STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 20 March 2015
[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Friday, 20 March 2015[font color=black][/font]
SMW for 19 March 2015
AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 19 March 2015
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Dow Jones 17,959.03 -117.16 (-0.65%)
S&P 500 2,089.27 -10.23 (-0.49%)
[font color=green]Nasdaq 4,992.38 +9.55 (0.19%)
[font color=red]10 Year 1.97% +0.03 (1.55%)
30 Year 2.53% +0.01 (0.40%) [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)
Market Updates
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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
. . . . I don't know what the dotted blue line means either.
(Horsey must have been hanging around the local Starbucks. That's the sort of thing you'd see around here, though maybe in LA, too? 
)
Looks like the support level...the point that nobody's willing to cross, at the moment.
I am especially anxious about the 65% chance of all hell breaking loose come September. I'm trying to figure out what conditions generate a 35% chance that hell WON'T break loose, assuming it's not a wishful-thinking delusion.
My favorite cartoon of all time sums it up nicely:
Of course without context, the above maps are useless, so those eager to learn more and invited to read our thousands of articles covering just this topic since 2009, while beginners can find a revised edition of Zoltan Pozsar's seminal "Shadow Banking" at the following link:
http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/epr/2013/0713adri.pdf
By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf Street.
The Fed speaks, the dollar crashes. The dollar was ripe. The entire world had been bullish on it. Down nearly 3% against the euro, before recovering some. The biggest drop since March 2009. Everything else jumped. Stocks, Treasuries, gold, even oil. West Texas Intermediate had been experiencing its biggest weekly plunge since January, trading at just above $42 a barrel, a new low in the current oil bust. When the Fed released its magic words, WTI soared to $45.34 a barrel before re-sagging some. Even natural gas rose 1.8%. Energy related bonds had been drowning in red ink; they too rose when oil roared higher. It was one heck of a party. But it was too late for some players mired in the oil and gas bust where the series of Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings continues.
Next in line was Quicksilver Resources. It had focused on producing natural gas. Natural gas was where the fracking boom got started. Fracking has a special characteristic. After a well is fracked, it produces a terrific surge of hydrocarbons during first few months, and particularly on the first day. Many drillers used the first-day production numbers, which some of them enhanced in various ways, in their investor materials. Investors drooled and threw more money at these companies that then drilled this money into the ground. But the impressive initial production soon declines sharply. Two years later, only a fraction is coming out of the ground. So these companies had to drill more just to cover up the decline rates, and in order to drill more, they needed to borrow more money, and it triggered a junk-rated energy boom on Wall Street.
At the time, the price of natural gas was soaring. It hit $13 per million Btu at the Henry Hub in June 2008. About 1,600 rigs were drilling for gas. It was the game in town. And Wall Street firms were greasing it with other people’s money. Production soared. And the US became the largest gas producer in the world. But then the price began to plunge. It recovered a little after the Financial Crisis but re-plunged during the gas “glut.” By April 2012, natural gas had crashed 85% from June 2008, to $1.92/mmBtu. With the exception of a few short periods, it has remained below $4/mmBtu – trading at $2.91/mmBtu today. Throughout, gas drillers had to go back to Wall Street to borrow more money to feed the fracking orgy. They were cash-flow negative. They lost money on wells that produced mostly dry gas. Yet they kept up the charade. They aced investor presentations with fancy charts. They raved about new technologies that were performing miracles and bringing down costs. The theme was that they would make their investors rich at these gas prices.
The saving grace was that oil and natural-gas liquids, which were selling for much higher prices, also occur in many shale plays along with dry gas. So drillers began to emphasize that they were drilling for liquids, not dry gas, and they tried to switch production to liquids-rich plays. In that vein, Quicksilver ventured into the oil-rich Permian Basin in Texas. But it was too little, too late for the amount of borrowed money it had already burned through over the years by fracking for gas below cost...During the terrible years of 2011 and 2012, drillers began reclassifying gas rigs as rigs drilling for oil. It was a judgement call, since most wells produce both. The gas rig count plummeted further, and the oil rig count skyrocketed by about the same amount. But gas production has continued to rise since, even as the gas rig count has continued to drop. On Friday, the rig count was down to 257 gas rigs, the lowest since March 1993, down 84% from its peak in 2008.
Quicksilver’s bankruptcy is a consequence of this fracking environment. It listed $2.35 billion in debts. That’s what is left from its borrowing binge that covered its negative cash flows. It listed only $1.21 billion in assets. The rest has gone up in smoke. Its shares are worthless. Stockholders got wiped out. Creditors get to fight over the scraps. Its leveraged loan was holding up better: the $625 million covenant-lite second-lien term loan traded at 56 cents on the dollar this morning, according to S&P Capital IQ LCD. But its junk bonds have gotten eviscerated over time. Its 9.125% senior notes due 2019 traded at 17.6 cents on the dollar; its 7.125% subordinated notes due 2016 traded at around 2 cents on the dollar. Among its creditors, according to the Star Telegram: the Wilmington Trust National Association ($361.6 million), Delaware Trust Co. ($332.6 million), US Bank National Association ($312.7 million), and several pipeline companies, including Oasis Pipeline and Energy Transfer Fuel. Last year, it hired restructuring advisors. On February 17, it announced that it would not make a $13.6 million interest payment on its senior notes and invoked the possibility of filing for Chapter 11. It said it would use its 30-day grace period to haggle with its creditors over the “company’s options.” Now, those 30 days are up. But there were no other “viable options,” the company said in the statement. Its Canadian subsidiary was not included in the bankruptcy filing; it reached a forbearance agreement with its first lien secured lenders and has some breathing room until June 16. Quicksilver isn’t alone in its travails. Samson Resources and other natural gas drillers are stuck neck-deep in the same frack mud...
Industry soothsayers claimed vociferously over the years that natural gas drillers can make money at these prices due to new technologies and efficiencies. They said this to attract more money. But Quicksilver along with Samson Resources and others are proof that these drillers had been drilling below the cost of production for years. And they’d been bleeding every step along the way. A business model that lasts only as long as new investors are willing to bail out old investors. But it was the crash in the price of “liquids” that made investors finally squeamish, and they began to look beyond the hype. In doing so, they’re triggering the very bloodletting amongst each other that ever more new money had delayed for years. Only now, it’s a lot more expensive for them than it would have been three years ago. While the companies will get through it in restructured form, investors get crushed.
MORE AT Junk-Rated Oil & Gas Companies in a “Liquidity Death Spiral”
... The issuance of unredeemable government debt and bonds are the ultimate control mechanism by the Western interests utilized in order to keep politicians, national leaders and nations in line and march in lockstep to their economic programs. Russia under Putin is not over indebted like almost all other western nations thus allowing Putin to exercise leadership independent of European and Washington demands and this makes Russia in their eyes a threat to the continuation of the fake debt democracy system across the West.
The ultimate goal is to destabilize Russia by destroying the economy and limiting government revenue and growth by holding oil prices at historically low levels. To do this they must depose Putin, the national leader with the highest poll approval rating in the world and replace him with a compliant quisling type of leadership submissive to western interests as has been done in Ukraine. This goal could be achieved due to Russia's extreme over dependence on energy resource revenue...
... Washington is indeed acting rationally if their goal is to preserve their power base as well as the support of powerful banking and economic interests. The US Empire has indeed reached it's zenith of power and authority in the world and as America heads downhill as have all major empires in the past. Therefore it is crucial to buy time by attempting to conquer or control energy resources around the world hence why the US is involved across the Middle East and increasingly in the Ukraine and is surrounding Russia and Iran.
Their goal for Russia, now the ultimate ally of a resurgent China is economic vassalage, territorial dismemberment and the development of "spheres of influence" just like Great Britain did to India and the western countries including Russia did to a weakened China in the 19th century...
... To date Russia only reacts to western sanctions and economic warfare against your energy industry thus there is neither real pain for the west nor any reason for them not to ratchet up the sanctions against individuals, banking and other interests. They are logically attacking your weakest link, the energy and financial sectors and they certainly do not expect a major response from your side. Still, dumping Treasury debt by Russia or China would probably be counter productive and both nations would be smart to liquidate US dollar debt in an organized regular fashion during this near term period of tremendous dollar strength. This is probably your last chance to unload US Treasury debt at a profit...
... The weakness of the Western banking and economic interests are massive government debt, the end of the dollar as the world reserve currency and nationalism within the EU. There is no way citizens or companies can escape the high taxes, massive debt service costs and the inability of citizens or companies within Europe to escape their high tax, regulatory environment that is killing the economy of Europe in order to defend the primarily German banking interests. Financial privacy and all wealth in Europe are at risk from future bail-ins where depositor's funds are used to pay for excessive bank lending losses. We've already seen it in Cyprus and soon it will happen in Greece and the PIIGS countries.
To win, you must have other powerful economic interests outside Russia who can benefit and profit from a sovereign independent Russia. The US has destroyed financial privacy and confidentially around the world and no nation can stand up to their powerful threats to other banking interests which means the private wealth of the entire West will eventually be at risk of bank bail-ins, confiscation of retirement funds and confiscatory tax rates when the bond crisis finally hits because there is no secure alternative for protecting honest earned wealth...
... Finally Russia must get aggressive in the economic war. You can win this economic contest in 24 months, if certain special zones in Russia simply are allowed to copy Swiss banking rules and regulations, as wealth will always flow to secure locations where taxes are low. You know what banking privacy and security did for Switzerland, it made a poor country with few natural resources the wealthiest nation in the world. You will have foreign banks and financial institutions lining up to open offices in Russia if you can guarantee financial privacy to a degree and wealth protection in total.
This will break the monopoly of West in financial and banking as well as their power to threaten you. The coming bond debacle guarantees this will work as I've written earlier every nation has wealthy interests and their own oligarchs so why not build support for Russia from wealthy foreigners as they transfer a portion of their wealth as taxable income at a very low rate to your nation. This will end the economic war...
/... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-18/guest-post-how-putin-can-win-economic-war-against-west
Heh, heh 
When you slip into the restroom for a little tinkle, you probably don't realize that you are participating in massive environmental genocide -- but you are. Millions of gallons of water swoosh down the tubes every day, even as water becomes an ever-more precious and limited resource, and the specter of global drought and conflict looms (the U.S. has declared water a "national security issue"
. On top of that, more than the equivalent of 9.8 million trees are flushed down the toilet every year, according to Claude Martin of Worldwide Fund for Nature. The expanding global demand for toilet paper has resulted in an assault on forests in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres by paper companies competing to fill a seemingly inexhaustible, rapidly growing consumer demand for ever-cushier toilet paper. The U.S. alone uses 30 billion rolls a year.
To make matters worse, the Sanitary Industrial Complex is succeeding brilliantly in its marketing of "flushable" wet wipes for adults, which are gumming the gears of plumbing networks around the nation. According to yesterday's New York Times, the city has spent more than $18 million in the past five years on wet wipe-related equipment problems (www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/nyregion/the-wet-wipes-box-says-flush-but-the-new-york-city-sewer-system-says-dont.html.)
My solution mitigates my impact on this forest and water misuse by close to 80 percent... For the past several years, I have defied our wasteful "toilet protocol," reducing my use of water and toilet paper drastically. First, I bought a package of inexpensive washcloths, in a color that complements my bathroom, and cut them into neat five-by-five inch squares. I use these dampened, nicely textured cloths to cleanse myself after I urinate. Then, I wash the cloth with soap and water while I am washing my hands (even so, I get out a new towelette every couple of days, and I put them all in the washer with my sheets for a clorox and detergent laundering). I hang the moist, cucumber-scented "wipe" neatly over my toilet-paper holder for my next event. This saves money, it saves trees, and it provides a far superior cleansing to the genitourinary area than paper does, which is why commercial wet wipes have become so popular. With a dampened washcloth, you are really washing yourself, not merely wiping or blotting. You'll have that "fresh feeling" all the time, with none of the lint residue that is so notorious with toilet paper.
We pee like mad all day, as our hydration levels have improved with our ubiquitous water bottles, Big Gulps, sodas and coffee.The EPA estimates that each of us flushes the toilet 10 to 15 times in a 24-hour period. I chug endlessly, and I pee frequently, but no longer am I slaughtering trees in the process. Naturally, you need to use toilet paper when you have a bowel movement, but for most people, that's just once or twice a day. Keep a spray bottle filled with water, perhaps adding a few drops of aromatic oil (I like bergamot or lemon) or shampoo/shower gel, next to your toilet paper, to moisten it and give your bum a superior cleansing.
ACTUALLY, NOT EVEN THEN...WASHCLOTHS CAN BE PROPERLY LAUNDERED AFTER WIPING BOTTOMS, JUST LIKE MOMMIES DO EVERY DAY
