Scott Redler of T3 Live I attached a chart of the S&P that you will see a series of “lower highs”: 1217 then 1181 then 1131, and now we are approaching and area 1065-1080 which will be very tough for this market to get through at it’s first attempt. If you traded this bounce from the long side, this could be a spot to take some off. If...

By Eliot Spitzer and William Black, courtesy of New Deal 2.0 How many disasters will it take to overhaul the regulatory agencies? The SEC and the Minerals Management Service’s (MMS) share a number of characteristics we can’t help but notice in the wake of the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, which followed the second-worst financial...

Courtesy of Mish The Wall Street Journal reports Retailers Turn in a Mixed Bag for June Sales. U.S. retailers reported mixed results for June, with some stores benefiting from aggressive promotions and others hurt by consumers’ continued restrained spending. Retailers from department stores to teen retailers responded to limited demand with...

Karl Denninger Nothing good to see here. Consumer credit decreased at an annual rate of 4-1/2 percent in May 2010.  Revolving credit decreased at an annual rate of 10-1/2 percent, and nonrevolving credit decreased at an annual rate of 1-1/2 percent. So non-revolving is now declining again, and the decrease in the revolving credit continues apace. There’s...

Tim Iacono Bloomberg has a lengthy report today on the performance of hedge funds during the second quarter, a stretch that included the months of May and June that were not kind to stocks. Hedge-fund managers, Wall Street’s best compensated and supposedly smartest investors, are dazed and confused. Reeling from the worst second-quarter performance...

By Jeff Clark, Senior Editor, Casey’s Gold & Resource Report One of the big hints that gold stocks will be ready for take-off is when they stop following the broader markets and strictly track gold, particularly if the market falls and gold stocks don’t. We now have data showing this has just occurred. From April 2009 to April 2010,...

Tyler Durden Nat gas is in freefall after the EIA reported a much larger than expected build up in natgas inventories: the Energy Information Administration reported an increase by 78 billion cubic feet for the week ended July 2. Expectations were for a 70 bcf increase, while the last week reading was at 60 bcf. The result is a freefall in the price...

Gold Scents First off, a little history to dispel some myths. I’ve known that the head & shoulders pattern that everyone is afraid of doesn’t actually hold up to testing being little better than a coin toss. Well, Jason Goephert of Sentimentrader.com actually ran the data and it’s much worse than a coin toss. The percentage...

The Market Ticker This is amusing…. In the week ending July 3, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 454,000, a decrease of 21,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 475,000. The 4-week moving average was 466,000, a decrease of 1,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 467,250. Right. ...

It’s been a short but exciting week so far. Investors and traders are have been scratching their heads the past few days as stocks continued to bounce around giving mixed signals. But today was a clear day of short covering from this much oversold market condition. Below are a few charts showing what I’m currently thinking will unfold in the...

by Tyler Durden There are probably a few words available to describe just how “forward looking” the market is, as it has just taken out the horrendous June 29 NFP number, and the plethora of ISM and other assorted negative news since then. Fundamentals don’t matter, just carry and leverage. With alpha now dead, we hope at least...

For those of us living in the United States, there’s definitely one thing getting barbecued this holiday weekend: porterhouse stock values. To wit: On June 30, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed out Q2 of 2010 with seven straight negative trading sessions. History shows this was the market’s longest losing streak since October...

The Mess That Greenspan Made It’s kind of funny to think back to days of late-winter and early-spring when the braintrust at the nation’s central bank was debating whether it should raise short term interest rates before starting to sell some of its $1+ trillion hoard of mortgage-backed securities, sell some of the MBSes before raising rates,...

Courtesy of Mish Economists are surprised by the strangest things. The UK has announced austerity measures, Greece, Spain, Portugal (3 little PIIGS) are in forced austerity programs, and Germany is paying more attention to deficit reduction than growth (rightfully so), yet somehow economists expect factory orders in Germany to keep improving. Please...

The death cross does not occur that often, in fact, in the last 2 1/2 years we’ve only seen this happen three times. The most recent occurred just last week and is something that every investor and trader should pay close attention to. I believe that this video will help you understand what the death cross is and how you can construct it and...