That can’t be good

Apple’s (AAPL) rock-star CEO, Steve Jobs, apologized to early iPhone buyers, including the ones that camped-out in front of stores on June 28th to be the first ones to own one of the most over-hyped chunks of plastic and silicon since Atari’s ping-pong game a day after announcing a $199 price slash on its 8-gigabyte model. Jobs and Apple said they want to make good by offering a $100 credit to earlier buyers at Apple's retail or online stores. Given what we know now about the iPhone’s preliminary sales and subsequent 33-percent price slash after roughly 65-days on the market can’t be good…Same store sales were better than expected at stores where one would expect the majority of parents to shop in preparation for their children’s return for the fall school semester. Its not unusual to see parents loose it as they watch their children get benched at sporting events is it? One thing to remember before extrapolating today’s “better-than-expected” same-store sales figures across the entire consumer specter is to realize that parents will go to extreme lengths to prove to others that their children are smarter, faster, prettier, more handsome, more hip, dress better and have cooler cell phones than other children. I believe they will even forsake the possibility of financial ruin in pursuit of those endeavors. That, in a nutshell, is why these particular stores reported better-than-expected same-store sales this morning. And this may also explain the scary growth in revolving credit growth (read: credit cards), now that people have tapped-out their home equity lines of credit. Speaking of that, foreclosures recorded a fresh new 55-year record high as a percentage of total mortgages entering foreclosure-- not just in number of foreclosures. That is a very significant point to understand. The Mortgage Bankers Association said that mortgage-holders starting the foreclosure process in the April-June quarter reached 0.65 percent. This was the third consecutive quarterly record set. Also, I have to say that the crap CNBC U.S. commentators regurgitate day after day is such an enormous disservice to its viewers. Late this morning, I happened to catch Bob Pisani explain that with the S&P 500 just 55-points from its all-time high that this is most definitely not “telegraphing any kind of recession.” These guys have far too much faith in the market’s abilities to fully discount foreseeable dangers ahead. I wonder what Bob Pisani thought the Nasdaq was telegraphing on March 10th 2000 when it was trading 5132 and a P/E over 100x----the existence of Santa Claus? Markets are essentially voting machines by the monied masses that also price in an array of human emotions and temperaments. If masses weren’t capable of making mistakes, we would have never had Germany’s Third Reich. Sometimes, markets are pretty efficient at predicting the future, sometimes its relegated to an adolescent reality telly programe—and that’s where we are today….The front-month gold bullion contract broke the important psychologically important $700 barrier today. Hey Bob Pisani, what does that telegraph? It can't be good.