For days, Gmail has been displaying scary red banners above certain users' inboxes, warning "Your account was recently accessed from China." So, now you at least know if Chinese hackers are spying on your Gmail.

For days, Gmail has been displaying scary red banners above certain users' inboxes, warning "Your account was recently accessed from China." So, now you at least know if Chinese hackers are spying on your Gmail.

New homes sales remained flat month-over-month in August at 288,000 annualized units, according to a report released today by the National Association of Federal Credit Unions. Sales are scraping bottom at 28.9% less than one year ago and barely above the record low of 282,000 units in May.

A clear divide is emerging between analysts on the outlook for the investment banking sector, with some suggesting the third quarter will surprise on the upside while others downgrade their forecasts in light of worse than expected trading activity.

Deutsche Bank’s Michael Carrier yesterday slashed third quarter earnings estimates for Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs by 70% and 35% respectively “due to weak capital market trends across the board in the quarter”.

The largest number of bank failures in nearly 20 years has eliminated jobs, accelerated a drought in lending and left the industry's survivors with more power to squeeze customers.

Some 279 banks have collapsed since Sept. 25, 2008, when Washington Mutual Inc. became the biggest bank failure on record. That dwarfed the 1984 demise of Continental Illinois, which had only one-seventh of WaMu's assets. The failures of the past two years shattered the pace of the prior six-year period, when only three dozen banks died.

The US government is in danger of missing its deadline of divesting all of its Citigroup shares by the year-end after a fall in stock market trading volumes prompted authorities to slow down sales in July and August.

China’s commerce ministry announced on its Web site that it would impose import tariffs on American poultry of up to 105.4 percent. It said the tariffs reflected the result of its own antidumping investigation, which looked at whether the United States was harming China’s poultry industry by exporting chicken parts for less than it cost to produce them.

As one of the most architectural productive country, China aggregates 2 billion m² of new building area every year, consuming about 40% of the world’s concrete and steel. However, on the flip side of the new building fever, there lie the rubbles and remains of other “older” buildings: people tear down four-star hotels to build five-star ones and bulldoze newly developed construction sites before they are even finished. Lots of young strong buildings are down, fulfilling their unnatural destiny in the roaring noise of blasting.

http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2010/09/24/on-deck-next-week-auto-sales-case-shiller-gdp-data/

Ireland should seek an €80bn bailout from Europe to address our debt crisis and prevent years of stagnation, a leading economist has suggested.

Although Ireland has no immediate funding problems, it should seek up to €80bn from the European bailout fund to prevent ""a long, slow death", according to Societe Generale chief economist James Nixon last week.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's Sao Paulo Stock Exchange (Bovespa) is now the second largest stock in market value in the world, the stock's president Edemir Pinto said Friday.

Bovespa reached a market value of 30.4 billion reais (17.7 billion U.S. dollars) by closing time on Thursday, only after Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday denied a bid by China's largest credit rating firm to become an officially recognized statistical rating organization in the United States.

By blocking the Chinese rating agency, the Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. Ltd., from entering the international credit rating market, the United States aims to thwart China's efforts to have a say in the international capital market, Chinese analysts and observers said.

(Reuters) - A computer virus that experts said may have been created by a state did not affect Iran's nuclear plant or government systems, but did hit computers of staff at the plant and Internet providers, officials said on Sunday.

 TOKYO, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Japan's Nikkei average rose 1.2 percent on Monday, buoyed by exporters after Wall Street jumped on a rebound in U.S. business spending, but gains were capped by the yen's continued strength. 
   

Iran's nuclear agency is trying to combat a complex computer worm that has affected industrial sites throughout the country and is capable of taking over the control systems of power plants, Iranian media reports have said.

Regulators announced Friday a rescue and revamping of the nation's wholesale credit union system, underpinned by a federal guarantee valued at $30 billion or more. Wholesale credit unions don't deal with the general public but provide essential back-office services to thousands of other credit unions across the U.S. The majority of retail credit unions are sound, but they will have to shoulder the losses through special assessments over the next decade.

Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil in New York may drop as low as $71.50 a barrel in a short-term consolidation period, according to technical indicators used by traders to predict price movements.

Oil for November delivery will fall toward intra-day lows of $74.25 a barrel reached on Sept. 7 and $73.10 on Aug. 31, said Stephanie Aymes, a London-based cross-commodity technical analyst at Societe Generale SA. The top range of crude’s consolidation is $76.25, which is close to the 38.2 percent Fibonacci retracement of the contract’s drop from its $83.91 high on Aug. 4 to $71.49 on Aug. 25.

Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The dollar may weaken further against the currencies of six major trading partners as a gauge of greenback strength formed a so-called head-and-shoulders trading pattern, according to Royal Bank of Canada

The resolution of a head and shoulders pattern for the Dollar Index paints a very ominous bearish profile for the U.S. dollar over the next 10 to 12 months,” George Davis, chief technical analyst at the Royal Bank of Canada’s RBC Capital Markets unit, wrote in a note to clients yesterday

Investors should expect more than three years of Wall Street ups and downs, Bank of America's top watcher of stock market trends, charts and history said in Birmingham Thursday night.

"People need to pull in expectations for the next couple of years," Bartels said.

"This feels like there's been a big psychological switch in just the past few weeks to the point where it's scary how fast things have shifted," said Rick Bensignor, chief market strategist at Execution Noble in New York.

Buyers (real, program, HFT or short covering) are in firm control today. If you came in long, who cares who the buyers are? The SPX has come within 1 point of the early week high but the Nasdaq Comp has gone 8 points above its recent high. Are there divergences? Yes there are, from the VIX holding above its recent low, the BKX still struggling below its 200 day moving average, and the lagging new high list. However, the market can move higher even with those nagging negative divergences but if they persist for too long, they become the market’s Achilles’ heel. If the S&P 500 Cash Index closes above 1150 today or by Monday, celebrate they will on your favorite financial show. Be on the lookout for a possible false breakout. We’ll be monitoring the volatility indexes, put/call ratio and a/d decline data for insight.  - Elliot Spar of Stifel Nicolaus

Renewal of asset purchases unlikely, but it's a close call. We believe that the incoming growth data will be sufficiently positive to prevent the reintroduction of asset purchases in coming months.  Indeed, since September 1, our tracking estimate for 3Q GDP has risen from +1.7% to +2.6%.  But it's a close call, and the FOMC could act at any time if the data disappoint.

In August, the entire gain in the LEI was due to the shape of the yield curve and nothing more. The other nine components aggregated to ZERO in terms of the growth.

And the growth bulls also have something else to answer for: the coincident-to-lagging indicator, which is almost like a book-to-bill ratio for the overall economy and actually has this nasty tendency to lead the leading indicator, actually fell 0.2% in August and is down now three months in a row. When that happened from November 2006 to January 2007 it really led … and as such, there was no excuse for not being prepared (unless, of course, you were not following it). This index peaked in May — pack that in your back pocket for future reference.

Sales of new single-family houses in August 2010 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 288,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

This is unchanged from the revised July rate of 288,000 and is 28.9 percent below the August 2009 estimate of 405,000.

New orders for manufactured durable goods in August decreased $2.5 billion or 1.3 percent to $191.2 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. Down three of the last four months, this decrease followed a 0.7 percent July increase. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 2.0 percent. Excluding defense, new orders decreased 1.2 percent.

So the relief did not last long. The news that Irish GDP fell by 1.2% in the second quarter caused another selloff in the Irish bond market, and an increase in Irish CDS rates to a new record , and yet the Irish government is still committed to its insane projection of a small growth rate this year. The delusion of V is one of the reasons why the situation is potentially dangerous.  Portuguese 10-year spreads also went back to above 4%. El Pais reports on this story with a sense of trepidation, though pointing that Spain is not in danger,

 Irish-German 10y Spread

"It is worth noting that at current levels, gold is overbought and this raises the chances of a correction over the near term," said Taso Anastasiou, a technical strategist at UBS.

Today I just want to focus on one thing and one thing only, making sure I pin the top on the S&P 500 rally started in late August as I strongly believe the next wave will take us sub 1,000 in the S&P future.

First of all our VIX reversal warning is still in effect, we still recommend to be long VIX November and December calls. I personally favor 35 and 37.5 strikes. At a cost of 1 for the November 37.5s, should we indeed go dip below 1,000 you stand to multiply your investment somewhere between 5 and 10 times.

That said, I turn to the fractal structure of the move in S&P and Eurostoxx. Both are completing an A-B-C flat correction from the lows in early July. Standard targets both indicate that we could possibly go a touch higher with a 1,160 being the C=A in S&P and 2,873 in Eurostoxx. However the price action in both is bearish here. In S&P as long as we remain below 1,138 I expect to go fill the gap at 1,105 before testing the key resistance which will be around 1,075. We have a H&S short term with neckline at 1,117 and we broke and retested as resistance the support of the latest move from 1,082 to 1,142.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The outlook for New Jersey's debt rating has turned negative, Moody's Investors Service said, citing the state's "long history" of failing to put enough money into its state pension fund

Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil is poised for a drop to $61 a barrel after prices fell below a “bearish pennant” formation, according to a technical analysis by Kase and Company.

The bearish pennant that “recently broke lower indicates that major support should be tested at $71.49 and then $70.50 in the near-term,” said Dean Rogers, an analyst at the Albuquerque, New Mexico-based consulting company. “Upon a close below $70.50 a barrel, oil prices will likely drop into the mid- to low-$60 range with $61.20 as the major lower support target.”

AAII Sentiment Survey 44.97% Bulls, 25.40% Bears.

Bull-Bear Spread 19.57

We closed the 1930s with a 2% long bond yield, which makes perfect sense to us since the typical spread between the 30-year and the overnight rate is around 200 basis points. It won’t be a straight line, and based on past long interest rate cycles, which can last up to 32 years, we could be looking at a bottom roughly two years from now. So we wouldn’t quibble with the view that the secular bull market in bonds is in the mature stage. But it ain’t over yet.

As BBC reports: "The Irish economy shrank in the second quarter from the previous three months, surprising analysts who had been expecting growth. Gross domestic product (GDP) fell 1.2%, the Central Statistics Office said. It also revised down its measure of growth in the first quarter to 2.2% from 2.7%."

The government has been seeking to reassure investors about the economy.

Most economists had predicted a 0.5% rise in GDP.

"It's well below [the consensus forecast] and a disappointing figure clearly," said Dan McLaughlin, Bank of Ireland's chief economist.

"One could take some comfort from the fact that domestic demand is beginning to show some signs of life," he added.

"Probably people will now have to reassess their outlook for this year overall."

The Central Statistics Office said the economy had been hit by a fall in consumer spending - down 1.7% compared with the same period last year.

It now costs a whopping $500,000 a year to insure $10 million of Irish bonds for five years, according to data provider Markit, compared with around $460,000 on Wednesday evening. That’s a fresh all-time record and a 9% jump. And Ireland’s bond market isn’t faring better: Ireland now has to pay an interest rate that is nearly 4.2 percentage points higher than Germany, the euro-zone benchmark, to borrow cash from investors for 10 years. (That’s also a fresh record.) Two other fiscally-challenged European countries – Portugal and Greece – are also watching their risk spreads weaken, but not nearly as much.

So, what gives? Traders and economists have been saying for days that there is actually very little “liquidity” in the market for Irish bonds or credit-default swaps. Translation: Few investors are actually buying and selling insurance on Irish bonds, which means that when anyone does indeed buy, the price of insurance shoots higher. Brian Devine, an economist at NCB Stockbrokers in Dublin, put out a good note Wednesday explaining why Ireland’s credit spreads don’t reflect the country’s economic reality.

Jobless claims weren’t so great, knocking U.S. stock futures down a bit. Economists thought we’d get a rise of 3,000 up to 453,000. Instead we got a jump of 15,000 up to 465,000. Some quick takes from market watchers:

Ward McCarthy, Jefferies — Today’s claims level is above market expectations, but within the range of forecasts. Claims have been unusually difficult to forecast in recent weeks as the residual effects of inappropriate seasonal adjustments and calendar distortions due to the Labor Day holiday weekend have created distortions. Going forward in the near-term, claims should resume their recent downtrend, though week-to-week reversals will be common.

Peter Boockvar, Miller Tabak — Just as the S&P’s couldn’t sustain any momentum after breaking above the upper end of the trading range of 1130ish, the economic data is unable to generate any positive momentum to the upside. Every breakout has been false and blah remains the unfortunate theme.

David Ader, CRT Capital – Not a huge increase but after several weeks of falling is in the ‘wrong’ direction. We note too that the lower [continuing] claims merely means people falling off the ranks vs. getting jobs (our take).

WASHINGTON (September 23, 2010) – Existing-home sales rose in August following a big correction in July, according to the National Association of Realtors®.

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for the U.S. increased 0.3 percent in August to 110.2 (2004 = 100), following a 0.1 percent increase in July, and a 0.2 percent decline in June.

In the week ending Sept. 18, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 465,000, an increase of 12,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 453,000. The 4-week moving average was 463,250, a decrease of 3,250 from the previous week's revised average of 466,500.

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. 10-year Treasury note futures are set to climb to 126 28/32 should they sustain a break through a key Fibonacci level, Societe Generale SA said, citing technical indicators.

The bottom line is that the "obvious" breakout of the S&P 500 is not confirmed by many other indexes and contrarian sentiment indicators. This does not signal the definitive end to the rally, but it should at least give cautious thinkers a seat at the table.

      Bullish                 Bearish

... as much as we did at the August top.

 - Schaeffersresearch.com