The Spin on Dr. Death

Did anyone catch the spin machines churning on the Nouriel Roubini comments today? I found it fascinating. Just before 2pm, CNBC reported that Roubini said the worst is behind us and we will have a recovery this year. The market clearly reacted to this news as it tracked up steadily into the close after the report.

And CNBC continued to bring up this news every 10 or 15 minutes. They could not let it go, using it as a catalyst for pumping the market.

But, around 5:20pm, CNBC had a breaking news story where they reported Roubini claims he did not say what was being reported and it was taken out of context. He continues to believe we will have a struggling economy and if there is a recovery, it will be slow and small.

What I found fascinating was all the CNBC talking heads who just a few minutes before were claiming how important Roubini's comments were, were now saying Roubini's comments/thoughts are insignificant. Kind of funny to watch the bulltard reporters back track everything they had said all day.

Now, to be fair, when Roubini's comments were reported just before 2pm, the bears were coming out and saying Roubini's comments were not important. And when the retractment report came out after 5pm, the bears came out in droves to say, Roubini really knows his stuff.

It's all a manipulation game and you have to expect the unexpected. The market will always lean toward optimism so spinning news to the optimistic side is an easy way to move the market up.

Notes:

And speaking of that, after the bell GOOG reported earnings and things were not as good as expected. But notice Jim Goldman's report on GOOG went through 4 minutes of positive comments and then mentioned in the last 10 seconds that they numbers were below expectation causing the stock to move down after hours. Goldman did his best being a spin master but it didn't work. Perhaps investors (even after-hours investors) are brighter than I give them.

AXP is defying gravity. I got stopped out early today and I was surprised it happened. But you gotta set stops and take your loses when you know you are beat.

I have not been reporting on the VIX lately because... well, not much to report other than it is retesting its recent lows. It could be a sign of stability in the market. I still think this is a head fake and when bulls start to really jump in, all hell will break loose.

Tech could save the day but eventually the housing price crash, commercial RE, unemployment and dismal retail will catch up and be reflected in stock prices across the board. Regional banks will crash before the end of the year. The big guys will survive due to gov't aid, but CIT Group shows us that the gov't is not interested in saving all of the banks.