Are We Being Gamed?

Stocks ended the day mixed as the market took a breather after soaring past the 200 day MA yesterday.

Many(including myself) have been amazed by the size and scope of this rally. I realized long ago that our current market is basically a casino right now that's based on ZERO fundamentals. However, the fact that I know this doesn't make the tape any easier to trade.

I have seen more frustration and anger on the trading sites that I frequent over the past few weeks than I have at any other time since our economic collapse began.

I picked up a chart that may help explain why the tape has been so difficult and thus frustrating to trade:

My Take:

As you can see above, we(the retail investor) are becoming less and less relevant to the stock market as a whole.

You need to ask yourself a very humbling question after seeing this chart: Do you as a retail investor even matter anymore?

Many of us continue to hop on various websites searching for someone that has the answer as to why the market is doing what it is doing.

I finally now have the answer. If you aren't in "the know" you have no chance. The market is no longer a discounting mechanism that uses fundamentals and P/E ratio's to come up with fair values for stocks.

In fact:

THE NYSE IS NO LONGER A MARKET!

ITS A CASINO THAT'S BEING GAMED BY THE HEDGE FUNDS, THE FED, AND OTHER LARGE INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS!

Unless you are one of the lucky owners of one of the Goldman/JP Morgan Crackberries that's on the receiving end of hearing what the Fed's next move is, you are screwed because the "lowlife" retail investor doesn't get the information until the pigmen have already already placed their bets. The money has been made long before you "the retailer" hears the news on Bubblevision.

The stock market is officially a sham. The rally from the bottom all got started with the "Big 3" banks all coming out at the same time and announcing that business was much better during Feb.

This got the market rolling and the pigmen never looked back. The banks proceeded to go on a stock market buying spree which took many by complete surprise including even some of the quants. In doing so, the banks were able to manipulate their stock values up to levels that allowed them to do stock offerings and raise capital at much higher prices which resulted in much less dilution.

The lies and manipulation kept on rolling after this one: "Green Shoots" started popping up all over the place. All of the sudden signs of the "great recovery" were everywhere! Stocks began to cheer when they saw home sales rise 3% in March.

3%? Are you kidding me? After a 30% drop? Big dipty doo! Is this is a green shoot or a minor blip on the radar as we roll right towards The Greatest Depression?

The more I reflect on our current great recovery the more I see how blatantly Wall St manipulated all of us. The rising market share of the institutional investor is absolutely frightening to me.

Why? Because you don't know what they plan on doing next! They know there is no real recovery. The whole thing is a total sham.

As a result, you need to ask yourself a question:

What if one day they decide to push the sell button and start selling to the clueless retail investor's that think the rally is real after a 30% move to the upside?

Hell, Goldman and the rest of the boys won't even hesitate to go short while they are in the process of selling you their holdings after a nice rally. The market will then roll over and once again the little guy gets screwed while the banks make another mint on the short side.

If the big trading desks don't burn you in this manipulated market the Fed certainly will. If the Fed decides its going to pull liquidity from the market, I am sure the boys will get a "heads up". They will then once again reach for the sell button and start dumping shares. Who are they selling to? YOU OF COURSE! God forbid they get left holding the bag.

Either way you are playing a game that's stacked against you. The only thing I can compare it to is a casino. You are betting against "the house" anytime you make a trade right now. What's different about investing in this cesspool today is "The House" never held all of the cards like it does now. The retail investor has shrunk from 80% in the early 1980's down to 30% today.

Gee, do you think it's coincidental that we saw the greatest bull market in history as the retail investor shrunk in influence and power?

Bottom Line:

You never want to invest in a market where the fundamentals don't matter. If the markets being gamed and you aren't in the loop stay away!

My advice? Try and trade in markets like the bond market where there is at least some transparency. Can you still get gamed here by the Fed and QE? Yes, but its a lot larger market which makes it more difficult to manipulate.

The traders in Chicago are much more sophisticated and transparent. I am involved much more in the credit markets than I am in equities at this point. I am short treasuries as many of you well know. The bond vigilantes appear to be out fighting the Fed which is an excellent sign. The credit markets are the ONLY guys that can stop the endless spending by the Fed.

It appears they are ready to do battle despite a slight pullback today. The dollar continues to vanish and commodities continue to soar as a result.

The bulls are trying to spin this by saying commodities are up because the economy is recovering! Yeah Right! Not! Its a sign that our dollar is collapsing as a result of our obsessive spending. All of this will eventually force the Fed to stop the music. If they don't I hope you enjoy that $20 loaf of bread at your grocery store.

Remember, the Fed is killing our dollar everytime they QE. They are monetizing debt or "printing" everytime they do this. The more the Fed QE's, the more pressure you will see on the greenback.

As for stocks? Need I say anymore? When the pigmen control 70% of the game "No thanks I'll pass".

The problem the banksters have here is EVENTUALLY the fundamentals always matter. You can only fix this game so long before you run out of money.

Wall St will eventually run out of cash because the economy sucks. The only reason we have any liquidity in this market is because the Fed is stuffing everyone with cash. The bond market is about to end this game so buyer beware.

Once the liquidity runs dry in the markets it's going to be an absolute bloodbath. It's impossible to know when this turn date will be but my guess is it's sooner rather than later.

If you dabble long "stay nimble". The recovery is nothing but a marketing ploy for Wall St. Once they have sucked everything that they can out of this rally, the boys will get out by selling to you!

Don't be the fool that's left holding the bag of stocks.

Option Arm Tsunami!

Before I begin:

A big hat tip to Mish for the charts, and please check out his excellent post on the mortgage meltdown.

I wanted to dig a little deeper into one area of the research report from T2 partners that Mish discusses in his post.

I will get to the bipolar markets in my Bottom Line section that I always finish with. However, I thought it was critical that I begin with the oncoming Option Arm Tsunami that we are all about to face.

T2's research report was absolutely phenomenal. As you all know, the subprime reset fiasco is just about over. Most of these life long renters are now back where they belong: In their apartments. Lets be honest, just about all of the subprime buyers had no business buying a house in the first place. They would have gotten a 30 year loan if they actually had the ability to pay it back.

Shame on Wall St for creating fraudulent faulty lending products like subprime that allowed unqualified buyers to get into these houses in the first place.

I asked everyone earlier this week: Is Prime the new Subprime?

The answer is an overwhelming yes, and the data out of T2 overwhelmingly supports this thesis. As the housing bubble turned into a speculative mania, Alt-A/Option Arms soared in popularity as they became a very convenient way for Wall St to keep the bubble going. Many of these were "liar loans" where no income verification was done. The bankers at the peak of this mania were basically handing out $1 million Alt-A loans like candy. $2.4 trillion dollars of Option ARMS were done overall, and $750 billion of them were done at the peak from 2005-2007.

These loans were created by Wall St for one reason only: They were a way keep the game going at the end when NO ONE could afford to buy a house.

The banksters didn't care if the borrower could ever pay the loan back because they passed on all the risk by securitizing the loans, and then proceeded sell them to the first sucker they could find in the form of an "AAA" shit sandwhich.

Well guess what folks. Now that the game is over: Its time to pay the piper. As you can see below, the Option Arm resets just got started and doesn't peak until 2013:

As I explained before, these loans were mainly given to higher income buyers and speculator's that couldn't afford to qualify for a 30 year mortgage. As you can see below(especially during the peak), people were using these loans because they obviously couldn't afford the house. If they could it would have made much more sense to go with a conventional mortgage because the rates were much lower:

So what happens when you lend to people using practically no lending standards and don't even bother to verify their income? THEY DON'T PAY YOU BACK. As you can see below, the delinquency rates on these loans are soaring:

My Take:

30+% delinquencies! Yikes! What a damn fiasco! Does everyone still think the banks are now well capitalized after their puny $60-70 billion in capital raising's? Over the next 5 years they are about to be slammed by a $2.4 trillion Tsunami of Option Loans that will once again bring them to their knees. Ummm...Something tells me they are going to need just a bit more money. Anyone got a few trillion they can borrow?

The scary thing here is this crisis hasn't even started yet. The period over which these loans reset ins much longer than subprime. Another thing to point out here is this was the speculator's favorite loan because he didn't have to have his income verified. These greedy specs just went to the bank, bought 10 houses on a $100,000 a year salary, and then screamed "Let's Flip Some Houses and Get Rich!".

These loans were often used by the prime buyers as well. As I have explained before. The prime and the subprime buyers both made the exact same mistake: They bought houses they couldn't afford.

How Will This Effect The Housing Market?

T2 nailed it in their report. Let me echo their sentiments. the $500,000 and up market is TOTALLY SCREWED. We already have 40 MONTHS of inventory here and its growing by the day.

The low end of the housing market has been moving strongly as home buyers gobble up foreclosures in the bubble areas. These foreclosures are nothing to write home about. Many of them are small and below McMansion standards, but buyers jumped all over them because they were affordable! I mean you feel like you gotta steal if you were able to buy a $350k house for $180-200k!

The problem here is as the prime borrower's and speculator's begin to roll over in the $500k-750k "mid to upper end" part of the housing market, its going to result in an explosion of new foreclosures.

The massive glut of new inventory combined with much tighter lending standards will force the prices of these homes to crash which in turn will then push them from the "mid to upper end" of the housing market down to the "lower end" of the market.

This will deal a crushing blow to the current suckers that picked off the first big wave of foreclosures. Why? Because new buyers will be able to pick up a 500-700k McMansion at around the same price level as the first round of foreclosures which aren't nearly as nice.

This will push the values of the "Round 1" foreclosures down because they won't be able to compete with the new flood of higher quality inventory.

Anyone that jumped in early on the first set of foreclosures will then end up taking another beatdown as the housing crisis continues to snowball. The 180k "steals" that home buyers gobbled up in droves after the first wave of foreclosures may only be worth 100k once the Alt A McMansions get down into their price range.

This will deal another very painful blow to the psychology and sentiment in the housing market. I still believe that no one will want to own a home when this all is said and done.

Anyone remember how burned you felt after buying Amazon at $300/share at the peak of the tech bubble? Home buyers will eventually feel the same way. The housing bubble may end up being the grandest of them all.

Bottom Line:

Patience is a virtue. This next Tsunami will take several years to play out. Do not be in a rush to buy a home. The next round of foreclosures will be much nicer than the first round that was basically comprised of below standard subprime crap boxes.

Could a McMansion sell for 200k or less 5 years from now? Wouldn't surprise me in the least.

As for the markets:

Bonds collapsed as money went back into stocks. This game can't go on forever folks. There simply isn't enough money to prop up both. Expect to see mortgage rates and gas soar as everyone begins to price in the economic recovery thats never going to happen this year.

This rally has speculation written all over it. I am still short treasuries, long metals, and short the S&P. The dollar continues to get trashed as we spend ourselves into oblivion.

I found it funny when it was reported today that the government spent $30 billion on GM to save 40,000 jobs. This equates to spending $1.25 million per worker. And you wonder why the bond market is nervous? I have no words to desribe how ridiculous this is.

If I was a GM worker, I would have asked Obama if I could dump my job and take the $1.25 million in the form of a severance package.

The insanity continues! Stay tuned!

Craig T Nelson "Coach": Tax Revolt?

All is quiet on the news front.

Awesome stuff here from the Coach. Maybe not paying your taxes is something we all need to think about. Its time to stop the insanity!

Some great points here from Craig: