Kaboom! Futures murdered.

China down 5.8%.

Eric's moccasin's are (finally) getting wet.

Dip-buyers today? We'll see who has the balls to buy here.

The risk trade is on the ropes.

Yet more toxic assets...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Low Volume + NFP = short opportunity

No volume today. Everyone is happy right where they are with the jobs report tomorrow.*

That guy that JUST bought VNO for 58 bucks is very satisfied, I suppose.

I'm totally hedged right now. Beautiful day. Going golfing.

When the birth/ death adjustment gets corrected, the NFP will lay this market to waste... but no rush, the take-down will be orderly, so keep your powder dry.

* Crudele on NFP:

"The Labor Department doesn't screw around much with the July jobs figures that'll be released at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow.

"Last year it added only 25,000 jobs that small companies are supposed to be creating. It'll probably add something like that estimate this year.

"That compares with 185,000 phantom jobs added in June; 220,000 in May, 226,000 in April and 114,000 in March.

"So tomorrow's number will be the purest of the year. Viewing the July employment data will be like seeing a Hollywood starlet without her makeup. Be prepared to have your illusions destroyed."

Spectre of Deflation

Eclectica Fund


h/t ZeroHedge

Achuton: "This is what a recovery looks like..."

Higher interest rates and higher commodity prices are expected when a recession recovers. We still have massive over-capacity with big unemployment numbers and under utilized industrial capacity and large (altho decreasing) inventories. Lakshmin Achuton starts about half-way through:

Technicals, Fundamentals and Sentiment

Macroeconomic evaluation of the market is nothing short of voodoo.  Traders are constantly attempting to find objective indicators to tell them definitively to be long or short.  Fear and greed play hopscotch on our hippocampus while we feverishly punch the buy/sell buttons on Tradestation.  Let's look at a few indicators and try to come to some conclusion.

Technical analysis.  Here we have Upsidetrader taking out his big purple crayons to look at Elliot wave, Fibonacci and horizontal resistance all at once.... and voila!  The DJIA will hit 6363 very soon.  Love it!!  You can say what you want about Upside, but he is always sure, and I respect him for that.... and his day-trades go well an inordinate number of times.

Fundamental Analysis.  The Big Kahuna, John Maudlin*, implies that nearly every factory in the world has shut down as inventories have been built and no buyers can be found.  Fugly by definition.  It's called a deflationary depression, my friends.  

*This pdf is really worth reading in its entirety.

Sentiment.  With all this bad news, it might come as a surprise that mutual fund managers are still nearly fully invested.  Marc Faber  implies that money mangers have not not fully capitulated yet, which bodes ill for the stock market in the coming weeks.  

Take all this voodoo with a grain of salt.  The stock market will be a leading indicator out of this morass but who knows how long that will be?  Play the swing trades both ways: some long and some short.  Daytrade if you have the guts.... and keep your retirement in cash, gold and Treasurys/TIPS.