One Step Forward After Two Steps Back
Stocks rallied into the close, after initial gains generated by positive global equities were taken back at 14:00 EDT by the release of the Fed’s minutes from the March rate meeting. “The news was that things are getting no better, and that the printing press would remain on until such time that whoever is hording dollars puts them to good use” said TheLFB-Forex.com Trade Team. “Now, that may lead to an awful lot of dollar bills and notes hitting the street, but the Fed showed today that their economic outlook is such that drastic measures are going to be needed to create liquidity that filters through to Average Joe without creating too much of a bubble that could burst all over again in five years time” they said. Wall Street closed in the green, going 6 for 8 in positive session finishes, which in the current environment is a solid signal that 800 on the S&P is well protected.
“The easiest way to move forward would be to lower lending standard criteria, create liar loans, package good and bad loans together to hide the scam, and get consumers consuming with tax cuts and/or stimulus checks. It worked for four years from 2003 onwards, and the Fed must yearn for the days that a call into the markets to get things moving with lower rates and their criteria would have a fairly instant impact. But, we are paying the price for decades of boom and bust initiated by low saving rates and easy credit and right now the pain the consumer is feeling will not easily be overcome”.
“Until it all balances out we can get used to the pain of getting by on what we earn, and going without what we cannot afford, because until that cycle finishes the dollar will be seen as the safest place to hide in times of turmoil. But take care buying the greenback when the economy turns around; the cost of putting this right will impact the dollar going forward. It may not be tomorrow, maybe not next month, but as soon as equities clear and hold 900 on the S&P the dollar index may start to drop heavily”.
On Wednesday afternoon the NYSE was looking at posting the first day of gains this week with on average 1% increases from the opening prices. The DOW was on 78400 after a gain of 40+ points (0.5%) while the S&P traded around 825, higher by 1.2%. and the technology-heavy NASDAQ traded in afternoon mode around the 1590 area, after gaining nearly 30 points (1.9%).
Banking Sector Will Continue To Struggle: Equities Pressured, Dollar GainsEven though the XLF index, which gauges the financials’ movement, rose 24% over the last month, the banking sector might not be out of the woods just yet. A number of analysts and traders are still saying that the banking sector will have to fight for its survival.
Among them, the legendary George Soros said zombie banks are among us, while the new accounting rules will only keep them alive. Meredith Whitney, the well-known analyst who predicted the financials’ decline ahead of the credit crisis, still thinks that banks profitability will not last too long, because their balance sheets are not ready to face a double digit unemployment rate.
Furthermore, UBS’s analyst Alastair Ryan predicts that any positive first quarter earnings will not continue into the second quarter, or after that. He says that most of the earnings came from the fixed-income desks, where the traders were helped by central banks adopting a quantitative easing strategy. Ironically, UBS was among the first banks that said it had profits in the first few months of 2009.
TheLFB-Forex.com Trade Team also believes that is hard to expect banks to post earnings beyond the first part of the year. "The number of companies or consumers looking for a loan right now is very small, and is likely to stay that way. Banks saw relatively good and stable profits coming from the credit market, but this is now gone. Additionally, the number of foreclosures and defaults are likely to increase over the coming period adding further strains" they said. "The move to safety in the greenback may not yet be over, and the fact that the XLF is 70% off last years prices puts into perspective the amount oif work involved in rallying the stock market, and by default that allows the dollar to more easily hold current valuations".
Written by TheLFB Trade Team, © 2007-2008 LFB Services, LLC. All rights reserved. http://www.TheLFB-Forex.com
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