What a morning it’s been already!
Last night, at about 11:30 EST, Abu Dhabi gave a $10Bn bailout to Dubai(until the end of April, anyway) with the following statement from Sheik Ahmed bin Saaed Al Maktoum, chairman of the Dubai Supreme Fiscal Committee: “We are here today to reassure investors, financial and trade creditors, employees, and our citizens that our government will act at all times in accordance with market principles and internationally accepted business practices.” That was enough to send the Hang Seng from down 300 points to up 300 points in less than 30 minutes of trading (on both sides of their lunch break) while the Shanghai went from -2.2% to +1.7% and the Nikkei also reversed a 100-point drop, but only managed to get back to even at the close.
US futures trading also went wild, up over 100 points at the time but we’ve given up about half of those gains as of 7:30. Does it make sense that the Dubai crisis, which dropped us from 10,450 back to 10,250 when it came up, sould be the catalyst to get us over 10,500 just because they were bailed out? Of course it doesn’t – that’s why we went to cash. This is one of the most ridiculously irrational markets I’ve ever seen. The other “good” news this morning is also the same old songs: Citigroup will repay their $20Bn TARP loan by dilluting their stock by about 20% and GS says oil will go to $85 early next year.
I don’t know why they even bother to pretend anymore – they should just put 10 market-boosting statements on a chip that randomly plays one of them whenever the MSM needs a quote for the morning. People don’t seem to notice it’s the same thing over and over and over again so why even bother with the pretense? Speaking of pretense – I mentioned in the Weekend Wrap-Up that we expected this nonsense this morning but, had I realized that Greenspan AND Cramer were going to be on Meet the Press yesterday, I would have gone more bullish as those are the two biggest market hypers GE could have used for this week’s quotes.
Europe seems happy enough with Asia’s recovery and all the bull*** commentary (that’s bullISH – what were you thinking?) and they are up about a point ahead of our open DESPITE the FACT that Q3 euro area employment is down 0.5%, the fifth straight quarter of contraction. All sectors reported declines,…
