Sour Apple hints at broader weakness
Wall Street looks to its tech hero to save the day. But with Apple's earnings miss, it is clearer than ever that only the Fed can give the market what it wants: More easy money.
The first two days of trading this week saw more chaos worldwide, as Asian markets were trashed on Monday and European markets punished Monday and Tuesday. The locus of the trouble was again Europe's debt markets; Italian and Spanish bonds were hammered, with yields for the former climbing to 6.3% and for the latter to 7.4%.
On Tuesday, the yield for Spain's two-year bond climbed past 5%. (Contrast that with the U.S. two-year, whose yield, at 22 basis points, is a mere rounding error.) Spain is in the process of coming completely unstuck, with its regional governments (entities similar to states in the U.S.) going bust, on top of the central government and central bank's problems.
The swagger we saw the previous week (of buying companies despite the prospect of weaker third-quarter results) was dampened rather decisively Tuesday morning when UPS (UPS) lowered its expectations for the rest of the year and lost 5%. More important, that company is a pretty good barometer for the rest of the economy, but it remains to be seen if and when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gets the memo (more on that later).
The trading both Monday and Tuesday saw a pattern of U.S. stocks selling off, but then rallying late in the day to trim the losses, with Tuesday's rally due in part to the hope that Apple (AAPL) might save the day when it reported its results Tuesday night.
One bad Apple
Once again, the stock market was surprisingly resilient Wednesday, given the fact that the current "greatest company in the history of the world" stumbled at beat-the-number. In fact, it more than stumbled, as sales were very disappointing. It was one of the few times in the past decade Apple has not won at that silly Wall Street game.
Apple has looked vulnerable to me since March, as I pointed out at the time (the column was reposted on April 5 as part of a site refresh; it generated a fair amount of "hate mail" in the comments section, but unfortunately those are no longer visible). Thus, Apple's results this week were not a shock, nor should they have been to regular readers.
At any rate, that should have been a double whammy that brought on selling due to Apple's weighting in the Nasdaq 100 (NDX) (as well as many exchange-traded funds), and the fact that the economies of the world are so weak that even mighty Apple couldn't make its projections.
Instead, the undertow was offset by the fact that The Wall Street Journal ran a story above the fold by Jon Hilsenrath, a regular conduit of leaks and spin from the Federal Reserve, which suggested that the Fed was more prepared to "do something" quantitative-easing oriented (e.g., bond buying or money printing) than it has been. In my opinion, the article suggested that the Fed may act at next week's meeting rather than wait for the following one, on Sept. 13.
For what it's worth, The New York Times also ran a story on the same subject. As a close observer of this sort of news, I can't recall a time when both of those papers prominently featured gossip about what the Fed might do next. Obviously, the pressure on the Fed is heating up, just as it is on the European Central Bank, but it remains to be seen if Bernanke has enough imagination to do what he is supposed to believe he should.
Their coup runneth over
The faith of those stock bulls who think the Fed has their backs has buoyed the equity market through a host of disappointing earnings reports, at least when one looks at the next couple of quarters. When I saw the Apple news, I assumed it ought to be enough to "bust the tape," which would, of course, increase the pressure on the Fed for easing. However, in perverse fashion, the Pavlovian salivation about said easing tends to keep stocks from reacting to the bad news that actually does arrive.
The question for those who are short is: "Will we get a nasty plunge in the tape before Bernanke actually panics, or will he ease before that swoon occurs?" I wish I knew the answer, but I don't, although my suspicion is that bulls will need to be tested a bit more before they get their "coup de whiskey," as the Fed boys of 1926 called it.
The reason I keep rooting for the Fed to reach deeper into its bag of tricks is because I know that it will eventually, and I would just as soon get it over with. If we are ever to have a chance of cleaning up the mess in this country, we need to completely discredit the Fed and the concept of fiat money managed by a politburo.
The sooner things get worse, the better
Getting to that juncture will precipitate quite a crisis, which will also create the pressure we need for the losers in Washington, D.C., to finally stop worrying about their own re-election and do something for the good of the country.
Unfortunately, that can happen only in a world awash in fear. Having Treasurys and the dollar under pressure due to recognition of the failed strategy of printing money is going to create the exact backdrop we need. That's getting way too far ahead of myself, of course, but we can only hope we get there as soon as possible.
At the time of publication, Bill Fleckenstein did not own or control shares of any company mentioned in this column in his personal portfolio.
Bill it is obvious to anyone that the Federal Reserve has been dong stealth easing for some time now.
When you consider how bad the real US economy is as we have been trapped in a Death Spiral of Lost Jobs and an ever weaker and weaker economy. Our real unemployment rate is north of 25 percent. The retail sales are in a downward slump. And income has been dropping like a rock.
Add in the fact that the stock market has been losing money as unemployed or retired people have been living off their 401K pension plans and taking more money out than other 401K pension workers have been putting in and that participation in 401K plans is at an all time low.
Pretty much the Federal Reserve in a disperate move has been loaning banks money at zero percent for what like 4 years now? And the banks are using the money to keep the stock market from total collapse and lining the Wall Street banker's pockets with trillions of dollars.
The real solution to our economic woes is very clear. Use to be 30,000,000 new US jobs paying $100,000 a year would have gotten us out of the mess we are in now. As more high paying jobs have been destroyed and replaced with 1/3 the number of minimum wage jobs we will need 40,000,000 million new US jobs paying $120,000 a year to get us out of the deeper hole Bernanke in his misguilded attempts has dug for the US economy.
Pretty much we are all going to wake up one day say January 28, 2013 and have the Federal Reserve tell us that the western banking system has totally collapsed and that all our stocks and bonds and monies and house values have fallen to zero. And that the Federal government has started a distribution system of the limited resources we have left.
Pretty much will make the war time shortages during W.W.II look like booming retail times.
Of course the 1 percent super rich will not be affected by this sudden drop in wealth of all other Americans. Their wealth will increase as the government sales all assets it has to them for pennies on the thousands of dollars.
Welcome to the brave new world folks. It's going to be very different than the way we live today and it is coming soon.
Even in the mercantile world two truths determine Corporate Karma and there are specific Universal Mantras. If it is yours it will come to you; do not take it or steal it. Corollary to it is; Never venture into an area that was given to you but you refused it as from then it never was yours. I can go on and on. Tech names will slowly fade away; AMD will win the tablet processor struggles, Microsoft will remain forever because it has not violated any fundamental Mantras. Paid for DoS; predicted Gaming as the emerging frontier and took steps to be in that field etc. All moot points who will stay and who will go etc.
Here is THE game changer in the PC space. It is possible now to make USB 3.0 key drives in the micro size format in sizes akin to the nano usb mouse receivers. Sizes of memory; 16gb, 32gb, and on and on. Expect to see huge memories on these tiny usb things. What is around the horizon is the entire CPU, GPU etc., etc., placed upon partitions in the usb drive eliminating the need for separate CPU etc., and the entire computing and computer paradigm changed dramatically. I had also told my friend about PC on an USB etc., back in July/August 2010. Both my friend and myself did not understand fully what this meant and so we stayed away from pursuing it any further. I turned in all my working samples to some youngsters so that they may have the spark of imagination come alive in them. What I had realized in that adventure with great sadness was that the PC had lost 50 to 60 years in its evolution and optical computing should have been here in its second generation!
So here is my take on the future of tech; the worst hasn't happened yet and the best has yet to arrive!
My goodness! How foolish of me! The micro usb drives will also have the operating system on them; not just the CPU and GPU etc.
LIve Life, Enjoy Living And Above All; DO GOOD AND BE GOOD!
- DROP OUT TO RURAL LIVING AS CHEAP AS POSSIBLE
- GET FOOD STAMPS
- GET MEDICAID
- SIGN UP FOR ALL THE PROGRAMS
- START FARMING
bottom line: Cut off their revenue and ramp up their expenditures until they collapse.
The country dwellers will find a way to live on without bloated government. When the urban entitlement class, gangs, and other human filth comes crawling out for food, they can work on your farm.
"If we are ever to have a chance of cleaning up the mess in this country, we need to completely discredit the Fed and the concept of fiat money managed by a politburo."
Oh so we go back to the gold standard and limit growth to growth of real commodities. What a crock of crap. So bankers and Wall Street think they should get to control the amount of wealth creation by creating more phoney consumer gadgert and social network stocks. They should try eating their iPhones and living on Fbook. The whole system's a big game of monopoly and everyone better just get use to it.
"I agree with you 100%. I believe that this crap mostly comes from people who are heavily over-invested in gold .Always beware of people giving advice because sometimes the advice is about what is best for them."
There's also a deep rooted narcism behind it. They think they know better then the world's top financial leaders, and that this grandoise ability to out-think the experts will somehow protect them from perceived problems with the world economy. They relish the idea that because they are part of this elite group of wisemen, they will be able to watch from safety as the rest of the world crumbles. Fleckenstein has made himself into some sort of cult prophet with his overly bearish column.
It's all bogus. The economy works the same today as it has for hundereds of years. Sometimes there are boom periods, sometimes we have recessions.
v_l thinks the markets will collapse because sales are not "real", and that there are no actual manufacturing assets because manufactures don't create the raw resources they use to manufacture. It's insanity.
Funny thing about fiat money... while normal people will slow down- the exact opposite of the intent of additional currency infusion- Inflationists will scuttle all they can to ensure what does get purchased will keep costing more. The pickled thinking process is this... the majority holders of things that are or can be liquidated (coin, cash, stocks, bonds, commodities) desire them to be worth more, so they create a catastrophe- like terminate the careers of half the workforce in the world. Some of those people move to another roles, start businesses or retire early. The others force a slowing in the economy. In order to recover, governments authorize additional currency printings and sell the issues. Those issues accrue interest. Inflationists cause the economy to continue to fail until there are several issues and plenty of interest. Then they right the economy and restore the commerce they purposely manipulated. People are happy to recover so they ignore the fact that it was manipulation that caused their woes and the fact that government now owes Inflationists- huge sums in principal and interest. These people still own what they hoarded, plus get the payments in the new economy. It's literally... a financial vampire cultivating a farm of bodies to drink dry when desired!
I do not recognize Bernanke, the Federal Reserve or Quantitative Easing. There was $50-60 Trillion in currencies worldwide just 15 years ago. That is what we must return to and tie it to a valuable and useful Index. Unfortunately, those in power want to make a World Currency, not because it is better for us, but easier to manipulate. Divest global... Close the banks. Save the world.
"If we are ever to have a chance of cleaning up the mess in this country, we need to completely discredit the Fed and the concept of fiat money managed by a politburo."
Thank you for writing that, Bill. 1,000 points UP in about 3 weeks without solid substantiation. Hopes and begging for stimuli are not good reasons for 200 point days. I've been reading up on the LIBOR scandal. It seems to me that Wall Street would be far more cautious about that then looking to Ben for more cash. The scandal ran mainly from 2005 to 2009, or while Phil Gramm (author of the Gramm Leach Bliley Act that gave the financial sector the right to collude) was at UBS (a major bank named in the scandal). Even Bernanke and Geithner are not free from this.
Commonsense thinks these increases are last minute grubber grabs and we have days to weeks before that major retracing occurs.
Great article.
We will get no handouts. Green companies will continue to get millions of our tax payer dollars, but the people that could use help will get none.
Actually I am tired of open borders that are cutting deeply into our own resources. We need someone that will close the border, now.
We have no money because we give it all away... Overseas, and to take care of the illegals coming across.
Time to stop... Take care of Americans first.
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ABOUT BILL FLECKENSTEIN
This column is a synopsis of Bill Fleckenstein's daily column on his website, FleckensteinCapital.com, which he's been writing on the Internet since 1996. Click here to find Fleckenstein's most recent articles.
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