World ending and recovering...which one is it?

The chart affirms my previous statements...the 10 year treasury hit highs in 2008 on sheer panic. It has traded very technically and just broke out over a cycle - this puts it in trend mode if that 121 22/32 holds. But what the market is not reflecting is panic. What we are seeing is de-leveraging. Expect de-leveraging to continue and make market dynamics to continue to be unpredictable. 

Why not rally on terrible jobs data based on clearly fraudulent/optimistically biased government statistics published at the most optimistic values possible and constantly revised downward, GDP, ISM, Jobs, Housing - you name it and the government is publishing the best numbers they can imagine and subsequently revising them down for several months or quarters thereafter. Notice they never understate any numbers and subsequently revise them upwards. The numbers are singularly too optimistic...everytime. This kind of consistent distortion has all the probabilities of 4 major banks not having a single losing trading day in 63 trading days without priority dealings involved.

The distortion is a coordinated effort. Coordinated by whom? By the same guys who think Maiden Lane Holdings portfolio of bankrupt Bear Stearns hotel assets can be marked as worth 67 billion dollars - fully 6 billion higher than the initial overstated number they say it was worth when they took the assets on. JP Morgan would have nothing to do with these assets and many of them are in receivership, yet the regulator is totally fine overstating their values...who is directing the charade? The fed of course...and Obama and congress are all beholden to these guys...

The same authenticity being applied to data is currently being applied to market prices...I mean non-market prices (not to mention OpEd pieces). It is not making things better either.

Congressional Relief...

"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session." - Mark Twain

Congress is going to go on break...market dislocations and decorrelations are testing peoples reserve to the max...the bankruptcies (deleveraging) on both sides of the trade are continuing...get ready for a free for all!

11:30 pm: I wanted to add that the free for all to me means more deleveraging...so, we need to expect shorts to pushed violently into submission and longs to be sorely hammered thereafter...I think most people are going to fail the trade...shorts will be broke prior to the short and longs will not have time to get out.

In any case, the 30 year bond is trading near the 2008 highs...and has barely pulled back...It is also in a trend mode break out if support at 126 holds. Overall, this is highly unusual behavior and is an example of the issues I have repeatedly stated with pair trading, correlation or arb trading. People who think treasuries rally when the equities go down and sell off when the equities rally are using selective historical information and are getting hammered. We had the same issue with Gold versus the Dollar index last month and the EURO vs equities at the beginning of the year to name just a few. These are examples of disorderly de-leveraging and I do not think that they will result in a pretty picture when the process in each security is fulfilled. $50 billion in retail investor money has come out of the equity market while it has been at fairly high levels. Most of these people have not made back what they lost...so why are they selling? Delveraging would be the right answer...people need to convert their assets into cash and reduce their exposure to economic stress so they can buy dinner and pay bills. That ultimately means anything not glued down will be sold it does not matter if the Fed and their buddies want to levitate prices. For now, we can see it demonstrated in these correlation blowups that are taking people out on stretchers.

Still alive...

Well, I am still alive...I have been working on a very sophisticated release that is now finally in UAT mode after months and months of work. So, I have been totally overwhelmed. Additionally, there have been no market events that have played out unexpectedly so far, so not much to update there. We are still long the hedges that were put on relative to our short futures trades. I will post when we close that position and am also working on a post regarding this type of trading and its psychological basis, foundations and potential.

The market is indeed interesting here...Bonds screaming deflation. In fact, I see the Bonds Up/Sock Market up - bond/equity arb blow up as a major influence on the market dynamics right now. Correllations are either extremely tight or breaking down...these are natural symptoms of de leveraging but very unnatural to trade and difficult to accept. While all this is happening Geithner is now writing Op-Ed marketing pieces for his screenplays in the New York Times and Bernake apparently is getting into the hedge fund business properly by planning entities to purchase worthless assets and mark them fraudulently until he can figure out how to compensate for the 40% drop in the volume in money over the last year. Stimulus is creating lots of new street building projects we don't need and paying unions that we also don't need while disrupting already fragile businesses on the streets that did not really require the work to begin with. That is happening all over miami...Obama and company just get it right everytime. Good thing Obama works for Bernake...What a bunch of losers these guys are.

All interesting stuff and interesting times.

I am working a few new feature posts...so, be patient with me. One of the things that I like about trading swing systems is that you get breaks in between the trades and I have tried to use this last one to force this release into fruition. it is surprisingly difficult to concentrate fully when you have large positions on as we did in July...I was relaxed but the size of the trades was larger last month than usual which was certainly interesting. So. I apologize for my lack of posts the last few days, however, I have not had many free cycles left...and I am handicapped because I am not blessed with very many cycles to begin with. ;-)

People I've Come Across On My Travels

I love interesting people.  On my travels, I come across a lot of them and sometimes I am lucky enough to be able to take their photograph.  If we start chatting, I always ask if it's ok to take their picture and they usually always agree.  Sometimes they are reluctant but they say ok after a while.

On this particular day on deer lake in Washington, I spotted a few nuns relaxing on a pier while I was enjoying the day with some friends on a boat.  I wanted to get close to them so we drove around to the dock and as we passed by, I asked them if it was ok to take their photograph and they all smiled and said yes.

In Ohio, I walked by a street fair and came across this gentleman showing his car in a show and chatted with him as he allowed me to take his photograph in front of his car. Of course there is the "Muffin Man" I met in Klamath, California when he offered me his handmade fresh baked muffin to taste, an artist on the streets of Venice and Airstream workers in Jackson Center, Ohio. All of whom I stumbled upon on my travels the past few months.

Most people I come across on the road are friendly and are just like you and I.  I am always attracted to people who have a look that you don't see everyday and  usually those are the people I want to approach and strike up a conversation with.

If you've followed me for a while, you've seen that most of the shots I took a year ago are of landscapes I've come across in the states I've visited.  I still love the beauty of our country but my eye is getting picky and I find it harder and harder to capture things that interest me.  The good news is that I usually have a camera on hand to get a shot of whatever I find interesting along the way and I look forward to sharing that with you.

Women's Work

I have always been fascinated with the roll women play in professions that have historically been male domindated positions.  Even more than the fact thaty are taking on a roll that has been defined by gender in this culture, I want to know why they decided on this line of work and what their life is like outside of their profession.

As you know, I am on the road with my dog Max, a tent and my camera.  A personal project of mine is meeting these amazing women.  As I spend months on the road, I would love the opportunity to spend time with them side by side to capture not only them in photographs on the job, but living their everyday life to get a glimpse of who they are and to ultimately publish a book about their lives.

I started this journey over a month ago and have been photographing women I meet on the road who have career positions that have historically belonged to men.  I would also like to meet women who do inspiring work and spend their lives living out their passion.  That would include artists, visionaries, musicians, and the like.

I think these women are a great example for girls to see and learn first hand that there is nothing they can't do.  That just because they are a girl doesn't mean they have to follow a path that society or the history books say that it's meant for a girl to take simply because of their gender.  I am thankful to the trailblazers that wrote and those who approved title 9. Once approved, I was able to participate on a Women's basketball team in college.

It also starts at home.  I was lucky enough to have parents that kept me busy in activities and sports and who didn't blink an eye when I wanted to try out for the football team in junior high even though I would have been the only girl.

All of the women I have met so far didn't pay attention to any rules to say they couldn't do what they do because of their gender.  Thank you to all of these amazing women who took the time to talk to me about what they do and for setting an example to younger generations looking to do the same.

Animated Afghanistan IED Attacks

A Day At The Lake And Art Fair In Coeur d'Alene Idaho

I've been hanging out in Eastern Washington State for a while and for the weekend I ventured with my friend Cat to Idaho to spend the day in Coeur d'Alene and attend the art festival they had over the weekend.

The city was jam packed with vendors and artists that stretched from the downtown area, through the parks and to the lake.  We browsed the artwork at each vendor and strolled along the grounds throughout the day.  The weather was beautiful and people were out to enjoy the day.  It was pretty crowded wherever we went and at one point, I wandered off to watch the kids on the pier playing and enjoying the day.

Usually I like to wander to people and things that seem interesting to me.  It's a good thing Cat knows this. She didn't have a problem with me darting in different directions to snap photographs of people and places that caught my eye.  I sat down by the pier for a while to capture kids having a good time, I took photographs of vendors that I found interesting and captured some of the activities going on at the time.

I love art and being in nature.  The festival had the best of both worlds.  I plan to spend a little more time here before I head out and I look forward to showing you more of what the area has to offer.  I love to photograph people in their element.  For more images of people in their habitat, click HERE.