Oh how quickly the facts can change in this increasingly interconnected global market place of trading. Nine different analysts have cut “estimates” for Goldman Sachs (GS) in the last week, and every other reporter is being tipped off that Lehman is going to take another multi-billion dollar write-down here in Q3. So much for policing insider trading.

Q3 is only halfway done, you see - it’s been whippy out there, to say the least. Asian growth has slowed, commodities have tanked, the US Dollar has soared, Musharraf has been ousted, and the Russians started a war. What does any of this have to do with tricky Dick Fuld at Lehman? A lot actually. On the ‘About Us’ tab of the Lehman Brothers website, the entrée into their business description is that they are “an innovator in global finance”. With all of the aforementioned cross currents associated with a global slowdown, Fuld is undoubtedly waking up to new risks that he didn’t prepare for, daily.

Not all “innovation” creates positive long term P&L. Ask the Russians, who on this day in 1960 launched Belka and Strelka into orbit. At least Sputnik carried 40 mice and 2 rats along for the dogs joy ride. Maybe Fuld should have tested some of his financial “innovations” with animals first!

Now that the “BRIC” (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) stock markets are all in free fall, our friends up here on science hill at Yale are calling us on the super secret whisper line suggesting that Wall Street investment banking structures are being struck by a breaking new discovery – gravity.

Russian space dogs succumbed to the same phenomena as Sputnik came back to Earth’s reality. It was as fascinating then as it is today. Like a space ship bracing for its landing, the Russian stock market is trading down -3.4% so far this morning, taking the RTS Index down to 1717, which marks a -31% decline since it’s May 19th, 2008 peak. On the bold red-army-colored cover of ‘The Economist’ this week, the page is titled “Russia Resurgent”. This looks more like “Russia Revealed” to me.

In Asia, gravitational forces continue to pull down everything that had expectations for moon shot flight patterns. We’ve been focusing on the horrendous economic data points out of Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong over the course of the last few weeks, and their stock markets were down another -2.3%, -1.8%, and -2.1%, respectively overnight, testing new year to date lows. There is a Chinese company that’s listed on the Nasdaq, China TechFaith Wireless (CNTF), that is looking down -19% pre-open. “TechFaith”? – how innovative!

The Bank of Japan decided to keep its socialist regime intact, leaving interest rates at 0.50%, and issued newfound concerns that gravity may very well indeed continue to affect them more severely. They have no idea on the duration of this economic downturn, but they are certain that they will keep the easy money bailout monetary policy that has not worked for almost two decades.

European trading is quite weak, on the heels of the highest reported inflation number that the Germans have had to read since 1981. At +8.9% year over year growth, the German PPI confirmed what the leaders of the Bundesbank tried to warn Wall Street of yesterday – a deflating Euro imports inflation! Alongside Putin’s stock market getting crushed, European indices are trading down -1.5% to -2% across the board. From a quantitative perspective, the momentum factor implied in the FTSE in London actually looks a lot like that in the S&P 500. A break down and close through the 5387 line turns immediate term momentum to negative. For the S&P, my critical support line is 1267.

The US Dollar has been working now that everything that went up is coming down. Gravitational force, like cash, is king. At 77.23 this morning, the US$ has had one of its sharpest short term rallies on record (+7.6% in a month!). What is good for the US$ may not be so good for everything else, particularly if all assets classes start to auto correlate to the downside.

If your broker has any “innovative” space puppy products in your portfolio, sellem’ while you can.

KM