Today confirms the theory that international banks will begin to delever and unload positions ahead of a Fed rate hike.  The following was written by GTM on Sunday April 18, 2010 (source).

The SEC has been sitting on the GS indictment for nine months. They finally decide to release during market hours on a Friday OPEX–curious. Was this done to mask distribution?

On Thursday [04/15/10] GS traded 7M shares and on Friday it was 100M. Compared to GOOG that did 6M and 12M or BAC’s 240M and 590M. C had 1.8B shares traded on Friday. Citigroup and Bank of America stock are looking more and more like war debt service vehicles.

A working theory is major banks are being used to service the U.S. debt. Primarily the war debt created by an expanding corporate empire. In 1720 England used stock in the South Sea Company to offload its war debt on the investing public. It was the first major financial scam to coin the term “bubble.”

Read more here:  Where the New PPT Hides

International banks (IBs) are now sitting on $1,200T in interest rate swaps. That’s $1.2 quadrillion dollars. It has peeled back $300T from last year. A squeeze on JPM alone could bankrupt the system. There is not enough free credit in the world to deliver on their $70T swap positions. There’s also not enough silver in the world to deliver on the total COMEX silver short position. It represents 100% of the total visible and recorded silver bullion in existence (source).  Owners of silver futures alone could squeeze the world’s largest bank by demanding delivery. Think of it. A new Sons of Liberty movement could once again stick it to New York stock jobbers. People could squeeze JPM just by asking for delivery on their silver. That’s a nightmare scenario for them. Why give you something real, with real value, when we can convince you to trade it for worthless paper instead.

Everyone is now learning how JPM illegally manipulates the precious metals market to suppress inflation. How about GS and their monopoly control of the stock market. Goldman Sachs is behind 1 out of every 10 trades on the NYSE. Is it unreasonable to think they would manipulate equities in the same way?

The Fed can’t lend money for free indefinitely. Soon the U.S. will be forced to raise cash. The Fed will have to raise the prime rate and it will stress the system. Unless prime dealers like JPM, GS, MS, UBS, etc. unload their leverage without tanking the market. This is the cornerstone to understand. Much of the recent rally is short covering. Look at the short % of total float on major names. Many stocks are near 20% short. We’ve seen higher highs on very low volume. That’s not new money buying up the market. It’s basically a short squeeze that can be used to cover real distribution by the IBs. They will have to unload somehow before the rates are raised. There’s a strong connection between this concept and silver manipulation. Friday’s selling was a warning that distribution is taking place.

Notice today’s crash happened right after 2:30pm where a halt would not happen.  Now active traders need to be aware of upcoming PPT action.

A 6:1 negative day (or greater) has not reversed in the last five years without PPT intervention. In order to bet on something like that, the market has to be making a scary new low. If we revisit January lows start looking for a PPT day that can reverse the most obscenely negative NYSE A/D.

Review of what is required:

* Market at new lows/breaking point
* Relatively high VIX
* High CBOE Put/Call Ratio
* Major pressure on the Financials [banks -20%]
* Negative NYSE Internals [worse than 5:1]
* Political pressure
* Fear/Panic

Read more here: Anticipating PPT Days

Review of NYSE Cicuit Breakers:

http://www.nyse.com/press/circuit_breakers.html

I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men. -Sir Isaac Newton

There are five zombie banks that control between 20%-40% of NYSE daily volume. It started earlier this year with Citigroup and Bank of America. They equaled 10% of NYSE total daily volume. Now the trend in High Frequency Trading (HFT) is on the rise. This begs several questions. If this is a healthy bull market, why are just five stocks running the exchange? Is it possible the bailout money is being funneled into just a few stocks? To get a really good answer we’re going to visit London England in the year 1720. Let’s explore how history is repeating itself with the new South Sea Bubble. The goal by the end of this article is to draw connections between the greatest financial bubble of all time and what’s happening today. Hopefully it will be so obvious you’ll feel sick.

One Chart to Rule Them All

There’s actually 315 years of stock market data available. People think DOW 4,000 is impossible, but look at this 315 year chart and how juicy DOW 1,000 is.

Here’s the theory. The country has nearly run out of credit forming the end of a Grand Supercycle. The money issue is obvious with state budget problems. So what is the most expedient way to generate credit in a corrupt system? A Ponzi scheme. Make it really big and complicated so no one can figure it out in time.

Here are some of the basics. The global financial markets, which are primarily run by New York banks, are being propped up by the Federal Reserve selling Treasuries. The money that is placed in Treasuries is then built out with leverage and funneled into the most wounded names in the banking system. These names get pumped up to create a cash machine that is used to cover debts of the United States of America. This is just a basic model, but understanding how this works will open windows into our corrupt financial system. A system designed to tax and steal without our knowledge.

Look at the stocks moving the market:

Volume continues to be concentrated in just a few names. Today, in a universe of over 5,000 stocks in the U.S. equity market, only 4 stocks contributed 20% of the volume.

Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC), Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) traded a total of 2.041 billion shares. Overall volume in the U.S equity market was only 10 billion shares. -Joseph Saluzzi

There is some variation to which names lead volume for the week. The PPT cash machine cycles through several names during the month. Read Themis Trading’s white paper, Toxic Equity Trading Order Flow on Wall Street: The Real Force Behind the Explosion in Volume and Volatility. This gives a concise explanation for current market mechanics. Here’s a section most of us don’t think about:

High frequency trading strategies have become a stealth tax on retail and institutional investors. While stock prices will probably go where they would have gone anyway, toxic trading takes money from real investors and gives it to the high frequency trader who has the best computer. The exchanges, ECNs and high frequency traders are slowly bleeding investors, causing their transaction costs to rise, and the investors don’t even know it.

What HFT Looks Like

The main HFT stocks are C BAC FNM FRE AIG and CIT. During Fed POMO days, where they’ve recently been injecting $30B into the market on a weekly basis, these names will cycle through large cash inflows. This is the new PPT vehicle. Check out the chart of AIG during a heavy week where $197B in Treasuries were on auction.

Note the blue shaded area on the chart. This is classic HFT or program trading where a stock churns shares within a very small range. Liquidity rebates are also happening where dealers like Goldman Sachs earn a quarter penny on every share traded. Everyone gaming the stock makes out. Shareholders looking for organic growth get chopped to pieces. It’s a giant cash machine and the stock goes nowhere, much like the S&P 500 intraday.

Then something happens… The PPT shows up. This move in AIG is a classic PPT push where a massive amount of capital is pumped in during the last hour of the market. HFT algorithms can see it coming and get out of the way. Here’s part of the reason why these moves come at the end of the day:

The directives of the FOMC are carried out in the context of two week maintenance periods. The Manager of the System Open Market Account is charged with achieving those objectives via the daily operations. (source)

Step One (08:30am):

• gather information, macroeconomic news
• desk telephones primary government security dealers
• large banks inform the desk about their reserve needs
• NY Fed gather data to provide forecasts of reserves

Step Two (10:30am):

• call to the Treasury concerning its forecast of its balance for the day

Step Three:

• formulate the actions for the day
• forecasts from Treasury, NY Fed, and Fed BoG combined
• interventions are formulated
• trading plan is formulated

Step Four (11:15am):

• conference call links…
• Manager (and staff)
• Director of the Division of Monetary Affairs at Fed BoG
• a Federal Reserve Bank president who sits on FOMC
• proposed actions for the day are detailed

Step Five (11:40am)

• desk traders contact primary dealers and execute day’s program

See our story Anticipating PPT Days for ideas on what these moves look like and how to trade them. This same move was seen in ABK AIG CIT FRE FNM during the last couple weeks. It is reminiscent of the moves seen prior to the September 2008 market crash. It used to be a safe assumption to put your money where the government puts theirs. Now that money disappears, in more ways than one.

Myth of Savings Accounts

Citibank (and many others) have a program called Deposit Reclassification. This is a relatively new financial scheme you won’t find on Wikipedia. It was invented for credit unions and banks to put dead money to use. That dead money comes from your savings accounts.

For accounting purposes, all Citibank consumer checking accounts consist of two sub-accounts; a transaction sub-account to which all financial transactions are posted; and a holding sub-account into which available balances above a pre-set level are transferred daily. (source)

What this means is banks using this program do not have to maintain a 10% deposit reserve on cash in savings accounts. So how do they guarantee cash that isn’t there? Banks use this sub-account loophole to circumvent all retail deposit reserve requirements. Under normal Federal Reserve System rules banks can leverage $100 in deposits into $1,000 of credit based on a 10% reserve. This is virtually free money for them. The more deposits they have the more credit they can create out of thin air.

With a 0% actual reserve–who knows? This nullifies what the FDIC says about the safety of the banking system and deposits. What deposits? Check out this presentation by the New Jersey League of Community Bankers on how it’s done.

Note that in July 2008, the banking system’s vault cash EXCEEDED both required and total reserves. [Vault cash is the physical banknotes that banks keep on hand to meet withdrawals; the vast majority of dollars exists in the form of electrons, and only a tiny sliver is metal coinage.] Now, in July 2009, the required reserves and vault cash have been relatively unchanged.

Over the same period, the monetary base has almost doubled from $847 billion to $1,681 billion while reserves grew by about the same amount, from a scant $45 billion to $803 billion. Where did this money come from? It is likely just FED “liquidity” or newly created currency. We would need to audit the FED to really be sure, but the timing and amount coincides with the Banker Bailout of October 2008. (source: Jake Towne for Congress)

Software also exists that allows banks to move money on a whim. There’s SWIFT that nearly everyone uses and fi-linx for Deposit Reclassification. These systems run a, “Now you see it. Now you don’t!” form of financial engineering. They can move money undetected in and out of accounts. One day the bank will have 0.6% cash on reserve, and the next they exceed the Fed 10% requirement. This is part of the reason bankers do not want the Fed to be audited. It’s also part of the reason we’re seeing enormous credit injections.

Banks and Bubbles

Current HFT names could be a modern version of the South Sea Company. In 1720 Britain had the equivalent of roughly $2T in debt and was nearly bankrupt. The South Sea Company was used to service that debt. Roll all of the debt into private stock, dupe everyone and their grandmothers into buying it, then sell for a profit. The public gets left holding the bag. Sound familiar?

A senior Bank of England official today compared the banking system over the last 20 years to the South Sea bubble of the early 18th century and said bankers had merely “resorted to the roulette wheel” to keep up with each other. (Guardian UK)

The South Sea Bubble was an enormous scam conceived after a costly war where Spain and France tried to control all of Europe. The stock became a vehicle for Britain to offloaded their war debt upon a naive investing public. Even Isaac Newton got soaked speculating in this stock. The South Sea Company was a Ponzi scheme. They were initially slave traders with one boat that did one trip a year. They never turned a legitimate profit. It is the original event that coined the term “bubble.”

Here’s some more good stuff from Ashley Seager at the guardian.co.uk:

The Bank’s executive director for financial stability, Andy Haldane, said in a speech in Chicago that having been stable over much of the 20th century, returns in the banking system relative to the wider stockmarket shot up after 1986 until 2006.

“Banking became the goose laying the golden eggs. There is no period in recent UK financial history which bears comparison,” he said. He said bankers and policymakers became seduced by the excess returns available: “Banks appeared to have discovered a money machine, albeit one whose workings were sometimes impossible to understand.

“One of the South Sea stocks was memorably ‘a company for carrying out an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is’. Banking became the 21st-century equivalent.”

“For a number of diseases, 20% of the population account for around 80% of the disease spread. The present financial epidemic has broadly mirrored those dynamics,” he said, adding that the failure of a core set of large, interconnected institutions such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG contributed disproportionately to the spread of financial panic.

How the South Sea Company Operated

Keep the Fed pumped AIG chart in mind while reading the following. Excerpts from Harvard Magazine’s “The Damn’d South Sea” by Christopher Reed:

On January 1, 1720, the price of a share of South Sea stock stood at £128. On June 24 it hit £1,050. In September came the crash. By December the stock had returned to £128. Thousands declared themselves ruined. Banks could not collect loans on inflated stock and failed. Specie was in short supply. Work stopped on half-built homes. Investigations and revenge ensued, and a long struggle to restore stability.

Sir Isaac Newton, scientist, master of the mint, and a certifiably rational man…sold his £7,000 of stock in April for a profit of 100 percent. But something induced him to reenter the market at the top, and he lost £20,000. [roughly £3 million today]

To put these sums in perspective, Carswell points out that a middle-class family could live very comfortably at the time on £200 a year.

The maxim that credit was not wealth unless it rested on a wealth-producing asset had been ignored…,” writes Carswell (former secretary of the British Academy). Greed blinded many, but not all. One unidentified observer saw clearly: “The additional rise of this stock above the true capital will be only imaginary; one added to one, by any rules of vulgar arithmetic, will never make three and a half; consequently, all the fictitious value must be a loss to some persons or other, first or last.

“In order to pay out profits, the South Sea Company needed both to raise more capital and to have the price of its stock moving continuously upward,” writes the economist and MIT professor emeritus Charles P. Kindleberger in his classic work Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (Wiley, third edition, 1996). “And it needed both increases at an accelerating rate, as in a chain letter or a Ponzi scheme.” The company repeatedly raised cash through new issues of stock as its price spiraled upward in the summer of 1720.

“It was clear that the Company could only pay the £7,500,000 to the government if they exchanged South Sea stock for government obligations at prices far above par 100. And, the higher the price of stock at the time of conversion, the greater the profits which would accrue to the Company. In addition to the profits the directors could make by holding South Sea stock were those available through stock manipulation which, in this case, included transactions in non-existent stock. The directors could create and purchase stock at a low price and sell it for an inflated price. It was a foolproof way of making a large fortune and it proved to be an irresistible temptation.

“Carswell employs a hydraulic metaphor to describe the action. The company first created £2 million in new South Sea stock, at £300 a share, and let investors pay for it in installments. Subscribers eagerly bought it up, and the company covertly issued £250,000 more for good measure. Then it announced that its cash position was so strong that it could lend shareholders money on the security of their South Sea stock. The price of the old stock at once rose to £325. The company issued yet more stock and made more loans, again and again.

“So Blunt…had constructed a financial pump,” writes Carswell, “each spurt of stock being accompanied by a draught of cash to suck it up again, leaving the level higher than before.” Success required that the level keep rising.

The South Sea Company was a confection of politics, commerce, and finance. None of its governors or directors had any experience of trade with the New World, but John Blunt, who wrote the charter and was the company’s dominant director, had been a scrivener and then director of the Sword Blade Bank. He and cohorts had a fine understanding of financial manipulation.

The company had the further splendid purpose of relieving the government of its burdensome unsecured public debt–obligations for which Parliament had assigned no funds–which then amounted to £9,000,000. South Sea was organized under the newish joint-stock principle, as a corporation with transferable shares. Holders of the national debt were obliged to exchange their government securities for shares at par in the company. The company could raise working capital–a huge amount of it–by borrowing on the security of the debt due from the government. In addition to its trade monopoly, the company would get an annual payment from the Exchequer of £568,279 10s., or 6 percent of the debt taken over. Stockholders had no promise that they would see any of this as dividends, but who could blame them for thinking that capital gains based on trading profits were a certainty?

Final Thoughts

Fortunately we now have technology that can dig under the surface. What does it mean again when the stock goes up while institutions are bailing?

A quick review of why the South Sea Company stock failed and why it’s like AIG C BAC etc:

1. Government funded stock secured by government debt
2. Stock operates in a monopoly environment
3. Corrupt system with unknown sums and fake shares
4. Depends on an infinite increase in value

What’s amazing is the South Sea Company stayed in operation for almost 100 years. However, the South Sea Bubble ended with purges, the Napoleonic wars, and about sixty years of total misery. It is partly responsible for the U.S. emerging as a new world power though. Here is some parting irony:

Historians wishing to study the company and the era can be awash in source material if they go to the right place–the Kress Library, Harvard Business School’s rare-book collection, housed in Baker Library.

Almost all of it was assembled by Hugh Bancroft, A.B. 1897, A.M. ’98, LL.B. ’01, president of Dow, Jones and Company. After his death in 1933, his wife presented the Bancroft collection to Harvard. It offers true value to scholars wishing to explore a seminal lunacy.

Lastly, Robert Prechter is very vocal about these connections. Check out the July issue of The Elliott Wave Theorist.

How Treasury Auctions Work

09:15 am : Though typically overlooked, participants will take note of a $24 billion 7-year Treasury Note auction, which is scheduled for this afternoon (1:00 PM ET). Given the weak showing in Wednesday’s 5-year Note auction, participants speculate that investors’ risk appetite may be changing.

Last night’s Frontline interview with Paul O’Neill:

Can the United States government go bankrupt?

Not in the classical sense, but we could get ourselves into a position where people won’t take our paper anymore. And that’s a really desperate position to be in when we’ve killed the idea of good faith and credit of the United States. That could destroy our society as we’ve known it.

Can’t we just turn the printing press on?

Nope, because at some point people will prefer to have broken pieces of glass than federal money. … Look at the German economy in 1923. People got paid twice a day in Germany in 1923, because if they waited to spend the money that they were paid at lunchtime at dinnertime, the money wouldn’t be worth anything.

And so people were actually willing to pay all of their money, a wheelbarrow full of money, for a broken piece of shiny glass, because the broken glass was worth more than a wheelbarrow full of money. We don’t want to get there, but semi-modern societies have gotten there.

You imagine we could get there?

No, because I think we’re smarter than that, and I don’t think we’ll let it come to that. But the answer to your question is, if we don’t do something, we could get there, yeah.

The United States has a AAA rating, just shines in the night. Could we lose that?

Eighteen months ago Citigroup had a AAA rating. Could they get there?

A bank isn’t the United States government.

No, I know, but you’re asking a very radical question: Could the federal government lose its AAA rating? And the answer is yes. We dare not let that happen, but the answer is yes.

If we keep going in a straight line, the answer will be yes?

Yeah. I don’t know how we dodge the bullet if we don’t change where we’re going. …

U.S. One-Month Bill Rate Negative for First Time Since December (Bloomberg):

Treasury 10-year yields have risen for the last five days as the U.S. sells a record $98 billion in securities this week to revive the economy. The note pared earlier losses after a government report today showed the world’s largest economy shrank the most since 1980.

For the time being, fears of supply have pushed up longer- term yields despite the Fed’s buyback program. The 10-year yield has retraced more than half of last week’s 47 basis point decline when the Fed said it would buy Treasuries.

The Treasury is selling $98 billion in notes this week as part of President Barack Obama’s efforts to boost government spending to revive economic growth. Debt sales will almost triple this year to a record $2.5 trillion, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. forecast. The firm is one of the 16 primary dealers required to bid at government auctions.

UK government bond auction comes up short:

Britain experienced its first incomplete auction of government bonds in almost seven years on Wednesday, potentially dealing another blow to Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s plans to resuscitate the faltering economy.

The bank has been buying bonds from banks to provide liquidity to the financial system.

Brown was further undermined on Tuesday by King, who warned that Britain may not be able to afford new expensive stimulus plans, noting that the country’s budget deficit is expected to swell dramatically due to the economic crisis.

Shore Capital analyst Tim Morgan said the government’s overall cash requirement, including the money needed to redeem previous gilt issues, could hit 240 billion pounds.

Morgan said that Britain was running a risk of a “debt vortex” in which markets lose confidence in the ability of the UK taxpayer to meet future obligations.

“It is by no means clear that this required sum can be realised, less still that it can be raised in sterling and at current low interest rates,” he said. “The only sure way to avert debt vortex risk would be to unveil major cuts in future public spending.”

My speech to Gordon Brown goes viral:

“Every British child is born owing around 20,000 pounds. Servicing the interest on that debt is going to cost more than educating the child.”

Last night’s Frontline interview with David Walker:

Let’s start with public debt. … Give me a sense of just how bad this is.

The national debt, as we speak, is about $10.5 trillion. But the real problem is not that number. … The number that we need to be focusing on is the total federal financial hole; that’s the total liabilities in unfunded promises for Social Security and Medicare. As of the end of 2007, which is the latest set of financials that we have right now, it was $53 trillion. That’s $455,000 per household. Median household income in America is less than $50,000 a year.

What’s clear is that, while the numbers aren’t final yet for the year ended Sept. 30, 2008, for the first time in the history of the United States, the federal financial hole exceeded the total net worth of all Americans. … So we could confiscate every dime of the net worth of every American household — including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and every other billionaire — and we wouldn’t fill the hole.

And guess what? The hole is getting deeper more rapidly than our net worth is going up. In fact, net worth has been going down because of decline in home values and because of decline in the markets. So we’re in a deep hole, and we’d better start figuring out a way that we’re going to climb out.

Conclusion

The sobering reality is even if the U.S. manages to avoid a serious depression the looming unfunded anvil of Medicare and Social Security entitlements hangs over the country.  This may keep some of you up at night, but this is not a problem that lacks solutions.  If it is not dealt with before it becomes another managed crisis then it’s a massive problem.  What is clear is the U.S. has mastered the art of instant gratification while ignoring future threats to stability. What Americans seem to have forgotten is we own the country. This is our money and our future. No child should be born a debt slave. And no one deserves to be a slave at the expense of their education.

• Market at new lows/breaking point
• Relatively high VIX
• High CBOE Put/Call Ratio
• Major pressure on the Financials [banks -20%]
• Negative NYSE Internals [worse than 5:1]
• Political pressure
• Fear/Panic

What to look for is a massive buy candle on any of the major indexes.  It will be as long as today’s first 5min down candle–a massive candle.  We’re looking for a BIG countertrend move on a major negative day.

My plan is to go ALL IN on FAS and get more than a +10% move.  I’m looking for $2 ideally taking profit right before the close.  The close should be the day’s high for the market.

If anyone knows the capital it takes to move the Dow Futures +100 points please let me know.

[Update from the close:  That was not a PPT push, but a bull fight.  A PPT Day shows no hesitation or stalling into gap fills.  A PPT push today would have blown up to the SPX open within 5mins then past it--without hesitation.  That's why it's PPT, massive capital is behind the move.  Still it was a nice move, just not sure enough to go ALL IN with conviction.]

PPT Day Characteristics

These moves typically occur after 2:30pm Eastern while the market is near a new low or breaking point, with a relatively high VIX.  Another characteristic is a large NYSE Adv/Decl negative ratio.  One that is negative 10:1 going into lunchtime typically assures a weak close.  Ratios of 3:1 negative aren’t what you want. They are easier to manipulate by weak bulls. You want a big scary ratio. It is these negative internals that can clue you into the probability of a PPT push.  A big push on a big negative internal is the tell. To instantaneously swing the market around on these days takes a massive amount of concerted capital.

If you watched the market every day last year you know what this looks like.  Using 5min candles on your favorite index you will see an immediate and massive full body candle, sometimes eclipsing the entire day’s range in minutes.  There is no mistaking this move.  It’s a wide-eyed holy crap moment!  After this massive push the market will typically close near the high of the day.

Here is a 15min chart of the SPY from last March–somewhat similar to today.  This is what a breakout looks like:

The PPT pushes are preceded by doom and gloom breakdowns.  These volume pushes fail to buoy the market after a few days.  In some cases it’s a rinse-wash-repeat move over the course of a few weeks.  Learn to anticipate it, regardless of the mechanics of why the push comes.

Often a panic sell-off precedes a PPT push, which breaks down into orderly selling, which causes another PPT push.  Watch for one this week or next week, possibly mirroring this move from last November:

There’s a similar feel to this month, except we’re missing a second PPT push:

Taking the Trade

The key to a PPT day is entering on the first push of a massive volume breakout.  You have to be prepared to enter in a matter of seconds.  That or have a resting buy/stop order sitting above a resistance area on your favorite stock.  Look for an entry that won’t get hit by a false probe.  During these moves it usually doesn’t matter which of the day trade stocks you pick–they all go up.  Some potential stocks right now are FAS MA FSLR GOOG BIDU ICE CME GS and other big liquidity names.  Trade what you know.

A good risk/reward setup are breakouts from tight consolidation ranges.  If you anticipate the move place a market buy order slightly above the range.  When the order fills put in your max loss stop and then be patient to the close.  Another method is to wait 10 minutes after the fill and then put your daily profit stop in.  If the entry was golden (profit stop doesn’t hit) exit manually near the close. It’s possible to get several months of profit off these extreme moves.

This chart of ABK from last year is a great example.  In anticipation of a PPT breakout a rested buy order above $8.70 was placed.  Going big, say 10,000 shares, a market order is a must.  The fill price isn’t as important as catching the momentum.  There is a saying, “Don’t be a prick over a tick.”

Conclusion

The essence of this strategy is catching a home run with a low risk entry.  Holding into the following day is a personal risk preference.  However, using margin hoping for continuation into the next day is very risky.  Follow through days have been trending down for decades now, and are especially thin today.  Hoping that will happen often eats through the profits on a perfect trade.

“The choice is between which mistake is easier to correct: underdoing it or overdoing it.” -Tim Geithner May 30, 2008

Ever notice how official speeches to prop up the US capital markets are timed right before a massive sell off?  How about those last hour rallies when the market looks really bad?  Today was a great example of a Plunge Protection Team (PPT) trading day.  This article will explain who they are, how they operate, and how you can profit.

Consider the background story on today’s market.  Does it make sense to engineer a rally while stalling on a stimulus plan.  The Washington wait-n-see numbers game is going strong.  Politicians, and the money behind them, are holding their ammo in reserve–no matter how often they deny this agenda.  They did it with the auto makers two months ago. Remember that?  A bailout was going to save the auto makers and then the market rallied out of nowhere, just when all looked lost.  The auto bailout almost became a non-event. The critical size of their cash infusion was nowhere near the size initially rumored.  The reality is, credit needed to cover all systemic threats to the market doesn’t exist. They wait and see for who is about to die, then they jump.

GTM covered this topic in detail last year, during a similar market environment.  You can read the full story here: Front Running A Systemic Market Crash: PPT Style.

Mechanics of the PPT
The following is from Robert McHugh, Ph.D. at Technical Indicator Index:

The origin of the Plunge Protection Team Intervention Risk Indicator:

For the past several years, we have seen repeated “out of the blue” short-covering rallies just about the time a  decline seems to be gaining some momentum. Our suspicion has been that the “Working Group” established by law in 1988 to buy markets should declines get out of control, has become far more interventionist than was originally intended under the law. This group has since been dubbed the Plunge Protection Team. There are no minutes of meetings, no recorded phone conversations, no reports of activities, no announcements of intentions. It is a secret group including the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Head of the SEC, and their surrogates which include some of the large Wall Street firms. The original objective was to prevent disastrous market crashes. Lately, it seems, they buy markets when they decide markets need to be bought, including equity markets.

Their main resource is the money the Fed prints. The money is injected into markets via the New York Fed’s Repo desk, which once upon a time showed up in the M-3 numbers, warning intervention was nigh. But, in November 2005, the Fed announced with little comment and no palatable explanation that it would no longer report the M-3 number after March 2006. Without the useful resource of M-3, we needed to find other tools to monitor when the PPT is likely to intervene, prolonging a rally and killing shorts.

For the PPT to be effective in driving markets higher, the potential for a sustained turnaround rally depends upon a high volume of open short interest. By measuring this short interest by the level of CBOE put options, we can gauge when markets are ripe for PPT intervention. The way it works is, the PPT decides markets need intervention, a decline needs to be stopped, or the risks associated with political events that could be perceived by markets as highly negative and cause a decline, need to be prevented by a rally already in flight. To get that rally, the PPT’s key component — the Fed — lends money to surrogates who will take that fresh electronically printed cash and buy markets through some large unknown buyer’s account. That buying comes out of the blue at a time when short interest is high. The unexpected rally strikes blood, and fear overcomes those who were betting the market would drop.

These shorts need to cover, need to buy the very stocks they had agreed to sell (without owning them) at today’s prices in anticipation they could buy them in the future at much lower prices and pocket the difference. Seeing those stocks rally above their committed selling price, the shorts are forced to buy — and buy they do. Thus, those most pessimistic about the equity market end up buying equities like mad, fueling the rally that the PPT started. Bingo, a huge turnaround rally is well underway, or a rally already underway is extended, and sidelines money from Hedge Funds, Mutual funds and individuals rushes to join in the buying madness for several days and weeks as the rally gathers a life of its own.

Ways to Build Edge for a PPT Rally

Look at the Fib 49.20 reversal on the VIX from the Oct. swing high and Jan. swing low:

Look at the 3min bars on FAS when it broke consolidation at $7.55.  This was a good setup. Another piece of edge for those anticipating a PPT push, which turned a breakdown into a clean W shaped day:

This is what a PPT rally looks like.  The prior day’s closing hour was a clue this could happen today. The yellow arrows show yesterday and today’s PPT push (right back to the previous day’s close–coincidence?):

This is what it looked like for the S&P 500.  Intraday you can see it happen with a massive push, the biggest move for the day:

Conclusion

Some people are calling today a bottom.  They are calling for a sustained bull rally.  Please consider our explanation of the PPT in lieu of a greed based wild guess.  We are in the greatest bear market of our lifetime.  Do you really think this market can turn around–suddenly?  See the Picture of the Day and draw your own conclusions about the overall market direction.

President Meets with Working Group on Financial Markets

Fact Sheet: December 2007 Marks Record 52nd Consecutive Month of Job Growth

“I had quite a fascinating and productive meeting with the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, chaired by Secretary Paulson. I want to thank the members for working diligently to monitor our capital market system, our financial system. And while there is some uncertainty, the report is, is that the financial markets are strong and solid. And I want to thank you for being diligent. This economy of ours is on a solid foundation…”

What is the Working Group on Financial Markets?

Executive Order 12631 — Working Group on Financial Markets

By virtue of the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, and in order to establish a Working Group on Financial Markets, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Establishment. (a) There is hereby established a Working Group on Financial Markets (Working Group). The Working Group shall be composed of:

(1) the Secretary of the Treasury, or his designee;

(2) the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, or his designee;

(3) the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, or his designee; and

(4) the Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or her designee.

(b) The Secretary of the Treasury, or his designee, shall be the Chairman of the Working Group.

Sec. 2. Purposes and Functions. (a) Recognizing the goals of enhancing the integrity, efficiency, orderliness, and competitiveness of our Nation’s financial markets and maintaining investor confidence, the Working Group shall identify and consider:

(1) the major issues raised by the numerous studies on the events in the financial markets surrounding October 19, 1987, and any of those recommendations that have the potential to achieve the goals noted above; and

(2) the actions, including governmental actions under existing laws and regulations (such as policy coordination and contingency planning), that are appropriate to carry out these recommendations.

(b) The Working Group shall consult, as appropriate, with representatives of the various exchanges, clearinghouses, self-regulatory bodies, and with major market participants to determine private sector solutions wherever possible.

(c) The Working Group shall report to the President initially within 60 days (and periodically thereafter) on its progress and, if appropriate, its views on any recommended legislative changes.

Sec. 3. Administration. (a) The heads of Executive departments, agencies, and independent instrumentalities shall, to the extent permitted by law, provide the Working Group such information as it may require for the purpose of carrying out this Order.

(b) Members of the Working Group shall serve without additional compensation for their work on the Working Group.

(c) To the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability of funds therefor, the Department of the Treasury shall provide the Working Group with such administrative and support services as may be necessary for the performance of its functions.

Ronald Reagan
The White House,
March 18, 1988.
[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 11:23 a.m., March 21, 1988]

Treasury’s War Room

These quiet meetings of the Working Group are the financial world’s equivalent of the war room. The officials gather regularly to discuss options and review crisis scenarios because they know that the government’s reaction to a crumbling stock market would have a critical impact on investor confidence around the world. (Fromsom)

In fact, as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the U.K. Telegraph notes, Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson has called for the PPT to meet with greater frequency and set up “a command centre at the US Treasury that will track global markets and serve as an operations base in the next crisis. The top brass will meet every six weeks, combining the heads of Treasury, Federal Reserve, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and key exchanges.”

“The government has a real role to play to make a 1987-style sudden market break less likely. That is an issue we all spent a lot of time thinking about and planning for,” said a former government official who attended Working Group meetings. “You go through lots of fire drills and scenarios. You make sure you have thought ahead of time of what kind of information you will need and what you have the legal authority to do.”

In the event of a financial crisis, each federal agency with a seat at the table of the Working Group has a confidential plan. At the SEC, for example, the plan is called the “red book” because of the color of its cover. It is officially known as the Executive Directory for Market Contingencies. The major U.S. stock markets have copies of the commission’s plan as well as the CFTC’s.

“We all have everybody’s home and weekend numbers,” said a former Working Group staff member.

The Working Group’s main goal, officials say, would be to keep the markets operating in the event of a sudden, stomach-churning plunge in stock prices — and to prevent a panicky run on banks, brokerage firms and mutual funds. Officials worry that if investors all tried to head for the exit at the same time, there wouldn’t be enough room — or in financial terms, liquidity — for them all to get through. In that event, the smoothly running global financial machine would begin to lock up.

This sort of liquidity crisis could imperil even healthy financial institutions that are temporarily short of cash or tradable assets such as U.S. Treasury securities. (Fromsom)

[This might explain the often seen cash infusion, or massive buying of index futures, after 2:30pm.]

According to John Crudele of the New York Post, the Plunge Protection Team’s (PPT) modus operandi was revealed by a former member of the Federal Reserve Board, Robert Heller. Heller said that disasters could be mitigated by “buying market averages in the futures market, thus stabilizing the market as a whole.”

Some Say the PPT Doesn’t Exist (from John Mauldin)

Every time the market drops and then “mysteriously” rallies, knowing individuals look at each other and nod, seeing the handiwork of the PPT.

Let’s say it straight out. The plunge protection team does not exist. It is an urban myth. Let me step by step prove it does not exist, and see if we can learn something in the process.

Art Cashin, of CNBC fame, and one of the real veterans of the markets, who has seen it all, wrote me the following very clear thoughts:

Trading desks do arbitrage program trading for a fraction of a percent on a trade. Any attempt by the Fed to manipulate the market would just make a lot of money for hedge funds and trading desks.

The amounts of money required to attempt such a manipulation would be huge. We are talking tens of billions of dollars if there was a true collapse going on. The collective size of the trading community in the world (hedge funds and “prop” desks – a prop desk is a proprietary desk for an investment bank or broker-dealer) is in the multiple hundreds of billions. It would require the willingness to lose billions of dollars every time you took the plunge, so to speak.

If the Fed or Treasury or some slush fund did buy stocks, it would inject liquidity or more total money into the financial system or money supply. Since the Fed openly manipulates the money supply every day in transactions that everyone can see, in order for the Fed to hide the activity of the PPT, they would have to take out liquidity by selling treasury notes. Otherwise, the numbers at the end of the day or week would not add up, and someone would notice. But if they were taking out liquidity and the money supply did not go down, then someone would know something was up. You can’t hide these numbers, unless you can get a lot of clerks at the Fed and elsewhere to agree to lie.

[Maybe not a lie. As Spock once said, "An omission." They stopped publishing M3 in March 2006. This is three years after Mauldin called it a myth.]

How To Hide PPT Action (from Mike Whitney)

This may explain why the Federal Reserve mysteriously decided to stop publishing its M-3 report. Since the Fed is the “main resource” for buying averages in the futures market “the money is injected into markets via the New York Fed’s Repo desk, which easily showed up in the M-3…. Without the useful resource of M-3”, Robert McHugh, Ph.D.says, “we need to find other tools to monitor when the PPT is likely to intervene, and kill shorts.”

What PPT Action Looks Like (from Minyanville)

Wall-Streeters and the media have called those who claim the government intervenes in the stock market ridiculous. They’d better. If it were ever found out that Washington does intervene in the market, all remaining confidence in the integrity of markets would be lost.

Tuesday morning in Europe when UBS (UBS) announced it would write down $19 billion and Deutsche Bank (DB) made similar pronouncements, both stocks were down big and the market was indicated much lower. That was the same day Lehman Brothers (LEH) was supposed to sell $3 billion in preferred stock to raise much needed capital. Imagine Lehman trying to get that deal done in such a messy tape.

Then all of a sudden those stocks began to turn. Along with the market, they closed higher on the day. Futures steadily rose all morning and methodically ended at the highs of the day. U.S. stocks saw one of the biggest rallies of the year. LEH not only got its deal done, but the stock rose so much the firm decided to grant another $1 billion in stock to its most loyal and secret investors.

It’s all highly convenient things turned out this way. The markets went from potential disaster based on fundamentals to a rip-roaring rally just when the government and banks needed it. It’s also highly suspicious.

But the pundits don’t do a very good job of debunking all the ancillary evidence of such intervention. Their main argument is that there’s no way to hide stock market buying by the government. That argument is very flimsy; there are many ways to hide it.

How about all these “loans” the Federal Reserve is making to dealers. There could easily be an arrangement that looks like a simple loan but in fact indemnifies the dealer from losses on any assets purchased with the proceeds of the loan. Just look at the deal the Fed made with JPMorgan (JPM) in buying Bear Stearns (BSC).

The Fed said it was taking control of $30 billion of a BSC portfolio, but not buying those assets, as currently the 1913 Federal Reserve act doesn’t permit such an action. However, the Fed is the the residual claimant, so it’s apparent it effectively has equity even if it won’t admit it. Overall, the Fed appears to be using any legal or structural manifestations necessary to accomplish what it wants to do despite what the Federal Reserve Act actually permits it to do.

How To Stage A PPT Bull Run

The editors of the New York Times summarized the feelings of many market-watchers who were baffled by this odd recovery:

“The torrent of bad news on housing is only worsening, with a report yesterday that new home sales for January had their steepest slide in 13 years…Manufacturing has already slipped into a recession, with activity contracting in two of the last three months. How is it then that investors took Mr. Bernanke’s words as a “buy” signal?”

Robert McHugh, Ph.D. has provided a description of how it works which seems consistent with the comments of Robert Heller. McHugh lays it out like this:

The PPT decides markets need intervention, a decline needs to be stopped, or the risks associated with political events that could be perceived by markets as highly negative and cause a decline; need to be prevented by a rally already in flight. To get that rally, the PPT’s key component — the Fed — lends money to surrogates who will take that fresh electronically printed cash and buy markets through some large unknown buyer’s account. That buying comes out of the blue at a time when short interest is high. The unexpected rally strikes blood, and fear overcomes those who were betting the market would drop. These shorts need to cover, need to buy the very stocks they had agreed to sell (without owning them) at today’s prices in anticipation they could buy them in the future at much lower prices and pocket the difference. Seeing those stocks rally above their committed selling price, the shorts are forced to buy — and buy they do. Thus, those most pessimistic about the equity market end up buying equities like mad, fueling the rally that the PPT started. Bingo, a huge turnaround rally is well underway, and sidelines money from Hedge Funds, Mutual funds and individuals’ rushes in to join in the buying madness for several days and weeks as the rally gathers a life of its own. (Robert McHugh, Ph.D., “The Plunge Protection Team Indicator”)

According to Michael Edward: (“The Secrets of the Plunge Protection Team” Rense.com)

“Since 911, there have been at least three major long-term stock market rallies. In all 3 instances, when the markets opened all the indexes began to quickly plunge. In each incidence, by early afternoon the markets were brought back from the brink of collapse to the surprise of everyone, including historical analysts….An event that should have sent markets spiraling downward was the Enron, et al, unprecedented corporate accounting scandals. Yet despite this, an unprecedented across-the-board markets rally began on July 24, 2002. Once again, the European Press called it a ‘PPT rally.’”

The Danger of Free Market Intervention

Edward goes on to say that outside the US it’s “no secret” that the market is being manipulated. He cites an article in the UK Guardian on 9-16-01 which states, “that a secretive committee… dubbed ‘the plunge protection team’… is ready to coordinate intervention by the Federal Reserve on an unprecedented scale. The Fed, supported by the banks, will buy equities from mutual funds and other institutional sellers.”

Kenneth J. Gerbino put it like this in his recent article “The Big Sell Off” on kitco.com:

Latest figures from the Bank of International Settlements: $8.3 trillion of real money is controlling $313 trillion in derivatives. That’s 38 to 1 leverage. These figures are just for the over – the – counter derivatives and do not include the global exchange traded derivatives in currencies, stocks and commodities which are another $75 trillion.”

“$8.3 trillion of real money is controlling $313 trillion in derivatives!”

This illustrates the sheer magnitude of the problem and the economy-busting potential of a miscalculation. That’s why Warren Buffett calls derivatives “financial weapons of mass destruction.” If there’s a fire-sale in hedge funds or derivatives, there’s nothing the Plunge Protection Team or the Federal Reserve will be able to do to stop a meltdown. The market will crash leaving nothing behind.

Conclusion (from Bob Chapman)

Treasury securities are also used to fuel the Fed’s repo pool which is used to power the PPT’s market manipulations by making tens of billions of dollars available on a moment’s notice. The Fed creates money out of nothing to buy treasuries from the primary dealers, who then use the sales proceeds to fund the operations of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets which assists the elitists in stealing from you on a 24/7 basis. The dealers offer to buy these securities back from the Fed within a month or less in what are called repurchase agreements. Thus, this “funny money” is shoveled back and forth from the Fed to the primary dealers and from the primary dealers back to the Fed as needed whenever the Illuminati deign that financial assistance for manipulation of markets is needed.

Treasuries are therefore the engine which drives this fraudulent scheme, a scheme that is completely illegal because the authority granted in Reagan’s Executive Order creating the PPT is exceeded beyond all belief in what one day will be exposed as the greatest abuse of financial power by US government officials in the history of our country. Because of this blatant illegality, Buck-Busting Ben and Hanky Panky Paulson deny that the PPT does anything but meet occasionally to brainstorm pending issues.

Sources:

Executive Order 12631 — Working Group on Financial Markets
March 18, 1988
Stock Market Manipulation – The secret maneuverings of the Plunge Protection Team (PPT)
by Mike Whitney
The Key To All Market Analysis
by Bob Chapman
July 5 2008
President Meets with Working Group on Financial Markets
Market Manipulation Under Veil of Secrecy?
Minyanville
Apr 03, 2008
Plunge Protection Team
by Brett D. Fromson
The Washington Post
Sunday, February 23, 1997; Page H01
NYSE Announces Third-Quarter 2008 Circuit-Breaker Levels
June 30, 2008
http://www.nyse.com/press/circuit_breakers.html
The Plunge Protection Team
by John Mauldin
April 05, 2003