Gold, FX, Bonds, Metals, Equities, Cash, PIGS, Apples and the Illuminati.

In Markets land something is afoot. There be portents of change. Getting a bit school-Macbethy, there be rabbits laying their eggs in the trees. The mistletoe be a'flowerin' early, the cows be givin' birth to dead eels and even the wrong type of oil is found in the Gulf (not ours claim BP).

Now please don your tin helmets for a tour of the conspiracy theory

First off, the creeping BTP futures through yesterday. Italian bonds weren't meant to do that were they?

Perhaps we are seeing the start of the iPIGS+CBs= GSE function kicking in with a creep back in spreads. EURHUF is creeping its way back down to the starting line pre Friday's race upwards too.

Then there were the comments from the Japanese Finance Minister re: exchange rate stability. Taken to mean JPY but could it have been angled at support for coordinated global stability and, by inference, intervention?

Then there was the 1040 Plunge Protection Team in SPX. Ben was wheeled out two nights ago on the approach to these levels and we saw a miraculous bounce from there. The most interesting point here "Trading volume on U.S. exchanges totalled 11.5 billion shares, the most since May 26 and 20 percent higher than the 2010 average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg" - more than traded on the poor NFP dump last Friday.

Then there was the "rumoured" return of the SNB in EURCHF - guess that if you have 230bln of reserves now on the balance sheet what are another few billion between friends? But are we SURE these Euros aren't leaking back to their owners? Is it JUST a Swiss idea? Are the Cantons going to be happy with an investment performance that puts some recent Hedge Funds losses in the shade? Who are the secret investors in SNB LLC we want to know? Is it a coincidence that today's Portuguese bond auctions went well...?
*PORTUGAL EUR816 MLN 4.8% 2020 BONDS BID TO COVER 1.8
*PORTUGAL EUR701 MLN 5.45% 2013 BONDS BID TO COVER 2.4

Then there were the Metals. They all had a good turn too. Gold fell back sharply after new high above 1250 (taxi driver's cheering). Base metals were all up and it appeared to be to be pretty broad (Zinc up 6%).

Then there was the launch of Apple's new iPhone. This subject is too personal to cover here so please see the footnote below *.

And finally if ever there has to be a seed crystal to drop into the supersaturated solution of conspiracy theory then this has to be it - the Bilderberg group met last week. Have the Euro-Illuminati swung their devious and cunning plans to take over control of the last Euro into action? Or have Team Macro Man just been reading too much Dan Brown.

You can now remove your helmets.

Oh hang on, you might want to put them back on before you read these couple of tid bits as they are almost too good to believe:

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*Footnote:

Well thats the top for Apple. The week after I finally bow to peer pressure and trade in years and years of Windows and PC experience for my first iMac, Apple launch their keenly awaited iPhone4. Well its a cheap pun and I haven't seen it anywhere else yet... so here goes... "What's an iPhone for?"

Only just having crossed into the church of Apple and still sitting in pews at the back, I can't really fully immerse myself in the adulation and worship of this new totem by the high priests up at the front.

"Its got multi-tasking!!" - woop diddly doo... my first Windows Mobile 10 years ago had that.
"Its got an amazing screen" - well I prefer to watch films on a big screen so the definition on 3.5 inches is pretty immaterial unless I was to suddenly develop minus 15 diopter myopia and get 2 (one for each eye).
"Its got a gyroscope now with its accelerometer!!" - great, I'll call you when I take up gliding.
"Its got lovely looks, 2 hrs longer battery life, my god its an iPhone4 !!" - Yaaaawn...

Now if they had added an external memory card, an FM radio, the ability to withstand at least a light mist without invalidating the warranty and a sync system which bypassed i(own your soul)tunes and uses a mini-usb then I may have been willing to take the next step up the aisle of Mackiness. But as it is, it just makes me think that this is a turning point for the company. I have just handed over vast sums for a machine which though cringingly pretty and fast, is unable to play MY DAMN WMA MUSIC FILES!!!

Android me up Scotty!!!

(OK, braced for a cart load of abuse in the comments for that little tirade, but would really rather we didn't delve too deeply into Mac vs PC debates, even if I did start it!).

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Unknown
admin
June 9, 2010 at 12:41 PM ×

Yay! Android rules :p

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June 9, 2010 at 1:07 PM ×

'Course, this (except for the bit on Apple) all might be related to the fact that a great deal of uproar over Club Med finances centres on the presumed political inability of the area's governments to deal with the deficit issue. The abject, pity-inspiring failure of yesterday's civil service strike in Spain may (hopefully) have put the societal unrest thesis to rest.

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June 9, 2010 at 1:58 PM ×

Utility of iPhone is inversely proportional to how much time you spend in your office. If you don't have an office, well, then the utility approaches infinity.

As for the iPhone 4, it won't matter to you....unless you're already addicted to a previous model. In which case, it represents the last vial of crack on earth for a raging crack addict.

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abee crombie
admin
June 9, 2010 at 2:03 PM ×

iTunes is the WORST, i will probably never buy anything Mac again just because of it. Another annoying thing with the iPhone is that you cant use your normal headphones because of the curved shape of the sides... you have to buy a new pair or use the annoying white pair of headphones that come with the phone... down with apple, they are EVIL

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June 9, 2010 at 2:47 PM ×

I've got a theory -- investors cannot stomach hearing about how badly the economy is doing (look at the news on the BP spill). Its not that things have been fixed, in fact virtually nothing has, its just that people are sick of hearing about it.

Last week Bob Janjuah was on CNBC and said, after getting a listners' question about American banks as sound investments: "I cannot recommend investing in banks, because by law, I cannot know what's on their balance sheet"; which breaks rule 101 of investing -- understand the company you buy.

As for your Apple rant, good luck with that. My entire family owns Ibooks and Iphones (I'm a BB addict), between the lot of them we counted 12 Apple products...It really pisses then off when I type an email without typos on my BB.

As the NY market opening indicates, all is well in the world, the crisis is over, Greece, Spain, the Euro, China and the US have all solved their problems, there are no bubbles.

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June 9, 2010 at 4:17 PM ×

As an aside on this metals madness the physical premiums for nickel and zinc are pretty insane (at least ex Asia). Seems like the money managers hate it but people still need to make stuff (for now).

Needless to say, they both can't be right. So long as people are very freaked out on China this nutso vol can be expected to continue particularly towards settlement dates.

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Werewolf
admin
June 9, 2010 at 5:10 PM ×

On a different topic, why 3m USD libor is 54bps for the last few days?

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Patrick
admin
June 9, 2010 at 10:20 PM ×

Yeah I'm with you on the Bilderberg thing. Been noting accumulation of short interest in gold around 1250 by watching the tape and tick-volume patterns. All this disaster is setting up for the next stage of funny-money-fueled globalist consolidation.

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Unknown
admin
June 10, 2010 at 12:34 AM ×

Women Prefer Men Holding State Bonds. Nice one, I nearly fell off my chair. They are desperate for sure.

Personally I boycott all Apple products (and Microsoft too for good measure). They are the worst kind of control freaks / wannabe monopolists.

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Unknown
admin
June 10, 2010 at 1:07 AM ×

Isn't this conspiracy theory just the classic big money slow trading cycle, as documented in the 1920s or so? Accumulate at the bottom, ride the bull market up, distrubute at the top? Have we seen enough "bear market" to make it worth accumulating yet?

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