Bernanke Defends Fed’s Ability to Supervise Banks (New York Times)

The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke , urged senators on Thursday not to strip the central bank of its authority to supervise the country’s largest banks, warning that to do so would pose a “grave risk,” The New York Times’s Sewell Chan reports from Washington. Read more….  Read More →

Central Bank expands as other banks struggle (Stillwater Gazette)

Bad news for banking has good news for Central Bank of Stillwater. Read more….  Read More →

Rumor Versus Fact: An Insider’s Report On A Manipulated Market

Full expanded blow by blow of today’s action from the CBOT via pitnoise.com. Rumors Vs. Data Well, well, well, today was an interesting day indeed.  It was a tug-of-war of sorts, with apathy pulling against very…VERY…bad data.  Luckily for the fearless apathetic lot amongst us who couldn’t care less about cascading... Read more...

Federal Reserve Balance Sheet Update: Week Of February 25 – Just $45 Billion Left In Quantitative Easing

The Federal Reserve’s assets were at $2.27 trillion as of February 25, jumping by $6 billion sequentially.  Securities held outright: $1,975 billion (an increase of $62.6 billion MoM, resulting from $59 billion increase in MBS and $3 billion in Agency Debt), or $8 billion increase sequentially.  The fed has completed $169.1 billion... Read more...

Expect the Unexpected

From The Daily Capitalist Today there was a lot of unexpected news. Unemployment claims increased by 22,000 last week and the culprit is … global warming. This was unexpected. Orders for durable goods fell 0.6%, the biggest drop since August. This was unexpected. Here is the report on unemployment: The number of Americans filing first-time... Read more...

How Goldman Prevented Today’s Market Rout And Made A Quick $3 Million In The Process

In our first of many “Trench Warfare” segments, we share with our readers the perspectives of various floor and desk traders and analysts, in this case CBOT floor trader F.S., whose valuable perspective sheds some much needed light on today’s odd market behavior, and on just who was responsible, and profited from it. I thought... Read more...

More Evidence that the Fed Sent Money to Iraq

Yesterday, I quoted an economist with the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee for eleven years who assisted with oversight of the Federal Reserve to show that there might be some basis for Ron Paul’s questions to Ben Bernanke about the Federal Reserve’s alleged shipment of money to Iraq. Here is some more information. In... Read more...

Support ‘America Saves Week’ or Spend?

From The Daily Capitalist Somehow Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan didn’t get the message from Team Obama about encouraging consumers to spend. As you know the Administration’s economic advisers see vigorous consumer spending as the solution for overcoming our recession. Consumer spending formerly represented 70%... Read more...

Postcards From Greece

For all those who wish CNBC would actually focus on the real problem areas of discussion, such as, oh, say Greece, and do some reporting instead of pandering to mutual fund managers puimping their books, here is a clip of what is really going on in this southeast European hotbed of IMF bailout activity.   h/t @fiatcurrency Read more….  Read More →

Next Round Of QE In England Now A Virtual Certainty

In a speech before the Imperial College in London, Bank Of England Policy Committee member David Miles made it almost a  virtual certainty that Quantitative Easing will continue in England, saying it is “entirely plausible” that further QE will be appropriate. According to Market News, Miles said that the minutes of the February... Read more...

Retail Ramp Job

The more horrific the jobs situation, the higher retail stocks are powerjammed by the Robots.  Just another example of how the junior 19-year traders at the biggest desks are being horsewhipped by the FemBots to “buy whatever is going up”.  Its all about gang tackling the “biggest % movers” on the Heat Maps. Exhibit... Read more...

Putting The Question Of Evil Sovereign CDS Speculators To Rest

Dear Mr. Bernanke, dear idiots at the SEC (to paraphrase an extremely observant Harry Markopolos), and dear everyone else who is just an empty chatterbox and a mouthpiece for other conflicted interests, who claim baselessly that it is all the CDS traders’ fault that Greece is about to be flushed down the toilet. We present to you the ratio... Read more...

GBP/USD Classical 02.25 (Daily FX via Yahoo! Finance)

GBP/USD: The most recent bout of bearish consolidation has been broken, with Thursday’s declines below 1.5350 opening a fresh downside extension which now eyes critical psychological barriers by 1.5000.  Read More →

The Daily Forecaster: USDJPY

The 88.76 target was met with 3 pips variance. The resistance at 89.50 is critical and while it holds there is probably a stronger risk that we’ll see 88.33 first. Watch for a bullish trade set up there as this should trigger a deeper pullback. Only an earlier break above… Read more….  Read More →

Daily Technical Analysis

The EURUSD attempted to push lower yesterday, bottomed at 1.3451 but closed higher at 1.3549. On h1 chart below we can see that price has slipped above the minor trendline resistance (yellow) indicating potential upside correction testing the upper line of the minor bullish channel. The main scenario should remain… Read more….  Read More →

Market Morning Briefing

The Yen appreciated while the Pound depreciated sharply against most major currencies yesterday. The Yen recorded a low of 88.80 against Dollar (USD-JPY) and 119.64 against Euro (EUR-JPY). Though it has depreciated slightly since then today morning because of month end demand from importers, the technicals suggests that the Yen… Read more….  Read More →

FX Technical Commentary

Euro 1.3560 Initial support at 1.3497 (Feb 23 low) followed by 1.3444 (Feb 19 low). Initial resistance is now located at 1.3692 (Feb 23 high) followed by 1.3788 (Feb 17 high) Read more….  Read More →

AUD/USD Test .88 Amid Risk Aversion

Technically speaking, the Aussie has multiple uptrend lines serving as technical cushions along with intraday and 2/12 lows. Speaking of 2/12 lows, investors should eye our 3rd tier uptrend line since it runs through these levels. Hence, a failure of our 3rd tier uptrend line could yield a retest of… Read more….  Read More →

Elliott Wave Update ~ 25 February [Update 9:30PM]

[Update 9:30PM: Although the market seems to be stair-stepping lower perhaps in some kind of leading diagonal move, the 'ol brain (and price action and up reversal volume) rather tells me its perhaps a wishful count.  Particularly since certain sectors show a distinct "three" correction over the last few days and maybe are making new wave... Read more...

E-minis [Update 2:30PM]

[Update 2:30 PM:  EDIT: Actually, as pointed out in comments, the Wilshire doesn't technically overlap but the other indexes do.] This would be the most logical spot for a leading expanding diagonal triangle. They can start at the top of a major decline when you can spot them.  If this is a wave [iii] or 3, it would qualify... Read more...

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