Top-performing mutual fund manager John Hussman sees no value in this “overvalued, overbought and overbullish” market.
Last week, the dividend yield on the S&P 500 dropped below 2%, versus a historical average closer to double that level. While part of the reason for the paucity of yield in the current market can be explained by the [...]

Graphite here.
One development which has been making the rounds in the financial news lately is the development of a US dollar carry trade. I won’t ponder the details of the carry trade here, as I’m sure most readers are familiar with its mechanics. Shorting low-yielding assets like the dollar to fund purchases of higher-yielding ones [...]

I’m again very bearish short-term, basically taking the approach that we’re topping until proven otherwise. I think we’re about to roll over like we have three times since early August. Indicators show that each recovery since then has further disheartened the bears and encouraged the bulls, which is as it should be, making each top [...]

Hat tip Evilspeculator
They counted 48 vacant properties (I presume mostly street-front) from 59th to 14th Streets on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. I don’t have any stats to compare this to, but it is clear that times are not so good for landlords (and their banks) in NYC. I used to live on the same block [...]

Graphite here. I remain an ardent deflationist and continue to see strong risks of a continued collapse in asset values in world real estate and equity markets. That said, one key practice in speculation, no matter how strong one’s conviction in a particular trade, is to understand the other side of that trade and how [...]

All the world’s a short…
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Charts below are 5-year views.
NASDAQ biotech index:

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Inter@ctive WK Internet Index:

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Value Line Arithmetic (where’s the value?):

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Philadelphia Gold and SIlver Index (XAU), back at ‘06-’08 commodities bubble levels:

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Mexico Bolsa:

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Venezuela:

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Argentina’s Merval Index:

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Pakistan’s Karachi 100 (look at the flat line where the govt suspended trading last fall — worked wonders, didn’t it? This market is [...]

The Indian stock market since 1990:

Source: http://www.nseindia.com/
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I suspect that this market will end up back at 2002-2003 levels. Manias like this tend to be completely retraced, like the oil bubble from ‘04 to ‘08, which sports a similar chart to the above, complete with a big B-wave bounce that should be peaking soon, though by [...]

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Well, we’ve hit the first common Fibonacci retracement level (38.1%). We’ve now rallied 350 S&P points after a 904 point fall (1570 to 666). This is the best shorting opportunity since 12 months ago, IMO.

Source: Interactive Brokers
Nasdaq is nicely lagging, and the dollar is looking good. China could have topped already. The chatter on the [...]

I usually am not so sure about things, but the markets are looking very stretched at the moment. Sentiment among bears is of capitulation. Everywhere I go on the blogosphere, I see posts and comments about how the market is rigged by Goldman or repo desks or the PPT, and that trading against robots is [...]

This post started as an email that got way too long. I added some charts and put it up here:
The rally has not surprised me (on March 31 I expressed the opinion that we would hit 900 or higher by summer:
…more likely in my mind is a protracted rally extending to 900 or higher by [...]