Thursday, May 3, 2012

15 Stocks That Traders Are Shorting Like Crazy

Stocks are selling off today.  This is  good news for the short-sellers, who profit when prices go down.
We screened the stock market to see which companies where being shorted the most (as measured by short as a percentage of float).
Electronics retailers and anything associated with for-profit education are still plagued by the bears.
The most heavily shorted stock on our list seems to come out of left field.

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A Fund for Brave Bears to Pounce On

Direxion Daily Small Cap Bear 3X Shares (NYSE:TZA) — This highly leveraged exchange-traded fund (ETF) seeks the daily results of 300% of the inverse of the performance of the small-cap Russell 2000 index.
Therefore, it is a highly speculative ETF and should be traded only by the most proficient and savvy traders. But for those who have the experience and are able to risk the capital, it can provide a very fast trade.
TZA’s support now rests at $17. If the Russell 2000 falls under its major support line at 785, TZA could trade to $24 very quickly.
This leveraged ETF is meant for day traders, but could be held for several weeks. However, as noted, this is for experienced traders and speculators only.
RUT Chart
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Trade of the Day – Direxion Daily Small Cap Bear 3X Shares (NYSE:TZA)
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The Student Loan Time Bomb



Student Loan Crisis - Coast to Coast AM 1.5.2012 with Guest Alan Collinge .As student loan debt in the US exceeds $1tn for the first time, George Noory of Coast to Coast AM asks Alan Collinge what the high cost of higher education means for the limping US economy. The student loan market is shaping up to pop, much as the housing industry just did .Education is a suffering social institution & just like medicine it has been heisted by corporateers & despotic oligarchs to become a profit making enterprise. Kleptocrat administrators & trustees have corroborated since they also serve as corporateering boardmembers to sell out the institutions, the public trust, & disregard the public good. Conflict of interest? Of course, corrupted ScAmerican government politicronies indulged the exploitation. The dubious & malevolent results are evident.

More Recession-Proof Stocks : ORCL, CERN, KO, CL, QSII, CA

Think we're headed back into a recession? A lot of investors do. They are buying the most defensive, recession-proof names they can get their hands on. That means consumer staples names Colgate Palmolive (NYSE:CL) and Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) are quickly coming back into favor; both are knocking on the door of new highs. Makes sense, as it's unlikely consumers will give up the most basic daily things - no matter how deep the economy sinks.

There's another group of stocks that do just as well in a recessionary period though, and these corporations don't make anything you can eat or clean yourself with. In fact, these companies don't even target consumers at all - at least not individual consumers.

Corporate StaplesIn the same sense that the average consumer just isn't going to give up food or hygiene no matter how tough times get, some corporations can't give up something they've grown quite accustomed to as well - their technology. Specifically, a whole host of enterprises are quite married to their software-as-a-service and database management service, so much so that they couldn't get rid of it if they wanted to.  (more)

95 Percent Of The Jobs Lost During The Recession Were Middle Class Jobs

Who is the biggest loser in the ongoing decline of the U.S. economy?  Is it the wealthy?  No, the stock market has been soaring lately and their incomes are actually going up.  Is it the poor?  Well, the poor are definitely hurting very badly, but when you don't have much to begin with you don't have much to lose.  Unfortunately, it is the middle class that has lost the most during this economic downturn. 

According to Bloomberg, 95 percent of the jobs lost during the recession were middle class jobs.  That is an absolutely astounding figure.  Yes, some executives lost their jobs during the last recession as did some minimum-wage workers.  But overwhelmingly the jobs that were lost were middle income jobs.  Sadly, the limited number of jobs that have been added since the end of the last recession have mostly been low income jobs.  A higher percentage of Americans are working low income jobs than ever before, and the cost of living continues to rise at a very brisk pace.  This is causing an erosion of the middle class unlike anything we have ever seen in American history.

When I was growing up I was taught that the fact that we had the largest middle class in the history of the world was evidence that our economic system was working incredibly well.

So what does the fact that the middle class is shrinking at a very rapid pace at this point say about how well our economy is working?

Middle Class Incomes Are Going Down
During the last recession, millions of Americans lost their jobs and the percentage of working age Americans that have jobs has not bounced back in the years since the recession ended.  (more)

This Is the First Time In History that All Central Banks Have Printed Money at the Same Time … And They’re Failing Miserably

Mainstream Keynesian economists argue that the failure of the European austerity measures to pull Europe out of the doldrums proves that more stimulus is needed, and that austerity is poison at this stage.
Indeed, most mainstream economists pretend that debt doesn’t exist … or believe that debt for its own sake is good and necessary.
But Martin Weiss noted last month:
Four of the world’s largest central banks have gone absolutely berserk, running the money printing presses like never before in history:
chart This Is the First Time In History that All Central Banks Have Printed Money at the Same Time ... And Theyre Failing Miserably
Source: Chart lines — Pimco
The Bank of Japan (BOJ) had already been printing money like crazy ever since their bubble economy burst in the early 1990s.
So when the debt crisis struck in 2008, the size of their balance sheet assets, which measure the cumulative total of a central bank’s money printing operations, was already the biggest in the world: About 20% of their economy.  (more)

Chart of the Day - Discover Financial Services (DFS)

The "Chart of the Day" is Discover Financial Services (DFS), which showed up on Tuesday's Barchart "All-Time High" list. Discover on Tuesday posted a new all-time high of $34.75 and closed up 1.45%. TrendSpotter has been long since April 25 at $33.54. In recent news on the stock, Goldman Sachs on March 23 upgraded Discover to a Conviction Buy from Neutral and raised its price target to $39 from $36. Goldman cited improving financial metrics and below-normal credit losses. Discover Financial, with a market cap of $18 billion, operates the Discover Card with more than fifty million cardmembers, the Discover Network with millions of merchant and cash access locations, and the Goldfish credit card business in the United Kingdom.

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