iftttwall – Page 26521

S&P Closes Above 1800, Posts 7th Consecutive Weekly Increase: Longest Streak Since 2007

The S&P 500 has now managed the longest weekly winning streak (7 weeks) since May 2007 (when it managed a 9% gain). Off the recent lows, the current run is an impressive 9.6% (for the S&P) with Trannies up 12.5% in the same period. (we hesitate to mention that May 2007's run-up was halted by the first of the structured credit funds imploding) On the week, Trannies and NASDAQ ended back practically unch, Russell 2000 outperformed but the afternoon melt-up in stocks (on the back of more shorts being squeezed) held the S&P above 1,800 close for the first time ever. Bonds rallied (recovering a lot of their mid-week losses), the USD was offered in general (led by EUR strength) but AUD's 2% loss was notable. VIX was manhandled to 12.25% into the close to maintain the headline-grabbing 1,800 as gold and silver clung to their lows.

The 7-week winning streak of the S&P 500 in 2007 marked the top…

A glance at the lower pane in the following week of data for the S&P 500 says all you need to know… the selling days are heavy volume and the buy days are thin, low volume illiquid meltups…

The NASDAQ crept back to unch on the week, Trannies underperformed but the small cap Russell went on another high beta trip to infinity… Just look at the dip-buying frenzy in small caps (blue) after the FOMC minutes were digested…!!

As "most shorted" names were tossed around like rag dolls… with the afternoon meltup in broad indices driven by yet further squeezes…

Led by the all-important EURJPY carry trade… come the fuck on!!!!

Treasuries were bid back in the last 2 days recovering most ofthe FOMC minutes losses…

The more hedged and saturated credit guys finally threw in the towel and capitulated the last 2 days…

Precious metals had a tough week – as oil and copper rose (Fed off, growth on? – not in the data but whatever)…

Charts: Bloomberg

Bonus Chart: The Only chart that counts…

Bonus Bonus Chart: A glimpse of the future for the US perhaps? Or are we witnessing the birth of the CaracasCoin (Venezuela's stock index surged 56% in 21 days, then collapsed 20.2% in 10 days and has now spiked 9.75% in the last 2 days…)

Is there a CNBC Venezuela?

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/_bAiJxVnsdo/story01.htm Tyler Durden

More signs we’re living in a Philip K. Dick novel: Jose Canseco pulled over for having diapered goats in his car.

This story is mostly for Matt Welch, who likes baseball, goats,
and diapers (in that order, according to his Wikipedia page).

Former baseball slugger, Madonna boy toy, and steroid enthusiast
Jose Canseco recently bought some goats, put diapers on them, and
then…things got weird:

A couple hours after acquiring his new goats, Canseco was pulled
over.

Apparently, the officer got a kick out of Canseco’s new animals
in the backseat.

More signs we're living in a Philip K. Dick novel: Jose Canseco pulled over for having diapered goats in his car.

This story is mostly for Matt Welch, who likes baseball, goats,
and diapers (in that order, according to his Wikipedia page).

Former baseball slugger, Madonna boy toy, and steroid enthusiast
Jose Canseco recently bought some goats, put diapers on them, and
then…things got weird:

A couple hours after acquiring his new goats, Canseco was pulled
over.

Apparently, the officer got a kick out of Canseco’s new animals
in the backseat.

Warsaw Climate Change Conference Goes Into Overtime

WARSAW-“This COP is already
locked in failure,” declared Anjali Appadurai at a press briefing
as the 19th Conference of the Parties (COP-19) of the U.N. Climate
Change Convention (UNFCCC) slouched toward its close on Friday
night. She added, “This COP has delivered nothing.” As it happens,
Appadurai was one of the activists who participated in the
“massive” walkout of self-styled civil society at the conference on
Thursday, but there she was on the podium at as representative of
the
Third World Network. Never mind. The environmental ministers
and diplomats are still at it trying shape some kind of deal.

So what would “success” look like to Appadurai and other climate
change activists here at the Warsaw conference? First, the rich
countries would have to admit their
historical responsibility for damaging the climate and commit
to cutting their greenhouse emissions by 40 percent below what they
emitted in 1990. Currently, developed nations have committed to
cuts amounting to about 18 percent by 2020.

Second, it is not enough that the rich countries promised in
2009 at the Copenhagen climate change conference to “mobilize” $100
billion per year in climate change funding for poor countries
beginning in 2020. Meena Raman, another representative of the Third
World Network, cited the demands from the Like-Minded Developing
Countries for $70 billion in climate change funding by 2015. The
poor countries are also adamant that the billions “mobilized” by
rich countries should not come from the private sector: that’s just
way too uncertain. Poor country governments will accept only public
funds in the form of grants.

Citing the awful devastation wreaked on the Philippines by
Typhoon Haiyan, the poor country negotiators claim is that it’s far
too late to mitigate or adapt to climate change. It’s now time to
pay for the effects of climate change. So the third demand from
poor countries is that the rich countries set up a separate funding
mechanism in addition to the annual $100 billion already promised
to compensate poor countries for the
loss and damage caused by climate change.

The rich countries have been resisting all three of these
demands. Instead, they are focusing on how to reach some kind of
binding global treaty at the COP in Paris in 2015.
Under that agreement all countries, rich and poor, are supposed to
make nationally determined mitigation commitments. That is, each
country is supposed tell the rest of the world how and by how much
they plan to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions after the new
treaty comes into force in 2020. Poor countries counter that they
will not make any such commitments until the rich countries make
firm climate change funding commitments.

The rich countries led by U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern
would count the conference a “success” if it achieved two things.
First, negotiators would establish uniform greenhouse gas
mitigation performance standards that could be compared directly
across all countries. Second, the conference would adopt a
timetable in which each country is expected to make its initial
mitigation pledges public and available for criticism, preferably
by late 2014 or early 2015. The rich countries also do not want to
create a new loss and damage bureaucracy, but have those issues
handled under the already existing adaptation provisions of the
UNFCCC.

The COP was supposed to close at 6 pm (CET) but the negotiations
continue and are expected to run well into the night. My final
dispatch from the Warsaw climate conference, reporting on what it
delivered, if anything, will appear on Monday

from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/22/warsaw-climate-change-conference-goes-in
via IFTTT

Behold The World’s Real “Death Cross”

This isn’t going to end well…

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/VpDLuexx3vc/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Behold The World's Real "Death Cross"

This isn’t going to end well…

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/VpDLuexx3vc/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Dear “5.4 Star” Tesla, Tone Down Hyperbolic Hype, Love NHTSA

Encapsulating all that is wrong with the raise-your-stock-price-by-hyperbole-alone strategy of most new ‘tech’ firms, Tesla’s recent claim of a “5.4 Stars – out of 5” safety rating from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) perhaps takes the biscuit. But as Jalopnik reports, the NHTSA is not standing for the lies anymore and has issues a statement explaining to car-makers that NHTSA does not award higher than a 5-star rating – advertisers should avoid “double” 5-star rating, numbers greater than 5, and using the terms “perfect,” “safest,” “flawless” or “best in class” are misleading. What will Elon Musk do now?

Via Jalopnik,

To be fair to Tesla, the Model S did score incredibly well in the safety tests, proving the inherent safety possible in a modern rear-engine design, incorporating as it does such a substantial frontal crumple zone to absorb collision energy. Tesla’s justification for the extra 0.4 star (astronomically, I think that would be a white dwarf, right?) is explained in their press release:

NHTSA does not publish a star rating above 5, however safety levels better than 5 stars are captured in the overall Vehicle Safety Score (VSS) provided to manufacturers, where the Model S achieved a new combined record of 5.4 stars.

which still means Tesla did their own thing with the ratings standard. If they had the data that gave them the number, you can’t really blame them for trying, but safety rating standards are one of those things that are important enough to keep everyone playing with the same tools. So that means no more than 5…

and the NHTSA’s response…(PDF here)

NHTSA does not award higher than a 5-star rating. Thus, advertisers should not use terms such as “double” 5-star rating when a vehicle has received a 5-star rating for both the driver and the right-front passenger seating positions. An advertisement should not claim that a vehicle earned a rating higher than 5-stars.

…

Language referring to “doubling,” “tripling” or “quadrupling” of a star rating is misleading…

Words such as “perfect,” “safest,” “flawless” or “best in class” to describe a particular star rating or the Overall Vehicle Score received by the vehicle are misleading…

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/7PjNDg224qM/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Dear "5.4 Star" Tesla, Tone Down Hyperbolic Hype, Love NHTSA

Via Jalopnik,

NHTSA does not publish a star rating above 5, however safety levels better than 5 stars are captured in the overall Vehicle Safety Score (VSS) provided to manufacturers, where the Model S achieved a new combined record of 5.4 stars.

and the NHTSA’s response…(PDF here)

NHTSA does not award higher than a 5-star rating. Thus, advertisers should not use terms such as “double” 5-star rating when a vehicle has received a 5-star rating for both the driver and the right-front passenger seating positions. An advertisement should not claim that a vehicle earned a rating higher than 5-stars.

…

Language referring to “doubling,” “tripling” or “quadrupling” of a star rating is misleading…

Words such as “perfect,” “safest,” “flawless” or “best in class” to describe a particular star rating or the Overall Vehicle Score received by the vehicle are misleading…

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/7PjNDg224qM/story01.htm Tyler Durden

The Amazing Disappearance Of Gold From The American Psyche

Submitted by Simon Black of Sovereign Man blog,

In George Orwell’s seminal work 1984, there’s a really great scene early in the book between Winston (the main character) and Syme, a low-level functionary at the Ministry of Truth.

Syme is working on the 11th Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary, and he explains to Winston how the Ministry of Truth is actually removing words from the English vocabulary.

In Newspeak, words like -freedom- have been struck from the dictionary altogether, to the point that the mere concept of liberty would be incommunicable in the future.

I thought about this scene recently as I was testing out Google’s new Ngram Viewer tool.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Google has digitized over a million books that were printed as far back as 1500, and they’ve made the contents searchable within their own database.

The Ngram Viewer allows you to search for particular keywords. And you can see over time how prevalent the search terms were for particular years.

Out of curiosity, I searched for the term “gold” in English language books starting in 1776.

As one would expect back in the 18th and 19th centuries when gold was actually considered money, the instances of the word ‘gold’ favored prevalently in English language books at the time.

The trend continued into the early part of the 20th century.

But then something interesting happened in the mid-1930s. The use of the word ‘gold’ in English language books reached its peak… and began a steep, multi-decade decline.

Further investigation shows that the peak actually occurred in 1933. And as any student of gold in modern history knows, 1933 was the same year that the President of the United States (FDR) criminalized the private ownership of gold.

It remained this way for four decades. And by the time Gerald Ford repealed the prohibition on gold ownership, the concept of gold being money had been permanently struck from the American psyche, just as the Orwellian Newspeak dictionary had done.

By the mid-1970s (and through today), people have become readily accepting of the idea that money was nothing more than pieces of paper conjured at will by central bankers.

The good news is that, according to Google’s data, there seems to be slight uptick in the number of instances of the word ‘gold’ in English language books over the last 10-years or so.

No doubt, this probably has a lot to do with gold’s seemingly interminable rise relative to paper currency.

One can hope that the trend will hold… that more people will wake up to the reality that the central-bank controlled fiat currency system is a total fraud.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/wG1Kyn_WO_Q/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Totally Predictable Consequence of LA County Condom Porn Mandate Gets Totally Predictable Call to Do More by Nanny Staters

oh brave new world Last November, voters in Los Angeles County
approved a measure requiring the use of condoms on the set of
pornos shot in the county. Predictably, the mandate was quickly
challenged in a lawsuit, both for the broad powers of enforcement
and
on free speech grounds. Over the summer, a court rejected the
free speech claim but
did rule to narrow the powers of health inspectors tasked with
targeting porn sets, requiring, among other things, warrants and
judicial review. The county did not appeal the ruling.
Nevertheless, some porn companies have been driven out of LA,

and California altogether, and permit requests in Los Angeles
county have plummeted. The Huffington Post
reports:

The LA County Department of Public Health told HuffPost
that 11 porn companies have been issued public health permits since
January. And yet there are many more adult film organizations in
LA, where an estimated 90 percent of porn movies in the
U.S. are made.

Industry insiders say that many adult film companies have not
applied for public health permits, adding that even those who have
a public health permit have yet to be inspected by the county.
County officials did not respond to HuffPost’s inquiry as to
whether the department has conducted any inspections of porn
sets.

So it could be that porn producers are still in LA and just filming
without either public health or film permits. That’s what Michael
Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, thinks is
happening, even though industry officials like [Free Speech
Coalition CEO Diane] Duke insist otherwise.

Weinstein, who authored the condom mandate, has been very
critical of LA County for not enforcing the law. Without
enforcement, porn companies don’t feel the need to use condoms on
set, Weinstein said to HuffPost.

“Would people speed more,” he added, “if they knew they wouldn’t
get caught?”

Weinstein refuses to acknowledge the civil liberties
implications of his puritan nanny state
crusade. When the county declined to appeal the court’s ruling on
the condom mandate, Weinstein
told the Huffington Post that county officials “obviously have
a callous disregard to the will of 1.6 million voters… The
department is bureaucratic and lazy. They want to do as little as
possible.”

Weinstein and his fellow crusaders, though, want to do as much
as possible to drive porn out of Los Angeles, and California, as
possible,
with state lawmakers looking at regulations that would require
the use of safety goggles on porn sets where contact with bodily
fluids is likely (all of them?). Supporters and fetishists of
porn regulation and enforcement look ever more likely to regulate
and enforce the entire industry completely out of their reach.

Reason TV previewed the condom mandate last year:

from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/22/totally-predictable-consequence-of-la-co
via IFTTT