Book Of Norm

In the last hour the markets have jumped off a cliff.. wtf is going on?   From Scottrade, look at volumes:   Market Statistics Market Recap Stocks are down sharply as investors liquidate their holdings across the board. The Dow Industrials are down -5.67% to 8,733 . The benchmark 10-year Treasury Bond is also lower, its yield rising to 3.80% . The Energy and Financial sectors are the biggest laggards, down -10.35% and -9.09% respectively. Major Markets NYSE NASDAQ AMEX Dow Jones 30 S&P 500 8,709 Price -548.85   (-5.93%) Change Today Advances 1 Declines 29 Unchanged 0   Advances Minus Declines -28 8,686 - 14,198 52 Week Range   1,306,778,000 Volume 0 New 52 Week Highs ...

Is terrible. They love all the wrong stuff. Germans singing bad american pop tunes in English, cheesy pop songs from the 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's, and basically every kind of bad music. Thankfully we had a couple iPods and an FM transmitter...

This is just ridiculous: GM is trading at levels last seen in at Christmas... 1950. Seriously. Thats just stupid. There is a lot of value in the company, and a lot of innovation and growth left in it. I think that GM has turned a corner in its car designs and its cost structures, and those are what ultimately make or break an auto manufacturer. I will be buying up as much as possible.

The London Inter-Bank Overnight Rate - Libor - is the global gold standard market "risk free" rate. The rate at which banks can borrow from each other in London - and used across the world to set lending rates. Generally borrowers (and in total there is about $360 trillion in debt globally...) are set off the Libor. They get a rate depending on their credit rating etc of Libor plus something. A few bps (hundredths of a percent) for the best rated borrowers, and on down the line to the "we are going bankrupt" firms of the world.   But there is a problem in the system. For the last 14 months, Libor has basically been a guess.   ``Whatever answer you give is by definition wrong,'' said Meyrick Chapman , a strategist at UBS in London. ``There is no interbank lending, so the only proper answer to where could you fund yourself is `I don't know' or `I can't.'''   Since the start of the credit crises, banks have generally n...

Good article on why banning short sales is just not a good idea; In response to the market turmoil of the last several weeks, several countries, including ours, have tightened restrictions on short-selling or eliminated shorting entirely in some classes of stocks. These restrictions have come with the expressly stated intent of reducing market turbulence. In the U.S., the entire sector of financial stocks (including, curiously, General Electric and General Motors) has been temporarily placed off-limits to short-sellers. Our research, which is strongly supported by market data, shows that rather than calming the markets, these types of restrictions produce heightened volatility and asset bubbles punctuated by sudden crashes. While our work is mathematical in nature, the essential features are very easy to grasp. Any restriction in shorting is equivalent to a market cost. This cost disseminates itself into the price of options (puts and calls) and into the equity price as...

This was sent to me by a guy working on the naked short selling issue, who we peripherally work with. This graph, to me, shows the problem of naked shorting at its root: as a company goes do wn, hedge funds piled on shorts in illegal trading. FTD's are fails to deliver: generally naked shorts. CNS is continuous net settlement, the system we use through the DTCC to settle trades, and the system which has allowed the continuation of naked short selling, and its abuse of the system. Washington Mutual, Inc. (NYSE: WM) CNS FTDs: January 2, 2004 to June 30, 2008

Huge volatility recently (though not today as much) in equity prices, but also in fed funds lending rate. Fed market rate opened at 7% yesterday. 7%!! Thats crazy, when the benchmark rate is 500+ bps lower... crazy. Now it is back down, with a little more stability and yesterday's rate cut. But still, just crazy crazy times.