What We're Reading

Just when the (last few remaining) bears were enjoying some market wide liquidation, China apparently launched some stealth QE of their own reversing AUD/JPY and sending markets plowing over weak bears.  From Bloomberg:

• CHINA’S PBOC STARTS 500B YUAN SLF TODAY, SINA.COM SAYS
• PBOC PROVIDES 500B YUAN LIQUIDITY TO CHINA’S TOP 5 BANKS: SINA
• PBOC PROVIDES 100B YUAN TO EACH BANK TODAY, TOMORROW WITH DURATION OF 3 MONTHS: SINA

According to Government Sachs

"This amount is roughly the same as a 50 bps cut to RRR for the whole banking system on a static basis.  Still, such an easing would be consistent with our expectation that (1) monetary policy will loosened amid the drastic slowdown in activity growth and falling inflation, and (2) full scale RRR and interest rate cuts are unlikely because they would be viewed as aggressive stimulus."

Toss in a little hint dropping from the Wall Street Journal's Fed-whisperer Jon Hilsenrath that that the "considerable period" language will

How mesmerizing is this?  Now that's what I call awesomeness.  Taken by my daughter last night.  Boy, do I love Texas!

When EBAY was blow torched this week after AAPL unveiled Apple Pay at their investor event on September 7th, I saw the knee-jerk fear that Apple Pay would take down PayPal as one to raise an eyebrow, however considering the possible number of iphone6 and Apple watch sales (because it won't be available on current Apple products) versus worldwide usage of PayPal, this would not something that would immediately destroy the EBAY name.  On Wednesday I jumped in on EBAY calls (cheap at that point) feeling the reaction was over done.

Booyah!  Was I glad today that I did.  Dumb luck is definitely better than no luck at all.

Not only are other market participants now beginning to question the depth of impact from Apple Pay (again only available on the new iPhone6 or Apple Watch), but it's overall security in a day and age of endless hackers when it comes to one's digital wallet replacing their plastic card and cash.

Then today the news hit when EBAY announced they are set to launch an

I'd be trading this bad boy to the long side.  In this seven year weekly chart, not only has it broken my three trend line rule, there was positive MACD convergence (as shorts began to massively cover) and the 200week SMA which was prior resistance, has now become support. 

It certainly appears that the "low" in low rates was in in 2013.

I should also note that the monthly chart is deeply oversold.  At some point, you simply run out of sellers.

I've long said that when in mortgage banking, we watched the 10yr. each week for direction of rates and we completely ignored the Fed raising or lowering rates.  They were a laggard; the 10yr was already there.

Yep.  If this were a stock, I'd be trading it long, buying at support or out of the short side completely.  Maybe not expecting anything spectacular in terms of upside but ROC would indicate no heavy selling; short covering more than anything else. 

I believe we've entered the phase in our bull market where "good news" is now bad new

Forgetting your wallet at home may no longer be a problem when picking up prescriptions or incidentals, as the nation’s biggest drugstore chain Walgreens and other major retailers partner with Apple and its new mobile payment system. Apple’s new mobile payment system — Apple Pay — could certainly make life for consumers much easier. But the move also makes the iPhone a virtually indispensable — and invaluable –piece of property that will be even more vulnerable to security risks if lost, stolen or hacked.

Walgreens, Target, Staples, McDonald’s, Sephora, Starbucks, and Groupon are among the 12 retailers to accept Apple Pay in October. The system was unveiled Sept. 9 along with the latest iPhone and the highly anticipated Apple Watch.

Apple Pay will allow consumers to pay for items using near field communication, a wireless technology that transmits payment information from the mobile device to a store’s checkout system. The SIM card in the mobile phone, which stores users’ personal in

Polls released this week showed for the first time that a majority – an extremely small majority, but a majority nonetheless – of Scots favor independence, although other polls suggest the no camp remains in the lead. A poll is not the election, which will be held Sept. 18, but it is still a warning that something extraordinary might happen very soon. The political union between Scotland and England might be abolished after 300 years. The implications of this are enormous and generally ignored.

Obviously, this raises a host of question about how such a divorce might take place, whether the expected time frame – divorce by 2016 – will be adhered to, and how state property might be divided. It also raises the question of Scottish foreign policy. Will Scotland remain in NATO? Will it have membership in the European Union? Will it continue to use the pound sterling, and if not, how will it roll out its own currency?

These are important questions, but far more important issues will follow

On down days such as this, one could easily assume some profits are being taken ahead of the Alibaba IPO the third week of September.  Some will look for signs of a market top (as they nervously do each day).  We could also sit and ponder if the dollar strength is weighing or over seas tensions are bothering the market but in truth, it doesn't matter.

Best thing to do is to check your stops, adjust as necessary and take note of just "who" is holding up amongst the selling.  I'm not referring sectors per se or to laggards or beaten up names, but what one could consider leaders with more "room to run" and not being sold first by finds. Funds, after all, know more than we do.

Better to explain it, those who may be seeing selling BUT are stil holding up (green) as eager buyers are there to scoop up what's being sold.  Today, such names to be kept on your radar are NFLX, TSLA, DECK, FB, JD, JKS, GOOG, MDVN, TWTR.

**If** we head higher, these names would be expected to lead.  Of course, i

Beware "Bear-Mageddon" says Mike O'Rourke, Chief Market Strategist at Jones Trading in this talk with Hedgeye's Keith McCullough.  Hat tip to StockBuz member Ed (@vette_ed) for this insight.  We miss you buddy!

I must admit, I don't particularly care for escalators when there are numerous riders (crowded and smelly) however I'd take the stairs even more often given the pleasant incentive.

And they get to write off over 1/2 of it too.

When Jack Ma founded the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba in 1999, one of his stated goals was to build a company that will last for at least 102 years so that it would span from the 20th to the 22nd centuries. Now with products, technology and marketing -- what Alibaba has done is a great combination of all three.

Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba ($BABA) is expected to begin an eagerly awaited roadshow for what could be the largest ever IPO early in the week of September 8, and its shares could list as soon as September 18 or 19, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Expected to raise about $20bn when it lists on the NYSE rivaling the Agricultural Bank of China’s $22.1bn IPO from July 2010, currently the largest on record.

Alibaba’s ability to make a transition to mobile has been a focus of analysts and investors as China’s tech groups square off for customers glued to smartphones. Last week, the company announced a surge in mobile revenues for the second quarter.

A tenf

Google certainly looks to be dominating the mobile playing field.  Good for Google or does this just open the door to fresh startups and current disruptors to look to take market share?  (more below)

Some key questions to be answered in this area include:

• How fast has mobile app usage been growing?
• How often are people using apps on each device?
• What percentage of time are consumers spending on their top apps?
• How do iOS users differ from Android users demographically and behaviorally?
• Which mobile app content categories are we spending most of our time consuming?
• How do the top apps compare in different age segments?

Download the full report at Comscore

Companies would expect their investment firm, especially management and Senior members, to not only dissuade insider trading, but to lead by example.  Here's a complete failure.

Case in point Mr. Michael Anthony Dupre Lucarelli.  The Director of Market Intelligence at a Manhattan-based investor relations firm.  Market Intelligence?  Serious oxymoron going on there?  Maybe not an oxymoron such as "honest politician" or "almost pregnant" but snake in the grass, no doubt (allegedly).

Today the SEC charged the "Director" of insider trading by more than a dozen clients.  The charges were filed against Mr. Lucarelli alleging he garnered nearly $1 million in illicit profits.

An SEC investigation and ongoing forensic analysis of Lucarelli’s work computers uncovered that he repeatedly accessed clients’ draft press releases stored on his firm’s computer network prior to public announcements.  The SEC alleges that Lucarelli, who had no legitimate work-related reason to access the draft press r

Ask 10 different money managers what metric they use to determine if a stock (or particular market) is overvalued, and you'll more than likely receive 10 different responses.  Of course buying at "the bottom" is easier said than done, as we all know so I submit to you this perspective.

Kyle Caldwell, personal finance reporter at the Daily Telegraph, determined whether stock markets were undervalued or overvalued. Caldwell used three measures: price to earnings (P/E), cyclically adjusted price to earnings ratio (CAPE) and price to book (P/B). His analysis included 34 countries, both developed and emerging and compared current measures to historical averages.

The CAPE adjusts for cyclical variations and takes a longer term view than the P/E considering the earnings average over the last 10 years instead of the 12 month average. Its premise is that eventually earnings will move back to their long term trend. Price to book divides the current value per share over the equity value sho

Last week we posted a blip about Bardabunga; the largest volcano in Iceland experiencing an enormous increase in seismic activity of late and we recapped how the 2010 volcanic eruption in Iceland paralyzed air travel, shuttering a number of airports and stranding travelers across Europe (not to mention costing airlines billions in lost revenue). 

To bring us up to date is Dem. site DailyKos which truly makes me love science even more.  Sadly, I slept through much of it as a teen.  What a fool was I.

In any case, Bardabunga is far from calming down and indicators point to it's magma chamber not only expanding, but flowing right towards...........Askja; another volcano's magma chamber.  Estimate now are that magma intrusion she's sent forth at an average rate of hundreds of cubic meters per second (similar to the flow rate of the Hudson River at New York City, straight through solid rock) has gone over 30 kilometers from Bárðarbunga's magma chamber, its end is no longer under the glaci

If the Old Farmers Almanac is even semi accurate, it looks as though it's going to be another nasty Winter - colder than last year (!) ahead thanks to the sun's activity.  According to this video (below) this forecast is nothing to shake a stick at as allegedly they have an 80% accuracy but only time will tell. 

Of course, the folks back home in Chicago will immediately roll their eyes and sigh in pure disgust and they have the right to after the "polar vortex" that rolled through the area last January.  Not only were schools shut and streets impassable but even expressways, covered with salt as fast as they could spread it, froze and brought commuters and semis to a stand still.  Supplies were cutoff across the nation and insurers definitely had to have felt the pain.

Seems I relocated to Texas just in the nick of time!  While we still get a few snow days down here below the 40th parallel North (even a inch of snow here paralyzes drivers and shuts down schools), the first thing that j