A FEW THINGS TO WATCH AND THINK ABOUT

Today we saw weakness in the market. There were a number of reasons for this. First one that I saw was the Nasdaq which closed down 2.31% at 1746.17. This was helped by MSFT which was down 2.9% Dell off 3.1% Goog off 3.2% at $396.63 yep under the $400 . There were many Tech stocks down emc, cien, intc, in fact hard to find a winner there. This was mostly down to worries about spending may fall by as much as 6/7% this year in what are essentially growth companies . Yes spending down in one of the big O's targeted areas to help the economy . Of course there is the talk of how much these stocks had run and were due a bit of a pullback . By now you will be aware about my thinking of the run, it was at least in part manufactured . There really is no interest in the market at the moment from investors. This can be clearly seen by the Vol. of late. No one is willing to take any kind of long term view at these levels and most think we will see lower levels again sooner or later.

Another reason for the fall today was the uncertainty about earnings from the big industrials with Alcoa AA giving their numbers after the bell tomorrow Wed. The number is expected to come in low. Their ceo announced today that the future is looking better with China looking like it's leading the way out of this slump. I worry when you hear things are not so bad before you get earnings from a company. A kind of soften the blow so to say.

There was a bit of a worry for some traders of UNG which was trading up till it was halted during the day. It finally got trading again but closed down around 3% at $12.18 It's not one I follow, but the news was about them looking for regulatory approval to issue 1 bln new units. What I hear you say more shares they must have more shareholders than shares lol. Well joking aside here is a couple of links to the story.

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN0733779520090707

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aAcyPvtgZKpU

Oil had a nasty slip today too with Crude oil falling to a six-week low. No one is buying at the moment as demand has fallen with inventories showing a rise last week. Here is a link for the weekly numbers . http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/weekly_petroleum_status_report/wpsr.html

Again I see reports of people saying it's needs to pullback a bit. “The price fall looks like a needed correction to the market,” Simon Wardell, energy research manager at Global Insight Inc. in London, said today on Bloomberg radio. “The oil market doesn’t reflect spot conditions, it reflects the expectation of conditions, and those change very quickly.”

The $ is in the news quite a bit and is been traded at 1.39 with the € as I type.

Credit card loan delinquencies also increased, rising to 4.75% from 4.52% in the last quarter of 2008.

The US unemployment rate is now at a 25-year high of 9.4%.

Debt Burden Quickens Power Shift as G-8 Loses Clout

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aEVdnjdCm1W0

Yep overall I'm quite confident in this market. Of course you have to be on the right side of the fence .

NEWS FLASH

Had to do that lol.






http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$INDU&p=D&st=2009-04-01&id=p96780006543&a=160203265


and the s&p chart link


http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$SPX&p=D&st=2009-03-01&id=p77279003958&a=172472989

These charts are courtesy of http://stocktiger.com/

I highly recommend stocktiger for market news and views.

Stocktiger is not in any way connected with my blog. The views expressed on this blog are mine.

Looks like the markets have indeed their head and shoulders .

THE GOLDEN CODE

Sergey Aleynikov

Well we see that Goldman Sachs code has been stolen . Goldman say if it were to fall into the wrong hands it could be used to manipulate the market in an unfair way. Well well well whats new there? All it means is someone else will be able to do for themselves, what Goldman are doing at present. I wonder if that was the cause of the glitch on Friday when we saw the extended trading . The Russian Sergey Aleynikov whom uploaded the codes to a German web site say's it was a mistake as he thought he was uploading “open source” files on which he had worked, and only later realised he had accessed more data than he intended . It appears Sergey was offered a job in Chicago with a wage pack of around $1,200,000 a year.

Now did he make a mistake or not. I think to be fair to Mr. Aleynikov I'd let the judge do his work on that one. But I will point out that this man is not slow when it comes to IT. He has some inventions which he worked on to his credit . These appear to be mainly in Telecommunications .

http://www.patentbuddy.com/patentdetails/2740386;jsessionid=26CAF2FC30E031638E48CD86CA05A9D2

http://www.patentbuddy.com/patentdetails/3204170;jsessionid=26CAF2FC30E031638E48CD86CA05A9D2

I believe he did delete most of his tracks but failed to delete or was unaware that there was a backup kept of all work done on Goldmans computers. Still he may not have had any criminal intent as he may have thought he was more or less taking some of the tools from his toolbox to start his new job with.

Anyway here is the actual charge

http://static.reuters.com/resources/media/editorial/20090706/Complaint%20--%20Aleynikov.pdf

as you can see Goldman dont divulged much about the trading programs but we do know that they are to do to with high vol. trades and can be executed with very high speeds . Just the tool a good crook would need!!!!!

I see he made bail ($750,000) so he must appear to be no immediate threat himself. But if the info was on a web site who knows who has it now. You do have to remember that there is a hell of a lot of stuff out there that no one sees. But he was arrested in Newark Liberty International Airport.

Here's something you wouldn't have seen on the net only for this news

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJQ9PyA3TMo&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideos%2Enymag%2Ecom%2Fembed%2Fplayer%2Fcontainer%2F560%2F367%2F%3Fwidget%5Ftemplate%5Fcid%3Dcustom%26content%3D7879JJ0QJQMDP6Q2%26widget%5Ftype%5Fcid%3Dsvp&feature=player_embedded

Yep old Sergy himself doing his thing lol.