Amazing that despite historic low interest rates, the 10-year treasury futures continued to march still higher (interest rates, lower) in overnight trading! U.S. treasuries are perceived as the ultimate flight to safety, and thus, rising treasury prices are considered to be a barometer of negative market sentiment. 
Moody's economist.com chief economist Dr. Mark Zandi is now saying that if the United States sees GDP at 0% growth for 2009, we'll be lucky! He says that 0% GDP for 2009 is optimistic rather than realistic!
Crude oil prices have dropped today in anticipation of disagreement and turmoil at the OPEC meeting Saturday. What a timely tumble!
Click here for a story in the Washington Post on OPEC's inner conflicts.
Tradestation has just released the newest version of their software. It has a great new feature called a Scanner that allows me to enter a very diverse list of criteria, including volume, price, indicators, etc., and the software will scan at programmed intervals for those criteria. I haven't installed the new software yet, but will install it and play with it over the weekend. It looks like a great new feature that will save me a lot of time!
Traders in treasuries must have gone on vacation en masse today also. Volume is so thin that the tick chart is lagging severely behind even the shortest time interval charts.
However, I have had good results today so far trading the Eurodollar futures! They are very liquid, probably because many European trading desks are unaffected by the Thanksgiving Holiday.
Shorting the Euro currency futures has also been a good trade. The US Dollar has shown some solid strength today, after showing considerable weakness over the past few days. I trade what the market tells me to trade.
From Arlan Suderman, Market Analyst at Farm Futures:
"Low Volume Trade is Expected Today
"Overnight trade was very thin, suggesting that today’s market should see even fewer traders than Wednesday.
"Wednesday’s trade was thin and choppy as many traders skipped out of town early for Thanksgiving. Overnight trade was very thin, suggesting that today’s market should see even fewer traders than Wednesday, with the closing bell ringing at Noon central time. As a result, we may see a few traders try to play a few games within recent trading ranges, but traders generally don’t like to extend things too far under these conditions.
"The dollar pushed higher overnight and crude oil prices slid lower, causing early gains to evaporate in the grain and oilseed markets."
For his entire commentary, click here.
Needless to say, I won't touch grains today.
It is typical to see thin volume on the days before and after a holiday, and especially the Friday following Thanksgiving. I am watching the charts carefully today, and if they appear to be unusually erratic -- a hallmark of thin volume -- I may decide to sit on the sidelines today.
A few short excerpts from John Mauldin's latest newsletter:
"The economic news just continues to be bad. New unemployment claims were over 529,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis. The "real" number was 606,877 lost jobs. New home sales were off by another 5% and down 40% from a year ago, as builders slash inventories. The Chicago Purchasing Manager index came in at 33.8, the weakest number since the serious recession of 1982. The national number due next Monday will be just as ugly, as durable goods were down far more than expected, by a negative 6.2%."
"And while the stock market may enjoy a serious rally over the next few months, we are not out of the woods. The fire is still raging and we are witnessing ever-more aggressive attempts to get the fire of the credit and housing crisis under control."
"The Fed is going to have some room to pump up the money supply without seeing inflation rise precipitously. I think this is the first of what will be several large injections, as they will keep it up until the economy begins to recover..."
I'll let you read Mauldin's newletter for the really cool stuff about the Millenium Wave.
Click here to read the whole thing.
Fed Funds futures are pricing in a nearly 100% chance of a Fed rate cut when the Fed meets mid-December. In the past two months, this was the surest bet in the futures industry.
After a two-day hiatus, I am buying treasury futures again. Fear still drives the markets. I personally an convinced that eventually, treasuries will be sold of in a panic as investors realize that the bubble of debt of the United States government will never be paid. However, my technical indicators will tell me when is the best time to sell. I will be one of the first ones to head for the exits! For now, however, like many others, I am buying treasuries!
From Bloomberg:
"Purchases dropped 5.3 percent to an annual pace of 433,000, lower than forecast and the fewest since January 1991, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. The median sales price decreased to a four-year low. Other Commerce reports today showed consumer and business spending tumbled last month."
Here is the entire Bloomberg story.
The drop in durable goods orders was twice the forecast amount, and is being blamed for sagging stock indexes today.
Click here for the Bloomberg story.
Volume for futures trading is light today in anticipation of the Thanksgiving Holiday. Liquidity is particularly poor for grains and eurodollar contracts today. Tomorrow, a few contracts will still be trading, notably currencies and energies. Due to poor volumes, trading can be particularly erratic on the days surrounding holidays.
Major homebuilders have indicated that 47% of all new real estate contracts don't reach completion of the transaction. This is the highest ever reported. It indicates that for every 2 contracts to purchase a new home, nearly 1 in 2 of those will never actually purchase the home.
In a report released this morning, famed analyst Meredith Whitney is saying the the TARP funds injected into America's banks are likely to be used up in write-downs ($44 billion in the 4th Quarter alone) and reserve requirements rather than lending.
Here's the Bloomberg article.
More bad loans to come, apparently! Were the taxpayer bailouts premature? Does this mean all those funds injected into the banks were wasted, if all they did was provide the banks with funds to write off more bad debt? And does it mean the taxpayers will be on the hook to pay all those bad debts -- with interest -- now that that debt has been transferred to the Federal balance sheet? Sure looks that way!
Cisco Systems, the bellweather technology company that overwhelmingly dominates its sector, has announced that it will temporarily close its shop for a few days at the end of the year to save money. I suppose this means that all its employees will lose their salaries during that period of time also. Wow, now that's an innovative approach to cost-cutting!
Despite the latest bailouts announced today by the U.S. Government, stocks have now slid into negative territory for the day. Over the past year, I have noticed that when government bailouts are announced, strong rallies have occurred. However, within 1-2 days, the markets reverse once again and move lower. This phenomenon appears to be manifesting itself once again today.
With almost daily announcements of new Federal bailouts and new additions to the national debt, the global financial markets are showing increasing concerns for the value and safety of the U.S. dollar. This chart shows that the rise of the Dollar has ended, and extreme stress is showing that the greenback may be on the edge of a new leg down. This should worry all Americans, because if it occurs, the prices of commodities will begin a fresh trend to the upside at the worst possible time for the economy.
