Easy shorting?

[maxi]

So I just read on WSJ that the congress went home for the "long weekend holiday". Which caused me to look up the market schedule. The holiday in question is Columbus Day October 14 which IS Monday. So those total assholes will NOT be in session again until Tuesday. Meanwhile the stockmarket WILL be open regular hours Monday and of course all week long. Here is the text from what I read. Of course there are numerous versions of this report but this one is the most straightforward.

Oct. 12, 2013, 12:10 p.m. EDT
House Republican talks with Obama stall
White House rejects proposal, tries to negotiate with GOP senators

By Jeffry Bartash and Robert Schroeder, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The White House rejected an offer by House conservatives to reopen the government and raise the government’s borrowing limit, turning instead to an effort to cut a deal with Senate Republicans.

The sudden turnabout in events raises questions over whether an agreement will be reached before Oct. 17, the day on which the Treasury says it will run out of money to pay the nation’s bills. Seemingly rapid progress in talks between the parties heading into the weekend had appeared to suggest a deal was near.


Republican leaders in the GOP-controlled House briefed party members in a rare Saturday morning meeting after negotiations with the White House stalled. They indicated that no progress had been made and told members to go home for the long holiday weekend

“We’ll do everything we can to make the point that we went to negotiate and he took no offers,” said Darrell Issa, a California Republican who is chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

As talks with the House hit an impasse, the White House pivoted to a proposal by some moderate Republican senators to end the shutdown. President Obama hasn't accepted the plan but he hasn't outright rejected it either, according to press reports.

Both the House and Senate plans would end the shutdown, but the Senate proposal included fewer conditions that the president finds unpalatable. The Senate plan, crafted by Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, would also effectively increase the nation’s borrowing limit for at least three months instead of the six weeks offered by the House.

“The House strategy hasn’t worked so far,” Collins told reporters Saturday morning. She also indicated that no deal was imminent, however.

Some House Republicans expressed anger at Senate colleagues for undercutting their negotiation position, but it was unclear if enough Senate Republicans would rally around the Collins plan. And even if they do, the House may not go along.

The White House, for its part, is trying to keep up the pressure on Republicans in both chambers to lower their demands. Fresh polls showing that the public largely blames them for the shutdown. Senate Republicans in particular have been less keen than their House counterparts in prolonging a staredown with President Obama.

The Democratic-led Senate, meanwhile, failed in its effort on Saturday to approve a separate proposal to extend the debt ceiling unconditionally through 2014. The proposal failed to muster the 60 votes needed under Senate procedural rules.

“The economy needs more stability than the short-term House Republican proposal would provide,” Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, said before the vote. “Congress and the country must not be back in this position six weeks from now, worrying whether Republicans will force our nation to default on its financial obligations.”

On Friday, stocks (SNC:SPX) climbed as Wall Street grew more optimistic about a deal emerging from Washington to raise the $16.7 trillion debt limit and end the shutdown, which is now on its 12th day. Read Market Snapshot Those gains could unwind next week, however, if hopes for a quick deal are dashed.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warned lawmakers as recently as Thursday that Congress must raise the debt ceiling by Oct. 17 or the U.S. will start to run out of money to pay the nation’s bills. The government cannot borrow more money without approval from both branches of Congress.

Even if the two parties agree to a temporary extension of the debt limit, they would still face a tough task in crafting a long-term compromise over government spending.

Copyright © 2013 MarketWatch, Inc. All rights reserved.
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[clinton]

I sold my SPXU
of COURSE the markets gonna drop now.

[maxi]

Keep googling government shutdown. I guess not all of them went home.....

48 hours

Senators seek to end US government shutdown and avoid default
Majority leader Harry Reid hopes for deal with Mitch McConnell 'in next 48 hours' after Obama rejects six-week debt ceiling extension offered by House Republicans

Paul Lewis in Washington
theguardian.com, Saturday 12 October 2013 18.30 EDT

Two senior senators have taken on the fraught process of finding a congressional deal to reopen the US government and raise the country's borrowing limit, just four days before the Treasury is scheduled to run out of money.

The Democratic Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, and his Republican counterpart, Mitch McConnell, long-time adversaries, met on Saturday morning after it became clear that a separate attempt to broker a deal, between the Republican-dominated House of Representatives and the White House, had failed.

Focus shifted to the Senate when President Barack Obama rejected a plan from House Republicans to extend the so-called debt ceiling by just six weeks and made no offer lift the US government shutdown. Reid told reporters his meeting with McConnell had been "cordial" and added that they were only at preliminary stages.

"We don't have anything done yet – there's a long way to go before something like that will happen," he said, adding that he hoped to achieve a deal "in the next 48 hours".

Reid, McConnell and two other senators – the Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander and New York Democrat Charles Schumer – met in Reid's office at 9am on Saturday, for just under an hour. Later in the day, Reid and Schumer met Obama in the Oval Office at the White House.


The four senators were described by a senior congressional aide as a "nucleus" that could now rescue the country from default. However at a press conference, Reid and Schumer expressed only cautious optimism, and after a strategy meeting with fellow Democrats, the California senator Dianne Feinstein said she could not see any way through the current impasse. "There are people that have different proposals – there are probably four or five of those," she said. "But the proposals that will get the leadership of the House, the Senate, and the president, are not out there at this time."

On the Senate floor, a Democratic procedural measure that would have moved the Senate to a vote to extend the debt ceiling through the end of 2014, with no contingencies attached, fell after it failed to secure the 60 votes required.

There was then hope that a bipartisan bill, by the Maine Republican senator Susan Collins with input from a West Virginia Democrat, Joe Manchin, might offer a way forward. That would have increased the borrowing limit until January 2014 and reopening the government until March, in return for concessions aimed at pleasing Republicans, who precipiated the crisis when they failed to pass a budget resolution to ontinue the funding of federal services without measures designed to undermine the Affordable Care Act, Obama's signature healthcare reform.

However in a sign of the disarray that has affected an apparently directionless Capitol Hill, interest in that proposal lasted no more than a few hours.

The risk of a possible US default – which most economists agree would be catastrophic and reverberate across the world – has concentrated minds on Capitol Hill. Some Repulbicans have become increasligly concerned that they are being blamed for the crisis. They hoped that by focusing on the unpopularity of Obamacare and characterising the president's stance as a refusal to negotiate, that the White House would be seen as responsible for the first shutdown since 1996.

But an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll this week showed the public largely blaming Republicans, with the party suffering its all-time worst rating since the survey began. Support for Obama's health reforms, which were introduced on the day the shutdown began, has increased despite early problems with enrolment websites.

Procedural complications

There appears to be little prospect of a deal before markets opened on Monday. All eyes are now on a deadline of Thursday when, according to the Treasury, the $16.7tn debt limit must be raised in order for the US to continue paying its creditors. Even if a deal between Reid and McConnell is reached over the next 24 hours, procedural complications mean a vote might not be taken until Wednesday or even Thursday, a senior congressional aide said.

Republican members of the House gathered for a private meeting with the speaker, John Boehner, on Saturday morning. The Republican leader informed his fellow representatives that discussions with the president had not yielded any prospect of a deal. "The president rejected our deal," said the Idaho representative Raul Labrador, immediately after the meeting. "It is now up to the Senate Republicans to hold firm." Representative Thomas Massey, of Kentucky, added: "We made an offer to the president and he turned it down. He's still refusing to negotiate – the president is refusing to offer anything."


House Speaker John Boehner leaves a Republican conference in the US Capitol on Saturday. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA
Obama has repeatedly said he will not be taken "hostage" by House Republicans, and will only enter into formal negotiations once they remove the treat of a US default and reopen the government. Speaking in his weekly address, on Saturday morning, Obama said he was against any stop-gap measures which would buy time but still leave the country under the shadow of a possible default.

"It wouldn't be wise, as some suggest, to just kick the debt ceiling can down the road for a couple months, and flirt with a first-ever intentional default right in the middle of the holiday shopping season," he said.

Even if a deal is reached between Reid and McConnell, with backing from the White House, the challenge will lie in securing the support of the Republican-dominated House of Representatives. Republican leaders now appear to have all but given up their initial efforts to defund Obamacare, or delay the "individual mandate" of Obamacare, which compels US citizens to obtain healthcare or face fines.

They now appear to be seeking some kind of concession that will justify a course of action that resulted in an initial 800,000 government workers being furloughed, or temporarily suspended from work, and damaged local economies across the country which are dependent upon federal funds.

The shutdown, now entering its 13th day, has laid bare the bitter divisions in the Republican Party. What began as classic congressional deadlock between a Republican-dominated House and a Democratic-controlled Senate has become an internecine dispute between the Tea Party movement and more moderate Republicans.


The Statue of Liberty will reopen to the public after the state of New York agreed to shoulder the costs of running the site during the federal government shutdown. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP
Its impact has been felt most acutely in Washington, where there is a concentration of employees of federal agencies and departments. At least 500,000 government workers are still thought to be furloughed. But across America federal outposts have also felt the squeeze, particularly in the many rural, local economies dependant upon national parks. One of the worst affected area is in the rural North Carolina district which elected Tea Party Republican congressman Mark Meadows.

He was described as the "architect" of the shutdown after orchestrating a petition among House Republican members to force the leadership to use the federal budget as leverage to undermine Obamacare.

Meadows denied he was particularly instrumental in starting the shutdown, telling the Guardian that he was striving to reopen the government for his constituents, many of whom are reliant on tourism from nearby national parks. "Honestly, if they're angry with me, I'm doing all I can to get the government back open and make sure the harmful affects don't hurt people back home."

Under a deal agreed reached late on Friday, the Statue of Liberty, Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore as well as some national parks in Colorado and Utah reopened this weekend, after the government allowed them to be temporarily funded by state money and other non-federal sources.

[maxi]

And an astute comment that will draw fire from the peanut gallery here:

No deal; Because the deal is not between the Republicans and the Democrats, it's between The Tea Party Koch Industry, the Grover Norquist corn-belt-brigade with their Iowa primaries, and the Republican Kentucky Senators who we can amicably call the "hemp party," and are trying to get the hemp amendment passed through the pending, expired Farm Bill. In other words, the GOP is in a circular firing squad over celullose vs. petroleum based ethanol and the whole world is being held hostage. (hempcar.org, votehemp.com)
The fight over Obamacare is nothing more than a poorly veiled ruse for the GOP; An internal battle over ethanol subsidies; Who gets them, and whether ethanol is made from plant oil or crude oil. The political spin over Obamacare is killing election odds for the Tea Party as they continue to insult our memory and intelligence and spite Obama for successfully passing THEIR insurance idea. (Remember Romney Care?)
As Senator McCain said it when on campaign against Obama and someone asked him "Are we ever going to fix our health care system?" McCain's honest answer was "Not as long as the Democrats are run by trial lawyers and the Republican Party is run by insurance companies."
Well, I think we fixed it McCain; The GOP is currently run by fanatics from Koch Industries and Exxon Mobile, and it's never been more clear to the American people. Prediction; Obama gets a full House next year, and the U.S. starts growing hemp again. Better sell your corn stock.

[crumbdon]

Maybe not a popular remark I'm about to make here, but oh well- I pledge allegiance to neither party.
Our government leaders (all of them) have lost their way, plain and simple. Sure, there are plenty of worthy examples from either side about the evils of the other party, and some actually have merit. But in the end, the American people have precious few PUBLIC SERVANTS looking out for their best interests. What we do have are plenty of examples of those looking out for their OWN special interests, as well as the wealth and power of their own party. I can't remember the last time I was casting a vote for a candidate (from any party) that was someone I really BELIEVED in. Instead, it always comes down to choosing the lesser of two evils.
It's time for a sea change in government, maybe even a little revolution from the American People. Throw the bums out. Every one of them. A fresh start. Maybe what we need is less experience, as counterintuitive as that might sound. But I digress.

AS for the market, I doubt many of our illustrious leaders in CONgress (the opposite of PROgress, lol), foresaw what a rapid ascent we'd have the last couple of days on just the suspicion and rumor that a deal might be brokered. I'm sure a great many of them have yet to cover their shorts. But not to worry, a little weekend breakdown in talks should take care of that pesky little issue, should it not??

Careful, they're coming for your wallet next

[jacksrbtr]

Oct 13, 2013 16:47:16 GMT -5 crumbdon said:

Maybe not a popular remark I'm about to make here, but oh well- I pledge allegiance to neither party.
Our government leaders (all of them) have lost their way, plain and simple. Sure, there are plenty of worthy examples from either side about the evils of the other party, and some actually have merit. But in the end, the American people have precious few PUBLIC SERVANTS looking out for their best interests. What we do have are plenty of examples of those looking out for their OWN special interests, as well as the wealth and power of their own party. I can't remember the last time I was casting a vote for a candidate (from any party) that was someone I really BELIEVED in. Instead, it always comes down to choosing the lesser of two evils.
It's time for a sea change in government, maybe even a little revolution from the American People. Throw the bums out. Every one of them. A fresh start. Maybe what we need is less experience, as counterintuitive as that might sound. But I digress.

AS for the market, I doubt many of our illustrious leaders in CONgress (the opposite of PROgress, lol), foresaw what a rapid ascent we'd have the last couple of days on just the suspicion and rumor that a deal might be brokered. I'm sure a great many of them have yet to cover their shorts. But not to worry, a little weekend breakdown in talks should take care of that pesky little issue, should it not??

Carful, they're coming for your wallet next

6 out of 10 Americans think all the bums should be thrown out. I agree with you and them.

...and btw they've been raping our wallets for at least the last 5yrs. That's Obama's prime directive.

[maxi]

Owww! mommy mommy mommy i fall down go boom!

[jacksrbtr]

Oct 13, 2013 17:10:39 GMT -5 maxi said:

Owww! mommy mommy mommy i fall down go boom!



View Attachment

Yay.

[huh]

It's a very rare thing that Sunday night futures see a large move down and don't fully recover by Monday's open.

I think we're only about half way through this move up. Only question is, will they let it rest and give those short s a little wiggle room, or squeeze them for everything they have? Tonight's move down might have simply been a way to grab some more fuel.

I'd love to see a +3% day tomorrow.

JMHO

[crumbdon]

Oct 13, 2013 21:05:23 GMT -5 huh said:

It's a very rare thing that Sunday night futures see a large move down and don't fully recover by Monday's open.

I think we're only about half way through this move up. Only question is, will they let it rest and give those short s a little wiggle room, or squeeze them for everything they have? Tonight's move down might have simply been a way to grab some more fuel.

I'd love to see a +3% day tomorrow.

JMHO

I agree with that stat, the only thing that makes me think this time could be different is due to the fact that this whole market has become very over-reactive to the whole gov't debacle regarding shutdown, debt ceiling, etc. We all know how this game ends, it's just a matter of how long we play it each time. The more times the Big Boys jerk things up and down, the more they chase out retail before the next big move. And if the next big move is up, they gotta let all their buddies out of their short positions first and make sure it's only retail players that get squeezed/screwed.

All that said, there should be an overall bias upward this week as the inevitable resolution draws nearer.

[walnut]

I had my late night bid in to sell some ES spreads for 3.1 while the market was 2.8 to 3.6. Instantly they moved the ask to 3.1. Then it sat there for a minute and someone took it at 3.1, all the while the market did nothing.

[huh]

Oct 13, 2013 21:05:23 GMT -5 huh said:

It's a very rare thing that Sunday night futures see a large move down and don't fully recover by Monday's open.

And apparently today is one of those rare days.

[alvisunaenleo]

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