It is hitting the fan

Dow Jones -419.63 (-3.68%) 10,990.58

NASDAQ -131.05 (-5.22%) 2,380.43

S&P 500 -53.24 (-4.46%) 1,140.65

10:11 am (Hawaii) They sent so many jobs overseas. Standard of living improved in those places. Standard of living is declining here. At the point when the standard there is as good as the lifestyle here for the manual worker, that might be when multinationals start opening shop in the states again.

Maybe.

For now, it seems that the only recourse for the infinite printing of paper money is downward. The Fed printed us into the American Dream, where most families once had no need for more than one wage earner, and a home, car and pleasant way of life was attainable for the masses. It was all a lie that took decades to be unveiled. The reality is that we made our bones off the backs of underpaid laborers overseas. The reality is that the scales balance eventually. The reality is that many of us have lost jobs because of the snapback. Many of us have taken pay cuts, not to make our bosses happy, but so that our companies would survive rather than die.

We'll survive and we'll still lead the world in innovation. That's who we are. But it would take a whole lot of guts and a little bit of stupidity to enter stocks today. If I'm a contrary indicator, maybe this is a bottom. Maybe retail traders/investors really will have no choice due to zero percent interest (until 2013) but to put their hard-earned dollars into stocks. Perhaps AAPL is a steal here at 366 and gold peaks at 1825 or so. Maybe James Altucher is right about Dow 20,000 and Jim Rogers is just wrong about Asia, farms and food prices. Maybe they're both right. Maybe hyperinflation makes Dow 20,000 a certainty while the cost of a Big Mac goes to $18, corn and wheat reach $1,500 and an oz of gold hits $4,000.

Time passes and I'm more interested in the future of currencies and paper money and how politicians and banksters will create the next form of "money." That matters. I'm just a peon trying to scrape by, but even I know: it matters.

They Said It, Really

2:31 am (Friday) Here's one more for the list of "Huh?" comments by some of my favorite market gurus. All are paraphrased. I'm too lazy to go get the ver batim quote.

Bix Weir: Ben Bernanke is purposefully attempting to destroy the fiat currency system by printing paper money to eventual nothingness.

James Altucher: The Dow is heading to 20,000. Or beyond.

Mike Maloney: We will have $30 crude oil, possibly $10.

James Turk: Gold and silver will explode this summer.

Nit-picky? Of course

1:52 am (Hawaii) Sure, I like the truth-tellers, the men and women who put the facts out there whether the public wants to hear it or not. But nobody's perfect. My favorite analysts and market gurus have said some wacky things in the past year or so. Can they all be right? Can they all be wrong? The answer lies somewhere in between.

James Altucher: The Dow is heading to 20,000. Or beyond.

Mike Maloney: We will have $30 crude oil, possibly $10.

James Turk: Gold and silver will explode this summer.

More coming later.

Tuesday night library & cinema (updated 9 pm HST)

2:01 pm (Hawaii) I may surely live to regret not backing up the truck for some AAPL, BIDU, NFLX, XG, AGQ and EXK today. Volume was substantial in most of these shares, and if I'm wrong in assuming that each is due for a minor consolidation (or worse) after a week to the upside, then it shall sucketh that I waited too long. The only thing that made sense today — Portugal was downgraded to junk level by Moody's (only a few months behind the market) — was the financials all in red. FAZ was up, as it should be. Why it isn't up every day is a wonder. But the market is schizo, manipulated, yadayada, and that's why I don't take unnecessary risks.

Financials down, precious metals up. Now THAT makes sense.

Note: Pete Najarian says AAPL goes right to 400 from here. I'm not saying he's right or wrong, just passing it along. Then there's James Altucher, who was also on Fast Money, insisting that we don't really have any basis with which to judge QE2 yet, and that the Dow is going to 20,000 by the end of 2012.

I'm still a little surprised that the CME mafia didn't take metals to the woodshed over the three-day weekend. I probably wasn't alone and today was boosted in large part by a lot of short covering. Just a guess. I'm still deep in cash, small position in DGP and growing stack of metals.

Spot silver tapering off to 35.33 after spending the previous 24 hours below 34.50.

Update 3:36 pm (Hawaii) Apmex has another flash sale: 99¢ over spot for a 100 oz Johnson Matthew silver bar. Started this morning, ends tomorrow (Wednesday). The bar is a beautiful thing, no doubt about it. But why would I want something that huge? If I needed to sell it, I would get spot price in return, probably. Finding a buyer for something that costs $3,600 or so is TOUGH. I'd rather have $3,600 worth of American Silver Eagles, 100 in all, than one big brick of silver.

If I were a gazillionaire, it wouldn't matter. I'd actually line the walls of my playpen/mancave with thousands of silver bars, floor to ceiling. But I'm not a gazillionaire. Yet.

Reports & Blogs

(new) MarketWatch: The next, worse financial crisis (July 6 2011)

(new) (audio) Chris Martenson: Eric Sprott interview (July 5 2011)

(new) (transcript) Chris Martenson: Eric Sprott: Paper markets are a joke (July 5 2011)

(new) Examiner: RICO suits against two banks = metals to soar (July 4 2011)

Le Fly: Sell the debt ceiling news (July 5 2011)

Video

(new) Nigel Farage: Isn't the EU as bad as the USSR, Mr. Tusk? (July 6 2011)

(new) Peter Schiff: Christina Romer is wrong (July 6 2011)

(new) Max Keiser: Greece robbed and securitized (July 5 2011)

(new) James Altucher: Dow heading to 20,000 (July 5 2011)

(new) BrotherJohnF: Silver update - debt (July 5 2011)

(new) Turd Ferguson: Not excited yet (July 5 2011)

(new) stellaconcepts: Understanding the silver derivatives market (July 5 2011)

(new) george4title: The new economic paradigm for middle-class Americans (July 5 2011)

Mike Maloney: The Difference (July 5 2011)

Nigel Farage: The Worm has Turned (July 5 2011)

Jim Comiskey: Daily market insights - metals (July 5 2011)

drutter: 'You can't eat silver!' (July 5 2011)

(video repaired) bullorbearreport: How to buy gold at $10 over spot (July 5 2011)

chessNwine: Stock market recap (July 5 2011)

silverfuturist: Silver up! Newsletter writers makes millions (July 5 2011)

(new) stellaconcepts: SGTBull07 and Bix Weir '500:1' (July 4 2011)

(new) silverfuturist: Silver vs. mining stocks and ... a goat (July 4 2011)

(new) SGTbull07: Why Silver, Why Now? (Dec 7 2010)

(new) InflationUS: The Day the Dollar Died (Nov 24 2010)

James Altucher: Dow heading to 20,000

Lay, lie, die ... or not

(9:01 pm, Hawaii) Lies, lies, lies. What else could come out of Japan now that this debacle has ensued? Bloomberg: Fukushima engineer says he covered up flaw at shut reactor No. 4.

And now, some perspective, which is often well provided by James Altucher: Was Greece just nuked? 

Alutcher says: "It's a scam. The pundits need something to talk about. The media needs something to make you panic and scared. The larger institutional investors need mom and pop to sell their retirement portfolio to them at cheap prices. So they all scare you to save their own lives and businesses."

Mr. Smiley

All right, James Altucher isn't quite Mr. Life is Tremendous all the time, but he gets close. After all, it was May 28 of 2010 when he pounded the table on stocks while most of the free world (myself included) was running scared and ready to cash out of the stock casinos.

Fast forward to February of 2011, and Altucher was dead-on right. He remains uber-bullish, as he explained on Kudlow yesterday, in large part because of Obamanomics (QE2).

Here's what Altucher said last May: We'll have a check mark recovery.

Notes:
• "The debate is over. It's already been a 'v'. It's going to keep going. We're in the middle of a whole inventory rebuild."
• S&P 500 companies will continue to beat earnings
• "People are going to laugh and nobody's going to say 'James Altucher was right.' "

Here, Altucher takes on a permabear in July of 2010.



This one is also from last July. Altucher vs. Roubini. Guess who won?



Here's what he said yesterday.





This is from January 5.



And finally, Altucher elaborates on a column he wrote recently on his site, Altucher Confidential, about the waste that paying for college really is.

Ordered his new book, Guide to Investing in the Apocalypse, and it arrived yesterday. Should be, as always, interesting reading.

Mr. Crystal Ball

There's Meredith Whitney, who has consistently called for the furies of hell to wreak the financial world for its past misdeeds. Then there's James Altucher, one of the biggest bulls of the past year or two, calling for a "checkmark" recovery. That's checkmark, as in bigger than a "V" bounce.

His interpretation of recent statistics in the broader economy is interesting, to say the least, but he certainly has conviction in his belief.

It doesn't end there. Altucher puts the recent correction, including the despicable yet almost predictable Flash Crash, in historical perspective.

If you're not sure what I mean by 'predictable,' I'm a former shareholder in Dendreon. Ask any long-timer in DNDN about strange market manipulation. We're generally paranoid beyond the norm.

Stimulus package good for Disney?

James Alutcher thinks the Fed's stimulus package will help Disney cruises. The more kids, the bigger your check from the Fed. I wonder if he'll be right. In any event, DIS is down 23¢ (-0.6%) to 31.89 on very low volume today. A nice pause.

>> Disney benefits from stimulus?

Climbing the Great Wall of Hesitation

Lust is a primitive thing that normally does very little in the way of positive production. But I will confess that I'm lusting for stocks have one of these denominators: 1) Oil, 2) China, 3) Killer Application.

Oil is freaking king, just like Jed from the Beverly Hillbillies used to sing. I don't know if singing the praises of CNOOC Ltd. and not getting on board before a 75% run in the past six weeks had an effect. I just know that the cost of crude oil is something I can spend less time bitching about if I just employ the old "Can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach. But as a bargain hunter, I freeze up when I see CNOOC (CEO) at $163 per share.

China was in play two years ago. China was in play one year ago. And even at the start of this year, when I really started to pay attention to the market for the first time in years, countless analysts and columnists echoed a red alert. The Chinese markets were saturated, overvalued, blah blah blah. Boy, were they wrong as heck. And then there's this. On Saturday, China takes its googlicious-level money (trillions) and will start putting it to real work.

AP: China to Launch Multibillion-Dollar Investment Fund on Saturday

Yup, forget the manini yields of treasuries. China is going to flood markets around the world with their happy money. No takeover attempts. Just getting a better return. Good news for financials? How good? How deep will they dip into non-political stocks? This is gonna be a helluva thing to observe, especially since the U.S. put up such a fight when CNOOC tried to buy some U.S. oil interest a year ago.

Conversely, it's hard to find a bargain among the Chinese ADRs at this point. James Altucher has his Chinese Rockets series of portfolios, but more recently, he lists a bunch of penny stocks in Portfolio III. Penny stocks.

Altucher: Chinese Rocket Stocks Part III

One of his criteria is that these Chinese companies absolutely must have a trong balance sheet. Major cash flow. But I'm not so big on one of his picks, NetEase (NTES). It's a good company with its toes in four different sectors, including online gaming. I prefer Shanda Interactive (SNDA), which is focused in online gaming and will emerge as one of the best in that area.

He also touts Solarfun Power (SOLF).

Last week, Solarfun announced that it has secured three multiyear framework commitments, which should consistently drive earnings for some time. It also announced that it signed its first non-domestic, long-term supply agreement (which starts in 2008).

Worth taking a much closer look. I'm almost devoid of Chinese stocks, which makes me almost heretical considering how much I actually like them. I just get wary unless they're brest of breed, and with the Chinese stock leaders at nosebleed levels, finding the kings is tough in the middle of a stampede. The hunt will now commence with discipline. Fundamentals. Technicals. Lust takes a back seat.