Ana_Idkit

Managers from William Ackman to Jim Rogers made a total of at least $1.4 billion in July with wagers against U.S. mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Harbinger Capital Partners staked $665 million that U.K. mortgage lender HBOS Plc would drop and Sao Paulo-based hedge-fund manager Francisco Meirelles de Andrade’s short selling of Cia. Vale do Rio Doce is also paying off.

More than $1.4 trillion of equities worldwide are now on loan, about a third higher than at the start of 2007, data compiled by Spitalfields Advisors, the London-based firm specializing in securities lending, show. Almost all of that is being used to speculate that shares will fall, according to James Angel, a finance professor at Georgetown University who studies short selling. The global economic slowdown, $447 billion in bank losses and an explosion of funds that can profit from stock declines spurred the increase in short selling, helping send 22 of 23 countries in the MSCI World Index into bear markets.

“It’s a huge amount of money,” said Peter Hahn, a London- based research fellow for Cass Business School and a former managing director at Citigroup Inc. “Shorts have come a long way. They are getting into the mainstream, and long holders need to understand the shorts are not evil.”

While U.S. and U.K. regulators tighten rules on short sellers amid concern they’re accelerating more than $11 trillion in global stock losses this year, countries from Indonesia to India are opening up to the practice, which involves borrowing stock to sell it on the expectation it can be purchased at a lower price before pa

First off, thanks, Ana, for helping out on Friday – I was trying to do too much too soon and paid the price.

I was going to examine the 30 Yr Bonds today – but I think a better approach is to lay the foundation for the comments.

In my trading, I look for an idea that places the secular trends in context. Markets have certain relationships that hold true but the relationships differ according to the context in which they occur. The current context is rare and I’d like to examine that next.

The current economic state has brought about bubbles in the stock and housing markets that led to the sub-prime crisis.

What would have been a reasonably short recession now has all the earmarks of a longer term down-term or hyperinflation ; hyperinflation will occur if the Fed fails to act once the results of its actions, since August 2007, filters into the inflation figures. If hyperinflation does not occur, the US, at the very least, will suffer a period of stagflation.

In the meantime, the other economic engine, China, is already suffering rampant inflation, and unless the Chinese authorities take more aggressive actions to cage and curb that tiger, it too will have to deal with hyperinflation.

If both the US and China suffer an economic downturn at the same time, then the rest of the world will catch more than a cold.

In this environment, what can we expect?

• A strong secular uptrend in commodities – Soybeans, Gold, Wheat etc. This does not mean we won’t have corrections e.g. Crude and Soybeans are in the throes of one now. But it does mean that the commodity boom will continue until the threat of hyperinflation is negated.
• The start of a new uptrend in interest rate yields (downtrend in price).
• Global tensions that will add to a strong secular uptrend in Gold and Silver. Again I do not expect a straight line advance. Right now for example, I see Gold forming a sideways market between $1045 and $850.
• A bear market in the stock indices. In the S&P, we are currently forming either a simple correction or a sideways market between 1256 to 1280 and 1200. We’ll have a better idea of the type of correction when we see a retest of the 1200 to 1210 area.
• The bear market in the US$ to continue. We can expect a bear market rally once the CPI starts in earnest to rise; that rally will terminate once it becomes clear that hyperinflation is a real threat to the US economy.

These are rare conditions: a current stagflation with the overhanging threat of hype inflation. In addition, we can expect even greater volatility because of the actions of politicians, who failing to understand the cause of the crisis, will look for scapegoats. What better candidates than ‘greedy’ speculators? In their attempts to ‘fix’ the problem, their actions will further disrupt the markets and will cause even greater volatility in price action.

As traders we can expect:

1. the secular trends in commodities to continue but need to be careful of political action: for example, some sort of bill to restrict the number of contracts we can hold in Crude Oil.
2. the secular trend in gold to continue
3. a particular strong secular trend to begin in 10-Yr Notes and 30-yr Bonds.
4. the stock market bear to begin in earnest.