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“It is not the strongest of the species that survives or the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” —Charles Darwin2008 in Review: Has the Easy Market Call Come and Gone?As regular readers know I've had a cautious even bearish view towards equities and credit over the past couple of years. The handwriting was on the wall and both seemed woefully overvalued. That being said my long-standing target for the S&P 500 of 750-800 was reached this autumn a level that has held even in the face of awful economic news. ...

By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE
UPI Editor at Large WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- Greed in 21st century America is stampeding democratic capitalism. From the 2001 Enron scandal to the current $50 billion Ponzi scheme that destroyed the savings of thousands, hedge funds and derivatives that escape any transparency, and the subprime mortgage swindle that engulfed the world, the United States is now teetering on the edge of the abyss -- another Great Depression.

NEW YORK, Nov. 4 (UPI) -- The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, not without some flack, has hired a former Bear Stearns risk assessor to help with bank supervision.

MIAMI, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- A fraud case against Bear Stearns dropped by the Securities and Exchange Commission's Miami office has the SEC inspector general seeing red, sources said.

In mid-August I predicted that “major” bankruptcies for 2008 would reach 225 (see Bankruptcies Revisited). Through October there had been 172 such bankruptcies, as reported by Bankrupctydata.com. That implied a pace of around 210 bankruptcies, well short of my prediction. At the time however, I suggested that the filing pace was likely to quicken in November and December as the economy deteriorated at a more rapid clip. Sure enough, the final numbers bear out my prediction. According to Bankruptcydata.com, “major” filings reached 231 in 2008. 231 bankruptcies falls far short of the 289 “major” bankruptcies in 2000 and 383 in 2001[More...]

I was recently perusing some investing blogs and ran across an article (1) I feel adequately captures my concerns (and belief) that financial mass destruction is probable in 2009. Rakesh Saxena, the article's author, does a good job explaining the unbelievable amount of financial engineering by the likes of Citigroup (NYSE: C (2)), JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM (3)), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC (4)), Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and many others. Reading this article, as well as the insightful comments, reminded me of two specific reasons why I urge everyone I know to stay away from financial stocks - even shorting them. What Do Banks Do? In the aforementioned article, one part I found particularly amusing was Vikram Pandit's response to a question posed at a Town Hall meeting: Responding to a rhetorical “What does a bank do?” question at a Town Hall meeting last November, Citigroup (C (5)) CEO Vikram Pandit explained that “a bank takes deposits and puts them to work by investing[More...]

In looking through material from exactly one year ago in preparation for tomorrow's all-important (and exceedingly difficult) predictions for the new year, the following chart popped up from the January 2nd post titled "That was interesting". It seems that the first day of trading last year set the tone for the next six months. While broad equity markets set out on their year-long decline, oil began at just under $100 a barrel and got a good head start on its move to almost $150 from which it began tumbling in July. Similarly, gold was priced about $50 below where it[More...]

I'd be the first to admit that I've made plenty of mistakes and bad predictions in my time. In most cases, I let ego or inexperience get in the way of good judgment, though sometimes it has been a matter of not having enough information. Regardless, some of the forecasts highlighted by BusinessWeek in an article entitled "The Worst Predictions About 2008" reflect more than just bad decision-making. In my view, they are in the realm of shill-dom and the criminally corrupt. See if you can figure out which ones I'm referring to: Just about everybody got wrong-footed by 2008, but some people's mistakes were truly[More...]

What can we say, we've been warning about California (and many many more states following suit) for a long while - over a year now. (Dec 16 2007: California in a State of Emergency - Coming to a Theater Near You) Here it begins folks.... as I stated in this week's piece (The Web of Credit Snares Another: Cleveland) One point I forgot to mention in <a style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(153, 51,[More...]

Daniel Frishberg predicts a lower stock market: "You want a prediction every once and awhile, I can give you a reasonable prediction. Back in March we hit some significantly lower prices that really started to scare people. We hit a kind of a temporary bottom for stock prices in the middle of March and they ran up, all the way until May. They've given up about half of that, swinging up a little bit in a very anemic way, but now I can tell you this: Investors did not start to have the willingness to assume risk based on the prices we had in March. I can make an educated analysis now and tell you that the low point that we reached was not enough to stimulate new real buying and therefore you're going to have to have the stock prices go quite a bit lower than we hit. That means March was not the low, we're going to go lower." After Lehman Brothers' first-ever loss and 65% decline in stock prices this year: "Here is the story on Lehman: they want to know why did the CEO not just fire himself? Why is he firing his CFO and firing the president? Should he have just fired himself?

Schaeffer's Carly Schaeffer takes a look at today's options activity

Schaeffer's Laura Houser takes a look at today's options activity

Schaeffer's Laura Houser takes a look at activity on the Street after the market close

Schaeffer's Laura Houser takes a look at activity on the Street ahead of the market open