3SOF

Quote from: David Randolph on March 16, 2008, 11:59:13 PM
The USD is at $1.5861 versus the Euro currency ... I'm worried.

The only reasonable value for the US$ is zero. because it is simply a piece of paper.  Hard truths are catching up with this broken system.  The only positive is that most currencies are not asset backed, so it is paper versus paper. 

I wonder with what Bush, Paulson, Bernanke and co will come up with?!

DJ30 just touched green?...

Don't tell me that the market "priced in" the failure of major financial firms. Maybe the market has.

Here's the experts' candlestick analysis for today

Just two thoughts for these hard times....

Expect the unexpected...

The trend is your friend... unless is able to end

We must not panic and... try to real read the tape

MF global

Applaud Kublakhan

JPM shareholders obviously saw value in the deal.
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4:25 pm : It was a remarkable day on Wall Street Monday and not because it was St. Patrick's Day.  Rather, it was a day that began with much nervousness, yet ended in much better fashion than most people expected.

News that the Fed cut its discount rate over the weekend to help stem a liquidity crisis that ultimately led to a fire sale of investment bank Bear Stearns (BSC 4.81, -25.19) to JPMorgan Chase (JPM 40.31, +3.77) for the jaw-dropping price of $2.00 per share fueled an early wave of broad-based selling interest that was concentrated on the financial sector.

The price at which Bear Stearns agreed to a sale raised valuation questions for a host of other financial companies and underscored the dire situation at Bear Stearns.  These issues weighed heavily on the broader market which was feeling the brunt of a de-leveraging trade that encompassed most asset classes with the exception of gold and U.S. Treasuries.

At their lows of the session, the Dow, Nasdaq and S&P 500 were down 193, 57, and 31 points, respectively.

The market, however, showed some surprising resilience and bounced back in a striking manner in the afternoon trade.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average logged a gain of as much as 125 points before a closing wave of selling cut into its gains.  Still, a positive finish for the Dow was more than anyone had a right to expect given the early tone.

JPMorgan Chase was the big winner in the Dow as investors recognized the bargain it scored in being able to acquire Bear Stearns at such a discounted price.  To this point, Bear Stearns's book value was reported to be $84 per share at the end of the fourth quarter.

The financial sector in general, though, played a role in the afternoon recovery.  It had been down as much as 4.9% at its worst level of the day, but ended the session with a decline of 1.5%.

As it so happens, the energy sector, which dropped 2.5%, was the worst-performing sector in Monday's trade as it sold off in conjunction with crude prices, which fell 3.9% to $105.93 per barrel.  Commodities overall were quite weak as evidenced by the 4.6% decline in the CRB Index.

The hit commodities took was a function of investors locking in profits in a nervous market as the dollar's continued weakness failed to stand out as a buying catalyst.

The dollar index closed well off its low, but still shed 0.3% ahead of Tuesday's FOMC meeting where the Fed is expected to cut the fed funds rate by at least 75 basis points to 2.25%.

Weakness in the dollar contributed to buying interest among multinational companies, which helped lead the afternoon rally effort.  That effort, however, still wasn't enough to get the S&P 500 back to positive territory.

In contrast to the stock market, the Treasury market stayed in rally-mode for most of Monday's session as it benefited yet again from a risk aversion trade.  The benchmark 10-year note jumped 40 ticks and saw its yield drop to 3.31%.DJ30 +21.16 NASDAQ -35.48 NQ100 -1.6% R2K -1.9% SP400 -2.1% SP500 -11.54 NASDAQ Dec/Adv/Vol 2221/728/2.37 bln NYSE Dec/Adv/Vol 2632/555/1.96 bln
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And why did BSC trade above $3.50 all day except the first few minutes to close at $4.81?  There's more to this than meets the eye.

this is from a blog

QuoteSo, did the FED win in the minds of traders? who knows? but the fact is that Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan may have made the deal of the century.
How would yo ulike to buy a major asset and have it guaranteed by the FED, for pennies on the dollar? that my friends is smart money!!! after all the BS building alone is worth over ONE Billion Dollars!!!
If the FED is willing to save BS do you think they will let JP Morgan go under? No WAY JOSE!!! If JP Morgan goes down that would be the collapse of western civilisation as we know it.
This week is going to tell us a great deal about the inner mind set of the market. This may be the most important week of the year.
we will probably see some once in a lifetime trading opportunities this year which are available to the disciplined and courageous.

BSC up 29%. Was up to $6.46......

The hell with the stock market. Start looking through your cereal boxes guys. The news just reported that someone found a corn flake that looks like the state of Illinois, put it on Ebay and the bid is now up to $200K. 

The Dow transportation average is back in the green again for the year. It's still considered a leading indicator. Isn't that a part of "The Dow Theory"? I think it says something like there can't remain a large divergence between the transports and Industrial average for long and that they always converge at some point.

I've specifically enjoyed the last paragraph of the CNN interview with the Princeton economist, that was posted here today:

What's the biggest x factor, the question no one really knows the answer to?

What I don't know is how serious the real consequences of the financial-market stuff ends up being on Main Street. If all of the fancy financial instruments that have been so popular these past couple of decades sort of roll over, it's still not entirely clear to me how that ends up affecting the real economy. Will a lot of business investment just go on unaffected because companies can pay for it out of retained earnings or by borrowing with good old bank loans? How much in the end does the ability of consumers to keep spending get affected by what's going on in fairly abstruse financial markets? So I'm not quite sure how this works. Maybe that's a reason for hope. Maybe it'll turn out that all this Wall Street stuff is just less important than we think it is.

So long I hear rustling in my wallet, I'll go to the grocery shop to get loaded on corn flakes. Perhaps I can find one that looks like Brunei so I can sell it to the sultan there! :-)

0.75% cut (not 1.00%) today.  Let's hope the market does not resume the downward trend now.