Hello all,
None of us here at TnT have posted a blog in some time. Sorry for this. We have completely moved offices from the Board of Trade in downtown Chicago to Homer Glen, a southwest suburb of Chicago. So that has taken most of the time that we have had the last week or so. We are all completely set-up now, and wow, what a couple of days to get back into the action.
Also, I am no longer trading overnight, so there will not be any overnight recap webcasts up anymore. I will however put up some daytime ones and will also begin to put some “tweets” up on twitter. Because of the move I will be trading during the daytime session.
Let’s get to the markets and the world for that matter…..
and what a nutjob of a world it is right now. It is hard to really understand and trade off of everything that is currently happening in the world.
-Numerous oil producing countries governments being overthrown
-Wisconsin (where I was born and raised) holding protest over government’s anti-union stance
- ECB beginning to throw around rate hike talks
-Federal Reserve may cut QE2 short
-Eurozone countries still facing problems
-China trying to cool their growth
-Inflation? Deflation? Commodities through the roof
-Iranian warships (Warships and Iran!) crossing through Seuz Canal for first time since 1979
As a trader, and as a group that is looking at these markets through a macro scope, it is becoming increasingly difficult when you have so many different scenarios pulling and playing tug of war with eachother.
We are finally, however, starting to see some volatility in these equity markets, which is always welcomed. These anti-government protests going on in the middle eastern countries, including Egypt and especially Syria, have really thrown some chaos into equities and the oil markets.
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who in my book is officially a lunatic, spoke on the national television station there. It was thought that he was going to possibly give up some control, which he somewhat did, but he also went on a tyrant that makes you shake your head. Below are some quotes from Reuters (Click for Reuter’s Article) which makes you believe that these protesters will not be done trying to push their will on the government:
“I am not going to leave this land, I will die here as a martyr….I shall remain here defiant.”
“Chase them, arrest them, hand them over to the security (forces),” he said of the protesters. “They are only a few, they are terrorists.”
“No sound person has taken part in these actions, they are all children.”
“”From tomorrow, families collect your children, leave your homes, all of you who love Muammar Gaddafi, go out the streets, secure the streets, don’t be afraid of them.”
To me those sound like fightin’ words, and I find it hard to believe that these protestors, are going to curl up into a ball and stop fighting just based off of some words that Gaddafi is letting fly out of his mouth, especially after he called for air strikes on his own people!. But hey that’s just me.
That leads me into my next couple of rants, why isn’t this dollar rallying? If people think the dollar is a safe haven, and it was during some trying times, then why isn’t it rallying right now? Is S&P down 25.50 handles today and 30 year bonds up nearly two points not enough to strike some fear into people and buy the dollar?
Couple of thoughts on this….First, I get the ECB may begin to speakabout raising rates in the next meeting, which would rally the euro and ultimately hold the dollar offer. Brian and I talked about this a little bit and it got brought up that shouldn’t high 150.00 to 160.00 levels in the euro already be a level in which a rate hike should be priced in and thus allow the dollar to rally on fear concerns?
Next thought on this…Are eurozone countries out of the shit-hole that they were in? I believe they still are in a pretty deep mess and have not solved any issues over there (a.k.a. Ponzi scheme…give Greece, Ireland, Portugal, etc some money to pay off debts even though they now just accrued even more debt…might as well have Maddoff be running the show). With this being said this euro should ultimately sell off on those type of worries.
But wait! The eurozone may begin to raise rates and that should keep the euro bid. Fine, I wont disagree with that, but wouldn’t raising rates right now on a bunch of, still, shitty countries still result in shitty countries and ultimately be bad for the euro?
Lastly, and then I will let you go, my final thought on why the dollar should rally but maybe isn’t. Maybe, like we said before with the tug and war, all the automated systems out there that were trading dollars off of commodities may still be turned on. In this case they see oil and gold skyrocketing and they want to be short dollars, no matter if it should go up on safe heaven buying. Now you just start to see a tug and war between the automated systems selling it off of commodities and those who want to buy it for safety and fundamentals.
All goes back into the nonesense that this world is in and how difficult it is to get a read on _____ (insert: some, most, all) of these markets.
