Its a crime to have a conviction in these markets. If you have any, you are proved wrong, in your face!! Monday, the big news that made the indexes across the globe rally was the bailout of FNM and FRE.. after all they are too big to fail.. Dow rallied near 300 points. Normally, such a bail out is inflationary and lthe dollar theoaritically should weaken, pushing Gold, if not any other commodity, up.. But well,, this is not the market where you play according to teh books. Open tuesday, the market shed most of the gains it had the prev day. Leh in the spot light, hitting a 10-year low.. Seems Korean govt has (and has not - might as well be a rumor) advised KDB against buying a stake in Leh. Indeed who would want to wash their money down the drain.. Leh has relatively more exposure to Commercial/Residential mortgages, fixed income business,, which are both in shatters.. added to the woes, the asset management, Underwriting, M&A business has all dried out. However, is the stock tumbling form low 60's to 9 dollars not enough for everything. Guess not. Spread on CDS (Credit Default swap) for Leh debt increased by about 150 basis points, pointing that LEH currently is a risky investment. As some economists have pointed out, may be leh is the next BIG bank to go under!

On other news, DEll bought 100 million worth of shares in Dell.. A significant insider buying.. what should technically happen to the stock.. go up ofcourse.. and what incidentally has happened today.. No sign of uptick!! Current trade philosophy - if there is a bad news on a stock, beat it, if there is a good news on a stock - beat it..

what are the stocks with about 1.2 Bn market cap, with 1B shares outstanding that can have a wild 50% swing on a single day??? answer - FNM and LEH..
Not surprisingly, FNM and FRE were awarded tax breaks by IRS and they get to keep all the NOL's - about 12 Bn.. That should get their effective tax rate to 0 for teh next 20-30 years!! catch is, it is only good if they are able to make any money!!

Till a couple of weeks back, the market strategy was to long commodities and short financials.. but now the former part of the equation seems to have altered. Commodities are facing a wide sell off, because of the percieved global slow down. High oil and commodity prices have created a demand destruction and a slow down of global economy. Its hard to restarin from going with the natural tendency - to invest in commodities are they seem to be at attractive valuations.. But, I do not think this is not a right time to get in.. Lesson - Never try to catch a falling knife!!. I really would like to know who is buying USD and what they're doing with it? They're not buying commodities or stocks or real estate or gold or American cars. WHAT ARE THEY BUYING,, Ipod, XBOX?

Apple unviels its new Ipod.. reception - lucke warm and the stock down 6. Thats the problem if investors have thier expectations high on a compnay. esp in these markets.. Microsoft on the otherhand is coming up with a newer version of Zune (and recently slashed the prices of Xbox). Well, dwelling the numbers, AAPL sold about 150 mill of ipods and Zune about 2 mill.. How do you think the market recieves MS zune changes considering the reaction to new ipod..

Bankruptcydata.com reports that 15 major retailers have filed for bankruptcy this year, compared with seven in all of 2007.

BAd news all the way!! The well-regarded Manpower Employment Outlook Survey's look at corporate hiring plans found that a net 9% of firms expect to hire in the fourth quarter, down from 12% in the previous quarter, and 18% for the fourth quarter a year ago. According to MarketWatch, this is the longest string of quarterly declines in two decades.

A quick glance over at the Forrester study of IT spending found that 43% of companies have cut IT spending this year. How can companies like Oracle (ORCL), Microsoft (MSFT), and IBM (IBM) have strong earnings into next year with that kind of trend?

A Bloomberg News survey of 39 economists showed that they believe pending US home sales dropped again in July.