Author Archive

  • Morning News: July 10, 2014
    , July 10th, 2014 at 6:47 am

    Euro Strength Defies Draghi’s Loosening Plans

    Rate Rise Chatter Grows As Bond Yields Climb

    China Agrees to Reduce FX Intervention ‘As Conditions Permit’

    China June Trade Data Misses Forecasts, Doubts Over Economy Linger

    Modi Budget Relies on India Revenue Boost as Subsidies Untouched

    DLF Leads Surge in Property Shares as Jaitley Plans REIT Rules

    Aussie Teens Show Financial Smarts

    Fed Saw Investors as Too Complacent on Risk as Exit Plan Evolves

    Hedge Fund to Give American Apparel a Lifeline

    Alcoa’s Q2 Earnings Top, Turn to Profit – Analyst Blog

    Boeing Sees 4.2% Gain in Airliner Market to $5.2 Trillion

    IndiGo Said in Talks With Airbus on $20.6 Billion Order

    Is Sun Valley All About the Guest List?

    Edward Harrison: The Fed is Already Creating the Next Bubble

    Cullen Roche: Brazil’s Soccer Collapse and Economic Waste….

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  • QE to End in Q3
    , July 9th, 2014 at 2:24 pm

    The Federal Reserve just released the minutes from its June 17-18 meeting. One surprise is that the central bank plans to end QE with a big $15 billion taper in October.

    Here’s Binyamin Appelbaum in the New York Times:

    The Federal Reserve intends to end its bond-buying program in October provided the economy continues to grow, according to an account published Wednesday of the central bank’s most recent policy-making meeting.

    The minutes of the June meeting reflected the confidence of Fed officials that the economy had rebounded from a rough winter and their expectation that growth would continue over the next few years. But it also reflected the growing consensus that damage from the recession would continue to limit the pace of growth.

    The Fed plans to add $35 billion to its holdings of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities in July, $25 billion in August and September, and a final $15 billion in October, according to the account. The Fed had previously left unclear whether it might extend the purchases by adding $5 billion in November and December.

    The minutes said that ending the purchases in October rather than December was not intended to signal any change in the timing of the next step in the Fed’s retreat – the first increase in its benchmark interest rate since December 2008. Investors generally expect the Fed to start raising interest rates next summer.

    This is, you know, kinda big news. On Twitter, I wondered: “Why the heck wasn’t this in the last FOMC policy statement?”

    Appelbaum responded, “Really good question.”

  • Wells’ Profit Streak Likely to End
    , July 9th, 2014 at 12:36 pm

    Wells Fargo ($WFC) reports earnings on Friday. The bank has increased profits for the last 17 quarters in a row. That streak has probably come to an end. Wells has also beaten expectations for the last 10 quarters in a row.

    The bank turned to other businesses as 30-year home-lending rates rose more than 1 percentage point, curtailing mortgage refinancings. Lenders probably made $109 billion of such loans in the second quarter, down from $453 billion in the final period of 2012, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Total quarterly originations will stay below $300 billion through 2015, the Washington-based group forecasts.

    Wells Fargo, which accounted for about 28 percent of U.S. mortgages in the first quarter of 2012, watched that share decline to 16 percent two years later. Mortgage-banking revenue slumped to $1.51 billion from $2.87 billion in the same period.

    Stumpf, 60, mostly left investment banking and trading to Wall Street before the 2008 purchase of Wachovia Corp. Wells Fargo’s push into those businesses drew a nod in February from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, whose firm was the largest global investment bank by revenue in 2013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Industries.

  • Stocks and Buyback Correlation = 0.61
    , July 9th, 2014 at 12:03 pm

    You should read the whole thing, but I wanted to share three sentence from Mark Hulbert’s latest.

    New stock buybacks fell to $23.2 billion in June, the lowest level in a year and a half, according to fund tracker TrimTabs Investment Research. In May, the total was just $24.8 billion, and the monthly average in 2013 was $56 billion.

    (…)

    According to Santschi, the correlation coefficient between monthly buyback volume and the stock market’s level, for the period from 2006 until this spring, was 0.61.

    (…)

    Over the past five years, for example, per-share sales growth for S&P 500 companies has been an annualized 2.4%, lagging far behind the 20% annualized earnings per share growth rate.

  • Life Imitates Parody
    , July 9th, 2014 at 11:55 am

    Yesterday, Bloomberg ran this headline:

    Concern Over ‘Severe’ Pullback Sends U.S. Stocks Lower

    As a joke, I tweeted this three months ago:

    Stocks Are Down on Fears of Lower Share Prices

  • The One- and Two-Year Treasuries
    , July 9th, 2014 at 11:45 am

    I thought this was a simple but fascinating graph. It shows the yields for the one- and two-year Treasuries.

    The difference between the red and blue line reflects the expectations that the red line will increase. The wider the spread, the more the red line is expected to rise over the next year. In 2009, those expectations were massively wrong. Gradually, the spread got narrower and narrower until 2011 and 2012 when there was very little difference.

    In the last year, there’s finally been some daylight between the two lines. While the one-year yield hasn’t moved much, the two-year is beginning to creep higher. It recently cracked 0.5%. By looking at the two lines we can infer where the market expects the one-year yield to be one year hence.

    The takeaway is that the market expects the Federal Reserve to do nothing to interest rates in the short term, but it expects an increase about one year from today.

  • NYT on James H. Simons
    , July 9th, 2014 at 11:31 am

    The New York Times profiles James H. Simons, the only person who’s ever made money off math:

    Dr. Simons received his doctorate at 23; advanced code breaking for the National Security Agency at 26; led a university math department at 30; won geometry’s top prize at 37; founded Renaissance Technologies, one of the world’s most successful hedge funds, at 44; and began setting up charitable foundations at 56.

    This year, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, an elite body that Congress founded during Lincoln’s presidency to advise the federal government.

    With a fortune estimated at $12.5 billion, Dr. Simons now runs a tidy universe of science endeavors, financing not only math teachers but hundreds of the world’s best investigators, even as Washington has reduced its support for scientific research. His favorite topics include gene puzzles, the origins of life, the roots of autism, math and computer frontiers, basic physics and the structure of the early cosmos.

    Wow.

  • Ford Close to Breakout
    , July 9th, 2014 at 11:25 am

    Shares of Ford ($F) got as high as $17.38 today. That’s two pennies shy of its highest price since October. After getting crushed in Europe, the automaker sees a profit coming soon.

    Ford Motor Co., targeting an end to losses in Europe, maintained its forecast to return to profitability in the region by 2015, as it reported auto sales for the first six months that outpaced the broader industry.

    “We are very, very pleased with where we are on our European transformation plan,” Stephen Odell, Ford’s Europe chief, told reporters today at the company’s headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan.

    Auto sales in Europe are growing this year after falling to a two-decade low in 2013. The company has said it expects a smaller loss in the region this year and a return to profitability in 2015. The second-biggest U.S. automaker’s pretax operating loss in Europe narrowed to $194 million during the first quarter from a loss of $425 million during the same period last year.

    Ford’s sales in Europe this year through June rose 6.6 percent from a year earlier, outpacing industry growth of 6.3 percent, the company said. For the first six months, the automaker’s market share in Europe, which it defines as 20 nations, was about 8 percent.

    Earnings are due out in two weeks. Wall Street expects earnings of 38 cents per share which is down from 45 cents for last year’s Q2.

  • Morning News: July 9, 2014
    , July 9th, 2014 at 6:47 am

    Why UBS Says Brazil’s 7-1 Trouncing Is Bearish for Stocks

    Wall Street Aims to Clear Low Bar For Earnings Season

    Why Alcoa Gained and The Container Store Tumbled As Earnings Season Kicks Off

    Trucks Left In The Dust as China Vehicle Market Races Ahead

    Chinese Teens Beat U.S. Peers in Money Smarts

    Vatican Bank Profits Tumble as Pope Francis Orders an Overhaul

    Carlos Slim to Dismantle Mexican Empire

    FOMC Minutes Loom Large

    Fed’s Kocherlakota Gives Lukewarm Welcome to U.S. Unemployment Drop

    Citigroup Is Said to Be Close to Settling Inquiry Into Mortgage Securities

    Amazon Offers Authors 100% of Sales Amid Dispute

    European Companies See Opportunity in the ‘Right to Be Forgotten’

    GM Korea Workers Approve Strike as Wage Talks Stall

    Joshua Brown: 361 Capital Weekly Research Briefing

    Jeff Carter: How to Kill Your Company

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  • Capitalism – Born in England, Nourished in America
    , July 8th, 2014 at 11:25 pm

    Capitalism – Born in England, Nourished in America

    By Gary Alexander
    Navellier Marketmail

    The Bank of England was born 320 years ago, in July 1694. Here’s a short description of that important event from “War and Gold: A 500-Year History of Empires, Adventures and Debt,” by Kwasi Kwarteng:

    “The setting up of the Bank of England allowed the government to borrow more cheaply. The initial amount raised was 1.2 million pounds at a time when total government spending in any given year was not much more than this sum. This money was raised by individuals pledging or ‘subscribing’ to lend certain amounts…There was an initial cap of 20,000 pounds for each individual subscription.

    “The subscription books were opened in the Mercers’ Chapel on 21 June, 1694. A total of 300,000 pounds, a quarter of the initial sum, was subscribed on the first day. By noon on 2 July, in less than 11 days, the whole of the amount had been raised. There were over 1,200 subscribers and the very first names on the list were those of the King and the Queen, who subscribed 10,000 pounds jointly.”

    The Bank of England, in turn, paid 8% a year interest, a relatively high rate even then. The Bank of England was privately owned for over 250 years, until it was nationalized by Atlee’s Labor Party in 1946.

    In his 1930 Treatise on Money, British economist John Maynard Keynes wrote that the modern age began with the accumulation of capital in the 16th century, “which resulted from the treasure of gold and silver which Spain brought from the New World to the Old.” Keynes claimed this “profit inflation… created the modern world.” Capital creation “commenced in 1519 when the Aztec spoils arrived, and terminated as early as 1588, the year of the Armada.” However, Spain’s power soon eclipsed because it spent its gold on Armadas, rather than banking it and using the new assets as the basis for loans.

    The British and the Dutch were able to build banking and stock market systems, while Spain created sinking assets – wooden ships. France also went the wrong direction. In the same year the Bank of England was founded, 1694, Scotsman John Law fought a duel in London, killing Edward Wilson. Law was sentenced to death, but he mysteriously escaped and fled to Amsterdam, where he picked up some lessons from Europe’s oldest stock exchange, founded in 1609 by the Dutch East India Company. Law then migrated to France where he created one of the great bubbles of all time, the Mississippi Company. His unique idea was to sell paper representing the hope of finding gold or silver in swampy delta land.

    John Law consolidated the considerable debts of the spendthrift kings of France by creating shares in this pipedream of gold in America, specifically along the Mississippi River. Shares multiplied 60 fold from 1716 to 1719. Like 1929 or 1999, commoners reaped princely fortunes. Law promised that France would dominate all of Europe, and he could “ruin England and Holland” whenever he pleased, but Law’s Papier-mâché empire fell apart in early 1720 and Law fled Paris to seek his fortune in other European cities.

    While France’s fortunes faded – in part due to the despotism which grew out of the French Revolution (225 years ago next Monday) – Britain continued to prosper throughout the 1800s. Between the fall of Napoleon in 1815 and World War I in 1914, Britain’s per capita wealth quadrupled, in real terms.

    British historian Niall Ferguson wrote in The Cash Nexus that “Between 1816 and 1899, the UK government ran a deficit in excess of 1% of GNP in only four years.” This was the golden era, literally. Historian A.J.P. Taylor wrote in The Origins of the Second World War that the British people “reared in the stable economic world of the later nineteenth century” assumed that “a country could not flourish without a balanced budget and a gold currency.” The terrors of World War I put an end to that belief.