Window dressing correction?

[Svenwulf]

i think it was tuesday night's show, Cramer was telling us all about window dressing. said that it ends wednesday afternoon, because the gov monitors phones for the last 2 days of quarter. sounded real good to me as a paranoid gold bug. after minor consideration, i conclude that it is not fear of insider trading prosecution, but rather simply fund settlement rules that explain this. mutuals/big boys had to complete, by wednesday (3 days) all transactions they wish to appear on their quarterly statements. perhaps a difference of symantics, i felt it necessary to make this distinction.

[madcowdisease]

i think it was tuesday night's show, Cramer was telling us all about window dressing. said that it ends wednesday afternoon, because the gov monitors phones for the last 2 days of quarter. sounded real good to me as a paranoid gold bug. after minor consideration, i conclude that it is not fear of insider trading prosecution, but rather simply fund settlement rules that explain this. mutuals/big boys had to complete, by wednesday (3 days) all transactions they wish to appear on their quarterly statements. perhaps a difference of symantics, i felt it necessary to make this distinction.

Nice observation. Now brace yourself for the selloff.

BTW, does anyone else feel the recent uptic in crude could be attributable to this phenomenon we call "window dressing"? With oil outperforming all Spring and Summer it seems plausible the hedge funds, and to a lesser extent mutuals, would want to show they were in oil contracts and stocks.

[Svenwulf]

mutuals especially, imho.

[madcowdisease]

mutuals especially, imho.

Certainly for the stock of oil companies. But, I would suspect the hedge funds are guilty of the increase in crude futures since no mutual fund that I know of is trading futures. Though I suppose I could be wrong there may be some fringe mutual that is trading crude.

[Svenwulf]

btw: officialy welcome back(for now) madcow, we missed ya.

i know i sound like chicken little with my posts: you will go broke betting on the end of the world. i try to preface everything as propaganda, perhaps not blatantly enough. i love the discussions on the boards, and agree its too easy to talk about what is wrong. i have had some nice returns with the retailers when they were out of favor. i know nothing of tech, so thats disappointing to me.

but i consider myself bullish when i want to see oil roll over- agree we have one more leg down. and, as a goldbug, i understand i can never win hoping the dollar goes down- they can print more debt than people (the globe) will ever call. but gold is an emerging market play- still many places in this world with unreliable banks. what i see is the transfer of wealth from (for lack of better terminology) the 1st world to the 3rd world. the result of which, for us at least (simplified), is deflation. hold on, deflation is terrible for gold miners, since gold is viewed as an inflation hedge. true, but again, one will not win viewing gold primarily as an inflation hedge. since the receipients of this wealth transfer will have little faith in their now necessary banking systems, combined with their increased realized inflation, gold consumption will increase more than the decrease in its value as a hedge.

the opportunity i see, aside from the sector specific value, is the reckoning of gold contracts. currently, futures are written and floating, because their is little fear of actually being called by the 1st world. why cant they write enough contracts to avoid a 3rd world call when the time comes? because gold infrastructure is where oil was a few years ago- and worse as crudes recent run has attracted all the geological/nuts&bolts talent, things will not get better until gold goes significantly higher. which is preceisley when these contracts will be called by the 3rd world, fueling the fire. and then the speculators will come, and a bubble will form.

these are all just my opinions, and i hold no degree in economy or geology. all of this propeller head macro analysis still will not make you a dime trading day to day. but as a younger person, longer range forcasts are still an interesting proposition for me.

[Svenwulf]

to beat a dead horse:

this possible bullion price run, reflecting weaker confidence in future pricing, will significantly hurt hedged companies (ie abx) and help the gunslingers. again, all my opinion.