Updated Crappy Mortgage Paper, Alt-A & Subprime

http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pdf/media/Subprime_loss_projections_07_22_09.pdf

http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pdf/media/Alt_A_RMBS_07_24_09.pdf

Want To See Some Crappy Mortgage Paper?

http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pdf/media/subprime_ced_091208.pdf

Baird Upgrades US Bancorp (USB) to Outperform, $29 Target

Robert W. Baird upgrades US Bancorp (NYSE: USB) from Neutral to Outperform. The firm also boosted its price target from $16 to $29.

LINK

Overstock.com - Q3 2009 Earnings Call

Today Overstock.com let a total of ONE analyst (Brent Nystrom) ask a few softball questions on their conference call. Amazing.

Wonder why? Heres the answer.

Overstock.com - Questionable Accounting, Naked Shorting.

The jig appears to be up at Overstock.com. While moving away from the original niche of selling overstock merchandise bought cheaply, to try and directly compete with Amazon and complain about naked short sellers, they appear also to have employed some very questionable accounting to show any bit of profits.

Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne Is In a Very Sour Pickle

Do Not Buy Penny Stocks

Cops kick out Rosemary Williams

Turns out its not your home after you pull out a handful of cash during a refinance.

Rosemary Williams - Eviction / Foreclosure - What are you thinking?

Defying Foreclosure, Owner And Protesters Wait

Sixty-year-old Rosemary Williams lived in the home at 3138 Clinton Avenue South in Minneapolis for the past 23 years. It's the only neighborhood she's ever known, having lived on the same block for the past 55 years.

Her troubles began last December when Williams lost her job and then received the terrifying news from her mortgage company. The interest rate on her GMAC adjustable rate mortgage shot up to 10 percent. You can imagine what that did to her monthly payment.

"It jumped from $1200 to $2200 in one year," said Williams.

Rosemary Williams eviction stalls on Friday—What will Monday bring?

Finstad also wrote: “Rosemary (my neighbor) grew up poor and she and her mother RENTED on our block for 30 years. Then she bought and payed a mortgage for 20 years. I don’t know the circumstances around her situation, but she took out a second mortgage (that was adjustable rate) and when it “adjusted” her payment then doubled."

ROSEMARY HOW MUCH MONEY DID RECEIVE WHEN YOU TOOK OUT THE SECOND MORTGAGE???

You lost your house not because GMAC is big and evil, *you* got greedy and took out a boatload of cash with a second mortgage you could not afford.

High-Frequency Trading Information

I've resisted writing a piece about high frequency trading lately. Although I have a very good understanding of the subject, I see it as a kinda lost cause to try to educate people about - uninformed people want to believe that computers are front running them, stealing their money and manipulating the markets. People who understand equity trading know that this is just the culmination of technology advancement and competition for spreads, which has resulted in equity bid/ask spreads being narrowed to their lowest levels ever. There has never been a better time for the individual stock trader to execute orders: our bid ask spreads are narrower than ever. A high frequency trader may have a computer program trying to scalp a penny or a fraction of a penny from you - but this is better than it's ever been - better than the days of specialists scalping 1/8ths and more.

An excellent article on high frequency trading: High Frequency Trading: We Fear What We Do Not Understand

Freddie Mac reports $768 million quarterly profit - The Bear is dead

Freddie Mac just reported a profit. The bear is dead in the forest, poachers got him.

High-Frequency Trading Misinformation

Denninger gets it wrong on high-frequency trading here. http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1262-High-Frequency-Trading-My-View.html and his mindless minions follow.

3. To the extent that these HFT systems are in fact using flash (or other) traffic to get in front of orders and advantage themselves they are dramatically increasing the violence of market moves. A stock trading at $20 that has a bid come in with a limit of $20.10 would normally fill (assuming sufficient depth) at $20; this does not materially move the market. But if a HFT system "sees" that order, steps in front of it and buys up all the shares at $20 and then re-sells them to the customer at $20.04 (one penny better than the next best offer at $20.05) it has caused the current "last" price to move where it otherwise would not. Multiply this by millions of shares an hour and the impact on price moves could be tremendous. While I understand that many people like the move of the last two weeks in the market, the fact remains that what goes up can also come down with equal violence.

That is not how flash orders work. First if there was sufficient depth @ 20.00, the order would get filled immediately and not be flashed. Second the order can not be flashed any worse then the NBBO, so they only offer price improvement to a client.

Flash Order

Jon Najarian - Yahoo Conference Call Update

Najarian covering Yahoo's conference call, looks like he might also be holding some AAPL calls. Nice work.

It's All Over But The Crying

Inexperienced trader suffers a forced buy-in on a short position. Cries to online support at Interactive Brokers because he does not understand the mechanics of selling a stock short. This was not some vast international conspiracy, your borrow was lost and you are now forced to cover.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/stop-trading-0

GOLDMAN SACHS NEVER TURNED THE COMPUTERS OFF

NYSE Program Trading Report June 22-26 2009

Goldman Sachs accounted for twice as much program trading as Credit Suisse (second place), the computers were never shut off.

NovaStar Financial and Naked Shorting - Still Good for a Few Laughs

NovaStar Financial victims.
Glen Kelly
Bruce Thompson
Bob Smith
This poor guy claims to own both Overstock & NovaStar, don't take investing advice from him.
Dmytrk

S&P 500 - 880 Bounce?

GOLDMAN SACHS TURNED THE COMPUTERS BACK ON

Staring into the face of a vast international conspiracy/corporate espionage, Goldman Sachs turned its computers back on, allowing the S&P to rise into the close.

Why your brilliant plan to short a pair of 3x ETFS will not work.

There is barely a day that goes by I do not hear or read about someone talking about the brilliant strategy of shorting a pair of leveraged ETFs. They pull up the charts and say look, they both go down! The favorite pair seems to be FAS/FAZ, here are a list of reasons this brilliant strategy will not work.

• The 3x leveraged ETFs are hard to locate borrows for, so its very possible you would never be able to open a short position when you wanted to.
• Once your position is opened, it will be difficult to hold the borrow. The high volume, short holding periods, and leveraged decay work against you because there are not any long term holders borrowing out shares.
• The cost to borrow the shares will be significant. It is not uncommon to pay between 20% to 50% per annum to borrow stocks that are hard to borrow.
• Assuming you have made it this far, you would now need to re-balance the trade daily.
• There is some massive short term distributions not accounted for properly in the charts.
• A consistent market trend for even a few days significantly raises capital requirements.

Rolling Stone - Blame Goldman Sachs!

The Great American Bubble Machine

So the largest brokerage house provided liquidity and hedged during all the recent bubbles. How is this news? How is this evil? Its Not!

Long of the day: Leisure

The leisure trade is setting up nice technically. I suggest a market on close order for entry.

Putting your car loan on a credit card turned out to be a bad idea?

Really?

Are you really this stupid? You will not find any bank that will offer you a 3.9% personal unsecured loan.

Credit card companies are now adjusting interest rates to match the risk.

FAZ to go up 10x, FAS only 5x.

Reverse splits.

S&P 500 Golden Cross - Don't be short.