Morning Market Chat: 12th March 2008

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

The calvary came and it had helped send the stocks sharply higher!

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 3.6 percent, or 416.66, the index's fourth-largest point gain on record. The Dow and Nasdaq posted their biggest one-day percentage gains since March 2003. For the S&P 500 index, it was the biggest percentage jump since October 2002.

Essentially as mentioned in the earlier blog posting, Here Comes The Calvary!

The Federal Reserve announced today an expansion of its securities lending program. Under this new Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF), the Federal Reserve will lend up to $200 billion of Treasury securities to primary dealers secured for a term of 28 days (rather than overnight, as in the existing program) by a pledge of other securities, including federal agency debt, federal agency residential-mortgage-backed securities (MBS), and non-agency AAA/Aaa-rated private-label residential MBS.

And what it does essentially can be best described in the following article on CNBC, How the Fed's Move May Affect Your Mortgage

"This is big," Art Cashin, director of floor operations at UBS, told CNBC. "The [Fed] helicopter is up in the air ... and it's about to rain down money on lots of places." Cashin attributed the market's reaction to short covering.

So how? Here's link to what CNBC's Bob Pisani had to say

But traders resorted to selling financial stocks midday -- a strategy which has worked for two months -- and the markets briefly dipped before recovering and closing near the highs. For the Dow, it was the biggest percentage gain in five years. The question now is, have we broken the cycle of selling any rally? ( See Has Market Broken 'Sell Any Rally' Cycle? )

Looks like we will have the strong counter trend rally as mentioned by Kirk.

And with the local stocks rallying strongly yesterday, The Day After The Plunge!, what do you say about Taking Chances?