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Jeudi 28 février 2008

Farmar donne le ton

Exécution

Fisher, Bryant, Walton, Odom et Gasol dans le starting 5. C’est la première année depuis le départ du Shaq que Los Angeles peut sweeper le Heat 2-0. En ce début de rencontre va dans ce sens. Kobe (jump shoot, puis dunk), Pau, Lamar et Walton marquent tous dans les premières minutes. Le ballon circule bien, mais c’est surtout les mauvaises passes face à la défense des Lakers qui permet aux locaux de conclure des transitions et contre attaques faciles. 12-4 LAL, Miami demande un temps mort.

Comme l’avant veille, Kobe est au four est au moulin. 3/4 mais surtout 5 passes en 7 minutes accroissent encore le score. Un dunk plus tard suivie d’une passe pour le dunk de Gasol, LAL prend un départ canon et laisse le Heat sur place, 18-4. C’est Wade qui défend sur Kobe. Le match-up est lancé. Sur un step rapide puis un shoot à trois points Kobe provoque deux fautes rapides sur Dwyane qui quitte le terrain.

Farmar et Vujacic rentrent. Le sophomore (qui reste sur son record en carrière face aux Blazers) convertit sa première tentative (jump shot). Le Heat augmente la pression défensive et trouve quelques shoots rapides les remettant dans la partie. Seule chose inquiétante pour L.A ? A trop chercher l’extra passe on en oublie de prendre certaines positions de tirs. Les hommes de Phil Jackson perdront 2 ballons sur violation des 24 secondes… Pour retrouver le chemin du panier quoi de mieux que le fameux pick and roll KoPau si meurtrier. 8 points pour les deux hommes. 26-19 LAL.

Phil tente une nouvelle combinaison pour débuter ce second quart temps. Jordan et Sasha sont accompagnés de Pau, Lamar et Ronny. Un très grand front ligne. Odom prend alors le rôle de « Facilator » et organise le triangle. The Machine en profite par deux fois (4 points 100%) avant que Farmar rentre un trois points poussant Pat à prendre un nouveau temps mort. 7-0 pour L.A et 33-19 au score board. Wade affiche 0 points (0/5) 2 fautes et 2 balles perdues.

Kobe revient face à Wade. Sur son premier ballon, il sort un reverse dunk signature sur Wade avec la faute. Sur son second, il provoque une nouvelle faute en allant au panier. 12 points en autant de minutes pour lui, sous dles MVP chants déjà présent. DW3 est vraiment hors de forme. Deux lancers francs pour scorer ses 2 premiers points… Un trop court. Une infâme brique. Il retournera s’asseoir auteur de 0 points, 3 pertes de balle et 3 fautes. Triste saison pour lui. A l’autre bout du terrain Bryant dissèque la défense et lâche un caviar pour Farmar qui remet ça from down town. 43-27 LAL, temps mort Miami.

A 4 minutes de la fin les angelinos réalise une action parfaite dans le système de Winter. Après quelques passes rapides Walton sert Turiaf sur l’extra passe qui dunk férocement à deux mains. La domination est totale, même si les visiteurs poursuivront avec un petit run (7-0). Les Lakers finissent avec 12 points d’avance à la mi-temps, 53-41, (Oh et pendant ce temps, les Spurs remportent le derby texan, did I mention that ?)

Scoreboard à la mi temps

 

Farmar to the max

On prend les mêmes et ont recommence ! Riley a insisté à la mi-temps sur le problème Wade. Ce dernier répond sur le terrain avec 9 points en 5minutes. Mais dès que les Heat s’approche des locaux, ces derniers mettent le petit coup de gaz qui les propulse en tête. Fisher à trois points et Kobe pour un nouveau Dunk sur interception, creusent l’écart. On assiste pas au match de l’année pour le moment soyons honnête. On savait que cette semaine entre les Sonics, les Blazers et le Heat un seul objectif était important ; les 3 W. Pour le fond de jeu on repassera. Quelques étincelles par séquence. Heureusement que sur un ballon volé Kobe envoie Walton en contre attaque d’une balle jetez aveuglement au dessus de sa tête. Walton attrape le cuir et redonne immédiatement un caviar dans le dos en direction de Lamar Odom qui trail, catch et dunk. Le Staples Center est debout… 71-56 LAL.

Le seuls moments passionnants de ce 3ème quart seront l’interception de Farmar qui part au dunk à son tour puis le contre de Kobe sur Marion qui veut smasher au buzzer. 73-58 LAL, 12 minutes remaining.

La second unit avec Gasol entre en jeu pour conclure. Ronny décide de commencer son controrama perso mais les arbitres sifflent systématiquement faute de corps. Jordan Farmar continue sa bonne série (19 points 7/11, 50% à 3 points) ce qui permet à L.A de garder la tête. Lorsque le Heat revient à 11 longueurs, Kobe et Lamar reviennent. Comme depuis le début de la rencontre, les hommes de Jackson ne cèdent jamais à la panique. Pour la seconde fois consécutive, Jordan égalise son record en carrière sur une passe bien sentit de Vujacic. Gasol sort, auteur de 13 points 11 rebonds et 4 contres. On retiendra le 5ème dunk de Kobe sur attaque posée et surtout les 24 points de Jordan Farmar sur son 4ème 3 points (sur 7). Nouveau record en carrière pour le kid qui nous fait du Barbosa à L.A ! Toujours +13 à 3 minutes de la fin de la rencontre. Marion et Banks auront sorti leur épingle du jeu avec 13 unités chacun. En 1 minute les Lakers offrent un petit showtime aux fans. Accessoirement des tacos. 2 trois points de Lamar et un de la machine confirment ce blow out latent. 106-88 LAL. 10 ème victoire consécutive pour les ors et pourpres. Today was a good day.

Scoreboard à la fin du match

Médias

Versus Heat

Retrouvez les photos du matche dans le forum en Cliquant ici

 

 

 

 

La video du jour

A Weekend Like no Other

Format : Wmv
Durée : 4min
En ligne le : 08/02/08
Createur : HMZ28 / Evolution Team
designer : Dakid / Evolution Team
Hébergement : NBAEvolution.com

Lien: Cliquez pour télécharger / Clic for download

Mot du réalisateur

"La NBA est une league de professionnels, des professionnels qui s'acharnent chaque jour pour donner le meilleur de leur basket. Un basket fort, un basket ou seul les plus forts peuvent y survivre. Et pourtant, au beau milieu de cette Jungle de 82 matches, il y' un weekend , un weekend exceptionnel . Un weekend vraiment pas comme les autres"

Vu sur NBAEvolution.com

Prochain rendez vous Vendredi 29 février,

Lakers at Blazers

Srces: CL/NBA/LAT /Espn

"Why can't America realize that falling in love with Kobe doesn't mean breaking up with Michael?" Rick Reilly

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By FX Insights Moderator,

If you've been around here long enough, you know we trade the EUR/USD in what many consider to be an unconventional manner, like watching things that most people think have zero to do with the currency market...

With the euro making a big, bullish move this week, a lot of traders have been asking me the same questions, like, "How do you know to keep buying the euro when it's so high?" "How do you know how long to hold your trades?"

Those questions are very difficult for me to answer in ways that would make logical sense because of course I have my own style of trading, but I can offer some answers that do make sense and relate to the so-called "unconventional" or "contrarian" ways we trade the market...

And this is stuff you've heard us preach over and over and over again... so, why am I still buying the euro at all-time highs? How do I know to hold on to my longs?

It's because everything outside of the FX market is telling me to do so... all the signals and signs are pointing this direction and have been pointing this direction for the past 3 weeks, which is the timeframe we changed our bias to staying long on the euro... all the market-correlated variables, as we call them have been pointing this direction since the euro was at the 4550 level, which is where we solidified our bias to stay euro long...

Lets look at some examples:

10-year yield -- as we've taught, when the 10-year yield drops, the euro will typically rise against the dollar. Just this week the 10-year yield has dropped 30 basis points and what has the euro done this week...?

Dow -- when the Dow goes up typically the euro goes up, very simple... this week the Dow made a comeback recovery and rally and it's now up 6%... and what has the euro done this week...?

Gold -- gold up = euro up, very simple... gold has made multiple new all-time highs this week and is pushing towards the $1000 level... and what has the euro done this week...?

Oil -- oil up = euro up, very simple, once again... oil has gone nutty and keeps pushing higher above the $100 level... and what has the euro done this week...?

USD Index -- euro up = USD Index down, very simple... the euro is the most heavily weighted against the dollar on the Index... on Sunday's update we told you to watch the Index very closely this week as were forecasting some bullish euro gains, sure enough, the Index gave away support and is testing more support levels as we speak...

So, here we have all the market correlated variables telling me to keep buying the euro and to keep holding my best euro entries... they have also been telling me not to add heavy euro shorts on an intraday basis, but on a swing basis (i.e. position trading). I've added three shorts this week, but they were added against my net euro longs, so no margin was used to take those shorts and they are being held in my accounts on a purely swing basis, set-up for the coming correction, whenever that should occur...

I hope what I've explained doesn't sound preachy or arrogant, but I want to very plainly and clearly blunt show why I watch those market-correlated variables so closely and what great indicators they are, and how I use them to help me know when to get in to the market and how long to stay in the market...

When the market is on these types of bull runs, I go from being intraday to swing in my trading style. Hopefully this sheds a little more light on my trading mindset under current market conditions...

EUR/USD Fundamentals:

GDP was absolutely terrible today, as forecasted... growth has slowed to zero... the indebted and frantic consumer is weighing heavy on GDP and will continue to weigh heavy on the GDP... end of story on that one.

Tomorrow we have a ton of data and I honestly do not have the brainpower right now to pick apart each piece of data, but overall, I have to say we'll see some USD- data tomorrow... and for that, I'm staying euro long tomorrow and keeping my same bias to stay long...

The only thing that will bring the euro down tomorrow against the dollar is if we see profit taking on EUR/USD longs, profit taking on gold and oil longs, and the Dow take a beating...

Fundamentally, we'd need major USD upside and EUR downside surprises to cause the market to drop...

I do not believe the market is done running the euro up... this afternoon the banks and brokers took the opportunity to trigger stops above 1.5200 before falling back down, but we've not seen the last of 1.5200 and I'm forecasting we eventually go even higher, based on what the market is showing us...

All my best euro longs are staying open, very simple. I've bought in again on the signal we triggered tonight and will buy again at all buy levels given...

Trade smart! Use strict risk and money management please!

See ya in the chat...

NB: To read details about our latest EUR/USD buy signal, please click here

At Swiss bank UBS's Extraordinary General Meeting on Wednesday, only about 44% of the shareholders voted in favor of a request for a special derivatives/subprime related audit. 

Notably, the bank's Chairman Marcel Ospel (pictured above) in his speech to the shareholders at the meeting seemed to blame the shareholders themselves for UBS's subprime fiasco.  He chided the shareholders that UBS used to be very careful but had to take on these subprime risks due to shareholder pressures.  He seemed to reluctantly concede that the "spotlight" is now on the Board of Directors and himself.  Excerpt:

"Until very recently we had the reputation of being a cautious, even risk-averse bank. We took the management of our credit, market and operational risks extremely seriously.  Over the years UBS often turned down business that we thought was too risky. <snip>  And at times we were so cautious that we were occasionally criticized by you for it. This is why we looked  for and found ways of being more active in dynamic market segments without abandoning our risk policies."  You can read his entire speech here →  ubsspeech22708.pdf

If you belong to HSBC, you may want to change your pin number...quickly!  The UK bank is re-issuing  atm/debit cards which  raises the OH SH#T! factor seven-fold. They aren't just issuing a teeny little press release...they are  trying frantically Read the rest of this entry »

Lets face it, homes these days are sitting longer and selling for less.  Why the big change?  The banks were too greedy and now most of them are in a world of hurt.  Lets take a look at what the banks did or didn’t do to create such a problem.

One of the big problems is that banks and credit score companies try to make understanding credit so difficult and mysterious.  I want to know how they come up with those numbers and I know everyone else does too!  The reason why banks want to make credit scores so difficult is to make sure that your credit stays low so that they can charge you more interest every month.  Greedy banks.

Then they lightened up the credit score requirements and let just about anyone qualify for a loan.  That is ok in my opinion.  Then the greedy banks had to throw in another element that was a big trap.  Make ARM loans, interest only on 100% loans, and negative amortization loans.

Then markets around the country started to lose their momentum and leveled off or dropped slightly.  Consumers with 100% loans were upside down.  Then ARM loans started to adjust up and homeowners couldn’t afford the payments.  So they started to go into default.  Which created even more problems.  The media started to get involved and created a panic that real estate was going down.

That is what started the snowball effect that spun out of control and became what we know today as the mortgage meltdown.

What are the after affects of the mortgage meltdown? 

Now your credit has to be so high that 2/3 of potential buyers were eliminated from getting the chance to get a mortgage.  That was a lot of buyers done in overnight.  That meant the inventory of homes in most markets were too high due to lack of buyers. 

The media then really started to get everyone in a huge nationwide panic that real estate was dropping like it had never dropped before.  Which may or may not be true depending on your market.

What should have happened to prevent us from the mortgage meltdown?  Banks should have explained credit, not made it impossible to understand.  They should have kept lending guidelines somewhere in the middle of the credit scoring and never tricked buyers into doing loans that were such high risk.

What can you do about it?

Forget about selling if you don’t have to.  Don’t let the media or any one else tell you that the market is going to tank.  They don’t know!  No one knows what tomorrow will bring.

If you need to sell, find creative alternatives to selling.  The best one that I know about is Seller Financing.  Why choose seller financing?  Because you become the bank!  You then can decide who can buy your house and who cannot.

For more information on Seller Financing or any other real estate question contact:

The Bronson Barber Real Estate Team

801-712-1607

bronsonbarber@gmail.com

Courtesy of the late Henry Hazlitt.

The original setting of this piece is in the U.S.A.. I hope I don't offend anyone, but I took the liberty to change some wording (like Dollar and Federal Reserve) in order to "globalise" the defenition.

The problem of inflation is not exclusive to America. Any country with a Central Bank, i.e. The Fed, European Central Bank, Bank Of England etc., will have this problem.

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What Inflation Is

Inflation, always and everywhere, is primarily caused by an increase in the supply of money and credit. In fact, inflation is the increase in the supply of money and credit.

Now obviously a rise of prices caused by an expansion of the money supply is not the same thing as the expansion of the money supply itself. A cause or condition is clearly not identical with one of its consequences. The use of the word "inflation" with these two quite different meanings leads to endless confusion.

The word "inflation" originally applied solely to the quantity of money. It meant that the volume of money was inflated, blown up, overextended. It is not mere pedantry to insist that the word should be used only in its original meaning.  To use it to mean "a rise in prices" is to deflect attention away from the real cause of inflation and the real cure for it.

Therefore more money will be offered against, say, a pair of shoes or a hundred bushels of wheat than before. A "price" is an exchange ratio between money and a unit of goods. When people have more money, they value each unit less. Goods then rise in price, not because goods are scarcer than before, but because money is more abundant. In the old days, governments inflated by clipping and debasing the coinage.

Then they found they could inflate cheaper and faster simply by grinding out paper money on a printing press. This is what happened with the French assignats in 1789, and with the American currency during the Revolutionary War. Today the method is a little more indirect.

Whole life insurance serves two separate and distinct functions. 

A. During our lifetimes, whole life insurance serves us as a depository and source of borrowed money...our "banks".

• ~ The money we accumulate in a whole life insurance policy is secured by policy guarantees.
• ~ Our policy cash values are accessible if we need them because some life event surprised us with expenses we didn't plan for.
• ~ If we become disabled, and added a premium waiver benefit when we bought our policy, the policy will pay for itself. We will continue to have access to the cash values in the policy as if we paid the premiums out of our own pocket.
• ~ Our policy cash values quietly and consistently accumulate over our lifetimes - guaranteed.
• ~ We can use the cash values in our whole life insurance policies as the source of borrowed funds for purchases large and small.
• ~ We can repay the loans we make to ourselves and recapture all of the principal and interest we would otherwise pay a third party lender - all of it.
• ~ The money we save by borrowing from ourselves and repaying ourselves enhances the cash values we accumulate in our policies.
• ~ The money we accumualte over our lifetimes in a whole life insurance policy becomes an inexhaustable income stream whenever we choose to make that happen...no goverment penalties or employer restrictions.

B. When we die - and, although that is a certain event, it is not a predictable one - those we care about (our named beneficiaries) receive a large sum of totally income tax free cash - money that they can use to help put life back together after our death.

There are many benefits that accrue to individuals and families that use whole life insurance as the foundation of their personal economies; so many that they cannot be summarized in a few hundred words in an article or a blog post. You can discover these benefits and find out how to apply them to your personal economy in Money for Life...in good times and bad - How to Thrive in the 21st Century. The complete e-book is available today at www.TheMoneyForLifeBook.com The paperback should be available sometime in March or early April 2008.

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Another obscure corner of the debt market is causing pain for taxpayers. States and cities selling municipal bonds are finding they have to pay more to issue so-called variable-rate demand notes, The Wall Street Journal reports. As with the collapse earlier this month of the now infamous auction-rate securities market, the problem is that Wall Street dealers such as Bear Stearns (BSC) and Morgan Stanley (MS) have stopped buying the debt, which allows municipalities to borrow for the long term at lower short-term rates. The dealer pullback has caused demand to dry up and interest rates to spike. The rate California paid on a recent $300 million issue quadrupled to more than 8%, the Journal reports.

Meanwhile, in a novel twist, the failure of the notes to sell at auction could leave them piling up on the balance sheets of so-called backstop banks such as Bank of America (BAC) and Citi (C), which are already stuck with billions of dollars of loans and other assets they can't sell. That's not even the worst news in the municipal bond market, though: Bloomberg reports that the California city of Vallejo is near a bankruptcy filing brought on by the collapse of the housing market, which has resulted in lower tax revenue, and rising pension costs. "Bankruptcy is a last resort,'' councilwoman Joanne Schivley said, Bloomberg reports. "But guess what folks, that's where we are now at.''

By FX Insights Moderator,

 Well we didn't get quite the volatility we saw yesterday, but we had some beautiful moves nontheless, courtesy of our good friend, Ben Bernanke...

As forecasted, all USD fundamentals were dismal today... no big news on that one... but of course the market was waiting to hear what Bernanke had to say in regards to the economic outlook and monetary policy...

I couldn't find a complete transcript of all the answers he gave to each question, I wish I could, because he said some of the stupidest things an economist and central banker has probably ever uttered in the history of mankind...

But, here's a few gems from his testimony and here's what propelled the EUR/USD to make more all-time highs and make a move to the 1.5150 level...

"Fed will act in a timely manner as needed to support growth and to provide adequate insurance against downside risks"

"The economic situation has become distinctly less favorable"

"sluggish economic activity in the near term"

"The risks include the possibilities that the housing market or labor market may deteriorate more than is currently anticipated and that credit conditions may tighten substantially further"

Plus, he said something along the lines of inflation subsiding in the second half of the year. When asked about high oil prices and inflation, Bernanke said that the current price of oil was not causing heightened inflation pressures and that if the price of oil stayed in this range, it would not be an issue...

To sum it up, this is what Bernanke has told the market:

1. The Fed is cutting rates in March or sooner
2. The Fed doesn't know what inflation is
3. The Fed doesn't care to know what inflation is
4. The Fed will stay dovish on growth
5. The Fed is thrilled with a weak dollar because it fuels exports

And that's all the market needs to hear to keep selling dollars and buying euros... that is why we're just a handful of pips away from another all-time high... this is why we've been buying the euro for the past 500 pips, and this is why we must keep our overall bias until the market signals a change in direction... very simple.

Lets take a look at tomorrow's fundamentals...

Prelim GDP Annualized and Prelim GDP Deflator -- the Prelim GDP comes out a month after the Advanced GDP data, the Advanced is slightly more of a market-mover, but the Prelim is an incredibly important report especially because it's tightly connected to growth and interest rate policy and is usually revised in some form or fashion from what the Advanced is...

The market is forecasting a USD+ GDP tomorrow... I'm not so enthusiastic, based on my own research... but it really doesn't matter because I'm still biased to be euro long no matter what GDP says...

Initial Claims -- once again we'll see continued weakness in the jobs market... even if we get an upside surprise tomorrow, it won't be enough to give the dollar any kind of substantial boost...

Trichet -- he's slated to give opening remarks at some gathering at the Bank of Netherlands... there's no indication he'll speak about monetary policy or economic outlook, but we must be ready for anything...

Bernanke -- our boy is back on the hot seat tomorrow as he testifies before some braindead senators on one of the banking committees... Bernanke is probably happy he got the congressional testimony out of the way first, speifically getting Ron Paul out of the way first... once again, Ron Paul schooled the Fed chairman in economics 101 in front of the financial world... Bernanke was a bit exasperated after taking Paul's punches and ended up basically saying, "you're right again, Ron."

I don't expect Bernanke to say anything that will give the dollar any love at all whatsoever tomorrow... in order to slow the dollar's slide against the euro Bernanke would have to come out with guns blazin' on inflation... that's not going to happen...

EUR/USD:

The big question is on many trader's minds is:

Q. When's the euro going to stop?
A. I don't know.

Q. When is the euro going to correct?
A. I don't care.

I've added a few shorts on this move up, but for now, I'm not adding anymore shorts on a swing basis until I see some signs within the price action that we're topping out and going to head down... I may short on an intraday basis, like I took a short this afternoon at 5134, but I've got a take-profit order on it to close me out for +1 should the market move against me...

I'm still holding my best euro longs, including the last euro long we took on the new signal... those of you who got the screenshot from the signal know which one I'm referring to... that trade is now up over 400 pips.

My highest long is a 5044, which also has a take-profit order to close me out for +1 should the market drop tonight... I'm just not taking any chances in this crazy market conditions...

I have to stay biased long, end of story... I may look to add another euro short between the 5200 and 5300 area, but we'll see if/when we get there...

So, what will need to happen for the euro to correct down? A few important things, and any combination of these things:

*Profit takers to emerge
*Banks/brokers to allow enough traders to get heavy long and then to run stops on the euro longs
*Gold and oil profit takers to emerge
*Central bank buying of dollars or selling of euros
*A dovish ECB on growth and inflation
*Central bank verbal intervention (i.e. complaining about the high euro)

Those are some of the biggies that will need to happen... I'm not giving up on the coming correction of course, it'll happen, but we'll need some of those things listed about to give the dollar a push...

Practice strict money management!!!

See ya in the chat...

-FX Insights
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