Brainstorming Tuesday

1. The reversal pattern which seems to develop today is accompanied with an ISE of 181 , a number a high have not seen in months.

2. The Apple hype should come to and end as well this week

3. The missing link for a real top is the weekly 13 VIX which has not counted yet need a close below 17.5 for that.

4. Summarizing This Afternoon's Financial Rumors

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Charlie Gasparino over at Fox Business News reports a rumor that the government may be looking to dispose of its 27% Citi stake at some point over the next 3 months. Logistics aside, presumably somehow this means that even more bankrupt companies like AIG, FNM and FRE are probably next in line for offloading the taxpayer stake into the hands of hapless hedge/sovereigns funds. We hope it is not the same hedge funds that have recently received subpoenas and C&D orders from ever shorting the euro (i.e., going long the dollar).As a reference point the gov't owns 27.01% of Citi which has a hilarious market cap of $108 billion, and owns 80.66% of AIG with its $23.5 billion capitalization. This explains why the government is now actively pulling the borrow: gotta sell at the highest possible price. Meanwhile, Doug Kass reports that a rumor of "new stringent short-selling rules is causing a squeeze in heavily shorted names this afternoon." Last but not least, here is the rumor as reported by Seeking Alpha. So yes, it appears we are back to the joyful days of late spring 2009 when the rumorsphere drove crap financials into the troposphere, even as nobody knows anything, and rumors are generated simply to explain massive short squeezes.