TPC

• Worried about commodity prices
  
• Japan nuclear meltdown fears - Nikkei down 5.5%. Japan makes 1/5 world electronic components, but currently have spare capacity, so not immediate problem. Japan imports oil, and oil prices fell immediately after the quake. However, if they have to replace all their nuclear capacity w/ oil, that would mean an extra 10% bbl oil / day globally.
• Uranium stocks were hit very hard (CCJ -13%) because of nuclear fears
• Risk on currency trades (AUD - australia, NZD - new zealand, CAD - Canada, SEK - swedish krona). Risk off (USD, JPY, CHF - Swiss Franc)
  
  • Bullish on Equities, but want to hedge, you buy EUR and sell SEK because as equities in the US fall, there is an 80% correlation w/ EUR / SEK. Trade is currently at 8.8. Stop @ 8.6, Close at 9.4.
• John Mauldin -
  

  Today, Brazil has very little debt, as it has all been inflated away. Its economy is booming, people trust the central bank, and the country is a success story. Much like the United States had high inflation in the 1970s and then got a diligent central banker like Paul Volcker, in Brazil a new government came in, beat inflation, produced strong real GDP growth, and set the stage for one of the greatest economic success stories of the past two decades. Indeed, the same could be said of other countries like Turkey that had hyperinflation, devaluation, and then found monetary and fiscal rectitude.

  In 1993, Brazilian inflation was roughly 2,000 percent. Only four years later, in 1997 it was 7 percent. Almost as if by magic, the debt disappeared. Imagine if the United States increased its money supply, which is currently $900 billion, by a factor of 10,000 times, as Brazil did between 1991 and 1996. We would have 9 quadrillion U.S. dollars on the Fed’s balance sheet. That is a lot of zeros. It would also mean that our current debt of 13 trillion would be chump change. A critic of this strategy for getting rid of our debt could point out that no one would lend to us again if we did that. Hardly. Investors, sadly, have very short memories. Markets always forgive default and inflation. Just look at Brazil, Bolivia, and Russia today. Foreigners are delighted to invest in these countries.

ADash

• Good - ECRI still improving, 6.7%. SLFSI same (.004 vs .03 [anything < 1 =" neutral).">
• Bad - initial claims were bad, barely under 400k. UofMich sentiment was very bad, Spain downgrade of debt is much worse than Greece. 23% of home mortgages had negative equity. trade deficit spiked higher by about 15%
  
  • this is bad because in a floating exchange rate system, net national savings = current account surplus. so large trade deficit = negative national savings. => so either there is a low private savings or large budget deficit, or both.
• Ugly - nuclear threat from Japan, might cause a change in political opinion of nuclear power. This might put pressure on fossil fuels. Saudi's have said they would be willing to supply extra oil, they would need to go to 1.8mb / d to replace it. But in 2008 when oil was $140 / bbl, they did not. If WTIC is at $106, will they do it?
• overall posture is slightly bullish (70%, -9% from last week)

TradersN

• Farrel Sentiment Index on II survey. Bulls / Bears + Correction, moved below 1.5 (sell signal). However, buy signals are much better than their sells
• NAAIM (active money managers) was overall positive
• Consensus is at a bullish extreme
• Leveraged ETF flows (-201M Long, + 355M Short). Last month (+558M, -650M?) Where to get this info from??
  

QuantE

• Option expiration week for March, April, and December avg about +0.9%, Oct .7%, all others [0.3% (aug) - 0.09% (Jul)]
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