures. More than 18.7 million homes stood empty in the U.S. during the second quarter as the steepest recession in 50 years sapped demand for real estate and banks seized properties from delinquent borrowers. The number of vacant properties, including foreclosures,...

Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist A great 17 minute interview with David Rosenberg here on Bloomberg Surveillance.  Rosenberg talks about everything from baseball to the likelihood of a 2002 like collapse in the stock market.  It’s an audio file so give it a minute to load.

Courtesy of Tyler at Zero Hedge MSNBC’s explanatory take on how the Federal Reserve “bailed” the system out and why the Fed is so keen on perpetuating its secrecy. Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Courtesy of John Carney at Clusterstock Just a quick run down of the latest developments in the CIT death watch. CIT is offering an extra $50 bucks per $1000 of notes tendered, bringing the total to $825 per thousand dollars of principal. Bankruptcy is still a very open possibility if enough bond holders don’t tender. The company rebuffed a...

Courtesy of Phil’s Stock World Warren speaks at 8:30 on CNBC. What are the odds he says SELLSELLSELL?  It would be a perfect bookend to a rally that started two weeks ago when CNBC’s guest was Meredith Whitney, who’s upgrade of the financials sparked off the biggest market rally in almost 20 years.  After bailing out even on our $1.20 QID...