Dow's 52 Week Highs Not Confirmed

The Dow has gone on to put in a series of new 52 week highs, something that has eluded both the transports and the utilities. We personally do not place too much emphasis on the Dow Theory which focuses on the transports, we. However, to do place quite a bit of weight on the utilities as they generally lead both the industrials and the transports. At the very least the Utilities should have put in one new 52 week high and more importantly they should have done it before the industrials and or the transports. As both the transports and the utilities have not put in new highs we have what amounts to a double non confirmation signal. This suggests high probability of the Dow suffering a big correction. (more)

Wheat Tailspin Accelerating Signals 13% Drop on Record Harvests

Wheat’s steepest weekly drop since December may be just the start of a fourth-quarter slump as the biggest harvests on record turn this year into the worst for prices since 1990.

Wheat will decline 13 percent to $4.30 a bushel in Chicago by the end of December, according to Emmanuel Jayet, head of agricultural-commodities research at Societe Generale in Paris. Prices had staged the biggest October rally in at least 50 years, rising 26 percent to $5.7475 on Oct. 23, after rain delayed U.S. planting. Last week’s 9.8 percent drop shows the gains were “overdone,” Jayet said.

Global output rose 12 percent to a record 682.3 million metric tons in the year through May and will total 668.1 million in the current season, the second-most ever, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Oct. 9. The surplus will likely lower costs for General Mills Inc., the maker of Cheerios cereal, and reduce profit for flour millers including ConAgra Foods Inc. (more)

Is THIS how the bank bailout money is being used?

HUMOR

BNN: Exclusive Interview with Paul Volcker

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U.S. Stocks Drop as S&P 500 Ends Streak of Seven Monthly Gains

U.S. stocks tumbled, ending a seven- month streak of gains for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, as declines in consumer confidence and spending and the threat of a CIT Group Inc. bankruptcy raised concern over the durability of the economic recovery. The dollar and Treasuries gained, while commodities retreated.

CIT, the commercial lender, plunged 24 percent as investor Carl Icahn agreed to support its prepackaged bankruptcy plan. Citigroup Inc. tumbled 5.1 percent on a report that banking analyst Mike Mayo predicted a $10 billion writedown for this quarter. American Express Co. and Walt Disney Co. slid as Commerce Department data showed a drop in purchases and the Reuters/University of Michigan sentiment index weakened. MetLife Inc. lost 7.6 percent after a third straight quarterly loss. (more)

Wilbur Ross Sees ‘Huge’ Commercial Real Estate Crash

Billionaire investor Wilbur L. Ross Jr., said today the U.S. is in the beginning of a “huge crash in commercial real estate.”

“All of the components of real estate value are going in the wrong direction simultaneously,” said Ross, one of nine money managers participating in a government program to remove toxic assets from bank balance sheets. “Occupancy rates are going down. Rent rates are going down and the capitalization rate -- the return that investors are demanding to buy a property -- are going up.”

U.S. commercial property sales are forecast to fall to the lowest in almost two decades as the industry endures its worst slump since the savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s, according to property research firm Real Capital Analytics Inc. The Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Indices already have fallen almost 41 percent since October 2007, Moody’s Investors Service said Oct. 19. (more)