Faithful readers, I hope you don’t mind if I am less chatty than usual today, since I had some competing obligations, plus some of the material on offer stands on its own. In the “pets.com redux” category, a reader pointed out this Wall Street Journal story: Excitement over oil is surging in Brazil…. After creating […]
Read more...The world is finally waking up to the fact that inflation is getting to be a wee bit of a problem and inflation is very unkind to investments. Confidence in China may be fragile, since the stock market reaction seems well out of proportion to the significance of the so-called tightening via a 1% increase […]
Read more...I am clearly not wired like a large cohort of investors who clearly have some sway in the markets. As the popularity of CNBC and thestreet.com attests, for some, the stock market is a form of sport. Actually, better than sports, since in every contest someone wins and someone loses, but over long periods of […]
Read more...While George Soros today said that he believed the worst consequences to the financial system are past, he was far from bullish about the economy. The veteran investor believes that the real world impact is only beginning to be felt. Given that the last housing recession of the late 1980s-early 1990s took 15 quarters to […]
Read more...John Dizard gives a cautionary tale to the growing ranks of vulture wannabes, and in a clever two-for-one, also warns against bottom fishing in commercial mortgage backed securiites. Although the piece revolves around a single anecdote, it’s revealing. Dizard’s story reminded me of this Oscar-winning song from 2005 (skip to the one minute mark): From […]
Read more...The Financial Times reports that mutual funds got off to a very bad start this year, with 24 of the 25 biggest managers seeing a decline in funds. Note first that the article is not discussing individual funds (e.g. Magellean) but fund families (e.g. Fidelity). Note second that the fall isn’t simply the result of […]
Read more...John Authers of the Financial Times uses Passover as a pretext for discussing four perplexing questions related to the markets. They’ve been bugging me too, so I appreciate him having a go at them. From the Financial Times: Passover starts tonight. The world’s Jews gather to commemorate the Hebrews’ flight from Egypt and eat a […]
Read more...Gee, wonder why it took so long for someone to connect the dots. Scarce credit, high commodity prices, and a economy that’s weakening despite the Fed pulling out all stops do not bode well for corporate earnings. Yet consensus earnings forecasts predicted a rise in profit for the S&P 500 in 2007 and and an […]
Read more...Storied investor George Soros believes that the credit crisis is far from over, and sees regulatory failure as a major cause. From Bloomberg: Billionaire George Soros said the global credit crisis will get worse before it gets better. Soros, who said lack of oversight is partly responsible for problems in the financial markets, criticized regulators […]
Read more...Two loosely related and thoughtful posts today point up some of the ways that the fundamental frameworks of how participants think about and relate to financial markets are breaking down. Note that this development is separate from the fact that financial institutions look pretty wobbly. Instead, these two writers, Roger Ehrenberg and Cassandra, highlight two […]
Read more...This message came from an investor who has provided me with some very useful research from time to time: Mike Belkin, who writes a weekly technically-based look at lots of markets—the only technical service to which I subscribe—notes today that last week equity fund flows netted to a $22.9 billion inflow, broken down as $3.3 […]
Read more...An unexpected rise in junk bond yields has led to a sharp fall in prices, and experts think the worst is yet to come. Note that the junk bond market is operating from a more pessimistic outlook than the equity market. This divergence is not uncommon. From Bloomberg: High-yield, high-risk bonds are off to their […]
Read more...The markets are making wildly different interpretations of the news and economic prospects. Record low T-bill prices and a sudden fall in commodities suggests that a serious slowdown and deleveraging pose major risks, yet equities had a strong showing, with the Dow up over 260 points. What gives? We’ve had repeated head-fake rallies in this […]
Read more...Investors are so nervous that they are willing to take almost nothing in nominal terms, which is tantamount to a meaningful negative real return, to sit in the safety of three-month T-bills, which are now a mere 0.56%. One explanation is the large number of fails in the repo market, which as Alea reports, is […]
Read more...Citigroup has declared a very bad scenario first forecast by analysts Stefan-Michael Staimann and Susanne Knips of Dresdner Kleinwort in February 2007, “The Great Unwind,” to be in progress. To their credit, they made this bold call months before the credit contraction began. They viewed it as an inevitable outcome of the hedge fund boom: […]
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