STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Wednesday, 24 December 2014
[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Wednesday, 24 December 2014[font color=black][/font]
SMW for 23 December 2014
AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 23 December 2014
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Dow Jones 18,024.17 +64.73 (0.36%)
S&P 500 2,082.17 +3.63 (0.17%)
[font color=red]Nasdaq 4,765.42 -16.00 (-0.33%)
[font color=red]10 Year 2.27% +0.09 (4.13%)
30 Year 2.85% +0.09 (3.26%) [font color=black]
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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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(click on link for latest updates)
http://tools.investing.com/market_quotes.php?
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
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Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
Credit Union Tracker
Daily Job Cuts
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Economic Blogs:[/font][/font]
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The Big Picture
Financial Sense
Calculated Risk
Naked Capitalism
Credit Writedowns
Brad DeLong
Bonddad
Atrios
goldmansachs666
The Stand-Up Economist
The Automatic Earth
Wall Street on Parade
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Essential Reading:[/font][/font]
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Matt Taibi: Secret and Lies of the Bailout
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
[/center][font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.
02/14/13 Gilbert Lopez, former chief accounting officer of Stanford Financial Group, and former controller Mark Kuhrt sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for their roles in Allen Sanford's $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
03/29/13 Michael Sternberg, portfolio mgr at SAC Capital, arrested in NYC, charged with conspiracy and securities fraud. Pled not guilty and freed on $3m bail.
04/04/13 Matthew Marshall Taylor,fmr Goldman Sachs trader arrested, charged by CFTC w/defrauding his employer on $8BN futures bet "by intentionally concealing the true huge size, as well as the risk and potential profits or losses associated."
04/04/13 Matthew Taylor admits guilt, makes plea bargain. Sentencing set for 26 June; faces up to 20 years in prison but will likely only see 3-4 years. Says, "I am truly sorry."
04/11/13 Ex-KPMG LLP partner Scott London charged by federal prosecutors w/passing inside tips to a friend in exchange for cash, jewelry, and concert tickets; expected to plead guilty in May.
08/01/13 Fabrice Tourré convicted on six counts of security fraud, including "aiding and abetting" his former employer, Goldman Sachs
08/14/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout charged with wire fraud, falsifying records, and conspiracy in connection with JP Morgan's "London Whale" trade.
08/19/13 Phillip A. Falcone, manager of hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, agrees to admit to "wrongdoing" in market manipulation. Will banned from securities industry for 5 years and pay $18MM in disgorgement and fines.
09/16/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout officially indicted on charges associated with "London Whale" trade.
02/06/14 Matthew Martoma convicted of insider trading while at hedge fund SAC (Stephen A. Cohen) Capital Advisors. Expected sentence 7-10 years.
03/24/14 Annette Bongiorno, Bernard Madoff's secretary; Daniel Bonventre, director of operations for investments; JoAnn Crupi, an account manager; and Jerome O'Hara and George Perez, both computer programmers convicted of conspiracy to defraud clients, securities fraud, and falsifying the books and records.
05/19/14 Credit Suisse, which has an investment bank branch in NYC, agrees to plead guilty and pay appx. $2.6 billion penalties for helping wealthy Americans hide wealth and avoid taxes.
09/08/14 Matthew Martoma, convicted SAC trader, sentenced to 9 years in prison plus forfeiture of $9.3 million, including home and bank accounts
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[font size=3][font color=red]This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.[/font][/font][/font color=red][font color=black]
= new reply since forum marked as read
Just when one thought the story of Ukraine and its (now non-existant) gold could not get any more surreal, it did...As a reminder, it was about a month ago when we learned courtesy of an interview on Ukraine TV with the country's central bank head Valeriya Gontareva, that Ukraine's gold was virtually all gone, when she made the stunning admission that "in the vaults of the central bank there is almost no gold left. There is a small amount of gold bullion left, but it's just 1% of reserves." That in itself would have been sufficient to explain why just a few short days later, the Netherlands shocked the world when it announced it had secretly repatriated 122 tonnes of gold from the NY Fed, and had the story of Ukraine's missing gold ended there (or even with the criminal probe launched by Ukraine whether the central bank head had abused her power and misused her office when she "intentionally committed an extremely unfavorable transaction for the gold and forex reserves of Ukraine"
, it still would have been one of the most bizarre, surreal stories of 2014.
Luckily, the story just got far better, and far, far more bizarre and surreal. As Bloomberg reports, Ukraine opened a criminal probe after several gold bars at the central bank’s storage in the southern city of Odessa turned to be painted lead.
"The management of the central bank’s branch in Odessa asked us to investigate fraud by their employee," Volodymyr Shablienko, head of the Odessa police’s press office, said by phone today. "We are conducting a forensic audit now."
As Bloomberg explains, the latest gold fraud involved a central bank employee passing lead bars covered with golden paint to the storage unit, registering them as gold, the Vesti newspaper reported today, citing an unidentified person with knowledge of the matter in Odessa’s police department. According to additional information from RT, the central bank was actually conned into buying the gold-plated lead. Yes. lead, not even tungsten. RT adds that the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has confirmed the theft of several kilograms of gold in the Odessa region. The cashier involved has apparently fled to Crimea, Vesti Ukraine reports. Criminal proceedings began on November 18, even though the scam apparently took place between August and October. In other words, when Ukraine still, allegedly, had some gold left. Now it has no more gold, but at least it has some very expensive lead.
A preliminary investigation suggests the gang had someone working for them inside the bank that forged the necessary paperwork to allow the sale of the fake gold bullion. It’s also been discovered that bank staff were not regularly checked when entering or exiting the premises. Altogether some 11 kilograms of gold worth about $420,000 are missing.
And while one can laugh at the stupidity of a central bank duped into believing gold-plated lead is the real deal, the real stunner is that according to the First Deputy Central Bank Governor Oleksandr Pysaruk, the central bank “took a principal decision that we will not buy gold any more from the population. We are making conclusions internally, including changing our procedures." In other words, until December, the central bank would buy any gold-plated lead, or tungsten, without any authenticity tests from any member of the population, or in other words, exchanging its existing reserves, i.e., gold (which it no longer has after converting most of it into dollars), into lead. There is a potential silver lining here in that whoever ended up getting the bulk of Ukraine's gold reserves, is now also the proud owner of a few hundreds kilograms of gold-plated lead.
One really couldn't make this up, which is perhaps the point. Better for the public to be focused on the stupidity of its central bankers, than on their criminality for selling out the people's gold (or worse, giving it away for free in exchange for political favors of the current class of US State Department muppets) to unknown buyers in exchange for a few pieces of green paper.
The Federal Reserve and its bullion bank agents are actively using uncovered futures contracts to illegally manipulate the prices of precious metals in order to keep interest rates below the market rate. The purpose of manipulation is to support the U.S. dollar’s reserve status at a time when the dollar should be in decline from the over-supply created by QE and from trade and budget deficits.
Historically, the role of gold and silver has been to function as a means of exchange and a store of wealth during periods of economic and political turmoil. Since the bullion bull market began in late 2000, It rose almost non-stop until March 2008, ahead of the Great Financial Crisis, which started with the collapse of Bear Stearns. When Bear Stearns collapsed, gold was taken down over the course of the next 7 months from $1035 to $680, or 34%; silver from $21 to $8, or 62%. The most violent takedown occurred as Lehman collapsed and Goldman Sachs was about to collapse. This takedown occurred during a period of time when gold should have been going parabolic in price. The price of gold finally took off in late October 2008 from $680 to $1900 while the Government and the Fed were busy printing money to bail out the banks. While the price of gold rose nearly 300% from late 2008 to September 2011, the U.S. dollar lost over 17% of its value, falling from 89 on the dollar index to 73.50. The current takedown of gold from $1900 to $1200 has occurred during a period of time when financial and political fraud and corruption becomes worse and more blatant by the day. Along with this, the intensity and openness with which the metals are systematically beat down seems to grow by the day.
Comex futures trade 23 hours a day via a global computerized trading system known as Globex. The heaviest period of trading occurs when the actual Comex floor operations are open, which is 8:20 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. EST. All other times Comex futures trade electronically via Globex. Gold and silver are smashed primarily during the Globex-only trading periods, when volume is often light to non-existent. This graph of Comex futures trading on December 16th shows the sudden plunge in the price of silver.
The second stage of the sharp price drop begins at 1:30 pm eastern time (11:30 mountain time), after the Comex floor trading operation was closed for the day. This is typically one of the lowest volume trading periods, during which orders to buy or sell can cause significant price disruption to the market. There were no news or events that would have triggered the sudden selling of bullion futures, and none of the other markets experienced unusual movements while gold and silver were quickly plunging in price.
To put in perspective the 9,767 silver contracts sold in 15 minutes, the total trading volume in Comex silver for the 23-hour global trading period for Comex contracts ending at 5:00 p.m. on December 15th was 149,964 contracts, or an average of 6,520 contracts per hour. The only type of market participant that would dump almost 10,000 contracts in a 15-minute period is a seller who’s only motivation is to push the price of silver as low as possible. One entity that can afford to use capital like this is the Federal Reserve, because the Fed can create its own capital for free using the printing press. In the background, the financial markets are becoming increasingly pressured by declines in emerging market currencies, insolvent sovereign governments–including here in the US–and perhaps a renewed derivatives crisis triggered by the collapse in the price of oil. The oil price decline could result in derivative problems larger than the subprime mortgage derivatives of the 2008 crisis.
The downward manipulation of the prices of precious metals prevents the “crisis warning transmission system” from properly functioning. More important, the decline in the price of gold/silver vs. the U.S. dollar conveys the illusion that the dollar is strong at a time when, in fact, the dollar should be under pressure from the over-issuance of dollars and dollar-denominated debt. What we have been experiencing since the 2008 crisis is not only the subordination of US economic policy to the needs of banks “too big to fail,” but also the subordination of law and the financial regulatory agencies to the interests of a few private banks. The manipulation of the bullion markets is illegal whether done by private parties or on public authority, and so we have the spectacle of the US government supporting a handful of banks via illegal means. Not only has economic accountability been set aside, but also legal accountability. Just as Washington places itself above laws prohibiting torture and naked aggression in order to conduct its self-declared “war on terror” and above the Constitution in order to construct a domestic police state, Washington places itself above the laws prohibiting market manipulation. Obviously, the government’s claim to represent the rule of law is as false as all its other claims. The foul stench of corruption and hypocrisy that emanates from Washington is the smell of a dying country.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org
Wolf Richter www.wolfstreet.com www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-23/first-oil-now-us-natural-gas-plunges-chart-%E2%80%9Cnegative-igniter%E2%80%9D-new-debt-crisis
Friday, natural gas futures plunged 6%. Monday morning, when folks were thinking about the beautiful Santa Rally, NG futures plunged nearly 10% to $3.12 per million Btu, the lowest since January 10, 2013. But the crazy day had just begun. NG bounced off and jumped nearly 4%, only to give up much of it later. Tuesday morning, as I’m finishing this up, NG continues to decline, now at $3.11/mmBtu. Down 30% from a month ago. NG demand peaks when the heating season starts. It’s a bet on the weather. Our gurus forecast warmer than normal temperatures across the country, so prices plunged. Or shorts piled into the pre-holiday session with exaggerated effect to make a quick buck.
Here is what this 30-day, 30% plunge looks like (each bar = 5 hours):
US-Nat-Gas-Nov_23--Dec_22-2014
Whatever the cause, NG has traded below the cost of production of many wells for years. That lofty $4.40/mmBtu on the left side in the chart above is still below the cost of production for many wells. The price simply fell from bad to terrible.
To make the equation work, drillers have shifted from shale formations that produce mostly “dry” natural gas to formations that also produce a lot of liquids, such as oil, natural gasoline, propane, butane, or ethane that were fetching a much higher price. Thus, they’d be immune to the low price of NG. They pitched this strategy to investors to attract ever more money and keep the fracking treadmill going. Much of this new money was in form of junk debt. Now energy companies account for over 15% of the Barclays U.S. Corporate High-Yield Bond Index – up from less than 5% in 2005. But there is no respite for the American oil patch. The price of oil has plunged 50% since June, the price of propane is down 50% since its recent high in mid-September, and natural gasoline is down 32% since recent high in mid-November. None of the fancy charts natural gas drillers have shown to investors work at these prices.
It’s showing up everywhere. Take Samson Resources. As is typical in that space, there is a Wall Street angle to it. One of the largest closely-held exploration and production companies, Samson was acquired for $7.2 billion in 2011 by private-equity firms KKR, Itochu Corp., Crestview Partners, and NGP Energy Capital Management. They ponied up $4.1 billion. For the rest of the acquisition costs, they loaded up the company with $3.6 billion in new debt. In addition to the interest expense on this debt, Samson is paying “management fees” to these PE firms, starting at $20 million per year and increasing by 5% every year. KKR is famous for leading the largest LBO in history in 2007 at the cusp of the Financial Crisis. The buyout of a Texas utility, now called Energy Future Holdings Corp., was a bet that NG prices would rise forevermore, thus giving the coal-focused utility a leg up. But NG prices soon collapsed. And in April 2014, the company filed for bankruptcy. Now KKR is stuck with Samson. Being focused on NG, the company is another bet that NG prices would rise forevermore. But in 2011, they went on to collapse further. In 2014 through September, the company lost $471 million, the Wall Street Journal reported, bringing the total loss since acquisition to over $3 billion. This is what happens when the cost of production exceeds the price of NG for years. Samson has used up almost all of its available credit. In order to stay afloat a while longer, it is selling off a good part of its oil-and-gas fields in Oklahoma, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado. It’s shedding workers. Production will decline with the asset sales – the reverse of what investors in its bonds had been promised. Samson’s junk bonds have been eviscerated. In early August, the $2.25 billion of 9.75% bonds due in 2020 still traded at 103.5 cents on the dollar. By December 1, they were down to 56 cents on the dollar. Now they trade for 43.5 cents on the dollar. They’d plunged 58% in four months.
The collapse of oil and gas prices hasn’t rubbed off on the enthusiasm that PE firms portray in order to attract new money from pension funds and the like. “We see this as a real opportunity,” explained KKR co-founder Henry Kravis at a conference in November. KKR, Apollo Global Management, Carlyle, Warburg Pincus, Blackstone and many other PE firms traipsed all over the oil patch, buying or investing in E&P companies, stripping out whatever equity was in them, and loading them up with piles of what was not long ago very cheap junk bonds and even more toxic leveraged loans.This is how Wall Street fired up the fracking boom. PE firms gathered over $100 billion in their energy funds since 2011. The nine publicly traded E&P companies that represent the largest holdings have cost PE firms at least $12.7 billion, the Wall Street Journal figured. This doesn’t include their losses on the smaller holdings. Nor does it include losses from companies like Samson that are not publicly traded. And it doesn’t include losses pocketed by bondholders and leveraged loan holders or all the millions of stockholders out there.
Undeterred, Blackstone is raising its second energy-focused fund; it has a $4.5 billion target, Bloomberg reported. The plunge in oil and gas prices “has not created a lot of difficulties for us,” CEO Schwarzman explained at a conference on December 10. KKR’s Kravis said at the same conference that he welcomed the collapse as an opportunity. Carlyle co-CEO Rubenstein expected the next 5 to 10 years to be “one of the greatest times” to invest in the oil patch.
The problem?
“If you have an asset you already own, it’s probably going to go down in value,” Rubenstein admitted. But if you’ve got money to invest, in Carlyle’s case about $7 billion, “it’s a great time to buy.” They all agree: opportunities will be bountiful for those folks who refused to believe the hype about fracking over the past few years and who haven’t sunk their money into energy companies. Or those who got out in time....
The Fed giveth, the Fed taketh away. What’s going to crash next?
I'm heading up to South Dumbfuckistan right now, to try to bring dear ole, Pappy back.....again.
Maybe I'll check in again later after I get to a hotel. If not, enjoy yourselves.
The Spanish king's sister, Princess Cristina, is to face a tax fraud trial over alleged links to her husband's business dealings. It is the first time for modern Spain to put a royal in the dock to face trial. Her husband Inaki Urdangarin is accused of embezzling millions in public funds with a former business partner. The couple deny wrongdoing. Prosecutors in Palma, Majorca, say Mr Urdangarin's sports foundation misused public money. It is alleged that €5.6m (£4.6m; $7.5m) of public money went missing from the Noos Institute, a charitable sports foundation, when Mr Urdangarin was in charge of it. Princess Cristina, 49, is under suspicion over €2.6m of that money. She is the sister of King Felipe VI, and youngest daughter of the former king, Juan Carlos. The allegations relate to business affairs in 2007-2008. The affair has cast a long shadow over the Spanish royal family since the investigation was launched in 2010.
Mr Urdangarin and his then business partner, Diego Torres, allegedly used the Noos Institute to organise events for the regional governments of Valencia and the Balearic Islands at hugely inflated prices.
The princess is expected to sit in the dock with 16 other suspects. With her husband she co-owned a company called Aizoon. A far-right trade union called Manos Limpias ("Clean Hands"
brought a civil action over the affair and wants an eight-year prison sentence for the princess and 26.5 years for her husband.
Princess Cristina is sixth in line to the throne. Her wedding in 1997 to the then Spanish professional handball player Inaki Urdangarin was celebrated in a fairy-tale atmosphere. But in recent years opposition to the monarchy has grown. Juan Carlos abdicated on 18 June, after months of poor health. Juan Carlos was widely admired for the way he steered Spain's difficult transition to democracy after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. But before his abdication Juan Carlos was criticised over controversial hunting trips, at a time when the Noos scandal was regularly making headlines. Republican feelings have also grown in Catalonia's strong pro-independence movement.
