Stock Market: Two Biggest Fears Getting Closer

The stock markets remind me of the real estate market in Toronto, Canada. While the U.S. housing market crashed, the real estate market in Toronto is as strong as it has ever been.

In fact, builders can’t find enough lots to build homes on and developers can’t put condo buildings up fast enough in Toronto. In decent areas, the prices of condos have gone up from $400.00 per square foot to well over $1,000 per square foot and buyers are lining up.

Same thing with the stock market: There are so many people out there saying “It’s overpriced,” but stocks just keep rising. Why? Simply, stocks keep rising because there is too much money around, too much liquidity in the system. I can’t see the Fed doing much else other than dropping money from helicopters to increase monetary stimulus. With so much liquidity around, stocks rise.

The S&P 500 companies alone sit on about $1.0 trillion in cash. Stock markets do not fall when with so much cash in the system.

But here is when stock markets do fall: when inflation rears its ugly head, and when interest rates rise.

My dear friend, neither of these two events is far off. All we need to do is look at the bellwether 10-year U.S. Treasury. Last October, the 10-year Treasury yielded 2.4%. Today, despite the crisis we have witnessed in Japan, which should have sent investors running to the security of U.S. bonds, the 10-year Treasury yields 3.4%, up 41% in less than six months. In fact, this bond is up drastically in the last three trading days.

Yes, stocks will continue to rise in the very immediate term, just like the condo and housing market in Toronto. But the warning signs of trouble ahead are getting clearer every passing day. Enjoy the bear market rally while it lasts, because it won’t last forever.

Michael’s Personal Notes:

It is with sadness that we learn this morning about the bankruptcy filing of Harry & David, the gourmet food and fruit basket purveyor.

Each year I look forward to getting Harry & David gift baskets from our various suppliers. I was an especially big fan of their fruit baskets; their jumbo pears being my favorite.

The stark reality today is that, unless you have a sizeable Internet presence, the old traditional mail-order model will no longer work. The U.S. Post Office continues to adopt the wrong model of raising its prices as it fights the Internet.

Harry & David was established around the time of the great depression: 1934. The business thrived as the decades passed (assets of $500 million today), but it was unable to really get the following that other merchandise companies have enjoyed on the Internet. According to compete.com, Harry and David’s monthly web site traffic was less than one percent of the traffic of Amazon.com.

Where the Market Stands; Where it’s Headed:

Not much I can say about the stock market that I already haven’t talked about. We opened Caesar’s most dreaded month of the year at about the same level that stocks are about to end the month, in spite of the Japan disaster and continued lack of focus by the politicians on curbing government spending.

The bear market rally in stocks, which started in March 2009, continues.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average opens this morning up 5.5% for 2011.

What He Said:

“The proof the party is over in the U.S. housing market could not be clearer to me. The price action of the new-homebuilder stocks is telling the true story—these stocks are falling in price daily (and the media is not picking it up). Those who will hurt most when the air is finally let out of the housing market balloon will be those buyers who bought in late 2005. In fact, the latecomers to the U.S. housing market may end up looking like the latecomers to the tech-stock rally that ended so abruptly in 1999.” Michael Lombardi in PROFIT CONFIDENTIAL, March 1, 2006. Michael started warning about the crisis coming in the U.S. real estate market right at the peak of the boom, now widely believed to be 2005.

Michael bought his first stock when he was 17 years old. He quickly saw $2,000 of savings from summer jobs turn into $1,000. Determined not to lose money again on a stock, Michael started researching the market intensely, reading every book he could find on the topic and taking every course he could afford. It didn’t take long for Michael to start making money with stocks, and that led Michael to launch a newsletter on the stock market. Today, Michael only employs the top market analysts and editors. Some of our recommendations have posted gains in excess of 500%! Michael has authored and published over one thousand articles on investment and money management. Along the way to building Lombardi Publishing Corporation, now with over one million customers in 141 countries, Michael became an active investor in real estate, art, precious metals and various businesses. Readers of the daily Profit Confidential e-letter are offered the benefit of the expertise Michael has gained in these sectors. Michael believes in successful stock picking as an important wealth accumulation tool. Married with two children, Michael received his Chartered Financial Planner designation from the Financial Planners Standards Council of Canada and his MBA from the Graduate Business School, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland. Follow Michael and the latest from Profit Confidential on Twitter

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Disaster in Japan; Just When the World’s Third Biggest Economy Was Turning Up

By Mitchell Clark, B.Comm.

It’s difficult thinking about stocks, commodities and investing in general when you see the tremendous devastation in Japan. Stock picking seems like a flippant endeavor compared to dealing with the loss of life in this natural disaster. My cousin’s husband is a Japanese American executive with Coca-Cola in Tokyo. Their immediate family is all right, but, as they communicated over e-mail, the entire country is virtually shut down.

The markets are clearly reflecting the shock of it all, as well as the very real economic worries now affecting the globe’s third largest economy. Japan consumes a lot of the world’s exports and there will no doubt be an immediate adjustment to businesses selling product to that country. As Japan’s economic interests naturally turn inward to focus on recovery and restoring infrastructure, the country’s fiscal situation will no doubt worsen. All this, just when Japan’s economy was seemingly coming out of a long period of stagnation.

Domestic lumber stocks are slightly ticking higher as speculators bet on Japan’s new infrastructure requirements. This, of course, is mostly just trading noise at this point. It’s way too early for any economic analysis of Japan’s actual need, other than it is enormous. This kind of speculation is just as likely not to work out anyway. Japan may choose to rebuild with metal studs instead of spruce. I don’t even want to think about it.

From a purely financial point of view, my analysis of domestic capital markets is that they will withstand this natural disaster. The stock market is now in the “lull” between earnings seasons and is actually holding up well considering the severity of events. The stock market has been due for a correction and it seems like events in Japan are unfortunately the catalyst. As the first quarter of 2011 is quickly coming to an end, the expectation is for strong corporate profits once again and that’s what institutional investors care about. This is what’s keeping investor sentiment in stocks generally positive.

I want to repeat a sentiment I’ve been writing about recently. There isn’t any rush for investors to be making any bold new bets in this market. I remain bullish on equities this year, although the action in the Dow Jones Transportation Average is still worrisome. Investing in gold has been, and continues to be, a good idea, but that commodity is also due for a major pullback. Over the very near term, global capital markets will reflect the daily events taking place in Japan. Domestic markets are now in a correction.

Mitchell is a Senior Editor at Lombardi Financial specializing in small-cap stocks. He’s the editor of a variety of popular Lombardi Financial newsletters, such as Penny Stock Reporter, Micro-Cap Stocks, and Monster Profits. Mitchell, who has been with Lombardi Financial for thirteen years, won the Jack Madden Prize in economic history and is a long-time student of equity markets. Prior to joining Lombardi, Mitchell was as a stock broker for a large investment bank. While Mitchell is not working he enjoys fly fishing, motorcycling and tending to his hobby farm.

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Should We Be Alarmed That The Biggest Bond Fund In The World Has Dumped All Of Their U.S. Treasury Bonds?

Bill Gross, the manager of the biggest bond fund in the world, has forgotten more about bonds than most of us will ever learn. That is why the big move that PIMCO has just made is so unsettling.  At one time PIMCO held more U.S. government debt than any other bond fund on the globe, but now news has come out that they have gotten rid of all their U.S. government-related securities.  So should we be alarmed?  For months Gross has been warning that the bull market in bonds is coming to an end, and now it looks like he is putting his words into action.s  Gross has often publicly decried the rampant government spending that has been going on over the last several years, and apparently he has seen enough.  He is taking his ball and he is going home.  This really is a stunning move by PIMCO.  Gross must really believe that something fundamental has shifted.    Gross didn't get to where he is today by being stupid.  But so far world financial markets are taking this news in stride.  Nobody seems all that alarmed that the largest bond fund in the world has dumped all of their U.S. Treasuries.  But with world financial markets in such a state of chaos right now, shouldn't we all take note when one of the biggest players in the game makes such a bold move?

Gross believes that interest rates on U.S. Treasuries are way too low right now and that they will start going up when the Federal Reserve ends the current round of quantitative easing in June.  Gross has indicated that if interest rates on U.S. Treasuries go up high enough, PIMCO might get back in.

But if interest rates do start going up that is going to make servicing the monolithic U.S. national debt much more expensive, and that would not be good news for U.S. government finances.

But would the Federal Reserve really allow interest rates on U.S. Treasuries to go up substantially?  Wouldn't they just step in at some point and start buying U.S. government debt again?

Probably.

But the truth is that the Ponzi Scheme of the U.S. Treasury issuing bonds and the Federal Reserve buying them up cannot last forever as Gross noted in his March newsletter....

"Basically, the recent game plan is as simple as the Ohio State Buckeyes’ “three yards and a cloud of dust” in the 1960s. When applied to the Treasury market it translates to this: The Treasury issues bonds and the Fed buys them. What could be simpler, and who’s to worry? This Sammy Scheme as I’ve described it in recent Outlooks is as foolproof as Ponzi and Madoff until… until… well, until it isn’t."

Gross also noted in his newsletter that the Federal Reserve is currently buying up about 70 percent of all new U.S. government debt.

So what is going to happen when that stops?

Nobody knows for certain, but it sure is going to be interesting to watch.

The market for U.S. Treasuries has not been working "normally" for quite some time now, and there is some legitimate doubt as to whether it will ever fully get back to "normal" again.

Meanwhile, the sovereign debt crisis in Europe continues to get even worse.

The yield on 10-year Portuguese bonds is now above 7 percent, the yield on 10-year Irish bonds is now above 9 percent and the yield on 10-year Greek bonds is now above 12 percent.

Most people expect European leaders to soon come to an agreement to add billions more to existing bailout funds, but there is no guarantee that is actually going to happen.

In fact, the Germans are making waves by insisting that the financially troubled nations in the EU must be willing to agree to limits on their future budget deficits.  A recent article on CNBC described the situation this way....

Before the Germans will agree to pump in extra cash from their taxpayers, backed by the French, they want each leader to agree to legislation at home that will limit the size of their future national deficits. The Greeks are already refusing point blank. Things may boil to the surface at an extraordinary summit on Friday.

So what if an agreement can't be reached?

Could the dominoes in Europe start to fall?

Very few people actually want to see a wave of sovereign defaults in Europe, but the current situation cannot go on forever.  At some point the Germans are going to get sick and tired of bailing out other members of the EU.

The global addiction to debt is about to start having some very serious consequences.

For decades, most of the governments of the industrialized world have been running up debt as if it would never come back to haunt them.  Now the world is absolutely covered in red ink and everyone is looking for a way to solve the problem.

But there is not going to be a debt jubilee to come along and save everyone.  This debt bubble is either going to keep expanding or it is going to burst.

At one point, at least some of the debt-ridden nations will try to inflate their way out of debt by recklessly printing money.  To a certain extent that has already been going on.  But it will not work.  It will only cause a whole lot of inflation.

This is just more evidence that any economic system based on debt is destined to fall.  When we allowed a private central bank to start issuing debt-based currency in this country back in 1913 we set ourselves up to fail.  As I have written about previously, the Federal Reserve should never have been allowed to come into existence, and it should have been shut down by Congress long before now.

But now the United States is caught in the same debt trap that most of the other nations around the world are caught in.  The global addiction to debt is going to have some very, very serious consequences.  Instead of moving into a great time of peace and prosperity, everything is about to come falling apart.

Things could have been different.  Things did not have to turn out this way.  But here we are on the edge of one of the biggest financial disasters in human history and most Americans still don't understand what is happening.

So what do you all think about all of this?  Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below....

View the original article here

Should We Be Alarmed That The Biggest Bond Fund In The World Has Dumped All Of Their U.S. Treasury Bonds?

Bill Gross, the manager of the biggest bond fund in the world, has forgotten more about bonds than most of us will ever learn. That is why the big move that PIMCO has just made is so unsettling.  At one time PIMCO held more U.S. government debt than any other bond fund on the globe, but now news has come out that they have gotten rid of all their U.S. government-related securities.  So should we be alarmed?  For months Gross has been warning that the bull market in bonds is coming to an end, and now it looks like he is putting his words into action.s  Gross has often publicly decried the rampant government spending that has been going on over the last several years, and apparently he has seen enough.  He is taking his ball and he is going home.  This really is a stunning move by PIMCO.  Gross must really believe that something fundamental has shifted.    Gross didn't get to where he is today by being stupid.  But so far world financial markets are taking this news in stride.  Nobody seems all that alarmed that the largest bond fund in the world has dumped all of their U.S. Treasuries.  But with world financial markets in such a state of chaos right now, shouldn't we all take note when one of the biggest players in the game makes such a bold move?

Gross believes that interest rates on U.S. Treasuries are way too low right now and that they will start going up when the Federal Reserve ends the current round of quantitative easing in June.  Gross has indicated that if interest rates on U.S. Treasuries go up high enough, PIMCO might get back in.

But if interest rates do start going up that is going to make servicing the monolithic U.S. national debt much more expensive, and that would not be good news for U.S. government finances.

But would the Federal Reserve really allow interest rates on U.S. Treasuries to go up substantially?  Wouldn't they just step in at some point and start buying U.S. government debt again?

Probably.

But the truth is that the Ponzi Scheme of the U.S. Treasury issuing bonds and the Federal Reserve buying them up cannot last forever as Gross noted in his March newsletter....

"Basically, the recent game plan is as simple as the Ohio State Buckeyes’ “three yards and a cloud of dust” in the 1960s. When applied to the Treasury market it translates to this: The Treasury issues bonds and the Fed buys them. What could be simpler, and who’s to worry? This Sammy Scheme as I’ve described it in recent Outlooks is as foolproof as Ponzi and Madoff until… until… well, until it isn’t."

Gross also noted in his newsletter that the Federal Reserve is currently buying up about 70 percent of all new U.S. government debt.

So what is going to happen when that stops?

Nobody knows for certain, but it sure is going to be interesting to watch.

The market for U.S. Treasuries has not been working "normally" for quite some time now, and there is some legitimate doubt as to whether it will ever fully get back to "normal" again.

Meanwhile, the sovereign debt crisis in Europe continues to get even worse.

The yield on 10-year Portuguese bonds is now above 7 percent, the yield on 10-year Irish bonds is now above 9 percent and the yield on 10-year Greek bonds is now above 12 percent.

Most people expect European leaders to soon come to an agreement to add billions more to existing bailout funds, but there is no guarantee that is actually going to happen.

In fact, the Germans are making waves by insisting that the financially troubled nations in the EU must be willing to agree to limits on their future budget deficits.  A recent article on CNBC described the situation this way....

Before the Germans will agree to pump in extra cash from their taxpayers, backed by the French, they want each leader to agree to legislation at home that will limit the size of their future national deficits. The Greeks are already refusing point blank. Things may boil to the surface at an extraordinary summit on Friday.

So what if an agreement can't be reached?

Could the dominoes in Europe start to fall?

Very few people actually want to see a wave of sovereign defaults in Europe, but the current situation cannot go on forever.  At some point the Germans are going to get sick and tired of bailing out other members of the EU.

The global addiction to debt is about to start having some very serious consequences.

For decades, most of the governments of the industrialized world have been running up debt as if it would never come back to haunt them.  Now the world is absolutely covered in red ink and everyone is looking for a way to solve the problem.

But there is not going to be a debt jubilee to come along and save everyone.  This debt bubble is either going to keep expanding or it is going to burst.

At one point, at least some of the debt-ridden nations will try to inflate their way out of debt by recklessly printing money.  To a certain extent that has already been going on.  But it will not work.  It will only cause a whole lot of inflation.

This is just more evidence that any economic system based on debt is destined to fall.  When we allowed a private central bank to start issuing debt-based currency in this country back in 1913 we set ourselves up to fail.  As I have written about previously, the Federal Reserve should never have been allowed to come into existence, and it should have been shut down by Congress long before now.

But now the United States is caught in the same debt trap that most of the other nations around the world are caught in.  The global addiction to debt is going to have some very, very serious consequences.  Instead of moving into a great time of peace and prosperity, everything is about to come falling apart.

Things could have been different.  Things did not have to turn out this way.  But here we are on the edge of one of the biggest financial disasters in human history and most Americans still don't understand what is happening.

So what do you all think about all of this?  Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below....

View the original article here