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King: FBI Has Failed Five Times to Stop Terrorists
Showing posts with label stop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stop. Show all posts
Sunday, April 21, 2013
King: FBI Has Failed Five Times to Stop Terrorists
King: FBI Has Failed Five Times to Stop Terrorists
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Goldman Keeps Gold Short As It Lowers Stop Price, Even As It Is Stopped Out On Commodity Basket For 6% Loss
Yesterday, Goldman was stopped out of its inflationary Long Brent reco for a 15.5% loss (for the clients of course, not for the Goldman counterparty traders who made 15.5%). Today, it was time for Goldman to get stopped out on its Commodity Carry Basket, after the firm’s 6.0% stop loss was triggered: “Spillover from gold and renewed European and EM macroeconomic concerns also created sharp sell-offs in crude oil and base metals, that were mostly front-end driven, crushing spreads (the carry), as longer-dated prices remained remarkably stable. This stopped us out of our CCB (Commodity Carry Basket) recommendation with the potential loss reaching our 6.0% stop.” With gold now trading below the revised stop out target, we will watch to see if Goldman lower its target once more to buy even more paper gold that its clients are furiously selling.
But ironically, while goldman was closed out on its various broader baskets, the firm refuses to cover its gold short from just a week ago, and instead it has lowered its gold price target from $ 1450 to $ 1400. Why: because it wants its clients to sell it some more gold please. Much more if possible.
The logic:
Although gold has now traded below the $ 1,450/toz target embedded in our short recommendation, we are maintaining our short as we argued last week that prices could decline more than we initially thought as positioning is stretched and the momentum is to the downside. The most recent ETF holdings showed acceleration in the liquidation of length, which points to a broad-based sell-off extending beyond the futures markets with potentially more room to go. As a result, we are now lowering the stop to $ 1,400/toz (which locks in a potential gain of 12%) while we wait for evidence of a bottom, though we are not changing our price forecasts now.
And the firm’s explanation for the gold tumble? All Cyprus’ gold sale (so Goldman’s ECB Draghi’s) fault:
Over the previous five years the two highest conviction trades in the commodity complex were being long gold in response to the debasing actions of central banks around the world and short natural gas in response to the shale revolution. These two trends have now likely reversed (see Exhibit 1) and our conviction in these new trends has risen significantly over the past month as we have introduced both short gold and long natural gas trading recommendations.
Further, these shifts in trends represent a significant departure from the past decade and are implicitly interrelated. The shift in gold represents a more confident economic environment where there is a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel to this period of easy money while the shift in natural gas represents the ability for trend natural gas consumption in the US to near 3.0%. This underscores how the shale revolution has helped shape the improving economic environment in the US – making US natural gas and the US economy the new safe haven.
This past week saw both of these trends accelerate with the extremely large gold move likely being triggered by growing fears that the central bank of Cyprus would sell its gold reserves, potentially triggering a larger monetization of gold reserves across other European central banks. The decline in prices was further exacerbated by the breach of a well-flagged key technical price support level at $ 1,530/toz and then at the $ 1,434/toz 200-week moving average, creating the largest one day price decline since the inception of the COMEX. Although gold has now traded below the $ 1,450/toz target embedded in our short gold recommendation, we are maintaining our short recommendation, as we argued last week that prices could decline more than we initially thought as positioning is stretched and the momentum is to the downside.
The most recent data on ETF holdings from last Friday (April 12) showed acceleration in the liquidation of length, which points to a broad-based sell-off extending beyond the futures markets with potentially more room to go (Exhibit 2). Accordingly, we are now lowering the stop to $ 1,400/toz (which locks in a potential gain of 12%) and waiting for evidence of a near-term bottom to establish a new target; however for now, we are not changing our price forecasts.
Once again: who is buying when Goldman’s clients are selling (to Goldman)?
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Goldman Keeps Gold Short As It Lowers Stop Price, Even As It Is Stopped Out On Commodity Basket For 6% Loss
Friday, April 12, 2013
Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase: Is it time to stop worrying about them?
Friday morning, megabanks JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo report earnings. Big banks have come a long way from when they and the entire financial system were on the verge of collapse. Major U.S. banks have largely had healthy balance sheets recently, with record profits. This leaves Americans to wonder whether it’s finally safe to let go of fears that they could again threaten to fail and drag the entire economy down with them.
“I definitely don’t think there’s nearly as much to worry about now as there was five or six years ago,” says Morningstar bank analyst Jim Sinegal. “Capital levels at all of the big banks have doubled, tripled or even more since the depths of the financial crisis.”
When there’s literally more money in the bank, there’s less worry about catastrophe. Banks are playing it safer in a number of ways, including much tighter lending standards. (Too strict, in the view of some small business owners, who are frustrated about not being able to get adequate loans for expansion.)
It’s nice to be healthy when the overall economy is recovering. And the big banks did survive the Fed’s latest simulated crisis — but that’s not the real test.
“We will only find out whether the new situation now is a better one for the country, for the economy, for the consumer when the next crisis comes by,” reminds Mauro Guillen, director of the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Mark Garrison: With record profits on the books, life is certainly a lot better for the largest banks.
Jim Sinegal: I definitely don’t think there’s nearly as much to worry about now as there was five or six years ago.
Jim Sinegal is a Morningstar bank analyst. These companies are playing it safer in several ways. For one, there is literally more money in the banks.
Sinegal: Capital levels at all of the big banks have doubled, tripled or even more since the depths of the financial crisis. And that’s the biggest thing contributing to the safety of the financial system.
It’s one thing to be healthy when the economy is recovering. And the big banks did survive the Fed’s latest simulated crisis. But Mauro Guillen of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School has a reminder.
Mauro Guillen: We will only find out whether the new situation now is a better one for the country, for the economy, for the consumer when the next crisis comes by.
It’ll take more than quarterly earnings reports to figure that out. In New York, I’m Mark Garrison, for Marketplace.
Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase: Is it time to stop worrying about them?
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
"Don’t Rush For Gold" - What A Real Hard Currency Mine Looks Like
When it comes to mining for alternative currencies, there is this:
Tien Shan mountains, Kyrgyzstan
“Don’t run! Slow down! Just don’t run!” I repeated this non-stop to myself like an incantation. Indeed, it is hard even to pace quickly – let alone run — when you have to breathe in the rarefied air and wear a supplied protective helmet and brand-new rigid boots with steel toes.
I also had to look out for giant trucks the size of three-story houses chugging around. It was difficult to keep my emotions under control during the few hours on this tight assignment. I was at an altitude of over 4,000 meters above sea level near the Chinese border, inside a huge open-pit gold mine at Kumtor, Kyrgyzstan’s largest gold asset, operated by Toronto-based Centerra Gold. Gigantic trucks and excavators worked non-stop in the snow-clad pit, looking like characters from a fantasy movie. As if playing a computer game, an excavator operator elegantly manipulated small joysticks – just five scoops full of ore, and almost 200 tones were loaded into a truck in about one minute.
In line with Centerra Gold’s tough requirements, I passed two medical checks before I started working at these giddy heights. A day before, we had to stay for the night at a guest house located at about 1,700 meters above sea level to get accustomed to high altitudes before ascending to Kumtor. The gold mine is the world’s second highest-altitude gold deposit after Peru’s Yanacocha mine. Some vehicles never even stop their engines in these ferocious conditions of Arctic tundra and permafrost.
Finally, the work of hundreds of workers, dozens of huge machines and the state-of-art gold-extracting mill reached its logical conclusion accomplished by just two workers. Moving like extra-terrestrials in their silvery heatproof overalls and helmets, they slowly poured dazzling, bright orange molten gold from a crucible into molds.
Minutes later, four bars containing around 80 percent pure gold and worth $ 2.6 million were ready for polishing. A worker wearing a mask closed the curtain of his glass booth to polish a 20 kg bar inside.
I saw gold dust shine in the light of bright lamps illuminating the booth. After being photographed as though they were prestigious models on a catwalk, the four shiny bars were then stamped and sealed in massive vaults. I have seen batches of banknotes worth more than $ 2.6 million, but beyond all doubt, gold bars look much more attractive!
When I left the hot melting shop, I saw a crystal clear sky over the Kumtor mine outside. As our team prepared for the 400 km (248 mile) ride back to the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, I raised my camera to shoot a final general view of the plateau. In the bright sunlight, a few tiny specks of gold dust were still glittering on my lens and camera.
By Shamil Zhumatov, Reuters
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"Don’t Rush For Gold" - What A Real Hard Currency Mine Looks Like
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
More colleges stop giving credit for AP exams
Alex Brown, a senior at Guilford High School in Connecticut, is taking two AP classes: statistics and chemistry.
“They’re both really intense,” she says. “I don’t think people understand how much AP classes actually take out of us. It’s going to be really rough.” Then she laughs nervously.
More high school students than ever are taking Advanced Placement courses, the College Board announced. And, they are doing better on the exams. The average score rose to 2.83 from 2.80, out of a maximum of 5.
Yet despite all the hard work, students like Brown may not be able to place out of required college courses or even skip freshman year if they score well on the AP tests. Some prestigious colleges have stopped giving academic credit for AP tests scores.
Brown doesn’t. Columbia doesn’t, and most recently, Dartmouth said it won’t let AP students skip ahead.
“We want a Dartmouth education to take place at Dartmouth,” says school spokesman Justin Anderson.
Translation: APs aren’t Dartmouth. Will more schools follow suit? David Conley, a professor at the University of Oregon and CEO of the Educational Policy Improvement Center, says: No.
“We’ve always seen a certain group of colleges not give much credit to AP. It’s not unusual and not new,” he says. “They’re highly selective and can get away with that.”
Conley says prestigious schools can afford to be picky about what credits to accept. But there are “more general admissions schools where they want students to bring AP credits and they do want to reward them for doing that.” In other words, AP credit is like bait for the best students.
Behind this question of college credit for AP tests is a deep-seated anxiety felt by educators that students aren’t prepared for college.
“Three out of four students who get to college come lacking in foundation and strong skills that a good college education requires,” says Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
Specifically, she says students lack skills in research, writing, and evidence-based analysis. Schneider says the general problem of college readiness “raises questions about whether the courses students took in high school, that might’ve been labeled AP or dual enrollment, were really providing students the preparation in writing and research that college itself will emphasize. Different institutions are making different judgments about that.”
Ken Bernstein, a retired teacher who writes on education, thinks more schools might join Dartmouth, Brown and Columbia on the AP question. Even though a third of high school students are taking AP tests, he says, “There aren’t that many kids prepared at a college level. Let’s be realistic.”
Trevor Packer, a Vice President at the College Board, the organization that runs the AP tests, points out that AP scores weren’t originally used as a replacement for college credit.
“The original use in 1956…was as a tool for placing students appropriately”, he says. That means determining whether a student should be in French II instead of French I, but not about placing out of French altogether.
Packer says the College Board is revamping the AP exams to make them more rigorous. But there is no question, he adds, that APs are making students more prepared for college.
“The research does consistently show that students who participate in AP courses in high school and earned a score of 3 or better perform at a higher level than matched peers,” he says.
Even if some top schools aren’t giving college credit, AP tests look good on high school transcripts. So they may not let students get out of freshman year, but they’ll help them get into college in the first place.
More colleges stop giving credit for AP exams
Friday, February 15, 2013
Car crash videos you can"t stop watching, and why Russian corruption is to blame
You’re wondering…perhaps…how it is that we’ve got so many great videos of that meteorite over Russia?
Turns out there’s so much corruption over there in the courts and in law enforcement in particular that the only protect yourself against false charges or claims of liability is to have proof. Hence everybody has a dash-cam in their cars.
And some of the videos they wind up with — Russians not being the world’s best drivers — are not to be believed.
Car crash videos you can"t stop watching, and why Russian corruption is to blame
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