The market correction that we’d been waiting for has finally started in earnest so let’s take a look at the sentiment data for this week: AAII Survey This week’s survey of US retail sentiment by the Association of American Individual Investors came in at 34% bullish (a drop of 7% points from last week) and an increase of bears to 42% (a 6% point increase). While the increased fear is normal after the kind of week we had, the ratio of the two remains neutral. Had the response been either muted or exaggerated, it would have been more interesting. At this point, it doesn’t really offer any edge.Complete Story »
Michael Arrington submits: Want to be the head of Barnesandnoble.com’s international business? Because they’re definitely hiring a whole team, and they’re starting at the top. Recruiting firm Russell Reynolds Associates is representing Barnes & Noble (BKS) in a search for the “head of their international business,” according to a source who was contacted about the position. The job entails building the international business for BN.com from scratch, hiring the team and “building the infrastructure outside the U.S.” They prefer the executive live in New York, but Europe is ok, too. Global e-commerce experience is preferred.Complete Story »
Stocks discussed on the lightning round session of Jim Cramer's Mad Money TV Program, Friday October 30. Bullish Calls:JP Morgan (JPM): "Everyone's worried about their bad loans, but they have a lot more good loans. I think they're the best-run American bank and I'm not backing away from it."Complete Story »
Sudden Debt submits: It is common enough to look at debt as a percentage of GDP, DPI, etc. but that's so... impersonal. So here are a couple of (very scary) charts that look at things from a dollars per person perspective (click on charts to enlarge). Debt per person and GDP per person.Debt per person and Disposable Personal Income per person.Note: the Total Debt used to construct these chart does NOT include debt of the financial sector so as to avoid any double counting (e.g. a mortgage inside a CDO), even at the cost of somewhat understating the crush of debt. It's bad enough, anyway.Complete Story »
Brett Steenbarger submits: Last week's sector review noted a pullback to a multiday trading range as part of what appeared to be a topping process following September's momentum highs and October's price high. That scenario continued to unfold this past week, as we broke sharply below the trading range and closed near the week's lows. As we can see above, this has turned five of the eight S&P 500 sectors that I track bearish in Technical Strength, with the others giving neutral readings.Complete Story »
Trade Radar Operator submits: Major market averages fell roughly 2.5% Friday but not everything went down. OPNET Technologies (OPNT) gained 4.7% today in the face of relentless selling in most other stocks. What gives?Background --Complete Story »
EP Vantage submits:What should have been a dream approval for Transcept Pharmaceuticals (TSPT) has turned into a nightmare for the Californian company, which now faces a significant delay to the launch of its middle of the night waking insomnia drug Intermezzo. Wednesday, the FDA issued the group with a complete response letter, not because of doubts over Intermezzo’s efficacy, but because of concerns over a safe dosing strategy that would avoid users taking the drug with less than four hours of bedtime remaining, or inadvertently taking a double dose in one night. Transcept now faces the expense and headache of conducting at least one or more additional safety studies, including next day driving tests, to show if there are any residual after-effects. The news, which has caused Transcept's shares to fall 55% since Tuesday, could also cause a few sleepless nights for Somaxon Pharmaceuticals (SOMX), NovaDel Pharma (NVD) and Alexza Pharmaceuticals (ALXA), who are also developing drugs in this niche indication.Complete Story »
John Mauldin submits: Catching Argentinian Disease? The Ascent of Money The Independence of the Fed Threatened A Few Quick Thoughts on the Dollar, GDP, and the Recession I have been in South America this week, speaking nine times in five days, interspersed with lots of meetings. The conversation kept coming back to the prospects for the dollar, but I was just as interested in talking with money managers and business people who had experienced the hyperinflation of Argentina and Brazil. How could such a thing happen? As it turned out, I was reading a rather remarkable book that addressed that question. There are those who believe that the United States is headed for hyperinflation because of our large and growing government fiscal deficit and massive future liabilities (as much as $56 trillion) for Medicare and Social Security.Complete Story »
Tim Iacono submits: Every week a prominent money manger waxes poetic about gold and last week was no exception as Paul Tudor Jones sounds like a converted gold bug in his monthly letter to clients as recounted in this story at Bloomberg.The time to hold gold is now as faster inflation and increased purchases through exchange-traded funds and by central banks boost demand amid stagnant mine output, Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp. said.Complete Story »
Rolfe Winkler, CFA submits: The FDIC closed 9 banks late last night, with a combined $19.4 billion of assets all of which were owned by one holding company and sold to US Bank in Minnesota. From Robin Sidel, WSJ: Banking regulators seized nine related community lenders in California, Illinois, Arizona and Texas, representing the collapse of one of the nation’s largest privately held bank holding companies that grew through a string of acquisitions dating back to the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1990s.Complete Story »
