Today is insane

When Steve Jobs died and they pushed out the iPhone 4S we opined
that it wouldn't be greeted with the usual enthusiasm that an iPhone usually
gets and it would hit the bottom line.  Apples savior was Sprint bought a pig in a poke as they are locked into buy 20 million units (working on memory here).  The time to short Apple is over in case anyone is looking to jump in now.
iPad sales were also down modestly but that might have more to do with the HP touchpad selling at bargain basement prices. I bought two of those things myself. It's no iPad killer but at $85 after rebate it pulled a few sales from Apple. The Android hack for the Touchpad is out and almost ready for prime time (see slashdot.org today for details).

The bottom line is the 4S is a stopgap on the road to iPhone 5. That will be a physical redesign from the ground up. At minimum I expect a hinged double screen and edge to edge LCD's. 

Greece I am sick of. Bail out is on one minute and the next it's not. The same can be said for the rest of Europe. At some point everyone will set their algo's to ignore all statements about Greece and European bailouts. It's insane.

The CTFC met and had lunch and imposed some position limits. The lunch part of the statement is the important news here.
"The position limits rule will put a maximum number on derivatives contracts that a trader can hold on 28 commodities including oil, wheat, gold and two other energy contracts. According to the New York Times, the new rule will enforce spot-month position limits and prohibit traders from acquiring more than 25 percent of the deliverable supply for a given commodity."
The idea that this will cut back on excessive paper flooding the commodity markets by market makers in my opinion is the wrong opinion. Nothing close to the 1500 contracts limit talk that was jaw boned about only a couple of weeks ago. The likes of JPM have about 2 months to figure out a way round this or out of a few markets. It's pretty easy to work around these limits.

Bank of America may as well just call it quits once the news about backstopping their stupid market bets with depositor money become public. See Zerohedge for more info as they are all over this story.
Also see http://dailybail.com/ for the story. In short get your money out of BOA and Merril Lynch.

Miller time. More later.

It's later: Bitcoin value continues to fall
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/10/bitcoin-implodes-down-more-than-90-percent-from-june-peak.ars

Tea party hangs out with Occupy Wall St
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=196164

Groupon is ready to file IPO. Compares more favorably to pets.com than google.com
crapon

Rhode Island models itself after New Jersey. Everyone gets hair gel, home tanning booths and pension cuts. Soylent Green

Greek debt by the numbers. Deadbeat list Surprise it's zee Germans and zee French.

It's Glenfidich 15 yr. old single malt time. Later.

It's later: Lousy excuse for a human being gets 10 days suspension for pepper spraying a few women
Tool

4 comments:

Kid Dynamite said...

fyi, Louis - BAC has LESS of their derivs exposure in the FDIC side than other banks do, which is why they want to move it. Not that I'm saying that makes it better - just that it's not unique to BAC

"Bank of America’s holding company -- the parent of both the retail bank and the Merrill Lynch securities unit -- held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June, according to data compiled by the OCC. About $53 trillion, or 71 percent, were within Bank of America NA, according to the data, which represent the notional values of the trades.

That compares with JPMorgan’s deposit-taking entity, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA, which contained 99 percent of the New York-based firm’s $79 trillion of notional derivatives, the OCC data show.

The moves by Bank of America are part of “the normal course of dealings that we’ve had with counterparties since Merrill Lynch and BofA came together,” Thompson said today. "

Louis Cypher said...

Good perspective KD.
I don't have any of my money deposited with JPM just on principle.
After the $5 a month bill for smaller deposits I no longer have any money with BoA or ML either.
All that being said it's dangerous and the FDIC sure as hell can't afford to bail out either institution.
It really is time to break up these banks into manageable risk.

GM Jenkins said...

I was glad to see Bart Chilton admit on his bloomberg video that the May 1 silver massacre was manipulation. Can a bubble be illegally popped? Lol

Re: OWS/tea party - don't trust anyone who wishes to frame the two movements as dichotomous. They have carefully hidden ulterior motives.

Louis Cypher said...

GM,
I don't know if it's by design or not but I still consider it a smart move that the OWS movement has not really said what they want (except in the vaguest of terms) or proposed any solutions.
That way they really are representing the 99.99%
Nobody is taking them seriously yet and expect the snow to blow them away. If anything they will probably grow and get more interest because they have said nothing.

Once they do though then the PTB can drive wedges and try and splinter them.