Randoms: Love for Sale!

• Oy poppie! It must be the 40th anniversary of Woodstock!
  
  
• T-minus four sessions until quarter-end. Be on the lookout for games people play.
  
  
• Yellow moons, orange stars and green clovers! "Just a quick mention that there's a Bradley turn date coming up tomorrow. According to the model, it appears that the market will turn up until July 14-15, where it appears that it will begin a major decline into September 14-15." --Minyan Glenn
  
  
• There's been alotta positive chatter about natural gas lately—no, not this. Not even this! I will simply offer that if you're playing it through United States Natural Gas (UNG), $12.75 is a natural level for risk definition.
  
  
• War of the Roses! Bank of America (BAC) has been the single best intraday tell of late and that'll be magnified today when the love triangle chimes on the hill.
  
  
• The most bullish thing on my screen? The sticky green internals, which stayed buff during the probe lower this morning.
  
  
• My sense of these Capital Hill hearings thus far? First, Big Ben's voice is cracking and that's rarely a good sign. Second, it sure feels like they want someone's head on stick on this one.
  
  
• Snaps to Q-Man who has had some nice trades recently in the FlexFolio and is +9% YTD.  Be our guest with a two week free trial.
  
  
• "To hear Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state financial officials tell it, July 28 is California's last stand before fiscal Armageddon."
  
  
• Gimme Shelter!

The Following Was Posted on the Buzz & Banter shortly after this morning’s opening bell:

Remember, the first move following the FOMC decision is typically the false move. If that nonsensical notion plays out, we could see some upside today. I continue to trade with a scalpel not a sword as we carve our way to better days.

The upside window, over the next week, includes quarter-end games and fresh monthly flows. If Hoofy (or Stella) is gonna get a groove on, I would imagine it's gotta start soon.

Minyan Mailbag

Enjoyed Todd's Bank America love triangle column this morning and had comment that you might find interesting.

I was trading a book for Countrywide at the time the deal went down. I sat couple seats down from the repo/finance guys on the desk. On that Monday they asked all traders to cut our inventory to raise cash as much as possible because we had a term repo due that Friday and the lender told us they wouldn't roll it.

Tuesday, we couldn’t get scrap together the cash to pay it so the repo guys went to all outside funding desks and countries (the Government of Singapore almost gave us money) but nobody came through with repo. Wednesday night, Angelo's #2 called Bernanke to layout the situation and ask for funding from the Fed window, which was denied.

Our trading floor was on first floor with window facing the driveway up to the building. Thursday morning we saw a long line of limos drive up full of bankers there to examine our books. I am not saying Ben called K. Lewis Wed night and put him on the job but the timing was very interesting.

I can say the sales guys, whose commissions were paid out over 3 years, were jumping up and down praising Ben for basically guaranteeing their comp that over those last three huge years was sitting in deferred money to be lost in bankruptcy.

Minyan Name Withheld

R.P.