Posted on 03/22/2008 4:27:01 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Standard & Poor's Ratings Services on Friday revised its status on Financial Guaranty Insurance Co. and holding company FGIC Corp. to CreditWatch with negative implications from CreditWatch with developing implications. PMI Group (PMI: 5.92, 0.00, 0.0%) , Financial Guaranty Insurance's principal owner, said recently that it no longer views the company as a strategic investment and will not be participating in any recapitalization plan.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
Ping!
Seems like Monday could be a dicey day in the market.
Bad news are coming out in the weekend. Would there be another Sunday surprise to offset them? Probably not this time.
New investment strategy ...
buy on Monday
sell on Thursday afternoon
hold stable (?) commodity over the weekend
“We have absorbed a little more than half of the expected losses in the housing decline. We have seen only a third of the housing price decline that we expect.”
- Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron, March 2008
Any suggestions? The commodities don't look too rust proof at this point.
Other than that, a sound strategy...
The banks have all been highly regulated since the Great Depression, yet they’re all in trouble. Anybody see a pattern here? Can you say “Failure of government oversight (yet again)”?
Actually the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999 and some blame the deregulation for causing the subprime insanity.
I’m not worried about gold and silver. I’m betting big money that it was a case of people (Bear Stearns?) selling whatever they could to make margin calls.
If I may direct you to a fairly rabid gold-bug site, here’s a direct quote from a coin dealer. (Don’t let the lazy spelling fool you.):
Some thoughts on the recent markets...and fizzicals.... — Norwester, 01:10:27 03/22/08 Sat
.
..first, I was not surprised with the plunge, nor with
the depth of this drop once it began breaking down thru
support levels....SLUDGE, as usual, surprised even me,
with it’s “overshoot” — which may not yet be done, either..
FIZZICAL SUPPLIES are very tight right now, in both Gold
and Silver.....While all shop dealers certainly saw a
larger-than-normal inflow of sellers when Gold reached
the $1000.+ mark and Silver shot thru $21./oz., I don’t
know of anyone who was “buried” in metals from sellers,
and, as well, many of us had BUYERS for the available
fresh, new purchases, even at those levels....
A LOT of us saw a lot of “stuff” — that is, NOT readily-
salable bullion-related products, like scrap jewelry,
dental crowns, broken chains, proof and mint sets, old
Franklin Mint sterling sets, weird foreign gold and
silver crapola — STUFF we mostly MELTED or “offed” to
wholesalers who eventually did the same — sent it to
“end buyers” at refineries...
Personally, we saw very little PURE SILVER products sold
to us at those $20-$21/oz. levels — very few 1-oz. or
10-oz. or 100-oz. bars/rounds and fewer Silver Eagles...
Likewise, most of the Gold that came in was “old product”
like Mex. 50-Pesos, Austrian 100-Coronas, KRands, and
lots of small “Euro” Gold (20-Francs, Sovereigns, even
20-Marks and 1-Ducats, etc.) — NOT Eagles or Maples of
good, REsalable [retail] products that we could use!
Currently, as happens with every big DROP in prices, there
are more BUYERS than SELLERS, less “usable” products in
wholesaler’s inventories (none of us small-shop dealers
have been getting anything decent to sell to them!), and
PREMIUMS HAVE JUMPED TREMENDOUSLY.....KRands, which were
being offered AT BELOW MELT a week ago are now trading
at + $10-$12 on the WHOLESALE LEVELS....Eagles are all but
non-existant (and esp. Silver Eagles!) and Maples are now
fetching + $17-$18 premiums, too, UP from + $6-$8 just a
week ago, and ALL OF IT IN TIGHT SUPPLY....
Silver products — 1-oz. rounds, for example — that were
readily being offered on our dealer COINNET system for
+ $.15-$.25 are now being quoted at + $.55-$.65 and
selling INSTANTLY when a SELL message appears...even
100-oz. bars that were available at Spot last week are
now fetching + $.35 over Spot and, likewise, selling as
fast as the message is posted....
So, forget CHEAP FIZZICALS currently....they just aren’t
“out there” to be had by the shop dealers or wholesalers!
I expect we’ll either HOLD at these levels or make a final
drop to maybe $885. and $16.35 or so by mid-week and make
a rebound later next week....I’m thinking we will hold and
run back up to $950-$965 real fast...maybe to $18.30 or
so in sludge.....BUT, longer term — that is, looking into
late-April and May, maybe even June — I still expect to
see another SELLING BOUT hit and likely drive prices even
lower than this round.....juss mah opine, not shared by
kapex or cashcobb and sundry other true believers....
heh-heh.....
I knew they removed some of the regulations from the banks, but didn't realize they entirely repealed Glass-Steagall. I note that the date was 1999. That's probably why you don't hear a single note of squealing about Bush deregulating the banks.
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