What kind of announcvement would drive this stock up significantly considering its underlying fundamentals? If there was such an announcement, wouyldnt it be a signal to buy more puts given the fundamntals? Thanks.

Countrywide?

Who knows? You saw the sheepie buy into the Convertable announcement, right?

That sort of stupidity could happen again.... of course it might be screaming "short me!" just like it was the last time!

I knew it!!! Wachovia' letter will be published next.

Wachovia already has a letter, I believe. They were one of the first weren't they?

re: CFC - I am praying that another fit of "Sheepidity" strikes again so I can get the other half of my puts back on.

re: The Ticker technical scenarios - I think there's one more possibility (looking at SPX) which is that we go into a whipsaw period where we cross above and below the support/resistance levels, thereby inflicting Max Pain on everyone. This scenario would resolve by building either:
1. Bullish - a head and shoulders bottom (of which we already have the left shoulder and head) with the right shoulder bottoming around 1430, or
2. Bearish - a triangle that drops first to near the 1410 level, oscillates back up to 1450 or so, then finally breaks to the downside.

Why do I see this? Primarily, it's just "feel" from 25 years of trading off charts. We appear to be losing upward momentum, but it would take an ENORMOUS increase in volatility to break from here straight to new lows, which would only be likely in a catastrophic scenario. Given that there's now a Fed Funds Put in place until 9/18, IMO there is a possibility that we're range bound for a little while - until there's either some very bad macro news, or the Fed uses the "Put".

Possibly Opal.

I am actually looking more at the scenario from the weekend where we have choppy trading here but with a downward bias. I would not be surprised to see the downward trendline re-established and prices hold under it while drifting lower for a while.

The "Fed PUT" isn't going to do anything. The wild part is that they spent most of the rocket fuel on the Whipsaw, in that they really ****ed people short the index options up the ass - those guys took HUGE losses and won't be willing to slam the indices the way they were before.

So that augers for more of a slow bleed rather than a waterfall type of scenario. That kind of trading suits me just fine.

News flow will define the breakpoint(s) here. If the Fed does NOT cut in September then the **** will REALLY hit the fan.

Note that their meeting is just before OpEx - when its guaranteed to produce the most "fun" for people on both sides.

A straddle may be a great play right about then - not now; let the time value bleed off.....

Gmak, the 3 letters are for Citi, BOA, and now JPMorgan.

Genesis, have you seen all the calls for a bailout from formerly sane economists Krugman, Baker, and Roubini?
Dean Baker has a subprime borrower protection plan, where he suggests these people rent at market rates the house that they USED to own
http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com....

But Krugman and Roubini want a bailout. They fail to differentiate between foreclosure/rental and foreclosure/homelessness.

Of course we can expect Bill Gross to want a bailout, since most of his bond fund is invested in Fannie Mae bonds. So he's just another self serving Wall Street pusher.

Yes, I agree that the Fed put won't do anything to solve the real problems. I just meant, that as you say, it has taken the swagger out of the sellers' walk for now. They won't be rushing to short "into the hole", if one occurs, right before 9/18.

since the fed meeting is before the options expiration, would you be inclined to take most of the stuff off the table to protect yourself from spikes in case the fed has any more surprises, or generally just leave it on? I mean cutting rates isn't going to save anyone anymore.

It will all be situational - I can't predict what I will see in the charts at that point in time.....

Peace - I'm a bit disappointed in Roubini. I see his point. But how exactly are we going to pay for our stupidity/greediness? Try and sell more bonds to foreigners? Great - even more in debt unless we cut, oh, social security and our imperial war machine (ah, that should get some blood boiling). What exactly will this do for the dollar? I can't imagine that would be good.

I swear I read something about this very scenario that detailed the problems with bailing everyone out.

The guys who are all net long sector (X) are trying to figure out how their ass doesn't fry.

Ergo, whining to Uncle Fed to fix it for them.

I say **** 'em.

Peace;

Here you go. Wachovia got theirs in June.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/....

Nice job, Gmak. You solved the puzzle!