Profit with faster news and research
 |
| Source: MarkitEconomics |
"After adjusting for seasonal factors, the HSBC Purchasing Managers’ Index™ (PMI™) – a composite indicator designed to give a single-figure snapshot of operating conditions in the manufacturing economy – registered 48.4 in May, down slightly from 49.3 in April, signalling a seventh successive month-on-month worsening of Chinese manufacturing sector operating conditions."
 |
| Source: NY Fed |
"Since the peak in household debt in 2008Q3, student loan debt has increased by $293 billion, while other forms of debt fell a combined $1.53 trillion."
"This program seems to be mostly all about espionage, but it had the ability to delete files. And when you are able to delete, you're able to destruct, you're able to cause a lot damage. Imagine the ability to knock down a stock exchange. Or the ability to knock down a trading floor. It's enough to be able to go inside to basically cause a dysfunctionality. We would probably see in the next 12 to 18 months, we would see some adaptation from this taken into the commercial world." -Udi Mokady, President and CEO of Cyber-Ark Software
 |
| Eric Rosengren's Speech Slides (Boston Fed) |
 |
| Madrid Stock Exchange Index vs. Spanish 10-year Government Bond Yield (Bloomberg.com) |
 |
| Source: Mary Meeker's Internet Trends D10 Conference 5/30/2012 (KPCB) |
"New York, May 29, 2012 – Data through March 2012, released today by S&P Indices for its S&P/CaseShiller Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, showed that all three headline composites ended the first quarter of 2012 at new post-crisis lows. The national composite fell by 2.0% in the first quarter of 2012 and was down 1.9% versus the first quarter of 2011. The 10- and 20-City Composites posted respective annual returns of -2.8% and -2.6% in March 2012. Month-over-month, their changes were minimal; average home prices in the 10-City Composite fell by 0.1% compared to February and the 20-City remained basically unchanged in March over February. However, with these latest data, all three composites still posted their lowest levels since the housing crisis began in mid-2006.
In addition to the three composites, five cities - Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas, New York and Portland - also saw average home prices hit new lows. This is an improvement over the nine cities reported last month." (source: S&P)
"The Chicago Fed Midwest Manufacturing Index (CFMMI) increased 2.4% in April, to a seasonally adjusted level of 94.2 (2007 = 100). Revised data show the index was down 0.3% in March. The Federal Reserve Board’s industrial production index for manufacturing (IPMFG) increased 0.6% in April. Regional output rose 12.0% in April from a year earlier, and national output increased 5.8%.
Production in three of the four regional sectors increased in April:
• Regional auto sector production rose 7.6%;
• Regional steel sector output increased 0.7%;
• Regional machinery sector production moved up 0.6%; and
• Regional resource sector output decreased 0.1%"
"Capital Economics said this afternoon that it is sticking with its forecast that the euro will slide to $1.10 by the end of this year, but feels there's a growing risk it could fall further, faster."
"Indeed, a research note just released by Citi estimates that the euro will fall to the brink of parity with the US dollar at $1.01."
 |
| EUR/USD |
Rick Santelli (CNBC): How could we correct this rather quickly, you have an idea?
Tim Backshall (Capital Context): "Well, it would be very simple, and coming from a credit guy it's a little bit odd to say. The bottom line is you could put so much of the credit derivative market on an exchange within a few days. It already trades electronically for the most liquid indices. Of course there are complex and ad hoc, or OTC positions that would be very hard to do, but they can be managed in a different way." (not from an official transcript)
 |
| source: Bloomberg.com |
 |
| Source: Bloomberg.com |
"Germany has operational leverage (Siemens): "Income within Europe is shifting. It's being redistributed. It's being redistributed from the financial creditors, think the banks. And let's keep it local like Germany. The trade really, is you want to be short the financial sector and you want be long the export sector. Because I think we all agree that where we're heading for is probably euro parity with the dollar if not going below that, which is a profound economic advantage to what are already super competitive businesses. And of course that only happens if we get more financial anarchy, and of course that's going to help your short position."
 |
| Deflated (Robert Couse-Baker via Flickr) |
"The number being bandied about now is closer to a range of $6 billion to $7 billion, according to several people working on trading desks that specialize in the derivatives JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) used to make its trades and from two sources with knowledge of the bank's positions." (CNN Money)
 |
| Source: Facebook Form-S1 |
 |
| Greek Drachmas (Wikipedia) |
"Fitch Takes Negative Rating Actions on Greece
17 May 2012 1:30 PM (EDT)
Link to Fitch Ratings' Report: Fitch Takes Negative Rating Actions on Greece
Fitch Ratings-London-17 May 2012: Fitch Ratings has downgraded Greece's Long-term foreign and local currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) to 'CCC' from 'B-'. The Short-term foreign currency IDR has also been downgraded to 'C' from 'B'. At the same time, the agency has revised the Country Ceiling to 'B-'.
The downgrade of Greece's sovereign ratings reflects the heightened risk that Greece may not be able to sustain its membership of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The strong showing of 'anti-austerity' parties in the 6 May parliamentary elections and subsequent failure to form a government underscores the lack of public and political support for the EU-IMF EUR173bn programme.
In the event that the new general elections scheduled for 17 June fail to produce a government with a mandate to continue with the EU-IMF programme of fiscal austerity and structural reform, an exit of Greece from EMU would be probable. A Greek exit would likely result in widespread default on private sector as well as sovereign euro-denominated obligations, despite a moderate sovereign debt service burden following the restructuring of Greek government bonds in March.
 |
| Bankia -23.5% (source: Yahoo Finance) |
 |
| House Attack, Vienna (via weburbanist) |
 |
| source: chk.com |
"In addition to the Permian sale and Miss Lime JV, we've identified a number of other assets that are non-core to us. And we will sell enough of those in the second half of 2012 to reach our asset sales target of $9.5 billion to $11 billion for the remainder of the year."
"Remember, our only maintenance covenants are in our revolving credit facility, which is a $4 billion facility secured by a relatively small subset of our $50 billion to $60 billion asset value that Aubrey referred to earlier. These covenants are 4x debt to trailing EBITDA limitation and a 70% debt-to-capitalization ratio."
 |
| Source: Haldini / flickr |
 |
| Jamie Dimon (Wikipedia) |
"The trader may have built a $100 billion position in contracts on Series 9 (IBOXUG09) of the Markit CDX North America Investment Grade Index, according to the people, who said they based their estimates on the trades and price movements they witnessed as well as their understanding of the size and structure of the markets."
 |
| Source: Youtube |
"We are still recovering from the worst recession since the 1930s. Tax receipts are coming in lower than expected, and the Federal government and the courts have blocked us from making billions in necessary budget reductions. The result is that we are now facing a $16 billion hole, not the $9 billion we thought in January. This means that we will have to go much further and make cuts far greater than I asked for in the beginning of the year."
"That's why I'm bypassing the gridlock and asking you, the people of California, to approve a plan that avoids cuts to schools and public safety. The plan: ask high income earners to pay up to 3% more in their income taxes for 7 years, and increase sales taxes by 1/4 of 1% for 4 years."
"It would temporarily raise the state sales tax, already the highest in the U.S., to 7.5 percent from 7.25 percent. It would also boost rates on income starting at $250,000. The 10.3 percent levy on those making $1 million or more would rise to 13.3 percent, the most of any state."
 |
| source: CMA Datavision |
 |
| Source: FinAid.org (real-time update below) |
 |
| Athens (source: DoctorWho - Flickr) |
 |
| source: occ.gov (see below w/ table) |
"As of December, five firms accounted for 96 percent of the total U.S. banking industry’s notional holdings in derivatives and 86 percent of the industry’s net current credit exposure in derivatives, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency."
"Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) said a proposed Federal Reserve rule seeking to limit links between banks could cut U.S. economic growth by as much as 0.4 percentage point and eliminate as many as 300,000 jobs."
 |
| Herbalife down 23%! |
