Currently, the most leverage anyone can get is three times.  This can be gained through exposure in ETFs such as the Direxion Daily Financial Bull 3x Shares (FAS), which enables one to gain triple the exposure to the financial sector.  If you’re bullish on financials, you can buy call options on an index that is leveraged three times. I have heard of big banks using options on options, but this is the closest the average trader can get to something like that. I remain bullish on FAS as we all know the financials are “Too Big To Fail”. This link takes you to get FAS analyzed for FREE and from there you can easily add more symbols to get a daily update, which I find very helpful. There are only a few quality sites out there that provide FREE high quality trading tools. Below is a small portion of the free analysis you get from Market Club’s “Trade Triangles”

Before Monday be sure you take advantage of the FREE weekend analysis that will get sent right to your in-box. All you need to do is enter your first name and e-mail HERE.

Strong Uptrend DIREXION SHARE FINANCE BULL 3X (PACF:FAS)
Smart Scan Chart Analysis confirms that a strong uptrend is in place and that the market remains positive longer term.

DIREXION SHARE FINANCE BULL 3X (PACF:FAS)

• Ralph Nader: Obama’s GM plan looks like a raw deal (WSJ)
• GM bondholders near deadline to accept equity plan (Reuters and NYT)
• Niall Ferguson: how economists can misunderstand the crisis (FT)
• The inefficient capital markets hypothesis (Credit Slips)
• My therapeutic rant on the current economic madness (EconoSpeak)
• Emir of Qatar still studying stake in Porsche (Reuters)
• Zoellick warns stimulus “sugar high” won’t stem unemployment (Bloomberg)
• Putting a price on leaving the TARP (Dealbook)

Courtesy of Arthur Hill
The Euro ETF (FXE) has been red hot with a move from around 125 in early March to 141 in late May. Interestingly, the rise in the Euro coincides with a rise in stock over this same period. FXE is fast approaching a resistance zone around 142.5-145. This zone stems from broken support and the December 2008 high.

The NABE sees the end of the recession on the horizon, but is concerned that the recovery will be slow at best:

“While the overall tone remains soft, there are emerging signs that the economy is stabilizing,” according to NABE’s latest survey and its president, Chris Varvares, who is also president of Macroeconomic Advisers. “The survey found that business economists look for the recession to end soon, but that the economic recovery is likely to be considerably more moderate than those typically experienced following steep declines. Moreover, despite encouraging signs seen in the last several weeks, the NABE panel downgraded the economic outlook for the next several quarters, compared with the previous survey,” he added. According to the survey, the key downside risks remain continued large job losses, no improvement in credit conditions, and further sharp declines in home values. These same forces are causing consumers to remain cautious, a feature that NABE panelists think is here to stay. Following a sharp 6.1% (annual rate) contraction in the first quarter of this year and another 1.8% drop in the second quarter, NABE forecasters expect real GDP to rise at a subpar 1.2% rate in the second half. This would result in a hefty 1.2% decline in 2009 (on a fourth-quarter over fourth-quarter basis), on the heels of a 0.8% decline in 2008. The unemployment rate is forecast to rise to 9.8% by year-end; and inflation is expected to moderate, as economic slack builds and as oil prices are forecast to remain relatively depressed. “The good news is that the NABE panel expects economic growth to turn positive in the second half of this year, with the pace of job losses narrowing sharply over the remainder of this year and employment turning up in early 2010,” Mr. Varvares said.

by Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge

Trim Tabs reporting that in the first half of May (May 1-15), short interest on the Russell 3,000 stocks dropped to 13.32 billion shares ($253 billion / 2.78% of market cap) from 13.62 billion shares ($260 billion / 2.88% of market cap) on April 30.

There was net short covering in eight of the ten major sectors with Financials and Information Technology receiving the largest short interest outflows of $2.9 billion and $2.0 billion, respectively. The only sectors with net short selling were Energy and Industrials, in which traders opened new short positions valued at $500 million and $169 million, respectively.

Posted by Tyler Durden of ZERO Hedge

Gettelfinger discussing the 2.5% warrants that the UAW has received in GM and snickering – “$75 Billion Dollars in equity for the company!? We did not put a lot of emphasis on the 2.5% warrants, let me put it that way.” As he shakes his head on whether he expects GM to ever get that kind of equity valuation.

Bondholders waiting for their warrants to be worth anything may want to find a flux capacitor and go to the year 10,000.

Which leads to the more pertinent question: obviously the (worthless) warrants were not the reason for the ad hoc committee to switch sides here… Did S-Rat have some highly persuasive conversations with Houlihan Lokey and the committee members? Inquiring minds dying to know.

Very Low Quality

The green shoot police will have a field day beating the drum over how the 30 Year mortgage has massively tightened to the 10 Year…. by a whopping 0.04 bps.

Dan Frommer of Silicon Alley Insider
Palm’s rivalry with Apple just got a little stickier, as the smartphone maker takes a bold step.

Palm (PALM) has figured out a way for the forthcoming Pre smartphone — launching June 6 for $199 after rebate at Sprint Nextel — to sync with Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes software.

“Simply connect Pre to your PC or Mac via the USB cable, select ‘media sync’ on the phone, and iTunes will launch on your computer desktop. You can then choose which DRM-free media files to transfer,” the company says today in a press release.

FREE Trend Analysis for PALM Here

This won’t make the folks at Apple happy. It’s probably not illegal, but given the bad blood between the companies, we assume Apple will block the Pre with the next update to iTunes, which could come this summer when the new iPhone OS is released. (After all, syncing to your iTunes library is a selling point for the iPhone — and one of the reasons other devices haven’t been as successful.) We’ve asked Apple for comment and will update if we hear back.

Meanwhile, Palm has also built Twitter into the Pre’s “universal search” function. This means when you search for something on the phone, it’ll also check recent conversations on Twitter. That will probably be useful, as Twitter is a good place to find news and short reviews.