If Hedge Funds can't make money than who can?

Blackstone's Wien Says Fund Returns May Shrink by Half to Protect Capital


By Tom Cahill - Jun 15, 2010 Email Share

Vice chairman of Blackstone Group's advisory services division Byron Wein. Source: Blackstone Group LP via Bloomberg

Byron Wien, vice chairman of Blackstone Group LP’s advisory services division, said hedge fund returns may shrink by half as firms seek to protect investors’ capital.



Returns may drop to 10 percent from 20 percent as funds lose their “zeal,” Wien, 77, told the GAIM International hedge fund conference at Monaco’s Grimaldi Forum today.



“I’m worried that by trying to protect capital on the downside they give up too much on the upside,” he said. “The concept of hedge funds was to produce equity-like returns with bond-like volatility. The danger is we get bond-like returns with equity-like volatility.”



Hedge funds lost an average of 2.6 percent in May, the worst month since November 2008, according to the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index. The S&P 500 retreated 8.2 percent, the biggest monthly drop since February 2007.



Wien called for a stock market rally in the U.S. last week, saying that Europe’s debt crisis caused too much pessimism in the U.S., where profits for companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index are projected to rise 17 percent this year. He forecasts the S&P 500 will climb to 1,300 from 1,089 before ending the year around 1100, where it started.



In April, he forecast that oil would go to $100 a barrel. At the time it was trading at $87, and is now trading at $75.25.



Wien called last year’s rally in stocks, oil and gold correctly. He incorrectly predicted that the dollar would fall to $1.65 against the euro. It fell to $1.51 in November 2009 and is now trading at $1.22.



Wien was chief strategist at hedge fund Pequot Capital Management Inc. from 2005 to 2009. He was a senior strategist at Morgan Stanley before joining Pequot.



To contact the reporter on this story: Tom Cahill in London at tcahill@bloomberg.net

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Not surprised to see WFC which was my favorite stock to trade.

Here is the Link:

http://www.businessinsider.com/25-stocks-being-manipulated-by-high-frequency-traders-2010-6

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Head Fund Watch - May 2010

Now we have roughly 1,000 more funds reporting returns for May than we had on the 11th (1818) notice that the return edged lower and this is probably the first half and likely to be the best of the bunch.  Expect this week a continued slew of bad numbers, and soon we should here from the few that are making a killing.

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William Tell's Daily Aimed Market Forecast - For 6/16/2010

A complimentary copy of William Tell's Daily Aimed Market Forecast (Excerpts below) can be downloaded from the William Tell sharesite found through the side menu... enjoy! WT

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William Tell's Daily Aimed Market Forecast - For 6/15/2010

A complimentary copy of William Tell's Daily Aimed Market Forecast (Excerpts below) can be downloaded from the William Tell sharesite found through the side menu... enjoy! WT

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Hedge Fund Watch - May 2010

Notice the that only 1818 funds reporting their returns for May by June 11.  This isn't unusual as many don't report until this week. 

Expect this week a slew of bad numbers.

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Jun 14, 1777: Congress adopts the Stars and Stripes - Flag Day

Gee ya think maybe if they added one or two more stripes we'd be better off?  i mean Thirteen is unlucky isn't it?  Nothing to trade here, just good ol' fashioned historical trivia.

During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress adopts a resolution stating that "the flag of the United States be thirteen alternate stripes red and white" and that "the Union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation." The national flag, which became known as the "Stars and Stripes," was based on the "Grand Union" flag, a banner carried by the Continental Army in 1776 that also consisted of 13 red and white stripes. According to legend, Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross designed the new canton for the Stars and Stripes, which consisted of a circle of 13 stars and a blue background, at the request of General George Washington. Historians have been unable to conclusively prove or disprove this legend.




With the entrance of new states into the United States after independence, new stripes and stars were added to represent new additions to the Union. In 1818, however, Congress enacted a law stipulating that the 13 original stripes be restored and that only stars be added to represent new states.



On June 14, 1877, the first Flag Day observance was held on the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the Stars and Stripes. As instructed by Congress, the U.S. flag was flown from all public buildings across the country. In the years after the first Flag Day, several states continued to observe the anniversary, and in 1949 Congress officially designated June 14 as Flag Day, a national day of observance.

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Suspicion confirmed

May proves cruelest month for hedge funds Suspicion


By Sam Jones, Hedge Fund Correspondent



Published: June 8 2010 20:07
Last updated: June 8 2010 20:07



On May 6, days after the EU moved to implement a huge €750bn bail-out package and on the eve of the UK’s knife-edge general election, traders at the world’s biggest hedge funds watched as wonderland numbers flickered across their screens.



Shares in Procter & Gamble plummeted 37 per cent on no news. Blue chip corporates traded for cents. In minutes the US Dow fell more than 9 per cent – its second-biggest intraday movement, after the great crash of 1929. Prices bounced back after this so-called “flash crash”, but confidence didn’t.



May has been the worst month for the average hedge fund since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in October 2008, according to industry data out on Tuesday – and for many it is a reminder that, in spite of 18 months of bullish markets, the world is still walking a financial tightrope.



Indeed, to some hedge fund traders’ eyes, the way individual names moved during the now infamous May 6 movements in the Dow was disconcertingly similar to the events of August 2007 – when previously imperceptible subprime jitters in the credit markets translated into a mass computerised dumping of stocks by the giant quantitative hedge funds AQR, Renaissance Capital and Goldman’s Global Alpha fund.



Though no explanation was forthcoming for the causes of the flash crash, it was, in the days that followed, painted as a freak event – idiosyncratic and technical.



EDITOR’S CHOICE

In depth: Hedge funds - Jun-08UK’s Europe minister vows to defend City - Jun-08Hedge funds win G20 support - Jun-07Fallen star RAB picks itself up with a reformed structure - May-23Hendry takes big bet on China crash - May-21Hedge funds losing the Ucits battle - May-11Scant comfort was available for many hedge funds, though. On the Thursday and Friday of the first week of May, some lost billions.



From its newly opened offices in Geneva, traders for BlueTrend, the $10bn quantitative fund run by Brazilian financial engineer Leda Braga, saw the flagship portfolio dive 7.5 per cent – a loss of nearly a billion dollars – in the first week of May alone. BlueTrend closed May down 8.5 per cent, unable to recover.



For some funds, May was not merely on a par with but worse than October 2008.



According to Hedge Fund Research information published on Tuesday, the average hedge fund lost 2.26 per cent in May. Every single hedge fund strategy lost money during the month. And in many cases, it was the biggest and best-known hedge funds – such as BlueTrend – that suffered the most.



Paulson & Co – perhaps after its phenomenally successful shorting of the US subprime market in 2007 and 2008, the best known hedge fund in the world – was among those hit hard. The firm’s flagship Advantage fund, which alone manages close to $7bn, closed the month down 4.8 per cent. Worst hit, however, was the manager’s Recovery fund – set up in early 2009 to capitalise on the bounce-back of the global economy. The $7bn fund dropped 8.7 per cent in May, though it remains up 14.35 per cent so far this year.



The losses are noteworthy not so much for their size, or the concern they might have caused investors, but rather because they caught so many off guard and were so widespread.



The first half of the month was marked by a growing panic from many of the largest funds to delever and unwind their biggest positions. April had caught many off guard. During that month, funds had been increasingly confident of their positions and outlook in global markets – not least as far as the eurozone was concerned. For many, April was a month to hammer home their advantage by bulking up their positions.



For macro funds, which trade on global economic imbalances, the eurozone’s difficulties were a godsend. Funds piled into “differentiation trades” – typically short the euro, and long Asian or Latin American currencies and equities. They were undone by the size of their positions.



“As problems in Europe grew, many market participants including banks and hedge funds began to try and derisk the other leg of their short euro trade – the large, long emerging markets positions – and they all rushed out at once,” says Jamil Samaha at CQS, a large London credit hedge fund.



The effect was a sudden fall in Asian markets that triggered a vicious cycle of derisking. Losses on macro funds’ long-Asian plays far outstripped gains on their short-euro positions.



Some global macro funds were able to staunch the losses, others were not. Brevan Howard, Europe’s largest macro hedge fund, saw its flagship vehicle down 0.7 per cent as of May 21. Paul Tudor Jones’ BVI Global fund closed the month down 2.26 per cent. Moore Capital, however, saw its flagship fund lose 7.7 per cent.



“There were movements in credit during May that were greater than anything we saw after Lehmans,” says a manager at one of the world’s biggest credit traders. “The banks were panicked. They were marking positions to the bone and we were marking some big losses mid-month.”



The effect cycled into the bond markets. Hedge funds specialising in convertible arbitrage were hit hard, according to brokers. As funds looked to hedge their risks, they bought CDS protection en masse, forcing spreads wider and only further exacerbating the cost of hedging. The only choice was to dump the underlying instruments.



In the words of one hedge fund manager, May was “a wilderness of mirrors” – when the many uncertainties and unknowns of an overstretched market became impossible to square.



The question for managers now, though, is how to make back money and where the crisis will go next – a quandary that depends on whether May’s events were an aberration, or the beginning of a new secular bear market.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.

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William Tell's Daily Aimed Market Forecast - For 6/11/2010

A complimentary copy of William Tell's Daily Aimed Market Forecast (Excerpts below) can be downloaded from the William Tell sharesite found through the side menu... enjoy! WT

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William Tell's Daily Aimed Market Forecast - For 6/10/2010

A complimentary copy of William Tell's Daily Aimed Market Forecast (Excerpts below) can be downloaded from the William Tell sharesite found through the side menu... enjoy!  WT

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Yes Affirmation! FT Rules!

Yes all in one felt swoop FT confirms my assertions about the origin of the Flash Crash in the John Henry and the Steam Shovel and several other posts in the last few weeks, except that the selling started a couple of months earlier than the Flash Crash and now hedgies are dumping and running cause the clients are freakin walkin.  Blue heron losing $1 Billion after the fund was only open for 1 week!  Zoikes!  Now it appears that the majority of the hedge funds were caught flatfooted, by the Flash Crash as I suspected several of the big guys were, but who was selling in March and April?  Chanos?  Einhorn? RenTec aka Simons?  we'll know when we see the return data at the end of this month.

May proves cruellest month for hedge funds


By Sam Jones, Hedge Fund Correspondent



Published: June 8 2010 20:07
Last updated: June 8 2010 20:07



On May 6, days after the EU moved to implement a huge €750bn bail-out package and on the eve of the UK’s knife-edge general election, traders at the world’s biggest hedge funds watched as wonderland numbers flickered across their screens.



Shares in Procter & Gamble plummeted 37 per cent on no news. Blue chip corporates traded for cents. In minutes the US Dow fell more than 9 per cent – its second-biggest intraday movement, after the great crash of 1929. Prices bounced back after this so-called “flash crash”, but confidence didn’t.



May has been the worst month for the average hedge fund since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in October 2008, according to industry data out on Tuesday – and for many it is a reminder that, in spite of 18 months of bullish markets, the world is still walking a financial tightrope.



Indeed, to some hedge fund traders’ eyes, the way individual names moved during the now infamous May 6 movements in the Dow was disconcertingly similar to the events of August 2007 – when previously imperceptible subprime jitters in the credit markets translated into a mass computerised dumping of stocks by the giant quantitative hedge funds AQR, Renaissance Capital and Goldman’s Global Alpha fund.



Though no explanation was forthcoming for the causes of the flash crash, it was, in the days that followed, painted as a freak event – idiosyncratic and technical.



Scant comfort was available for many hedge funds, though. On the Thursday and Friday of the first week of May, some lost billions.



From its newly opened offices in Geneva, traders for BlueTrend, the $10bn quantitative fund run by Brazilian financial engineer Leda Braga, saw the flagship portfolio dive 7.5 per cent – a loss of nearly a billion dollars – in the first week of May alone. BlueTrend closed May down 8.5 per cent, unable to recover.



For some funds, May was not merely on a par with but worse than October 2008.



According to Hedge Fund Research information published on Tuesday, the average hedge fund lost 2.26 per cent in May. Every single hedge fund strategy lost money during the month. And in many cases, it was the biggest and best-known hedge funds – such as BlueTrend – that suffered the most.



Paulson & Co – perhaps after its phenomenally successful shorting of the US subprime market in 2007 and 2008, the best known hedge fund in the world – was among those hit hard. The firm’s flagship Advantage fund, which alone manages close to $7bn, closed the month down 4.8 per cent. Worst hit, however, was the manager’s Recovery fund – set up in early 2009 to capitalise on the bounce-back of the global economy. The $7bn fund dropped 8.7 per cent in May, though it remains up 14.35 per cent so far this year.



The losses are noteworthy not so much for their size, or the concern they might have caused investors, but rather because they caught so many off guard and were so widespread.



The first half of the month was marked by a growing panic from many of the largest funds to delever and unwind their biggest positions. April had caught many off guard. During that month, funds had been increasingly confident of their positions and outlook in global markets – not least as far as the eurozone was concerned. For many, April was a month to hammer home their advantage by bulking up their positions.



For macro funds, which trade on global economic imbalances, the eurozone’s difficulties were a godsend. Funds piled into “differentiation trades” – typically short the euro, and long Asian or Latin American currencies and equities. They were undone by the size of their positions.



“As problems in Europe grew, many market participants including banks and hedge funds began to try and derisk the other leg of their short euro trade – the large, long emerging markets positions – and they all rushed out at once,” says Jamil Samaha at CQS, a large London credit hedge fund.



The effect was a sudden fall in Asian markets that triggered a vicious cycle of derisking. Losses on macro funds’ long-Asian plays far outstripped gains on their short-euro positions.



Some global macro funds were able to staunch the losses, others were not. Brevan Howard, Europe’s largest macro hedge fund, saw its flagship vehicle down 0.7 per cent as of May 21. Paul Tudor Jones’ BVI Global fund closed the month down 2.26 per cent. Moore Capital, however, saw its flagship fund lose 7.7 per cent.



“There were movements in credit during May that were greater than anything we saw after Lehmans,” says a manager at one of the world’s biggest credit traders. “The banks were panicked. They were marking positions to the bone and we were marking some big losses mid-month.”



The effect cycled into the bond markets. Hedge funds specialising in convertible arbitrage were hit hard, according to brokers. As funds looked to hedge their risks, they bought CDS protection en masse, forcing spreads wider and only further exacerbating the cost of hedging. The only choice was to dump the underlying instruments.



In the words of one hedge fund manager, May was “a wilderness of mirrors” – when the many uncertainties and unknowns of an overstretched market became impossible to square.



The question for managers now, though, is how to make back money and where the crisis will go next – a quandary that depends on whether May’s events were an aberration, or the beginning of a new secular bear market.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.

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William Tell's Daily Aimed Market Forecast

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BIGGS, BUFFET, FINK, and WIEN, LLC.

Over the last two or three weeks each of these guys has touted that the market is ready to "Rock and Roll" and apparently this is like the four sided slow song or a lullaby, each has spoken on their belief that the bear market is over done, and there are lots of bargains out there. 

So I'd like to know which of one of these guys was buying on Friday, because according to them that would have been a great opportunity to buy when everyone was piling up against the door to get out. 

The reason why I know that they weren't buying anything was that the activity was this.. ZERO.  Gee looks like the tide went out and they were all swimming with no trunks.  These guys aren't buying they are selling and if they are buying they are stupider than I thought. 

Really these guys are traders so they are always either talking up their book or trying to ease out of it.  Einhorn, Chanos (Short) et al.  appear to be more effective at talking up  their book, than the Hedge Fund of BBFW.  I have a lot of respect for these guys, but it is clearly evident no one has been buying much of anything the last two days.  So I smell low tide.

Bear Options at Record as Wien Says Stocks to Rally (Update2)


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By Jeff Kearns and Rita Nazareth



June 7 (Bloomberg) -- Confidence in stocks is sinking to record lows in the options market even with the U.S. economy poised for its fastest growth in six years, a sign to Blackstone Group LP’s Byron Wien that it’s time to buy.



Contracts that pay off should the benchmark index for U.S. stocks plunge more than 23 percent from its April high cost 75 percent more than those speculating on gains, the biggest premium ever, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and OptionMetrics LLC. The 10-day average difference exceeded 50 percent 34 times since 1996. In those cases, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index gained a median 7.2 percent in six months.



Wien says the gap shows Europe’s debt crisis caused too much pessimism in the U.S., where S&P 500 companies are forecast to post 38 percent profit growth in two years. Rising demand for insurance shows investors unwilling to sell stocks have hedged against losses, according to New York-based Morgan Stanley.



“People are trying to protect themselves and they are willing to overpay for it,” said Wien, 77, the Blackstone adviser who foresaw last year’s gains in stocks and oil and predicts the S&P 500 will rally to 1,300 before ending 2010 little changed. “Bearishness is high. The best time to buy stocks is when the level of bearishness is at a peak.”



Bank of America Corp. and the Oil Services Holders Trust are among stocks with bearish options priced highest relative to bullish ones, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. So-called two-month skew for the Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender and the energy exchange-traded fund exceeds 38 percent, data compiled by Bloomberg show.



Employment Disappoints



U.S. equities fell last week, with the S&P 500 dropping 2.3 percent to 1,064.88, as a Labor Department report showed private employers added 41,000 jobs in May, 77 percent fewer than the median forecasts of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The stock index extended its 2010 retreat to 4.5 percent. The S&P 500 lost 1.4 percent to 1,050.47 today as Google Inc. and Apple Inc. led a drop in technology shares and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was subpoenaed in the financial-crisis investigation.



Profits for S&P 500 companies are projected to rise 17 percent in 2010 and 18 percent next year, estimates from more than 2,000 analysts compiled by Bloomberg show. The index trades at 13.1 times 2010 per-share earnings forecasts, compared with an average 16.4 times reported income since 1954. Economists predict gross domestic product will expand 3.2 percent this year, the most since 3.6 percent in 204, the data show.



23% Retreat



The 10-day average premium for options that pay off should the S&P 500 decline to 940 jumped to 75.7 percent on May 27 and remains within a percentage point of the record, based on data compiled by Bloomberg and OptionMetrics, a New York-based provider of options market data and analytics. A retreat to that level would represent a 23 percent drop from the April high, exceeding the 20 percent commonly defined as a bear market.



“When you see this much fear in the market, it’s probably the time to get a little more constructive and possibly look to putting money to work,” said Peter Sorrentino, who helps oversee $13.3 billion at Huntington Asset Advisors in Cincinnati. “The skew is too heavy. The paranoia premium has driven it up.”



Billionaire Warren Buffett said in a press conference on May 1 that his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is ready to spend as much as $10 billion on an acquisition as the economy improves. Buffett, chief executive officer of the Omaha, Nebraska-based insurer and investment company made an “all-in wager” on the U.S. by paying $27 billion for Fort Worth, Texas-based railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. in February.



Rally Signal



When bearish puts cost 50 percent more than bullish calls, the S&P 500 rallied 28 times during the next six months and declined 6 times, according to OptionMetrics data going back to 1996 compiled by Bloomberg. The biggest gain started in November 1997, when the index rose 18 percent and the premium increased to 54.1 percent, data show. The S&P 500 plunged 35 percent after the skew reached 50.2 percent in June 2008.



More than $1.9 trillion has been erased from American equities since April 23 on concern budget deficits in Greece, Portugal and Spain will spur bank losses and freeze lending. The S&P 500 slid 3.4 percent to a four-month low on June 4 following the jobs report and speculation that Hungary’s budget deficit may force a default.



A group of U.S. financial companies posted the third- biggest retreat during the selloff since April, falling 16 percent. Energy and commodity producers both lost 17 percent.



‘Tail Risk’



“The tail risk of a significant stock market correction is very high now, thus the option prices correctly reflect the cost of hedging against” a decline, Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who warned of a financial crisis in 2006, said in an e-mail on June 2. “Macro risks and financial risk are significantly rising.”



Rising options costs suggest money managers are suffering smaller losses than are reflected in benchmark indexes after Europe’s crisis sent the S&P 500 down 8.2 percent in May, the biggest monthly slump since February 2009, said Christopher Metli, a derivatives strategist at Morgan Stanley. Hedge funds fell 2.6 percent last month, according to the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index. That was the largest drop since November 2008, two months after New York-based Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed the biggest-ever bankruptcy.



“The market’s telling you that investors are still bullish, and they’re hanging onto their positions, but they’re protecting through options,” Metli said. “Investors are worried about sovereign contagion, and the growth slowdown transmitting globally.”



Bank of America



Traders are buying options on Bank of America amid the 1.9 percent rally in its stock this year. The second-biggest U.S. home lender behind San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co. said on June 2 that loan charge-offs may have peaked as demand improves. The company posted losses of about $9 billion in its mortgage unit since January 2008, Bloomberg data show.



The Oil Services ETF has plunged 31 percent since April 23. The security is made up of companies such as Vernier, Switzerland-based Transocean Ltd. and Halliburton Co. and Schlumberger Ltd. in Houston that declined after U.S. President Barrack Obama proposed extending a moratorium on deepwater drilling. New York-based Citigroup Inc. was the fund’s biggest holder with 3.55 million shares, or 19 percent of those outstanding, as of March 31, data compiled by Bloomberg show.



“It could be a buying opportunity,” said Wayne Lin, a money manager at Baltimore-based Legg Mason Inc., which manages $685 billion. “Stocks are at good value. Earnings are growing fairly strongly. Economic fundamentals are still strong, especially for the U.S., making it possible that the risks are overblown.”



To contact the reporters on this story: Rita Nazareth in New York at rnazareth@bloomberg.net; Jeff Kearns in New York at jkearns3@bloomberg.net.



Last Updated: June 7, 2010 16:49 EDT

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The Case For DOW 4500 WATCH IT Unfold! - Week 6

The share and dollar volume on selling is just huge, about half of what it was on Friday, but still very heavy.  This step doesn't feel done although the TRIN ending the day at 2.0 makes it easier to have a pop early tomorrow, but I doubt it will last.

Here is that monthly Russell 3000 chart with the big ol' Head and Shoulders pattern thirteen years, there is an additional H&S on the same chart daily from December also confrimed.  This still looks so nasty.  Be careful and don't overstay your welcome.

See Yesterday's Chart O' The Day for the UUP, chart...

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UUP, UUP, and AWAY...er... down we go?!?

UUP approaching levels we haven't seen since the unhinging of the markets since late 08 and early 09, yes the big down swings. 

This TRIN (above) is comical. Generally, a trin THAT ends that out of whack would be screaming big rally on Monday, but I tend to think not because of the last picture and the decisive nature of the sell off across everything (see below) the tale of the tape. 

BTW, you can subscribe to my Daily Aimed Market Analysis where you get this analysis and more, check it out on the newly added share site! Where is it?          Hint: Check the side menu bar!

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1933 and 2010 Concentration

What if we drilled down on the 1929-1933 $DJI Era what would we see?

Well the Gestalt view (looking at the whole) last 7 plus decades, probably not much, but when you look at the period of 1929-1933 you have to ask yourself does this relate to our current situation?

Are we at the beginning or the end?  Is 2010 = 1931 or is it = 1937?  My hunch is that this is more like 1931.

The market at that time was equivalent to a 37 story building (10ft=1 Story).  FYI, the tallest building at the at that time was 48 stories (The NY Mercantile). 

A fall of a 37 story building was just as deadly as it is today, except the buildings being built today are well in excess of 100 stories, one of the the tallest buildings being planned is in excess of 160 stories.  Yes you guessed it.... in Dubai! I guess the extra stories gives you more time to think about how you got to where you were and where you are going.   

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This Day and Week In History

This Week in History, Jun 6 - Jun 12

1. Jun 06, 1944 D-Day
2. Jun 07, 1913 First successful ascent of Mt. McKinley
3. Jun 08, 1968 King assassination suspect arrested
4. Jun 09, 1973 Secretariat wins Triple Crown
5. Jun 10, 1752 Franklin flies kite during thunderstorm
6. Jun 11, 1979 John Wayne dies
7. Jun 12, 1987 Reagan challenges Gorbachev.

Although the term D-Day is used routinely as military lingo for the day an operation or event will take place, for many it is also synonymous with June 6, 1944, the day the Allied powers crossed the English Channel and landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, beginning the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi control during World War II. Within three months, the northern part of France would be freed and the invasion force would be preparing to enter Germany, where they would meet up with Soviet forces moving in from the east.




With Hitler's armies in control of most of mainland Europe, the Allies knew that a successful invasion of the continent was central to winning the war. Hitler knew this too, and was expecting an assault on northwestern Europe in the spring of 1944. He hoped to repel the Allies from the coast with a strong counterattack that would delay future invasion attempts, giving him time to throw the majority of his forces into defeating the Soviet Union in the east. Once that was accomplished, he believed an all-out victory would soon be his.



On the morning of June 5, 1944, U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe gave the go-ahead for Operation Overlord, the largest amphibious military operation in history. On his orders, 6,000 landing craft, ships and other vessels carrying 176,000 troops began to leave England for the trip to France. That night, 822 aircraft filled with parachutists headed for drop zones in Normandy. An additional 13,000 aircraft were mobilized to provide air cover and support for the invasion.



By dawn on June 6, 18,000 parachutists were already on the ground; the land invasions began at 6:30 a.m. The British and Canadians overcame light opposition to capture Gold, Juno and Sword beaches; so did the Americans at Utah. The task was much tougher at Omaha beach, however, where 2,000 troops were lost and it was only through the tenacity and quick-wittedness of troops on the ground that the objective was achieved. By day's end, 155,000 Allied troops--Americans, British and Canadians--had successfully stormed Normandy’s beaches.



For their part, the Germans suffered from confusion in the ranks and the absence of celebrated commander Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who was away on leave. At first, Hitler, believing that the invasion was a feint designed to distract the Germans from a coming attack north of the Seine River, refused to release nearby divisions to join the counterattack and reinforcements had to be called from further afield, causing delays. He also hesitated in calling for armored divisions to help in the defense. In addition, the Germans were hampered by effective Allied air support, which took out many key bridges and forced the Germans to take long detours, as well as efficient Allied naval support, which helped protect advancing Allied troops.



Though it did not go off exactly as planned, as later claimed by British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery--for example, the Allies were able to land only fractions of the supplies and vehicles they had intended in France--D-Day was a decided success. By the end of June, the Allies had 850,000 men and 150,000 vehicles in Normandy and were poised to continue their march across Europe.



The heroism and bravery displayed by troops from the Allied countries on D-Day has served as inspiration for several films, most famously The Longest Day (1962) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). It was also depicted in the HBO mini-series Band of Brothers (2001).

GBUS

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FDR takes United States off gold standard - June 5th 1933

On June 5, 1933, the United States went off the gold standard, a monetary system in which currency is backed by gold, when Congress enacted a joint resolution nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold. The United States had been on a gold standard since 1879, except for an embargo on gold exports during World War I, but bank failures during the Great Depression of the 1930s frightened the public into hoarding gold, making the policy untenable.




Soon after taking office in March 1933, Roosevelt declared a nationwide bank moratorium in order to prevent a run on the banks by consumers lacking confidence in the economy. He also forbade banks to pay out gold or to export it. According to Keynesian economic theory, one of the best ways to fight off an economic downturn is to inflate the money supply. And increasing the amount of gold held by the Federal Reserve would in turn increase its power to inflate the money supply. Facing similar pressures, Britain had dropped the gold standard in 1931, and Roosevelt had taken note.



On April 5, 1933, Roosevelt ordered all gold coins and gold certificates in denominations of more than $100 turned in for other money. It required all persons to deliver all gold coin, gold bullion and gold certificates owned by them to the Federal Reserve by May 1 for the set price of $20.67 per ounce. By May 10, the government had taken in $300 million of gold coin and $470 million of gold certificates. Two months later, a joint resolution of Congress abrogated the gold clauses in many public and private obligations that required the debtor to repay the creditor in gold dollars of the same weight and fineness as those borrowed. In 1934, the government price of gold was increased to $35 per ounce, effectively increasing the gold on the Federal Reserve's balance sheets by 69 percent. This increase in assets allowed the Federal Reserve to further inflate the money supply.



The government held the $35 per ounce price until August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon announced that the United States would no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed value, thus completely abandoning the gold standard. In 1974, President Gerald Ford signed legislation that permitted Americans again to own gold bullion.

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The Case For DOW 4500 WATCH IT Unfold! - Week 5 - $SPX - ALL RED

Wow is all I can say...  I got a baaaaaaaaaaaaadd feeling about this...

Oh and here is the PC Ration and volumes as of 2:19:46 PM EST, this just saying go short.  BTW, this is courtesy of TOS Platform.  It rocks!

Here is the closing picture for today 5 stocks in the S&P 500 finished up!  The PC Ratio below tells the story as does the $ and trade volume.  I can't imagine any investor wanting to be playing in this, I have to think even big investors are also getting leery.  Today I think I heard some necks snapping and backs breaking as any hedge funds that might have had a chance to live after May no just got their throats stomped. 

I can't believe Larry Fink and Barton Biggs came out bullish!  They aren't looking too smart right now.  Here is the above to snap shots again, after market close.  YUCK!

PC/Ratio of .28 on advancing stocks... WOW!  Over 1.601 on declining stocks. This just screams short on Monday too!

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The Case for DOW 4500 WATCH IT Unfold! - Week 5 - A Little Dipper

I  just wanted to bring this to your attention.  A nice head and shoulders on the daily $SPX, $DJI and $RUA looks like it is close to completing the right shoulder.  This pattern has been in development since December 2009, clearly this pattern should give anyone special heed if you are considering buying into these bargains. 

This H&S pattern is encapsulated witihn the 20 year pattern I have been writing about extensively. 

If you subscribed to my Aimed Daily Market Forecast or Aimed Bi-Monthly Market Forecast you would have known about the potentiality of it 24 hours ago.  Check out the William Tell TradeCraft store for details, just click the June 1 bi-monhtly report image.

Todays action looks to have made this right shoulder a done deal, definately bad news for Monday-Next week, unless something extraordinarily positive happens...

It's possible this could still head up, but it actually double topped, so I 'd say it's a goner.  Especially since the the DOW dropped 150 at the open.  Maybe a success story out of the Gulf will stem the bleeding, but even that may not be enough good news.

The $RUA is sans Fibonacci lines...  Each chart looks the same there is no escaping this Large Cap, Small Cap, Micro Cap, it just doesn't matter.

The little dipper.

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