Trader’s Narrative

For economic and market news and to see what interesting reading you may have missed last week, check out the list below. To see it all, go to news.tradersnarrative.com:

• Why the Goldman Sachs-AIG Story Won’t Go Away
• Europe Shows the Way: ING Broken Up
• Wall Street Revalued: Imperfect Markets and Inept Central Bankers
• Get a FREE Subscription to SFO Magazine (US residents only)
• Why Paul Tudor Jones Favors Gold
• Number-Crushing: When Figures Get Personal
• Ten Characteristics I See Among Successful Traders
• FREE 60-page eBook: The Deflation Survival Guide
• Stiglitz: Death Cometh for the Greenback
• George Soros Lectures (video)
• Why Big Banks Should Be Broken Up, But Why White House & Congress Don’t Want To

The above is a small sample, for the complete list, follow the graphic link below to news.tradersnarrative.com:

And remember to check back during the week as there are interesting links added throughout the week. If you are a twitter user, add the news.tradersnarrative.com twitter stream to get new stories in real time.

The Week Ahead:

By Elliott Wave International

It’s one of the first rules in the book of mainstream economic wisdom: a country’s economy is the thermometer which “reads” its stock market’s temperature. If financial conditions are heating up, stocks rise; if they are cooling down, stocks fall. Were it so simple — millionaires wouldn’t make up a measly .15% of the global population.

Obviously, there’s a major flaw with this logic; namely, it isn’t true. Time and again, stock prices smolder to near boiling even as economic growth chills to the bone. (The opposite also holds: Stock prices cool down even as the economy is on fire.)

Take, for instance, Germany’s main stock index, the DAX 30. On August 13, Europe’s number one economy reported a .3% rise in gross domestic product (GDP) — Germany’s first quarter of growth since January 2008. Soon after, the DAX began to rally and finished the day at a fresh, ten-month high.

In no time at all, every financial media outlet from Wall Street to la-la land had their story: “Germany’s DAX rose nearly 1% on the GDP data. The big picture will be one of ongoing gradual recovery through 2010.” (LA Times)

One problem: the DAX’s bullish flame has been burning since the index landed at a two-year low on March 9, 2009. YET — the economic data over those six months has been about as “hot” as the Arctic Circle. Here, the following news stories from the time say plenty:

• March 24, Wall Street Journal: “There’s a slew of evidence that Germany is in an economic freefall: A 19% drop in industrial output, a 23% decline in exports, a 35% drop in new manufacturing orders, and on. The numbers we’re seeing are just mind-boggling.”

(FreeWeek Kicks Off With Germany: On September 16, EWI launched its first-ever FreeWeek featuring its youngest subscriber services: European Short Term Update and Asian-Pacific Short Term Update. Take advantage of this amazing opportunity. Click HERE to sign on and get invaluable insight into Europe’s #1 market.)

• April 30, New York Times reveals a 17% year-over-year decline in Germany’s exports and writes, “With 47% of its GDP generated by exports, Germany would suffer a severe contraction in its economy.”
• May 16, Wall Street Journal: “In the fourth-quarter 2009, Germany’s GDP plunged 3.5%; its worst performance in nearly four decades.”
• May 17: Tens of thousands of German workers march through downtown Berlin to express their anxiety over the alarming increase in unemployment: at 7.7%.
• June 29 Associated Press: Germany’s GDP has now fallen by nearly 7% in the past four quarters with widespread expectations for a 5.5% to 6% contraction by the years end.
• July 3 WSJ: “Germany’s own recession is the deepest of any major economy in the world, apart from Japan.”
• September 8 speech by Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel: “We are in the worst economic crisis that the Federal Republic of Germany has experienced in 60 years.”

You get the picture: During the DAX’s entire six-month long winning streak, Germany’s economic figures have been bleaker than bleak. The mainstream correlation was broken in its box along with any preemptive opportunity to position for the uptrend.

That, however, was NOT the case for EWI’s European Financial Forecast. Here, the following archive of our analysis shows the extent to which objective analysis of the market’s internal measures keeps traders ahead of the biggest moves:

March 2009 European Financial Forecast (release date: February 25):

“We favor the fourth-wave contracting triangle interpretation for the DAX. The DAX broke through a solid support shelf at 4014 this week so selling pressure could intensify before we see a notable rally.” The end of the wave v decline should come near 3440.

March 6 European Short Term Update (ESTU):

“The DAX situation is similar to the entire region. We believe that the market is closing in on a low; perhaps it’s a week away from finding a decent bottom.”
On March 9, the index did indeed “find” its bottom at 3588.

March 13 ESTU:

“We must entertain the possibility that the low earlier this week may hold for a time, weeks or months, and the risk-reward equation is not as heavily favorable for the bears.”

So, where will Germany’s DAX be headed next? Find out at the unbeatable price of $0.00. No, that’s not a typo; it’s how much it will cost you to read objective insight, view original price charts, and receive trend-breaking, and making details about Germany’s DAX for a full seven days. These are just few of the benefits of EWI’s first-ever FreeWeek featuring European Short Term Update, and its Asian-Pacific counterpart.

FreeWeek continues from September 16 through September 23. Get all the details on how to participate in this amazing offer today.

Robert Prechter, Chartered Market Technician, is the world’s foremost expert on and proponent of the deflationary scenario. Prechter is the founder and CEO of Elliott Wave International, author of Wall Street best-sellers Conquer the Crash and Elliott Wave Principle and editor of The Elliott Wave Theorist monthly market letter since 1979.

According to Jim Stack of Investech Research, there are a few conditions which must be met before a new bull market can be born. They are a mix of monetary, technical and sentiment measures. I’ve looked at four of them already:

• Consumer Sentiment
• Formal Recession
• 20%+ Decline
• Coppock Guide

Here is the fifth: monetary policy. Of course, almost every single central bank around the world has reduced interest rates. Here is a quick summary of a few key ones:

US Fed
The intended Fed funds rate stands at 1% but the problem is that the Federal Reserve took its sweet time in lowering interest rates. Rates topped out in June 2006 at 5.25% and were taken down by the Fed subsequently. But as the bond market repeatedly was warning, the Fed was behind the curve by a very wide margin.

The US is also undertaking a gargantuan multi-trillion dollar fiscal stimulus package with a much more comprehensive one waiting in the wings until January 20th 2009 when Obama takes over.

Canada
Almost one full year ago, the Canadian central bank began its easing cycle and I wrote that since central banks move in packs, this was the beginning of a world-wide trend.

The Canadian central bank has since lowered interest rates continuously. The overnight rate has almost halved from 4.5% to 2.5%. The next meeting in early December is seen by almost all as another opportunity to cut further.

China
The Chinese central bank announced a massive 108 basis point cut in their key interest rate today (to 5.58%). While this is their fourth time cutting rates since September, this recent move shows just how worried the Chinese government is. Usually interest rates are stepped up or down by just a 27 basis points but this move is four times larger in magnitude.

China has also announced a $590 billion fiscal stimulus package as well as lowering the reserve requirements for several banks to pump more money into their economy. Right now, putting money into a bank account is a losing proposition since the latest data has inflation at 4% and banks pay 2.5%. Basically, China is pushing its people to consume, rather than save.

England
The Bank of England is no stranger to large rate cuts. At the beginning of November, it cut 150 basis points off its key lending rate (from 4.5% to 3%). That followed a 50 basis point cut in early October 2008. Most are expecting another cut next week when the monetary policy committee meets. Some are even calling for a further 0.50% cut.

England is also pushing forward a VAT reduction (to 15.0%, from 17.5%), and a $30 billion stimulus package.

European Central Bank
The ECB has been the most sluggish in responding to the current decline in economic activity. They are under pressure in their next meeting of December 4th to take drastic action and lower by 50 basis points. But considering the extremely hawkish tone of the ECB that is very unlikely.

The ECB has already cut 100 basis points since October to bring their rate to 3.25%. But as the Eurozone faces its first recession in 15 years, it may not be enough.

Australia
The Reserve Bank of Australia topped up its rate in March 2008 at 7.25% and ever since has been lowering it. On October, it also cut 100 basis points and more recently, by 75 basis points to bring the target cash rate to 5.25%. This is the steepest cut in rates since the 1991 recession in Australia. And it may just help them to dodge most if not all of the fallout.

The Australian government is also implementing a stimulus package of $6.7 billion - helping first time home buyers and pensioners.

Japan
In its most recent decision, the Bank of Japan held interest rates steady at 0.3% (not a typo). They are reluctant to return to the zero interest rate policy they adopted between 2001 to 2006 because it was not that helpful. But the Japanese central bank is pursuing alternative ways of pumping money into their economy. For example by accepting a wider assortment of assets as collateral.

Warm up the helicopters!
At this point, all central banks are focused on the present battle against the very real danger of a deflationary spiral. Of course, if they overdo it, as they almost always do, then they have to quickly mop up the extra money sloshing around the world financial markets without causing another dramatic downturn.

Don’t you just love central planning comrade?

Not a moment too soon, the financial markets reacted to leadership from European governments and central banks over the weekend. Sadly, the US team of Bush (excuse me while I roll on the floor convulsing with laughter) Paulson and Bernanke didn’t exhibit one iota of leadership or common sense. Did anyone expect the same team that continuously reassured the world that everything was fine over the past 2 years to be the ones to actually solve this?

The consensus among smart economists (Roubini), investors and traders (Soros) has been the need for “capital injection” - a euphemism for “buy a truckload of financial common stocks”.

The Old World Shows The Way
The US’s muddled TARP proposal instead was aimed at buying into the nebulous and toxic derivatives at the heart of this crisis. Shares are easily priced each second on the open market so it can’t be easier to value a bank’s “worth”. Whereas the derivatives are next to impossible to untangle and value. Also, a share, because of its perpetual existence, has a multiplier effect. So by injecting $100 billion of capital, you in turn leverage the effect by the P/E ratio which even now is around 10 for the average financial institution.

Of course, by now TARP has morphed into the European model. Which can arguably be also called the Swedish model, since this very solution was used by them in the early 1990’s to get a banking crisis under control. And unless I’m mistaken, the Swedish taxpayer actually got significant capital gains out of the whole thing. Seriously, how ridiculous does Paulson sound when he proposes with a straight face to simply use government money to buy assets of dubious quality and worth… without receiving absolutely anything in return?

You don’t need a PhD in finance to know that way lies madness.

Then again, the news of a concerted European effort may simply have coincided with a snap back rally. If you recall, many had high hopes for the TARP announcement to reverse the market’s decline. It did no such thing. So in effect, while the news seems to have caused the market to rally, we can’t truly prove that it was the force behind it. There are strong reasons to believe that the market was simply exhausted from relentless forced liquidation and just hit the wall.

Timing
Last week I facetiously suggested that if this wasn’t the stock market bottom, we should flee to the hills and buy guns. The future was starting to look like some kind of Mad Max distopia, at least if you believed the breathless analysts on TV and the headlines across newspapers. Then just hours later I learned that Tony Oz had taken a large long position, based on similar conclusions.

Of course, no one knows what will happen in the market. The best one can do is to put aside emotion and to look at the facts. Or one better, and use emotion to your advantage by looking at sentiment, rather than having it control you. Last week’s sentiment overview was clearly the most pessimistic in a very very long time.

90-90 Day? - You Betcha! (wink)
As much as last week’s market’s were smashing all records on the way down, Monday’s rally smashed them on the way up. This was as broad based and furious a come back as the bulls could have mounted.

In terms of volume, 95% was accounted by advancing stocks on the NYSE. We went from seeing more than 2,500 stocks on the Big Board hitting new 52 week lows on Friday… to seeing less than 60 today doing the same today. So yes, today definitely met the requirements for a Lowry’s 90-90 up day - and more!. This is something that we had been waiting for because according to the research, a significant floor is created when the market has fallen significantly (90-90 down days) and then reverses with the same ferocity.

Here is a short excerpt from the research done by Paul Desmond of Lowry’s Research:

The historical record shows that 90% Downside Days do not usually occur as a single incident on the bottom day of an important market decline, but typically occur on a number of occasions throughout a major decline, often spread apart by as much as thirty trading days. For example, there were seven such days during the 1962 decline, six during 1970, fourteen during the 1973-74 bear market, two before the bottom in 1987, seven throughout the 1990 decline, and three before the lows of 1998. These 90% Downside Days are a key part of an eventual market bottom, since they show that prices are being deeply discounted, perhaps far beyond rational valuations, and that the desire to sell is being exhausted.

But, there is a second key ingredient to every major market bottom. It is essential to recognize that days of panic selling cannot, by themselves, produce a market reversal, any more than simply lowering the sale price on a house will suddenly produce an enthusiastic buyer. As the Law of Supply and Demand would emphasize, it takes strong Demand, not just a reduction in Supply, to cause prices to rise substantially. It does not matter how much prices are discounted; if investors are not attracted to buy, even at deeply depressed levels, sellers will eventually be forced to discount prices further still, until Demand is eventually rejuvenated. Thus, our 69-year record shows that declines containing two or more 90% Downside Days usually persist, on a trend basis, until investors eventually come rushing back in to snap up what they perceive to be the bargains of the decade and, in the process, produce a 90% Upside Day (in which Points Gained equal 90.0% or more of the sum of Points Gained plus Points Lost, and on which Upside Volume equals 90.0% or more of the sum of Upside plus Downside Volume). These two events – panic selling (one or more 90% Downside Days) and panic buying (a 90% Upside Day, or on rare occasions, two back-to-back 80% Upside Days) – produce very powerful probabilities that a major trend reversal has begun, and that the market’s Sweet Spot is ready to be savored.

Source: Identifying Bear Market Bottoms and New Bull Markets (Dow Awards folder)

Believe it or not, this is the second Lowry’s 90-90 up day we’ve had within 9 trading days. According to Lowry’s 90-90 up days can be spaced out as far as 30 days from each other and still be effective. And although most people keep strictly to the 90-90 definition, Lowry’s actually mentions above that 80-80 up days also qualify. So if you want to be more flexible like them, on September 18th 2008 we had a 89.5% up day which would make it three strong up days.

LIBOR & TED Spread
As I mentioned a few days back, LIBOR and the TED spread stopped going up and today they actually fell hinting that we may have seen the worst of the credit crisis. As banks start to trust one another and lend again, liquidity will flow back into the financial markets and the forced liquidation will cease. It is still too early to be complacent about this but the first signs of a return to normalcy are there.

Since the chart of crude oil priced in gold was interesting, Edward requested a chart of crude oil in Euros:

and for good measure, here is a chart of crude oil priced in Japanese Yen:

You’ll notice I didn’t include the axis on the charts - that’s because they would have been meaningless since I took the price of crude and calculated a ratio of it and the Euro Index and the Yen Index. So the charts are a very good approximation but not exact in showing crude in either currency. They are still useful and do provide a lot of information.

In any case, they show pretty much the same thing as the normal crude oil chart (priced in US dollars). It is safe to say that everyone is hurting.

I have family in Europe and they tell me things are very grim economically. From anecdotal evidence it would seem even more so that in North America, Europe is undergoing a deep recession.

Readers from Europe are free to chime in with their own views