Tim Iacono The American public understands evil big banks (or at least they think they do), but they clearly don’t understand the biggest evil bank of them all – the central bank – and that’s probably why, in this election year, the Federal Reserve got off virtually scott free in the Senate’s recently passed financial market reform...

Tyler Durden With bid buckets dry, so far the morning portion of today’s melt up has been due to offer chasing across the board as smart money sells to momos and algos. However, a particularly large offer at 1089 in ES is so far keeping the market range bound. Not surprisingly, S&P futures got as high as 1,088.75 before retracing. For...

The Market Ticker It’s always unwise, but especially so when you have government actors (like, for instance, the Japanese Central Bank) willing to come in and break every rule in the book (which they’re immune from, of course) to screw you. If you’re wondering how bad that could have been it’s about $5,600 margin to trade...

Gold Scents I know this is hard to do, especially when one is weathering draw downs. And of course a liberal dose of gloating from the bears during these times doesn’t help either. But let’s not get sidetracked by the little things and let’s face it, the haters are going to show up every time gold corrects. We really should be...

Brandon Rowley of Trading Wall Street Investments The Senate overcame the filibuster today voting 60-40 to end debate and clear the way for the final vote on passage of the financial reform bill. Republican Senator Brown of Massachusetts flipped on his vote providing the last needed vote to reach 60. The vote is expected to happen by the end of the...

By Doug Hornig, Casey Research Recent decades have witnessed an amazing shrinkage of the American manufacturing sector, from #1 in the world to virtual non-existence. Companies, taking advantage of cheaper labor costs abroad, have either outsourced some portion of the workforce or relocated their entire operations offshore. Remember the “great...

CalculatedRisk Here is the Philadelphia Fed Index released today: Business Outlook Survey. The survey’s broadest measure of manufacturing conditions, the diffusion index of current activity, increased slightly from 20.2 in April to 21.4 this month. The index has now edged higher for four consecutive months and has remained positive for the...

Brandon Rowley  of T3Live There’s nothing quite like a 20-minute, 700-point crash in the stock market to scare the hell out of retail investors. The Investment Company Institute reported estimated outflows from long-term equity mutual funds of $12.33 billion for the week ended Wednesday, May 12. Compare this weekly outflow to the $25.57 billion...

Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist Just a few brief comments on the market at the current levels. I was relatively optimistic about the equity markets coming into the beginning of the year.  The themes that had dominated much of 2009 (better than expected earnings, accommodative Fed, continuing stimulus, etc) appeared to be largely intact.  ...

It has been an interesting week in the market as stocks and commodities push to extreme support levels. Below I have posted some charts showing where the market is currently trading at and what I think is likely to unfold. Gold Futures – 4 Hour Candle Stick Chart The price of Gold is testing a key support level. I figure we will see gold try to...

Tyler Durden When this happened on the way up, it was being blasted endlessly on CNBC. Now, not so much. Watch out for the ongoing Liberty 33 stick save at the 1,100 level.

Scott Redler of T3Live We continue to get very nice day-and-a-half trades, from long to flat, then short to flat, as we have maneuvered lower the past two weeks. We have been out of macro longs since May 4th when uptrend broke and simply looking to make quick cash flow type trades. At this time, we are all now Euro traders as this is the new market...

Courtesy of Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker If you thought the German government was going to be a lapdog for Sarcozy, or worse, was going to fellate Brussels and the ECB, you got a rude shock today. It appears that the German Government has just plain had enough of the crap that the banksters have tried to pull, and has decided to do what Barack...

You know what a mystery the Dow’s 1,000-point drop on May 6 has been. Wall Street is looking for a smoking gun — a trader’s mistake, a computer glitch — but nothing definite has been found yet. If you’re familiar with Elliott wave analysis, last week’s shocking decline...

by Marin Katusa, Chief Investment Strategist, Casey’s Energy Opportunities Earlier this year, the Obama administration announced large new federal loan guarantees for the nuclear energy industry – totaling about $54 billion, or more than triple the current level of funding. Philosophically, we abhor government subsidies to any industry, but we...