Angry

Investors should be ticked-off, especially those with capital tied up in Ambac and MBIA. Actually all of retail-side should be fit-to-be-tied! Ambac has been down over 90% in the last 8 months and is now up about 90% from its January low, talk about volatility! Just this month alone it has made 30+% swings up or down, that’s pretty nauseating for someone who is investing in this …..stock.

At this point you may be thinking “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen”, although “oven” may be more appropriate in this case. And this is where I quip back-“well if it were just that simple, I’d save it for the Yahoo-Ambac board”. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. Ambac, more than any other stock in recent memory (that’s about all the memory I have left any way), is a fulcrum, if not “the” fulcrum of the entire market. You might want to think of it as, “As Ambac goes, so goes the market”-not in the Goldman Sach’s sense, more like “if they take down Ambac, they take down the entire market”. In this case “they” =Moody’s and they must love all of their new-found power…or maybe not? It feels like Moody’s is the “Jesse Livermore” of 2008 (referring to JP Morgan’s call to Jesse asking him to cover his shorts before he’d step in to save the market during the “Panic of 1907”). If they can simply hold off Moody’s (they=everyone trying to save Ambac) before it’s too late (“it’s too late”=Moody’s downgrading Ambac’s credit rating), they may actually manage to stave-off one of the worst, and entirely most under-rated/misunderstood, financial crises of the last 100 years (totally subjective number just plucked from thin air, but meant to convey the depth and seriousness of the situation). And it seems like Moody’s is at pain to twist the definition of “minimum requirement” in a delicate act that tries to balance “ticking-off” the entire financial/governmental establishment and maintaining some sort of credibility while also struggling with the ego of it all and trying to keep it real (That was pure conjecture on my part, but if I didn’t believe it, I wouldn’t publish it-I just love pseudo-hyperbole).

In any case, it seems as if Moody’s will comply as long as they can. Here’s where we should all be ticked-off. If you are an investor, you’ve probably seen your portfolio decimated, if you are an investor in Ambac/MBIA-you’ve probably seen your portfolio decimated x3-or more. If you are a trader, then you’ve probably been hurt as well. If you are a good day trader, then you probably are having a ball. It is probably an understatement to say, “The volatility is driving capital out of our markets”-I believe this. I think many people are throwing in the towel and won’t be back for a long, long time. I say this with full understanding of the fact that bear markets are volatile, this is something on an entirely different scale, again Ambac/MBIA are the fulcrum/gun here and Moody’s has their finger on the trigger. And why should this make you mad? Because someone knows something or more like a lot of “someone’s” know a lot and they’re not gonna say, instead they’ll pull the strings like a twisted puppet master who play with voodoo pins.

Last Friday the mouthpiece of the entire scandal, CNBC (my humble opinion of course), goes on air and reports that we may hear about a deal as early as Mon/Tues and this from a nameless, unattributed source….is that even journalism? Wouldn’t you think with something this big, you might want to pitch a tad of credibility in there? So, Mon/Tues go by and nothing. And now today, the big “mystery deal” that nobody will go on record about, may be in danger. I mean come the … (your choice, this is a family site) on! There are a lot of people involved in something this big, and nobody knows anything? I’m sure they are all of the highest ethical stature and not one of ‘em may be trading knowledge of this thing. I think we should all be mad, if something is happening, then please…do tell. Let us all work off the same information and come to our own conclusions-isn’t that how a “transparent”, democratic, free market should work?

On another note, if you’ve been watching the videos, reading the TagBoard on the side of the site or looked at the “Free Preview of Member Services”-then you may have made some money the last couple of days, like our short positions in HIG, NOV, PAC, PRU, CAL, GNK, PCLN, STLD, ATI, or our longs in LAYN, OVEN and ARUN. The free preview is almost up and as much as we’d like to leave it that way, it’s not fair to us because we put a lot of work into it nor is it fair for our paying members. But, do sign up for free updates (at the top right side of the blog) and you’ll get the Guild updates as well as Trading-to-Win and you’ll continue to receive alerts to our updated free content. Also click on the videos and sign up for alerts via You-Tube so you get timely information from recent videos. Thanks for stopping by.