Macau's new Cultural Secretary gives a nod to the casinos

Looks like the shorts in these numbers rolled snake eyes!

Now I know I was in WYNN on April 2 (I said the shorts on the casinos were Wall Street's new cooler) at 27, out at 50 on May 5, and back in at 35 and change on May 26 before Obama decided to visit Vegas.

Thursday morning, I said it was time for traders to get back in the casinos that have the Macau IPOs. LVS was 10.25 and WYNN was 42 and change. So why another tout again instead of another "As advertised?"

Because I think this time, the market won't be able to contain the moves.

Last I checked, there was 70 million shares short in LVS, and 16 million shares short in WYNN.

Shorts think WYNN will stop at 50, and LVS will stop here. I don't buy that for a second. I retouting these names because I think WYNN goes to 66, and LVS goes to 17, on their "enterprise" value, which will be unlocked by the Macau IPO's and the market belatedly recognizing that Sand's Singapore casino will greatly help cash flow for LVS.

I also think MGM could spike to 12, as I believe negotiations with the NJ gaming regulators regarding Pansy Ho, could soon receive clarification. (I'm long the 7.5s, 9s, and longer dated 10 calls on this number. 12 is just a stepping stone on the way to 22.)

The catalyst this time?

What analyst is bullish? But what person doesn't know that China is on fire? And what person soon won't know about Macau's new culture secretary Fernando Chui, who wants to smooth relations with China?

First step is changing the Visa restrictions on Chinese heading to Macau. Currently its once every two months.

Chui's first statement was this:

“The Motherland not only provides us with powerful backing, but also continuously injects dynamism into our development. I’d like to take this opportunity to extend my gratitude to the Central Government for its care and support for Macau.”

And I'd like to take this opportunity for thanking him on the shorts burial!

The parking ticket precedent

Sgt. Crowley and Henry Gates are now going to meet together at the White House, as Obama tries to diffuse the racial issues surrounding Gate's arrest and Obama's choice of words regarding it.

One question.

Didn't Obama have 17 parking tickets courtesy of the same Cambridge police, that he garnered in college, that he only paid right before he started his Presidential campaign?

At least Washington works like the SEC.

If its a parking ticket, they'll move mountains to get to the bottom of it.

CEO of Kuwait's Al-Raya commits suicide

Supposedly Middle Eastern companies were making bids for Textron and Harmon International. The bids were phony, but the profits on the buyers who sold on the news was real.

Now that the SEC has investigated, Al-Raya's CEO Hazem Khalid Al-Braikan was found dead.

Citigroup owned 10% of Al-Raya.

The SEC officials should do some digging at Citigroup and see what their positions in these numbers were.

Ex Citi bigwig, and ex Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, did many, many, many multiple times more damage to Citigroup than what these couple press releases from Kuwait did.

But no-one from the SEC deems it important enough to investigate Rubin's misstatements!

All eyes on the start of the next bubble!

HFT: We're just providing liquidity

Just like the old TV filters, that turned your black and white TV into color.

And just like those old TV filters, the only ones that see what is going on, are those who sit in front of the screen!

Why are markets supposedly "stupid?"

Because that's the claim by journalists or touts who are supposedly so smart, that also missed this move!

On May 5, after the market had a great move, Mark Hulbert said this.

Commentary: Yet more evidence we're in a bear-market rally

What I found reinforces the conclusion I reached last week: There is a good possibility that the market's rise since March 9 is a bear-market rally rather than the beginning of a new bull market.

At the same time, I was calling these bears Waldos.

Now Mr. Hulbert is warning us again:
That unfortunately means that the stock market's rally can no longer count on receiving much continuing support from the sentiment data. In other words, the editor of the average short-term market timing newsletter is no less optimistic today over Dow 9,000 than he or she was about the same market level in early January -- just before the stock market was about to go over a cliff. This is not what contrarians believe should occur at major market bottoms. The typical pattern is for there to be a lot more pessimism as the market recovers from such lows than during the initial descent into those levels.

I guess that's the difference between a journalist and myself. I say it like it is. These folks love to use the word "contrarian" when its just an euphemistic way of saying they are right and the markets are stupid.

But if they said that, who would buy it? Who wants to call the markets stupid? Oh wait. Didn't we have one of the most vocal bloggers alert us of that? (Karl should really be running for political office!) And say, "Do Not Be Stupid." And what was his "misplaced" advice on Aprl 11? That if we didn't listen to his bearishness, it would be to our own peril!

So now just call yourself a contrarian, and make bad calls, and then you can continue to write about them!

Even if the calls are--wait--I won't say stupid--I'll put on the hat of a journalist--and just say even if the calls are misplaced!

And while misplacing my modifiers--too your own peril!

Because stupid is only funnier on a shirt, than on your shorts!

Erin Andrews peephole video

For 10 days, Erin Andrews of ESPN, and her peephole video is one of the top searches on Google, despite the warning that hackers have downloaded the video with viruses.

Now we know why Brett Favre hasn't signed with the Vikings.

His publicity machine can't compete with that!

Don't let "they" do the thinking for you!

What happened to Caterpillar after earnings? Two days before earnings it was 33. It's now 42. You had that action in six days. And we heard how they "missed" on the top line.

How about MMM? Wednesday before earnings, the stock was 64.67. After earnings Thursday the stock was 5 points higher! And they "missed" on the top line!

How about GOOG? They beat numbers last Thursday night, but they sold the stock down on expiration to 430, because "they" wanted you to think it was a miss. Where did the stock close yesterday? 446! How about its twin BIDU? Thursday it was 332. After earnings--358 at Friday's close!

How about ISRG? Remember when this was manipulated on April 16? After earnings? You had the story here, on this blog. After earnings, they knocked the stock down 10 to 109, only to see it close at 131 the next day. Three months later we get another earnings report from ISRG. Wednesday before earnings, the stock closed at 169. It closed Friday at 222, double the manipulated price that the bears printed only just three months ago!

How about JNPR? Weren't we told that it missed it's numbers after it reported? Didn't these hapless bears and shorts knock this number down in Thursday's after hours to 24. What happened? Didn't Goldman Sachs then upgrade JNPR Friday morning? And didn't this number then close at 26.86?

But we hear the stories and the excuses. It's just the HFT. The high frequency traders and the flash orders. Why else do you think I have the women flashing on this blog? Did you get anything from the women flashing? That's the same that these HFT's guys get. Sometimes the flash is worthwhile, but sometimes they just need to get the programs interested. Because buyers are under the market, thinking that they are so smart, when these buyers underneath the market are just dumb! They should be taking offers; instead, they think they are being prudent, and smug, in their own analysis of where prices should be, when they should be as giddy as the folks at the Heinz wedding!

Newsflash stock buyers! Prices should be much higher, and if the HFT traders need to smoke you out, to pay up, then so what. They at least know where stock prices are going, and those folks with their bids in the system don't.

These HFT traders are doing just what we did during the Internet stocks. But this time, they are doing it with real companies, with real assets, and real franchises, that have a real worth.

It's just that the typical stock buyer hasn't gotten a clue of where prices should be. They read the erudite bears, and they look at the unemployment numbers, and they see the foreclosures, but somehow they can't see past any of this.

March, 2009, is the equivalent of August of 1982. And now we are just approaching December of 1982, and it's July of 2009. Where did that market go? Where then, do you think this market is going?

So now you want to sit and bid for stocks?

So the supplemental liquidity providers then will take your money. Your liquidity, goes to supplement those with billions. But you let them. You should be just taking offers instead of bidding for stocks.

Spreads are so tight with these algorithms, that you don't need bid against the machines. You can pick your entry points, when the machines exaggerate the moves downward, or sell when they exaggerate the moves upward.

So pick their pocket, or otherwise let them pick yours!

Heck, one company that did report, that they have now taken down, is United Technologies (UTX 52.23). Long term buyers should be all over this number right here, when these programs are trying to smoke out the stock. This stock really isn't the kind I buy, but these mutual fund that keep getting their pocket picked, should take stock down here, now, and in size. Take it when they are giving it to you!

This HFT game is no different than anything else.

Remember when Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius, was calling for the end of the world, and the next great depression? Right at the market low, and the months before? Notice how he doesn't show his face on television anymore? But to Goldman's credit, at least he was allowed to throw a sop at the market on April 22.

Is it any different here with the Supplemental Liquidity Provider's? Didn't Goldman just up their S&P target now to 1060? But that target is moving anyway. Heck we went up 7.3% the week before last, and 3.9% this week.

How about oil? Did we hear a peep from Goldman when it was $59? Now that it's $68, don't you think they are getting ready to get out of the closet again? After all, weren't we supposed to have an investigation of oil being rigged? What happened to that story? It was swept under the rug, just long enough, that now oil is ready for another Goldman pump!

Because the HFT scandal has now become main stream. The NY Times has that story.

It used to be "pump and dump."

Now it's just "pimp and pump!"

Without a peep!

Bears keep talking their book!

Barron's had an article titled Why the Rally Should Keep Rolling..For Now

Since July 10:

HERE'S A SNAPSHOT OF JULY'S ROMP, courtesy of Bespoke Investment Group: From their July 10 low, the 50 smallest stocks in the S&P 500 had rebounded 17.2% through Thursday, outgunning the 50 biggest stocks' 9.7% gain. The 50 most heavily shorted stocks have jumped 17.6%, versus just 8.8% for the 50 least-shorted names. Companies raking in foreign revenues outran domestic earners, a sign that traders are still uneasy about the dollar.

In Barron's Friday, noted shortseller and bookseller, Barry Rihltolz was quoted as saying:

"In this environment, capital preservation is paramount," Ritholtz concludes.

Up 17% in a couple weeks? How about capital restoration?

Maybe capital preservation is key for those short, but capital restoration is key for those long!

And the market is providing it, despite what the booksellers will tell you!

Jill and Kevin Heinz Wedding

And you want to remain bearish and glum?

Clusterstock's worthless .02 of advice

Anyone see Business Insider's headlines last night, and this morning by Joe Weisenthal? I'll help you out:

Did CNBC Jinx The Rally?

NASDAQ Win Streak Will Crash To A Halt (MSFT, AMZN)

What happened? That's a jinx? That's a crash? Not even .02 on the QQQQ's?

That's the difference between a journalist and a trader.

At least here, last night and this morning, I said the news meant nothing.

And the supposed sell-off and crash?

Nothing happened!

Except more accumulation and buying of stocks!

MGM

MGM, looks like it has finally absorbed all the selling that those short and the traders who slammed it when it broke the $7 offering price, and with the better pyschology on the casinos, it's time to look at the December 9 calls at $1.15.

If you look at how annoying this stock traded, then you know, it got just about every person that wanted to sell out.

And when you get every person out that wanted to sell, you go higher.

Bears will soon be seen jumping in Hell's gate

Instead of guarding the entrance!


Let's look at the dialogue we've heard just the last few days.

That the market "melt-up" is a black swan event.

Was sub-prime black swan? Was that contained? Didn't it hit Alt-A, Prime and then Commercial real estate?

How about the market crash that we just went through? Or the collapse of the financial institutions? Didn't the black swan get them also?

So now we are just going to dilly dally around here?

Who is smoking what?

We are going to rip the hearts out of the shorts. This market will make the doomsdayers irrelevant. And it will make the person, with the most outlandish, and reckless opinion, the one that wins.

Because when Armageddon happens, no one will be prepared. And to make all these Armageddon callers look completely foolish, no one will remember this crash. They will only remember the opportunity it gave, and the fortunes that were created, by those who were "brave" enough to buy. And that bravery is of the Wall Street type. Because it doesn't take courage, and it doesn't take bravery, and it doesn't take intestinal fortitude to buy here, but Wall Street needs to pretend it does, because most of the people are just overpaid scared sheep, that have figured out a way to misprice merchandise on an unfostering gullible public while they accumulate it--a principle Goldman Sachs completely understands. So they need to pretend that it took balls of steel to buy, so they can steal the money back that they already stole from the public!

So when you here that this rally was a black swan event, pay it no heed.

The pain hasn't even started for those short, and for those that are underinvested.

Because after all, isn't the pain, so far, just contained?

And the only way to blow the lid off is with higher prices.

And they will be much higher!

Time to oggle Medicis?

Botox and breasts making a comeback?

We knew that there was a downturn in "vanity" but the upswing in the market may even make DABA girls fashionable again.

Allergan reports numbers at the end of the month. AGN snatched breast maker Inamed, from Medicis Pharmaceutical who tried to buy them a few years back.

With the price that Ethicon (JNJ) paid for Mentor, we know that breast augmentation and aesthetics is still a good business.

The trade down in aesthetics has been MRX, which has been accumulated the past three months. They don't do breasts, even though they tried buying them, but they do help the face look nice.

They report earnings on August 4th.

The stock, at under 16 is cheap, and has takeover potential.

$190K in $20 bills

National:

Roger Griffiths, an artist and loyal customer for 25 years of Westpac, was denied an $80,000 mortgage application, so he withdrew $190,000 from the bank.

In cash, and in 20's!

SEC investigating Goldman's Sachs trading?

NY Times has a story on it:

"Yet high-frequency specialists clearly have an edge over typical traders, let alone ordinary investors. The Securities and Exchange Commission says it is examining certain aspects of the strategy.

“This is where all the money is getting made,” said William H. Donaldson, former chairman and chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange and today an adviser to a big hedge fund. “If an individual investor doesn’t have the means to keep up, they’re at a huge disadvantage.”

It was July 15, and Intel, the computer chip giant, had reporting robust earnings the night before. Some investors, smelling opportunity, set out to buy shares in the semiconductor company Broadcom. (Their activities were described by an investor at a major Wall Street firm who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his job.) The slower traders faced a quandary: If they sought to buy a large number of shares at once, they would tip their hand and risk driving up Broadcom’s price. So, as is often the case on Wall Street, they divided their orders into dozens of small batches, hoping to cover their tracks. One second after the market opened, shares of Broadcom started changing hands at $26.20.

The slower traders began issuing buy orders. But rather than being shown to all potential sellers at the same time, some of those orders were most likely routed to a collection of high-frequency traders for just 30 milliseconds — 0.03 seconds — in what are known as flash orders. While markets are supposed to ensure transparency by showing orders to everyone simultaneously, a loophole in regulations allows marketplaces like Nasdaq to show traders some orders ahead of everyone else in exchange for a fee.

In less than half a second, high-frequency traders gained a valuable insight: the hunger for Broadcom was growing. Their computers began buying up Broadcom shares and then reselling them to the slower investors at higher prices. The overall price of Broadcom began to rise.

Soon, thousands of orders began flooding the markets as high-frequency software went into high gear. Automatic programs began issuing and canceling tiny orders within milliseconds to determine how much the slower traders were willing to pay. The high-frequency computers quickly determined that some investors’ upper limit was $26.40. The price shot to $26.39, and high-frequency programs began offering to sell hundreds of thousands of shares.

The result is that the slower-moving investors paid $1.4 million for about 56,000 shares, or $7,800 more than if they had been able to move as quickly as the high-frequency traders."

And now ZH, has a copy of the SEC letter on its website, purporting to look into Goldman's high frequency trading.

But why doesn't someone try and game the algorithms?

If someone really wants to own a stock, why don't they just take the offers? On most stocks, you have 50-100,000 shares available. Take it from HFT algorithms, instead of flashing them your orders, and letting them front run your price!

And if you really wanted to goose a stock that you were long, why couldn't you have 100 daytraders all in concert, put in bids, on some of the thin names and let the algorithm detect the "buying interest" and let them run it up amongst themselves. Then have one of the daytraders, put a bid a penny above his buddies, and let the algo's hit him, while the bid continually is refreshed. That will alert the algo traders that the buyer is "real" and that the bid is really another algo trader that really wants the stock.

It's time to game the gamers.

Dennis Kneale: "No publicity is bad publicity!"

DK had a rather laudatory article written about him in the Observer, titled Kneale Down, Bloggers. Here's how it starts, and you know the story:

"Finding your rhythm as a rookie anchor in cable news, circa 2009, is in large part about learning to tap your inner outrage. On the night of Tuesday, June 30, Dennis Kneale found his. At the time, the 51-year-old business reporter was several weeks into a tryout, anchoring CNBC’s 8 p.m. hour. He stared at the camera in a TV studio in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and lambasted the anonymous bloggers who were making fun of him on the Internet for, among other things, his recent and repeated claim that the recession was over. Mr. Kneale called the “digital dickweeds” cowardly and cynical.

“I say dickweed because apparently it is indeed a plant akin to pond scum,” said Mr. Kneale, “and name-calling seems to be the lingua franca of the blogosphere.”

Afterward, Mr. Kneale’s producer told him that his outburst was poetry, the best thing he’d done on the show. The next night, Mr. Kneale returned to the subject. He called the blogosphere the “bitterest realm on earth,” and noted that he didn’t spend much time reading “the vitriol spewing out of these miscreants and these digital imbeciles,” but that, apparently, they were watching him. “Nanny-nanny boo-boo,” said Mr. Kneale."

Poetry?

Gawker has a different version:
If half the rumors about Dennis Kneale are true, the CNBC host has good reason to fear bloggers and curse them on air. So why is he telling people privately that he manufactured his feud with bloggers for buzz? After Kneale's repeated on-air outbursts against bloggers, in which he has called them "dickweeds" (see June 30 video above) and "digital imbeciles," Kneale told our source who spoke privately with him that the crusade was dreamed up with his producer, former Fox News man Jerry Burke. The idea was to draw attention and drum up buzz.

Supposedly, his rant was manufactured, as in made up, as in pretended outrage. The day before his rant, someone from CNBC went through 28 pages of my blog. Maybe it was manufactured? who cares. What isn't on CNBC? I was then invited to be on CNBC's show, and gave a response, but it never amounted to anything.

Anyway I suppose the blogosphere will talk about it for a bit, since Harry Crumb is demolishing them since DK is bullish! It will be akin to blaming the market upswing on HFT!

But the story has brought up another side of Dennis, that is rather entertaining. The Viagra induced groper! He's caught in a rabbit hole, just like the bears!

This Page 6 article has now been resurrected:

WHICH business-magazine editor, who keeps a jar of blue jellybeans on his desk labeled Viagra, was called on the carpet for feeling up an underling's wife? The co-workers and their spouses were in a taxi heading to Brooklyn after an office party. The underling later went to the groper's home to get an apology. The groper's boss told him that if it ever happened again, he'd be fired.

Danger is his middle name!

The yellow haired parakeet

In Dr. Seuss book, Scrambled Eggs Super, Peter Hooper, goes around the world, collecting eggs from rare birds, to make his scrambled eggs, but in real life, last weekend, in Colombia, I met the "bird lady" Colombia's most famous ornithologist, who saves the rare eggs.

Of Colombia's 162 endangered birds, her favorite is the yellow haired parakeet. One time when she was in the jungle a bothrops atrox, (a pit viper) was in the nest of her favorite bird, so she had to remove the venomous snake. She used her net to delicately remove it, and toss the viper and protect the bird's nest and egg.

But no sooner had she removed the viper, that she was confronted by one of the more serious side; one of Colombia's gun toting guerrillas, who had amusingly been watching her.

They asked her what she was doing in the jungle; and she told them, and she gave the names of those in their territory that had given her permission to be allowed in their jungle. (Guerrillas have property rights, its just that most people don't bother trespassing on their land!)

They asked her, if she was afraid of the jungle. She said, "No, I'm not afraid of the jungle but I'm afraid of your guns." They laughed, and then looked at her, sized her up, and not having any female companionship, they told her to come with them. They then proceeded to give her a "tour" of the jungle, and did their best to be charming.

She saved the birds, got her stories, and made the guerrillas day, all the while being protected by machine guns.

Because she was saving a rare birds egg.

And that night, she restfully slept in a hammock, tied between two trees, by the edge of the water.

She was awoken early in the morning, by a crocodile, eating a fish dinner, underneath a hammock.

Compared to the guerrillas, it was restful!

MSFT and the market

What happened to the massive drop in the futiures that we were supposed to see after MSFT's miss and AMZN? Weren't we assurred that the market was then going to rollover and puke?

Two things on MSFT. They have a new operating system, Windows 7, and and they spent money putting out bing--So Windows client revenue was down 28%, and online services lost $732 million.

So sweat Mr. Softee all you want, and try and extrapolate it to the rest of the market, and sell stocks and go short because of it, and you'll be just wrong.

It means nothing, and you that have their hopes that this will mean something, will have your hopes displaced.

The only ones selling on MSFT on this news, were those short, trying to make the market appear to say something, and those re-allocating money from MSFT, into something that moves.

Because where are these same folks that sold last night this morning?

Scrambling!

And the bulls are eating eggs for breakfast!

Two weeks with Carnac the Magnificent!

So the futures are down on Amazon's miss, and we are supposed to be scared. So I guess I'll beat my chest like Tarzan, put out a silly picture, and advertise some calls made here in just the last ten days or so.

Just to show you that you can swim in the Amazon!

So weren't HIG and LNC touted just 7 trading days ago at 11.31 and 15.45? And didn't they close at 14.38 and 18.26, up 27% each?

Two 27% movers in, and the bears think people are going to stay away from the stock market?

How about BUCY last weekend at 28.92. It's at 33.25 in the after-hours and going higher. That's 15% in four days. URI is 11% higher also.

How about my cement plays VMC at 40.62 and EXP at 22.72 just 10 days ago? Didn't they close today at 46.77 and 28.54? That's 15% and 26%!

I touted options on Berkshire Hathaway two days ago. They are up 40% already.

How about my CAT options. You only had 500% on these numbers in three days!

You had the play on AAPL before earnings, and cash for the gold bugs--two 15% plays, and two 10% plays, in less than a week.

You had the play on Harmon twice! In the pre-market it was up 50% on the fake take-over story. And I touted it again at 21.33 when someone puked this number up!

You had the bottom in oil at 59, and ICE at 85 here.

And on Tuesday July 14, before the open, and before this market took off, before oil rallied, and before bonds sold off you had this:

Bullet points

• Oil bottomed at $59 the other day, as advertised here. It is a BUY.
  
• Bonds are done rallying. They are now SELLS, as they were on January 1.
• The market sell-off is now OVER.

Posted by Palmoni at 7:34 AM 5 comments

And you had a "flash" piece on Meredith Whitney, and the inimitable Harry Crumb here and here!

And now Sitting Bull! Carnac!