DOWN HARDLY OUT

In recent years there's been a lot of stuff, most of it nasty, written bout the earth's second most abundant source of energy.

It's no stretch of the imagination that more than a few see it as a nasty-burning, hydrocarbon-producing four lettered word, coal. As the article linked below points out, much energy has gone into putting the dirty-burning stuff out to energy pasture once and for all to be seen, smelled and breathed no more.

Not however with much success. "Coal generates about 40 percent of the world’s electricity and is poised to dethrone crude oil as the largest energy source by 2020." Not only is coal abundant, it's cheap, "cheaper than other energy sources because it’s accessible, easy to transport and simple to store."

Beyond that the black tarry stuff has a humanitarian history to it most of the warming climate crowd choose to ignore. In this age of rich versus poor, haves against have-nots: "The power and warmth it generates has helped lift millions out of poverty and misery in China, India and other emerging nations."  How many climate-warming freaks can claim that? 

How much coal is there? Well, according to some based on 2012 production, there's enough to keep global skies cloudy and gray for about another 130 years. By some estimates China consumes as much coal as those bad boys and girls in the US consume oil. What oil does for the United States coal does for China, "nourishing economic growth and choking cities."

The future of coal as an energy source is uncertain. The climate change crowd is larded with if-we-don't-want-it-you-can't-have-it either people. Yet as the recent Ukraine situation and Japan's horrific earthquake reminded, abundant cheap energy is hardly a given. Coal in many quarters has been getting a second look.

The chunky black stuff has been down for a long time, but it's still a long way from being out. We'll know more come the next frigid winter, something those climate-warming worry warts should openly embrace. 
http://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/confronting-coal/                                         

CONFIRMATION

   

Call it what you will it's a schizophrenic stock market much different from 2013.

With yields on 30-Treasury bonds down more than most at the beginning of the year expected, share prices on the DJIA and S&P 500 hitting new highs while on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000 investors seem to be leaving the party before it gets out of hand.

There's an old bromide about which is the more painful of the two, plunging off a cliff or getting bitten to death by a duck. Not all bear markets are the same. Back in 1973-74 it was a steady, almost daily drubbing with little respite for air. More recently they have played the plunging off the cliff game.

In today's Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf once again took on the Dragster, ECB President Mario Draghi and his bankers for being, if they ever do something, too little and "vastly too late."

Draghi slid one by the market in 2012 with his "within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough." That was then. This is now. It's highly unlikely the market will settle for such bureaucratic jawboning this time around. Draghi's and his band of bankers' put-up moment draws nigh.
 
Confirmation is a wonderful thing, especially when one get it. But as we quoted the rolling Stones before, you don't always get what you want, but with a little luck and some hard work you might get what you need.

Instead of the Land of the Rising Sun under Abernomics it's become the House of Falling Cards looking for a convenient spot. If Japan's debt to GDP ratio were any higher it's be a street drug. Assuming anything can be dangerous. Assuming a little economic reform sprinkled with some lukewarm austerity will correct the troubles in these EU peripheries is plain dumb.

Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece all have debt to GDP ratios that would send a tee totaling vicar searching for the nearest pub. Bureaucrats and bond-buying investors are acting too much like the best is yet to come. 

And that's the confirmation to pull this whole thing off they need. But like the song says you don't always get what you want.

RANDOM READS

The can't protect our borders but when it comes to keeping "an endangered species of mouse from being trampled by cattle," you get the idea.

Commissioners in Otero County voted 2-0 on Monday night to authorize Sheriff Benny House to open a gate allowing nearly 200 head of cattle into the 23-acre area despite Forest Service restrictions. A third commissioner was out of town for the vote.

We are reacting to the infringement of the U.S. Forest Service on the water rights of our land-allotment owners," Otero County Commissioner Tommie Herrell told Reuters. "People have been grazing there since 1956."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/13/us-usa-newmexico-cattle-idUSBREA4C0XV20140513?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews
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When housing prices before the subprime-led crash were running amok many claimed it was only a bicoastal thing with California, Nevada, Florida and parts of the east coast. Turned out to be more national than many thought.

Those who've been ballyhooing the most recent recovery in home prices are trying to sell a different  tune this time along the lines that the rising tide has lifted all houseboats. Well, maybe. But there are some signs it ain't so.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/7-places-where-property-prices-are-falling-2014-05-13
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French President Francois Hollande appeared yesterday to be grabbing a page from a fellow EU bureacrat, ECB President Mario Draghi, suggesting that the country was on the road to recovery. According to one report, Hollande's intent was to allay fears about tax hikes and spending cuts two sore spots with union members.

If the French recovery, as Hollande says, is any where at hand no one has seen it yet. So we have Draghi searching the horizon far and wide any signs of inflation and Hollande on the lookout for recovery.

Elected two years ago among some high hopes for change, Hollonde's popularity ratings recently hit an all-time low with just 18 percent of voters approving his performance as France still has a record 3 million-plus out of work. This is just one of the reasons the French are hardly interested in any provisions that smack of German economic probity and a strong euro.

Nobody likes austerity policies less than unions.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-13/hollande-economic-recovery-elusive-as-french-face-taxes-cuts.html
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TRADERS ON ALERT FOR INFLATION

That's the title of this report from CNBC.

One wonders if these traders of late have been talking to ECB President Mario Draghi, the EU dragster. Draghi and his crew of ECB bankers have been looking for that elusive sucker so long it reminds of a popular song in the early1980s, "Looking For Love in All The Wrong Places."

According to the report: "The PPI is expected to increase by 0.2 percent on the headline and by the same amount, when excluding food and energy. PPI rose 0.5 percent last month."

We hate to bring up food and energy and so do those bureaucrats who supposedly track the price of such things. But oh well. Here it goes. This is from http://www.zerohedge.com/news

Bloomberg notes, consumers in the U.S. will probably pay the most ever for meat this grilling season as costs for pork and beef surge, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.



We can't say much about those traders, but we doubt they're going to find much in the PPI on Wednesday or the CPI on Thursday. Take a tip from that old song. Those are the wrong places.

AROUND THE WEB

New Price Set For Sugar, Rice, Chicken
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-13/venezuela-sets-new-fair-prices-chicken-sugar-rice-coffee

Title Speaks For Itself
https://www.fidelity.com/viewpoints/investing-ideas/biotech-dip-or-bubble

Satellites In Your Neighborhood
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/books/no-place-to-hide-by-glenn-greenwald.html?

Drones, Satellites And Rogues
http://financialspuds.blogspot.com/2014/05/drones-satellites-and-rogues.html

Euphoria: Deserved Or No?
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/05/13/qa-with-eqts-new-chief-the-market-euphoria-scares-me/

April Retails Disappoint Market Yawns
http://briefing.com/investor/markets/stock-market-update/2014/5/13/stocks-end-flat-after-s-and-p-500-tests-1900.htm

Turkey Gas Russian Interest
http://www.minyanville.com/trading-and-investing/commodities/articles/Russia-Showing-Interest-in-Natural-Gas/5/13/2014/id/54959

Watch Yield Curve
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2014/05/13/bear-market-wont-come-until-the-yield-curve-says-so-kleintop/

HOW'D YOU DO IT, BEN?

  
The stock market is about the only positive thing going right now.

Though many dissidents to prove otherwise will roll out reams of data about declining joblessness, low interest rates and low inflation as far as the myopic can see. 

A while back on the Internet we came across an interview a successful entrepreneur granted a veteran reporter. The guy had been successful more than once, building several companies and selling them.

Reporters are noted for their skepticism, thick skin and supposed toughness. The truth is the only mean streets most of them ever grew up on were in their own imaginations. But we'll leave that for another time.

In interviews like this there's always that one point where the interviewer asks the bottom-line-what's your-secret question. It's sort of a reportorial version of a Malcolm Gladwell tipping point. 

In the late Arthur Miller's American tragedy, "Death of a Salesman," the pathetic, delusional Willy Loman keeps asking his dead brother, Ben, who went into the Brazilian jungle and came out one day a millionaire the same question. 
 
"How'd you do it, Ben?" "How'd you do it?"

The entrepreneur looked the reporter firmly in the eye and replied: "Just be absolutely honest, always tell the truth to everyone."

The story didn't run until weeks later after the reporter admitted he had tried out the advice. His conclusion was quite simple: "So far, far good."

Recently, one economic wag in the WSJ wrote an editorial piece listing all the positives negative folks never focus on. Problem with his list he chose to omit the many qualifiers one needs to make an open, fair discussion of his indicators. Many of them were abstract, sound-good-feel-good sound bites. The crux of his article aimed at the pessimists or the so-called cynical.

But it's not about being pessimistic; it's about being realistic. The MSM today featured a raft of stories on April's so-called shrinking budget deficit numbers. Good news for the economy and likely, so the media ranted, to hold down those dreaded higher interest rates investors lose sleep over.

In short, more fuel for the stock market.

Here's just one example. April numbers usually show a decline in such, a point few in the MSM chose to highlight.

The main problem as we see it is, to use a very kind term, the fudge factor. Governments, politicians, economists, the MSM for some inexplicable reason just don't believe the masses can stand the truth. Talk about your disrespect. That's the ultimate insult to a nation and its people. It's the ultimate elitist-driven slight, an intellectual put-down of major magnitude.

They love to rant and rave about the inequality gap between the have littles and the have lots. But wealth and poverty are hardly the only yard sticks. If you want to set a precedent, you want to evoke change, just start telling the freaking truth to people irrespective of their social, racial, economic or religious make-up.

Throw away your bogus polls, econometric nonsense and your phony, arrogant we-know-best attitudes. Try a big dose of honesty. We know it hurts, but you'll be surprised to discover it frees not kills.

                                                                                                                                                               

PICK ANY TWO

With the market opening up on a tear today the bulls are out in force.

Both the DJIA and the S&P 500 recorded intraday highs with the Dow up 100 points at 16,695 and the S&P index trading at 1892, not far from that magical 1900 level many bulls have predicted. Over on the Nasdaq smaller company shares also inhaled a breath of that higher, rarefied air adding 57 points mid-day.

European stocks lent a helping hand to the US opening, apparently discounting the latest negative news from the Ukraine. Stocks in the UK, France and Germany all closed up with the Stoxx index hitting a six-year high closing at its highest level since 2008.

Bulls are citing improved economic fundamentals, low inflation and lack of any signs on the horizon of those dreaded bubbles investors fear so much. Still another point the bulls lean on is over-concern about how high and how fast interest rates will go up.   

Now we're not suggesting their predictions for more gains are incorrect. We've are still net long. Driving through the south some years ago we ventured upon a popular home grown restaurant with a big home grown sign out front that said:  Great Food, Great Service, Great Prices. Pick Any Two.

The corollary of that in market parlance is you can pick the timing or you can pick the direction. But you'll seldom get both correct.  


http://www.cnbc.com/id/101663665

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-12/gundlach-s-no-normal-means-treasury-yields-defy-market-selloff.html

STILL WATERS RUN DEEP

 







Often the real turbulence lay just below a calm surface.

That appears to be the case in Franco-German relations. For some it's just a matter of what's new? For these people it's like water and oil. They're never going to mix well together.

For others Franco-German relations represent the heart of the matter which is whether the European Union survives. To many the Germans are sticklers for rules. The French? Well, they're just sticklers.

It's no secret 15 years after Europe's bureaucrats rolled out what is basically a monetary union France has yet to meet the EU-mandated ceiling of 3% debt of GDP despite receiving a two year deadline extension.

The Germans come from a long-time concern about a strong currency, something French politicians privately loathe. It's hardly a secret that many in France blame the strong euro for its economic woes. French politicians would like a more French-tinged EU. For the Germans that represents an economic Achilles they have sought to avoid for decades.

Toss in the turbulence surrounding the Ukraine and matters get even murkier.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/12/us-germany-france-analysis-idUSBREA4B02H20140512

AROUND THE WEB

We like certain emerging markets. We're not alone. 

http://us.beyondbullsandbears.com/2014/04/22/hasenstab-separating-wheat-chaff/?nicamp=&nichn=twitter&nismseg=advertising

My secret love is no secret anymore goes a line in a popular ballad of long ago. Well, the Secret Service and it's troubles ain't no secret anymore either. And once again it looks like those at the top, guess what?--didn't know and didn't authorize. Now that's probably the biggest secret of all.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/05/11/secret-agents-patrols/8970083/

Too big to jail.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101658888

 Say what you want. People hate capitalism. But is it really the only dream there is?
 http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-business-of-moving-a-bulgarian-village-to-hamburg-a-967884-2.html

Want to make and keep friends or do you want to hear the truth? This guy will undoubtedly catch hell for telling the truth. What's new?
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7498911011601559828#editor/target=post;postID=592805132746681151;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=1;src=postname

Now you will know it all. Networking: A softer term for cronyism.
http://buzz.money.cnn.com/2014/05/09/wall-street-10-tips-sucess/?iid=HP_River

 Some are calling it a rotational rough spot. So the back testers are out in full force. But as one guru recently states about back testing: "I have never seen a bad one."
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/05/11/the-markets-rough-rotation/?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

Another Fed governor speaks.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-11/fed-s-lockhart-sees-end-of-u-s-qe-stimulus-program-this-year.html

Room full of measles.
http://financialspuds.blogspot.com/

Forget clouds in your coffee. Try a little butter.
http://www.businessinsider.com/butter-coffee-stronger-2014-5?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+businessinsider+%28Business+Insider%29/

DRONES, SATELLITES AND ROGUES

 

Of  late I've been noticing more than a few drones and satellites around my neighborhood.

As far as I know there aren't any drug dealers, ex-politicians, retired Cartel members or child molesters nearby, but then what do I know.

Most of my close friends are whenever I bring the subject up starting to become, to use the comparative case, a little less close. But I'm not too worried 'cause my dog, Taylor, he's a smart four-year old muti-pooh, also sees them and knows they're there. We go for an evening stroll most nights, rain, shine or clear-satellite-laden skies.

Still the whole thing got me to thinking recently one star-filled clear balmy spring evening a week or so ago about flash trading, satellites and drones. Maybe these rogues are after my trading secrets. 

But I got a message for them. Besides me Taylor's the only one who understands them. And he knows how to keep a secret. He told me so again on one of our walks just the other night.

Come to think of it there has been of late some guys in blue suits, white shirts with dark plain ties and short-cropped hair wearing aviator shades tooling around the neighborhood. At first I didn't give it much thought until one of my neighbors, a guy who owns a satellite company and recently went through a nasty divorce, casually told me about them a few days ago.