DOWNGRADES COMING? MLPS DOWN 6 IN A ROW!

Markets were due for a pullback and they are getting one in a big way this morning so far with the dow down 135 and mlps down nearly 2 points. A S&P downgrade of Europe appears imminent according to news sources. Now lets go back to last August. The S&P downgrade of the US came in Early August which took the S&P down from 1250 to 1100 in a hurry. Now comes word that the Greek haircut would be forced instead of voluntary which means default as negotiations breakdown. The Euro is down 2 cents on that news. So now we've come to some sort of breaking point. Is the rally that began in October over? Now as i type we have Reuters reporting that S&P has downgraded France.


Meanwhile the mlp index is down 6 days in a row after reaching 396. Energy stocks as a whole have been selling off since the year began as money seems to be going from last year's winners to last years losers. Net net this is not good as we are basically moving the same chips around the table with no new money coming in.

Attention continues to center in energy on the implosing of nat gas which went from holding 3 bucks to 2.65 in a hurry. Energy producers who have been going head first into nat gas may have earnings issues (see Chevron). MLPS seem to be suffering from the money flow out of energy but getting support from the collapsing 10 year yield which is heading fast to 1.80% and it looks like we will retest 1.69% which we got to last October.

On the coporate side Copano did a public offering of shares so its down 1.40 right now. Not much else happening here. No upgrades or downgrades. Targa Natural Resources (NGLS) took the distribution up again by 3%. We should be hearing from the bulk of mlps next week.

Dow and MLPS just off the lows of the day here.