Don’t look now, but history tends to repeat itself.

Also, consider the fundamental picture. We have rallied 48% from the March lows on the back of what? Good earnings? Good employment figures? Good spending figures? Expanding GDP? No.

We have rallied based on one of the largest and most concerted propaganda campaigns ever waged, supported by government stimulus. But no government can stimulate forever. The bottom line is this, if Americans do not return to work, THERE IS NO RECOVERY. Memorize this line. Post it on your refrigerator, your mirror, your dashboard – wherever!

So maybe now you’re asking yourself, “Aren’t the unemployment numbers getting better?”

Well, let’s see…

Verizon (NYSE:VZ) – 8,000 jobs cut
Motorola (NYSE:MOT) – 7,000
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) – 5,000
Untied Technologies (NYSE:UTX) – 8,000
HSBC (NYSE:HBC) – 6,100
Anglo American (LON:AAL) – 19,000
Avon (LON:AVON) – 2,500
Goodyear Tire (NYSE:GT) – 5,000
GM (NYSE:GRM) – 10,000
Nissan Motors – 20,000
Panasonic (NYSE:PC) – 15,000
PNC Bank (NYSE:PNC) – 5,800

Many of these will be released in the third and fourth quarters. No doubt there are plenty more we haven’t heard from yet. Frankly, I couldn’t list the thousands of companies and millions of jobs lost in this write-up. That’s just a sampling. But let’s get to some hard and fast figures.

According to Seeking Alpha, 13 million Americans will lose their benefits by years’ end. So if unemployment claims are falling, people must be getting back to work. Right?

WRONG!

They are exhausting their benefits. There are 30 million people in the United States on food stamps. There are only 200 million working-age Americans (age 15-64). Is there any wonder why the Administration is NOW saying they will have to raise taxes on the middle class to fund their programs?

Unemployment has been estimated by many good economists as being around 20%. Unfortunately for these people, their nanny-government lifeboats are slowly running out of air.

Those 3 million people who lost their jobs in the second half of last year? Once you factor in their dependants, that equals 10 million people who have no income and no savings.

And how about the other 4 million others who lost their jobs in the first half of this year? They will be next. The numbers get so depressing, I hate to even count them up.

As I have said before, unemployed people don’t spend money. They don’t buy technologies, or durables, or even pay their mortgage. Bankruptcies are up 600% in this recent downturn. And that includes the time after Congress affected new rules to make bankruptcy harder.

So who is going to pay for anything when they are struggling to buy groceries?

If the equity averages are already rallying on the back of these horrible stats, there is nowhere to go but down when the real truth sets in.

And we have seen this corollary frequently in recent months. When stocks and risk assets fall, so do the currencies, and the dollar rises. We are a long way from being out of the woods on this retracement.

So why do I cite all this doom and gloom about the United States? Believe me, there’s plenty more to go around. Because the fact of the matter is this: When these chickens do come home to roost, we will see another gut-wrenching breathtaking sell-off in equities, which will be followed by currencies. We have not seen the end of this yet.

While some are talking of a recovery, others are talking about a possible double-dip recession – and I’m reasonably sure we are in for a “multi-dip.” It is hard to be bullish on the dollar for any reason, but if the market drops again, which I believe it will, funds will rush right back to the dollar (and the yen).

So far, we have seen range-bound trading in the recent months as currencies search for direction. This week the big news was the US GDP. Risk currencies rallied on the back of it, but for 24 hours they have remained flat as there were no buyers to move it higher.

Also, the market got awfully jittery on the release of the consumer spending news yesterday. The manufacturing euphoria expended itself, and now we find out that personal income has dropped 1.4%, the biggest fall in four years. Inflation-adjusted spending fell 0.1%. The real dark spots in the economy have started showing back up. The stimulus has worked its way and done its best, but its effects are now negligible. Even though there are signs of a “recovery,” it isn’t going to be one without the consumer. If he’s exhausted his means of spending, or is just afraid to put out any money, the recovery trade will be doomed. And that means dollar strength once again.

But for now, we will have to trade with what we have. It is hard to argue with the markets, even with the most compelling of reasons. A person may as well try to stop an ocean wave from breaking onshore.

And as we look ahead, we must always be mindful of what may be. As numerous talking heads were saying on Tuesday of this week, “We have turned the corner… things are going to get better – if they don’t get worse!”

Regards,

Bill Jenkins

Source: Illogical Optimisim

• Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund yesterday (Tuesday) warned of a “Great Recession” taking place this year. “The IMF expects global growth to slow below zero this year, the worst performance in most of our lifetimes,” Strauss-Kahn told African political and financial leaders in the Tanzanian capital. He added his forecast may “even be too optimistic.”

• United Technologies Corp. (UTX), makers of Carrier air conditioners and Otis elevators, announced a $750 million restructuring plan that includes 11,600 job cuts. The plan is a response to expectations that 2009 revenues will fall $2.7 billion short of projections, Bloomberg reported.

• Brazil’s economy expanded 1.3% in the fourth quarter, and economic growth for 2008 clocked in at 5.1%. The fourth-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) growth is a drastic decline from the 6.8% year-over-year growth rate in the previous quarter, Reuters reported.

• Malaysia’s government yesterday (Tuesday) added $16 billion (60 billion ringgit) in tax incentives and spending to its stimulus plan, and predicted its economy would contract as much as 1.0% this year. That would be the first contraction in 10 years. The additional stimulus measures will take place over the next two years, Bloomberg reported.

• General Motors Corp. (GM) may sell at least half of its Opel unit to private investors with German government support.  GM’s European unit will still have to save $1.2 billion (784 million euros) annually under the plan. The plan could include closing an Antwerp, Belgium, factory and selling a plant in Eisenach, Germany, Bloomberg reported citing a person who didn’t want to be identified because the talks are private.  GM is seeking U.S. and foreign aid to survive the current economic downturn.

• Bankruptcies by publicly traded U.S. companies are running at twice their 2008 pace, fueled by large companies with assets of more than $1 billion, Reuters reported. There have been 46 bankruptcy filings in 2009 by public companies with assets of $74 billion. That’s nearly seven times more than the $11 billion in assets of the 21 companies that filed for bankruptcy by this date last year. Two of the more noteworthy companies were Nortel Networks (NT), and Smurfit-Stone Container Corp (SSCCQ), according to research firm BankruptcyData.com.

• Hedge funds may slash 20,000 jobs worldwide this year, as investment losses and client withdrawals erode fees. The dismissals account for a full 14% of the industry’s jobs, and come on top of the 10,000 jobs that disappeared last year. Employment peaked at 155,000 in 2007, and has since dropped to about 145,000, according to estimates by New York-based Options Group, an executive-search firm. About 920 hedge funds, or 12%, closed last year, Bloomberg reported.

• The Securities and Exchange Commission will restore the uptick rule in about a month, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said yesterday (Tuesday). Bringing back the uptick rule, which would only allow short sales when the last sale price is higher than the previous one, could calm volatile markets, market-watchers said. The rule also could stem a stock’s decline by preventing short sellers from piling on one after another, Reuters reported.

Source: Global Investment News Briefs Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Foreclosures jumped 81 percent nationwide last year. That’s 3.2 million homes.

In December alone, foreclosures jumped 41 percent versus the December 2007 reading.

The readings for the reports this week anticipate further drops in both December Building Permits and Housing Starts. The only question is by how much. Last month, expectations for both reports were off by at least 10 percent. This month is expected to be nearly identical to last month for Building Permits, and a drop of about 15k units in the Housing Starts report.

Try as I might, I can’t see either of these reports coming close to expectations. I don’t think a slowdown of 75k units on each is unrealistic. The housing market is just in terrible shape. Excess inventory is growing, not shrinking. A reading of 550k or even less on both reports is reasonable. I guess we will find out Thursday.

Earnings:
Tues: BAC, CSX, IBM, JNJ,
Wed: ABT, AAPL, EBAY, USB, UTX
Thur: BAX, GOOG, MSFT
Fri: GE, HOG,

Source: Nothing Left for The Big Bad Wolf

This from Investor’s Daily Edge:

The election’s over. President-elect Barrack Obama won, and some people are worried that he’ll start taxing dividends like income. Have I got news for you… that’s the least of our worries on the dividend front.  Put it in the drawer for next year’s hand wringing.

Because just when you thought the financial news had exhausted all the bad stuff and you had found safety in dividend stocks, I have to give you a heads up. Your stock could be getting a pension fund “margin call.”

I love dividend stocks. These companies have cash, pay cash, and keep the faith with investors for the most part. But some are on the verge of breaking that faith this year. It has nothing to do with mortgages or credit markets – it’s about pension funds in trouble.

And when pensions are sucking up cash flow, your dividends could suffer. Mercer, a pension consulting firm that is part of Marsh & McLennan (NYSE:MMC), already estimates that pension shortfalls will lead to a 10% cut in stock dividends this quarter compared to a year ago.

That’s a big deal. Even the 2003 squeeze on pension funds after the three-year-long post-dot-com bear market didn’t cause that. In fact, this could be the first time pensions have been hit so hard since 1958.

Pension plan contributions are a normal expense that companies handle just as they pay the electric bill and management bonuses. But pension plans are special. The funds are separate from the general coffer and there are rules on how much money the plans must have compared to the benefits they’ll have to pay out. This is true in the U.S., Canada, UK and Europe. And though I will use U.S. examples, British and European stocks are also under pressure.

In the bull market years of the 90s, keeping a pension fund properly funded was no problem for most companies. Their funds were flush with stock, and stocks were going up. In fact, before Enron spoiled everyone’s party, some pension funds were loaded with roaring hot company stock. (The post-Enron limit is 10% in company stock in the company pension fund.) Pension funds were making money.

Obligations were fully covered and then some. Some funds were so flush the companies were able to stop putting money in them for several years. They even showed earnings from pension funds as “other” income on balance sheets, making their earnings look better than they should.

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GE (NYSE:GE) was famous for smoothing its earnings by including pension fund surpluses in its figures. Some critics called this maneuver “vapor earnings.” These vapor earnings fattened the bottom line sufficiently to bring fortunate GE execs an extra 9% in their bonuses.

Now comes today… after a bear market… into a recession. Vapor earnings are vaporizing. As of September 30, S&P 500 companies’ pension funds have lost an average of 11.6%, according to CFO magazine. They are now about 92% funded. That’s just barely OK… for a couple more months.

For many years, U.S. companies only had to keep 90% of the present value of expected obligations in their accounts. The Pension Protection Act of 2006 will raise that “coverage ratio” gradually to 100%. For 2008, the magic number is 92%. And it goes to 94% in 2009. So this 92% funding estimate means that some companies pass muster, and a lot don’t.

Standard and Poor’s says S&P 500 pension plans were $200 billion short of minimum funding levels by the end of September this year. Worse, they were on target to surpass the $219 billion record shortfall of 2003.

Who’s in trouble? What stocks to avoid? Remember that funding a pension is a normal business expense. So it’s not every company that shows a pension obligation that should bother you, but the ones that show likely shortfalls that could overwhelm earnings.

Among the companies with big pension plans that are likely to need a large shot of hard-to-find money are Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT), United Technologies (NYSE:UTX), Aetna (NYSE:AET), Boeing (NYSE:BA), IBM (NYSE:IBM), Eastman Kodak (NYSE:EK), Goodyear (NYSE:GT), Ford (NYSE:F) and GM (NYSE:GM).

Those are just the big names. By industry, the most underfunded pensions are concentrated in information technology and healthcare. Utilities also slipped from overfunded last year to coming up short this year.

The good news is that companies have to give you a warning in their financial reports—the bad news is that you have to read the suckers. At least if you do it online, you can use a search and go straight to the “pension” part of Management’s Discussion.

Source: Another Fancy Disaster You Didn’t Need – Pension Fund Vapors

• The U.S. Federal Reserve released its Beige Book report yesterday (Wednesday), which looks at the economic conditions in the 12 Fed regions. “The pace of economic activity has been slow in most districts,” the report said, Bloomberg News reported. “Wage pressures were characterized as moderate by most districts amid a general pullback in hiring.”

• August was another weak month for auto sales as most major carmakers reported declines. Ford Motor Co. (F) reported 26.6% decline, while General Motors Corp. (GM) sales fell 20.4%. Toyota Motor Corp. (ADR: TM) fared better with a 9.4% decline, but Japanese rival Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. (ADR: NSANY) had a surprising 13.6% increase, Reuters reported.

• GMAC Financial Services (GMA) announced yesterday that it would close all 200 GMAC Mortgage retail offices and reduce and its Residential Capital LLC unit in an effort to cut costs and streamline operations, The Wall Street Journal reported. Approximately 5,000 employees, 60% of Residential Capital staff, will be let go.

• U.S. government officials charged two former Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR: CS) brokers with fraud and conspiracy yesterday (Wednesday) concerning sales of subprime-related debt, the International Herald Tribune reported. The two brokers gave clients the impression the debt was secured by federally guaranteed loans. “In September 2007, these former employees resigned after we detected their prohibited activity and promptly suspended them,” the bank said. “Credit Suisse immediately informed our regulators.”

• Orders to U.S. factories rose by a larger-than-expected amount in July, the Commerce Department said yesterday (Wednesday). New orders increased by 1.3%t in July, much stronger than the 0.8% increase economists expected. The July advance follows a 2.1% increase in June and represents the fifth straight rise in orders, The Associated Press reported.

• Staples Inc. (SPLS) the world’s largest office supply company, reported profit of $150.2 million, or 21 cents per share, for the quarter ended Aug. 2. Down from $178.8 million, or 25 cents per share, a year ago. Sales climbed 18% from $4.29 billion to $5.07 billion.

• A division of United Technologies Corp. (UTX) received a $78.1 million contract from the U.S. Navy for parts and materials to build propulsion systems for a variant of the Joint Strike Fighter, The Associated Press reported yesterday (Wednesday). United Technologies’ Pratt & Whitney will also build 10 propulsion systems for the U.S. Air Force, two of the same for the Royal Netherlands Air Force and three for the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy.

• Liberty Media Corp. (LMDIA) will spin off its stake in DirecTV Group Inc. (DTV) and other assets into a publicly traded company called Liberty Entertainment Group SA, according to Reuters. Liberty’s 50% stake in DirecTV will be the dominant asset in Liberty Entertainment, accounting for more than 80% of its value.

Sourcce: Global Investing Roundups Thursday, September 4th, 2008

Once upon a time, the defense sector was the place to have your money. From wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. was spending tons. Is the party over? That’s what our reader Paul was wondering when he asked…

Subject: UTX United Aircraft?

Hi Charles, Shares are down perhaps because of building slump dropping HVAC and elevator backlog? This seems to be a well-managed company. Jet engines doing well (Pratt-Whitney) and more efficient ones will go into the newer lightweight composite fuel efficient jobs the survivors will have to be flying to be competitive. Whatcha think? Paul

The whole sector is being downgraded. It explains why United Technologies (UTX) is suffering. The scariest part… airlines should reduce their orders in the next two years as they cut costs to cope with higher oil prices.

Just when you thought things were at their worst, now investors are worrying about the election. Obama wants to pull troops from Iraq, which would mean less defense spending. McCain isn’t in a hurry to pull troops out, which means a continuation of defense spending.

That’s a huge uncertainty that won’t be fully resolved until after the election in November.

Technically, the company is a falling knife. Well, that is unless you look at their weekly chart. They are sitting just above their 200-week moving average. While this may look tempting as a buy, when you look back, you’ll notice the last time they hit their 200-week average, they still fell under it.

In other words, there’s no real pattern of their 200-week acting as support. The last thing you should do is buy because your hoping a pattern emerges.

While I believe the sell-off in this company is overdone (and we may see a bounce), this stock probably won’t perform until after the November election.

Let United Technologies (UTX) slide.

More than 30 years after Japan’s only airliner program since World War II ended as a commercial failure, the country is making a multi-billion-dollar bet that it can succeed in the jetliner market.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (PINK: MHVYF) has unveiled a plan to develop a “regional” jetliner for use by airlines all around the world. The controversial project gained global credibility in recent weeks after analysts began to speculate that Toyota Motor Corp. (TM) – the world’s No. 1 automaker by sales – would join the development team. Toyota subsequently confirmed its involvement, announcing plans to take a 10% stake in the venture and injecting $67 million to help get the initiative off the ground. The Japanese government is backing the program.

It’s a big gamble for Mitsubishi and its partners: The regional airliner market is right now dominated by Bombardier Inc., of Canada, and Embraer (Empresa Brasileira de Aeronautica SA) (ERJ) of Brazil. And firms in both Russia and China – each with a major U.S. corporation as a partner and co-pilot – already have targeted this market, and have a solid head start on the Mitsubishi team.

Still, the potential payoff is hefty enough to warrant the risk. Such key global trends as rocketing fuel prices, soaring global travel, fast growth in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, and ongoing problems with major air carriers across the world are stoking worldwide demand for efficient, economic regional jets. And that demand could persist until 2030, many experts predict.

“In terms of the macro picture, demand is there for this type of jet,” Mizuho Investors Securities Co. Ltd. senior analyst Yuichi Ishida told the Reuters news service. “Money-losing regional routes could turn profitable by using them. But the real question is whether there is room left in this market for Mitsubishi Heavy.”

To date, the so-called NAMC YS-11 – a turboprop airliner built by a Japanese consortium – is the only commercial aircraft made in Japan in the post-World War II era. The program was initiated by Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry in 1954. The aircraft was rolled out in 1962 and production ended in 1974 – hardly qualifying it as a “success” from a financial standpoint.

Toyota’s Desire to Fly

Toyota said its motivation was primarily patriotic – the Mitsubishi jet is being backed by the Japanese government, which is searching for ways to for its smallish aerospace business to become more of a global player, especially after losing other industries to South Korea and China.

Toyota – which edged ahead of General Motors Corp. (GM) in the first quarter to become the world’s top-selling automaker – said it also would be looking for ways to adapt the technological know-how developed in its aerospace activities to its core automaking business. That’s not just an empty claim made to justify its diversification into the aerospace sector: The Mitsubishi MRJ70 (70 seat) and MRJ90 (90 seat) jetliners are to be the first regional jets to make extensive use of high-strength/lightweight “composite” materials, such as those found on the new 787 Dreamliner being developed by U.S. aerospace giant, The Boeing Co. (BA).

Although it hasn’t built a commerical aircraft in decades, it is an experienced subcontractor in that area, and is a veteran defense contracting firm. For example, Mitsubishi already is a key manuacturing partner on the long-range Boeing jet. And it has experience building such military aircraft as the F-1 fighter, T-2 trainer – both supersonic jets that the company built on its own – and the F-2 fighter, a Japanese-built version of the U.S. F-16 Fighting Falcon that was produced in partnership with Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT)., the No. 1 U.S. defense contractor.

Toyota, too, has some experience, and already operates a small aerospace research team. Analysts say that venture could easily take flight and become a major business operation. That’s just what happened with Toyota’s robotics business, which started out as a fairly tiny research operation, but today is one of the company’s better-known businesses outside its core auto operation.

Honda Motor Co. (HMC), Toyota’s chief rival in Japan, already has expanded into the aircraft business; its futuristic seven-seater HondaJet light business jet has garnered heady praise for its advanced design and elegant lines. The company was supposed to start taking orders for the airplane sometime this month.
Toyota’s investment in the Mitsubishi jet is the largest of any company outside the Mitsubishi corporate network, or “keiretsu” of related companies. Other backers include domestic Japanese trading companies and the government-supported Development Bank of Japan. Foreign suppliers also will be involved.

To Market, To Market

Why is Mitsubishi – Japan’s largest producer of machinery – getting into the airliner business? In a word: Opportunity.

Over the next 20 years, Boeing itself is forecasting that air carriers worldwide will need to acquire 28,600 commercial aircraft of all types – with a potential value of $2.8 trillion. The Boeing forecast is generally viewed as the world’s best analysis of the future global market for commercial airliners and cargo aircraft.

The huge revenue potential in the global airliner market – combined with the low number of viable competitors and the high barriers faced by new potential entrants – is a big reason that Money Morning’s investment gurus have repeatedly mentioned Boeing as a promising global investment for years to come.
During that same 20-year stretch addressed by Boeing’s market forecast, China will have to buy 3,400 airliners, a requirement worth $340 billion. That will make China the fastest-growing airliner market in the world, and will also rank it as the biggest market outside the United States for new commercial airliners. In fact, if you average it out, from China alone you’re talking about sales of $17 billion a year for the next two decades.

This staggering shopping list will include the globetrotting tarmac queens being built by Boeing and European rival Airbus SAS.

But global forces also are revving up demand for regional jetliners, like those being dreamed up by Mitsubishi.

According to Mitsubishi, the world’s airlines will order 5,000 regional jets over the next two decades as global carriers seek out fuel-efficient airplanes for shorter routes and developing nations expand their airliner fleets to fuel economic growth.

That’s not an arbitrary figure, either: The company spent several years analyzing the market and projecting the potential demand for the jet, and designed the specifications specifically around its findings. The plane will be:

• Small, so it can fly out of regional airports.
• Made of lightweight composites to make it strong and fuel efficient.
• Fast (with cruisng and maximum speeds of between 0.78 and 0.82 times the speed of sound, according to published reports).
• Profitable to operate, carrying 70 to 90 passengers, depending upon the model.
• And with a good range – 920 nautical miles for the base model, although extended-range (1,400 nm) and long-range (1,960 nm) versions will be available.

“Mitsubishi Heavy has always been just a partner of Western aircraft makers,” Mitsubishi Heavy President Kazuo Tsukuda said at a news conference that talked up the company’s pet project. “Now we want to take advantage of changes in the marketplace such as high fuel costs and a greater need for environmentally friendly aircraft.”

Among the Dow components reporting are Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. The importance of these earnings reports cannot be stressed enough as investors look for any kind of sign that the credit crisis is over or at least coming to a close. There are a number of other financial companies due out this week: Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, Wachovia, and Wells Fargo to name a few.

I know expectations for the financials have been brought down over the last five or six months, but have they been lowered enough? I don’t think they have. When I look at the chart of the S&P Select Financial Spyder, and the rally over the last four weeks, I question whether or not the expectations meet the reality. In fact, the rally simply brought the XLF back up to its downward-sloped trend line and back up to an overbought level.

This is just covering the financials, but there are seven other Dow components reporting this week. Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) reports on Tuesday, along with Intel (INTC). Wednesday, Coca Cola (KO) and IBM (IBM) both report, and on Thursday, we will hear from Pfizer (PFE) and United Technologies (UTX). The lone Dow component reporting on Friday is Caterpillar (CAT).

There was a clue sent out last week about what we should expect in the earnings. Did you see the clue? You probably did and may not have known it was a clue. When UPS issued an earnings warning last week, that was your clue.

For consumer products companies like Johnson & Johnson, Intel, Coca Cola, and IBM, having UPS come out and announce that the demand for package shipping is down, is an ominous sign. If UPS’s services are not needed to ship products, are products selling? More than likely, the products are not selling like they were a year ago.

While the sentiment towards the overall market has grown more pessimistic over the last three months, in the last three weeks the bearish sentiment has slipped from its peak in mid-March. I am basing this on the 21-day moving average for the CBOE Equity Put/Call Ratio and Investor’s Intelligence. The moving average for the put/call ratio peaked out on March 20 at 0.93 and has since slipped back down to 0.81. The bearish percentage on the Investor’s Intelligence report peaked at 44.7 on March 19. It is now down to 38.5.

What this tells us is that the overall sentiment, while still bearish, it has slipped a little over the last 3-4 weeks. Are investors looking for the earnings season to rescue the market?

If they are, I have the feeling they are going to be disappointed. And in the words of Ozzy Osbourne, we may be “going off the rails on a crazy train.”

Good luck and good trading,

Rick

P.S. To let me know what you thought of today’s article, send an e-mail to: feedback@investorsdailyedge.com.

[Ed. Note: Subscribers to Rick’s KISS Investing service recently closed out gains of approximately 150% on Continental Airlines and 175% on the Diamonds Trust. Click here to learn more about KISS Investing]