The Big Picture - Macro Perspective on the Capital Markets, Economy, Technology, and Digital Media

Australian comedy group ‘Axis Of Awesome’ perform a sketch from the 2009 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Footage courtesy of Network Ten Australia.

See http://www.axisofawesome.net/ for more details of the comedy trio including Jordan Raskopoulos, Lee Naimo, & Benny Davis.

Journey – Don’t Stop Believing
James Blunt – You’re Beautiful
Alphaville – Forever Young
Jason Mraz – I’m Yours
Mika – Happy Ending
Alex Lloyd – Amazing
The Calling – Wherever You WIll Go
Elton John – Can You Feel The Love Tonight
Maroon 5 – She Will Be Loved
The Last Goodnight – Pictures Of You
U2 – With Or Without You
Crowded House – Fall At Your Feet
Kasey Chambers – Not Pretty Enough
The Beatles – Let it Be
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Under the Bridge
Daryl Braithwaite – The Horses
Bob Marley – No Woman No Cry
Marcy Playground – Sex and Candy
Men At Work – Land Down Under
Banjo Patterson’s Waltzing Matilda
A Ha – Take On Me
Green Day – When I Come Around
Eagle Eye Cherry – Save Tonight
Toto – Africa
Beyonce – If I Were A Boy
The Offspring – Self Esteem
The Offspring – You’re Gonna Go Far Kid
Pink – You and Your Hand
Lady Gaga – Poker Face
Aqua – Barbie Girl
The Fray – You Found Me
30h!3 – Don’t Trust Me
MGMT – Kids
Tim Minchin – Canvas Bags
Natalie Imbruglia – Torn
Five For Fighting – Superman
Axis Of Awesome – Birdplane
Missy Higgins – Scar

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Eighty-five percent of American households were food secure throughout the entire year in 2009, meaning that they had access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members. The remaining households (14.7 percent) were food insecure at least some time during the year.

Something to consider on this holiday when we give thanks for what we have.  As the holiday season kicks into high gear, please consider helping those less fortunate than yourself:

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. ~ Winston Churchill

USDA report after the jump

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Blame Greenspan

Insider Trading Is “Everywhere”

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Source:
Insider Trading Is “Everywhere,” Matt Taibbi Says: “The Fear Is There’s No End to It”
Aaron Task
Yahoo Tech Ticker Nov 23, 2010
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/insider-trading-is-“everywhere”-matt-taibbi-says-“the-fear-is-there’s-no-end-to-it”-535645.html

In the US, we eat almost 300 million turkeys per year. About a third of them are consumed in the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Let the slaughter begin!

hat tip Flowing Data

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See also:

• The Genetics of White Meat and Dark Meat from Scientific American (Thanks, Erin Biba!)
• Tyrannosaurus Rex Had a Wishbone from Smithsonian’s Dinosaur Tracking blog
• Why Arsenic is Used in Turkey Processing, and Why It’s Not Worth the Risk
• A Genetically Modified Thanksgiving from Popular Science
• The Genetic Origins of Snood Erections from The Annals of Improbable Resarch
• A 3-Dimensional Cosehedron-Shaped Pecan Pie, and other Thanksgiving DIY projects from Popular Mechanics
• 1969 Study On Frozen Turkey Semen Ability to Impregnate Female Turkeys
• It’s Not Actually the Tryptophan Making You Sleepy
• How to Turn Leftover Turkey Fryer Oil into Biodiesel
• A Whole Episode of the Science Jim Show dedicated to Thanksgiving, turkeys and Benjamin Franklin

I yesterday summarized my market view in a post entitled “Commodity prices – on a knife’s edge”. For some additional perspective, I consider the key moving averages of the principal asset classes in the following paragraphs:

The major moving-average levels for the benchmark U.S. stock market indices, the BRIC countries and South Africa (where I am based in Cape Town when not traveling), are given in the table below. The key observation is that after the nascent correction, most major indices are within striking distance of their 50-day moving averages. As a matter of fact, emerging-market indices such as the Shanghai Composite Index, the Bombay Sensex Index and the Brazilian Bovespa Index have already breached the 50-day lines. However, all the indices in the table are still trading above their key 200-day moving averages – often used as an indicator of the primary trend.

Click here or on the table below for a larger image.

From across the pond, David Fuller (Fullermoney) provides the following perspective: “Technical evidence of this corrective phase can now be seen in the combinations of recently failed upside breaks, downward dynamics, breaks of rising lows within the prior short-term uptrends, and the ranging loss of upside momentum. It would be prudent to expect this process to continue for a while longer in what is at least a partial mean reversion towards the rising 200-day moving averages.”

The table below shows moving averages for the other major asset classes – commodities, gold, currencies and government bonds. Interestingly, the Reuters/Jeffries CRB Index (commodities) is still marginally above its 50 DMA, whereas West Texas Intermediate Crude has just breached the 50-day line. The U.S. Dollar Index’s recent strength pushed the greenback above its 50 DMA (but still below the key 200 DMA), whereas the U.S. dollar/euro exchange rate has fallen below its 50 DMA (but is still above the 200 DMA). The other noteworthy readings are that gold bullion remains comfortably above all the key moving averages, while the 10-year Treasury Note yield has breached the 50DMA but still has some way to go to give a primary sell signal, and the commencement of a secular bear market, by crossing the 200 DMA.

Click here or on the table below for a larger image.

I have been warning for some time that “risk off” could be the order of the day for a while, and remain cautious regarding risky assets.

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Black Friday Sales have already begun.

I am not planning on going crazy, but since a planned trip to Florida during Xmas week had to be rescheduled, I will be home chillin.

My only purchase so far is Lord of the Rings trilogy (which I last saw in theaters)  in Blu-Ray for $7.99 per disc at Amazon.

• LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring

• The Two Towers

• Return of the King

A few other Blu-Ray discs on sale caught my eye:

• Kingdom of Heaven (Director’s Cut) ($8.49)

• The Usual Suspects ($10)

• Fight Club (10th Anniversary Edition)  ($10)

Next week, Stocktwits launches their new Store –its been in the works for a while, and what we have seen of it is really kicking.

In addition to selling low priced data screens ($9.95/mo) to the stock twitterers, we are also thinking about making our individual stock, sector, and market calls available to subscribers.

Here is the output from Screenr, a very cool screen capture tool I have been playing with.

Each year, Citywire produces a terrific conference in Berlin. (I spoke there last year). This year, it is (unfortunately for us Yanks) on Thanksgiving weekend.

If you are on the continent and want to attend a first rate show, i suggest you head to the Hotel Adlon. More details here.

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The 2nd and final look at Nov U of M confidence was 2 pts better than thought at 71.6 and up from the initial reading of 69.3 out a few weeks ago. It’s the best level since June and up from 67.7 in Oct. Both Current Conditions and the Outlook rose a bit more than 2 pts. One year inflation expectations were 3%, up from 2.7% in Oct but holding steady with the preliminary Nov report. That is the highest since May. There is no better driver to consumer confidence than comfort in one’s job and maybe the fall in initial claims is a clear sign that the labor market is getting better and the consumer is beginning to feel that. With this said, we’ll get labor market net hiring data next week with the ADP report and Payrolls and they will help to quantify to what extent.

Be sure to see Jonathan Tasini’s new eBbook: It’s Not Raining, We’re Getting Peed On: The Scam of the Deficit Crisis.”

Jonathan has given us permission to reproduce this, and its in the Think Tank now as an iPad friendly PDF. You can get also pick up versions for Kindle or Nook.