Phil’s Stock World The question isn’t how low can we go, but rather, how high can the Dollar bounce? With our manipulated joke of a currency, the knee-jerk response is “not very” but I was at the Economist’s Buttonwood Gathering yesterday (see my write-up of Day 1 here) and taking the pulse of the audience of movers and shakers...

(AP) — Ford Motor Co.’s third-quarter net income rose 68 percent as it grabbed a bigger share of the U.S. auto market and buyers paid more for its highly-rated cars and trucks. It was Ford’s sixth straight quarterly profit and the company’s best third-quarter performance since at least 1990. Ford CEO Alan Mulally said popular...

Tim Iacono The latest  report(.pdf) on home prices coming from the S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index confirms what has been known for some time now – in the absence of government largess in the form of $8,000 tax credits, home values are again dropping, down 0.2 percent from June to July and, more recently, down 0.3 percent from July to August. The...

By: John Darsie of T3Live Goldman: Fed Needs $4 Trillion of QE2 to Meet Mandate (Fortune) Fed Needs to Print $4 Trillion to Close Taylor Gap (ZeroHedge) Goldman Sachs’ economists Jan Hatzius and Sven Jari Stehn estimate that the Fed needs to make $4 trillion in asset purchases if it is serious about reducing unemployment, increasing inflation...

(Excerpted from the most recent issue of the BullBear Weekend Report and updated on Friday, October 22, 2010) Although the current market dialogue between Bulls and Bears is focused on the Inflation vs. Deflation dichotomy, it’s possible that a dynamic between Risk vs. Safety is the better framework for analysis. The possible transition from...

Courtesy of Mish John Hussman has an interesting post this week on the misguided policies of the Bernanke Fed and how quantitative easing promotes commodity speculation and hoarding but does nothing for the real economy. Please consider Bernanke Leaps into a Liquidity Trap The belief that an increase in the money supply will result in an increase...

The 25 charts in this just-published issue tell you all you need to know about the psychology driving share prices today. And the contrarian insights Robert Prechter adds to each picture only increases their unique value. Subscribers will do more than benefit from the specific safe investment advice spelled out inside; Prechter’s one-of-a-kind...

The Market Ticker Hattip Zerohedge: BAIR: LITIGATION FROM SERVICER ISSUES COULD BE `VERY DAMAGING’ BAIR SAYS FORECLOSURE PROBLEMS WILL REQUIRE `GLOBAL SOLUTION’ BAIR: CRISIS REQUIRES `DECISIVE’ ACTION FOR MORTGAGE SYSTEM BAIR: FDIC SECURITIZATION RULES `CONSISTENT’ WITH DODD-FRANK BAIR SAYS CRISIS REVEALED `CRITICAL FLAWS’...

Last week was volatile thanks to China raising their interest rates a quarter basis point. This rate hike caused the Dollar to spike in value which in turn forced equities and metals to sell off sharply. This one day event caused equities to break below a short term support level causing a large number of protective stops to be triggered. This added...

The adjusted initial claims for the week ended October 16th was 452,000, (the non adjusted figure was under 400,000) a decrease of 23,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 475,000.  Economists were expecting claims to fall to 455,000 from the previously reported figure of 462,000. The four-week average of new jobless claims fell...

Tim Iacono Here’s a chart from the current issue of the investment newsletter at Iacono Research. It’s been quite a ride for gold, silver, and mining stocks in recent months, their future direction now uncertain as the world waits to see what Ben Bernanke and the crew at the Federal Reserve do in ten days after the most highly anticipated Fed meeting...

The Market Ticker Oh yeah, let’s see….. last week I wrote about this: Richard M. Bowen, former chief underwriter for Citigroup’s consumer-lending group, said he warned his superiors of concerns that some types of loans in securities didn’t conform with representations and warranties in 2006 and 2007. “In mid-2006, I discovered that...

Courtesy of Tyler Durden After months of US bitching and moaning about China’s so called unfair exchange policies, when it is the US Fed which is the biggest currency manipulator in the world by orders of magnitude, one country finally had the guts to stand up and call out Tim Geithner on his endless bullshit. At the G-20 meeting, per Bloomberg,...

Courtesy of Doug Short Based on data by Rick Davis at Consumer Metrics Growth Note: The CMI charts are now updated through October 20. Is the Consumer Metrics Growth Index a leading indicator for GDP? See the Institute’s October 5th commentary for a discussion of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) September revision to GDP. ***** For the past...

By: John Darsie of T3Live This week marked the meat of earnings season, with a host of leading stocks across many different sectors reporting. We characterized this earnings season as ‘make or break’ coming in, and this week would provide telling evidence in regards to the health of the corporate landscape. Given the strong month-and-a-half...