Insomniac Hedge Fund Guy It’s hard to argue that major banks charged more interests to the consumers by under LIBOR reporting rates. JPM not knowing what their risk was and losing $5 Billion or more was egregious. I doubt if they colluded to under report rates for the benefit of Barclays. I doubt that you can prove much damages. After all who wants higher rates?
These are two questions I hear a lot and I hear myself asking these two questions. Conventional wisdom is that if we are heading into a recession, you don’t want to own stocks. I’ve never found that statement to be true though as I’ve made a lot of money for myself and clients in recessionary environments. This time though could be different. Normally a recession triggers Fed rate cuts. As interest rates are one of the biggest determinants of relative value, lower rates makes for higher stock valuations. With rates near zero, though, this thesis might not hold. After all … Read more
BOUT DOT EARTH By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to reach nine billion, essentially adding two Chinas to the number of people alive today. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where, scientists say, humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. In Dot Earth, which recently moved from the news side of The Times to the Opinion section, Andrew C. Revkin examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits. Conceived in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Dot Earth tracks relevant developments from … Read more
Short Sales on NYSE Top 2011 Peak as September Bets Lost 21%By Whitney Kisling | Bloomberg – 2 hours 8 minutes sales on the New York Stock Exchange have climbed above last Septembers peak, a level that preceded a five-month rally and heralded losses for bears. Shares borrowed and sold reached 5.35 percent of stock available for trading last month, according to data compiled by NYSE Euronext. NYX That eclipses 5.28 percent on Sept. 15, when bearish bets peaked last year and the 25 most-shorted companies in the Standard & Poors 500 Index SPX began a 21 percent advance, data … Read more
The Striking Price | SATURDAY, JULY 14, 2012How to Win in Earnings SeasonBy STEVEN M. SEARS Goldman Sachs study shows that the weeks before quarterly results are unusually important to a stocks annual returns.ArticleCommentsEmailPrintReprints smallerLargerIt is now much in vogue to observe that stock-market correlation is high.With all stocks seemingly rising and falling as one, with little regard for their individual merits, the fashionable trade is to ignore stocks.The better approach, says the new conventional wisdom, is using exchange-traded funds and associated call options to profit from the rapid risk-on, risk-off trading patterns that now define the stock market. To take … Read more
Buffaholics like me, lap it up. The full Becky Liu interview with Warren at Sun Valley
Beware investors in high flying VC social media deals. You can lose your shirt. At least with public companies you can get out! Betaworks Is Buying Digg For $500,000 Jay Yarow | Jul. 12, 2012, 4:28 PM | 12,982 | 10 Betaworks is buying social news site Digg for $500,000, the Wall Street Journal reports. Betaworks is acquiring the Digg brand, website, and technology, but not its employees. Digg will be folded into News.me, Betaworks’ social news aggregator. This is not the outcome people expected for Digg. In 2008, Google was reportedly set to buy it for $200 million. … Read more
Knowing how everything is manipulated, this means Goldman has covered their short on energy and now wants to take money from you the on the other side of the trade. It sure acts like oil has stopped going down for now.
Looks like Bill Ackman has been following our blog and has seen the light with P & G. The stock is up 6% since we first posted about it (many thanks to Mr. Ackman; up 4.3% so far today) and is poised to continue its rise if Mr. Ackman is willing to push management around a bit. With the dividend yield and the run towards safe income stocks, PG still looks like a screaming buy. Based on our DCF assumptions of -1% revenue growth for the next seven years P&G is still worth $75 per share. The market is … Read more
Housing Passes a Milestone By DAVID WESSEL The housing market has turned—at last. The U.S. finally has moved beyond attention-grabbing predictions from housing “experts” that housing is bottoming. The numbers are now convincing. Nearly seven years after the housing bubble burst, most indexes of house prices are bending up. “We finally saw some rising home prices,” S&P’s David Blitzer said a few weeks ago as he reported the first monthly increase in the slow-moving S&P/Case-Shiller house-price data after seven months of declines. The U.S. finally has moved beyond attention-grabbing predictions from housing “experts” that housing is bottoming. The numbers are … Read more
Be sure to tune into Warren Buffett tomorrow on CNBC at 7:30AM. With his stock doing so well this year, he’s sure to be ebullient. Warren Buffetts Berkshire Hits 16-Month HighPublished: Wednesday, 11 Jul 2012 | 7:44 PM ET Text Size By: Alex CrippenExecutive They are up 10.2 percent year-to-date, outperforming the benchmark S&Ps 6.7 percent gain.Since closing at $66 on September 22, Berkshire Class B shares are up 27.4 percent. via Warren Buffetts Berkshire Hits 16-Month High – CNBC.
PMorgan, Goldman Shut Europe Money Funds After ECB Cut By Dawn Kopecki and Charles Stein – Jul 6, 2012 11:38 AM MT Draghi Own Words on ECB Rates, Inflation, Economy JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and BlackRock Inc. (BLK) closed European money market funds to new investments after the European Central Bank lowered deposit rates to zero. via JPMorgan, Goldman Shut Europe Money Funds After ECB Cut – Bloomberg.
Regardless of the investment merits of Facebook ( I personally think there were none), I find it stunningly contradictory that our culture teaches fair play yet rewards just the opposite. For example, the institutional investors that got the early call that Facebook’s revenue growth had shortcomings were big customers that showered Morgan Stanley with fees. Since the deal was way oversubscribed, it didn’t hurt Morgan Stanley to deflate a little air out of the deal by alerting the good customers, that maybe the oh so hot deal wouldn’t pop just the way they thought. But Facebook is just a sideshow … Read more
Manufacturing Slowdown Reaches U.S By NEIL SHAH And BEN CASSELMANThe global economic slowdown has finally caught up with American manufacturers.The U.S. factory sector shrank in June for the first time since July 2009, the first month of the recovery, the Institute for Supply Management said Monday. Exports fell sharply, and new orders—an indication of future activity—dropped at their fastest pace since the post-9/11 plunge in October 2001. via Manufacturing Slowdown Reaches U.S. – WSJ.com.
Coal – The Ignored JuggernautSubmitted by Tyler Durden on 06/30/2012 09:38 -0400Submitted by PeakProsperity.com contributing editor Gregor MacdonaldCoal – The Ignored JuggernautOil, natural gas, and alternatives dominate the headlines when it comes to energy. But theres a big and largely-overlooked revolution occurring with the energy source likely to become the most preferred fuel for a world in economic decline: coal.The United States coal sector has been hit very, very hard this spring. Demand has been crushed by over 10%, as warm weather and bountiful supplies of cheap natural gas have induced power plant operators and all other users where possible … Read more
Just A Very Visible Fat Finger? Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/28/2012 16:15 -0400 Equities did it again – and no matter what narrative a mainstream media channel needs to comprehend the monkey-hammering that occurs every second in our ‘market’, it seems a fat-finger 50k block of S&P 500 e-mini futures (or around $3.3bn notional equivalent) was enough drive the nominal price index up 1% to close the day-session almost green (and rather notably right at yesterday’s closing VWAP). All the highly correlated sectors of the equity market surged with them (led by Energy and leaving financials just in the … Read more
Ray Dalio: Don’t Assume That Germany Will Bail Europe Out; Consider The “Fat Tail” A Significant Possibility Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/26/2012 19:54 -0400 European Central Bank Germany Lehman Lehman Brothers Ray Dalio Snakeoil Salesmen Lately, more and more professional investment “advisors” and newsletter recommendations boil down to just one catalyst: wait for either Germany, the ECB or the Fed to step in, as usual, and bail the world out, because, well, they have to, and any additional thought is rendered moot as fundamental analysis is meaningless under central planning (plus it is actually more work than just repeating … Read more
Monti lashes out at Germany ahead of summit By Guy Dinmore and Giulia Segreti in Rome and Peter Spiegel in Brussels ©Reuters Mario Monti has set the stage for a tough fight with Germany at the EU summit this week, insisting that he will continue to push Italy’s proposal to use eurozone bailout funds in an attempt to stabilise financial markets. Italy’s technocratic prime minister’s frustration with Germany surfaced in a combative speech to parliament, saying he would not go to Brussels to “rubber-stamp” pre-written documents and was ready to extend the two-day summit until Sunday night if needed to … Read more
Looking at this chart makes one think that what goes up must come down. Is it possible that the super spike in oil prices has come to an end due to greater fuel efficient driven by CAFE standards and technological breakthroughs like horizontal drilling and fracking? Are we going to undergo a long period of moderate to sharply declining crude prices? Look at the Case-Shiller Home Price Indices during the same period. There is some correlation but crude went up a far greater percentage. Is this all emerging market demand and supply issues? Is there more speculation than meets the … Read more
Look no further than the Soros interview to understand why markets went down sharply today.
Global Hunter Securities We believe West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices could oversell potentially into the lower $70 range before rebounding to the $80 area, where we expect prices to consolidate. From a purely fundamental perspective, the over-production evidence is interesting, with total U.S. field production up by 12.4% year-over-year to 6.35 million barrels per day, against a declining consumption trend in the same period. The Cushing hub bottleneck bonanza has pushed Cushing stocks higher by 25.6% year-over-year to 47.8 million barrels, but this has not really moved the total crude stocks number out of whack, in our opinion. via … Read more
Courting the Chinese Buyer Buyers from China are pouring billions into residential property—and developers are courting them with everything from feng shui to lucky numbers. By LAUREN A. E. SCHUKER A new wave of buyers from China is snapping up luxury properties across the U.S., injecting billions of dollars into the country’s residential real-estate market. Lauren Schuker has details on Lunch Break. Photo: Erhard Pfieffer. A new wave of buyers from China is snapping up luxury properties across the U.S., injecting billions of dollars into the country’s residential-real-estate market. The industry is scrambling to court the new buyers. Some … Read more
CHART- know how to read charts. I firmly believe I can improve the price of buying or selling from an understanding of chart action. Stock is very oversold; +1 ANALYSTS- read analyst reports but come to your own conclusions. 4 strong buy, 10 hold (according to CNBC); -1 INSIDERS- if the people that know the company the best are not buying it, why should you? Chairman purchased 112,000 shares at $25.02 on 6/8/12, director purchased 4,500 shares at $23.60 on 6/15/12; +1 MANAGEMENT DISCUSSION 10Q AND 10K- this is the only truthful thing you will read about a company. It’s composed … Read more
Oil Stocks Biggest Losers With Valuations Lowest Since 2009 By Lu Wang – Jun 24, 2012 10:53 PM MT Facebook Share At a time of record fuel demand, bountiful oil and natural gas, and expanding economies, no stocks are doing worse in the world than energy producers from BP Plc to Hess (HES) Corp. The MSCI World Energy Index (MXWO) has declined 9.6 percent this year, more than any other group, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The gauge has climbed 45 percent since equities bottomed in 2009, less than any industry with earnings tied to economic growth. In … Read more
U.S. Banks Aren’t Nearly Ready for Coming European Crisis By Simon Johnson Jun 24, 2012 4:30 PM MT The author, an MIT Professor is especially negative on JP Morgan. This is an interesting read to go along with Jamie Dimon’s command performance in front of Congress last week. via U.S. Banks Aren’t Nearly Ready for Coming European Crisis – Bloomberg.
Romney Donors Get Access, and Face Time, at Utah Retreat By Lisa Lerer – via Romney Donors Get Access, and Face Time, at Utah Retreat – Bloomberg. I didn’t recognize anyone on Mid Mountain trail today. The attendees must have been too hungover to go mountain bike riding. It’s either a sad commentary on American politics when you can buy acccess to either Republican or Democratic Presidents or just more proof we are increasingly an egalitarian society when you can do this for just $50,000 per head.
RAJA 07:09 EDT SPN theflyonthewall.com: Superior Energy downgraded to Outperform from Strong Buy at Raymond James Raymond James downgraded shares based on lower 2013 U.S. land rig count assumptions and a bearish view on oil prices. Price target lowered to $25.50 from $37. :theflyonthewall.com 07:09 EDT PTEN theflyonthewall.com: Patterson-UTI Energy downgraded to Outperform from Strong Buy at Raymond James Raymond James downgraded shares based on lower 2013 U.S. land rig count assumptions and a bearish view on oil prices. Price target lowered to $19 from $21. :theflyonthewall.com 07:09 EDT ORIG theflyonthewall.com: Ocean Rig UDW downgraded to Outperform from Strong Buy at Raymond … Read more
Spanish Government 10 yr. Bond Italian Government 10 yr. Bond Watch these two yields on Bloomberg. If they blow out, you can expect stocks to come down, the dollar to rise, oil goes down, and financial contagion spreads. It’s as simple as that. Why Spain and Italy matter so much to the world is just another example of how global financial systems are too complexly intertwined Soros and Buffet are both right; credit default swaps should be banned. That would be one easy step for governments to do to begin to surgically repair the circulation back to the banking … Read more
CHART- know how to read charts. I firmly believe I can improve the price of buying or selling from an understanding of chart action. No sign of a turnaround yet; -1 ANALYSTS- read analyst reports but come to your own conclusions. 4 strong buy, 6 buy, 2 hold, 1 sell (according to CNBC); +1 INSIDERS- if the people that know the company the best are not buying it, why should you? Independent director Charles Haggerty recently purchased 40,000 shares at a price of $6.93-$8.07; +1 MANAGEMENT DISCUSSION 10Q AND 10K- this is the only truthful thing you will read about a … Read more