• Dow 10,000
    Posted by on October 14th, 2009 at 1:22 pm

    We did it! The Dow cracked 10,000.
    The Dow first broke 10,000 more than 10-1/2 years ago.

  • The Countdown to Dow 10,000
    Posted by on October 14th, 2009 at 11:55 am

  • S&P 500 Above 1080
    Posted by on October 14th, 2009 at 10:45 am

    Thanks to Intel’s (INTC) impressive earnings report, the market is up again today. As a rule, Octobers following presidential elections don’t have a great history for Wall Street, but this October is defying expectations.
    The S&P 500 is currently up to 1083 which is about 60% above the March 9 closing low. I’ve been amazed that there are folks who have dismissed this rally from the get-go. Why aren’t they groveling to Jon Stewart? Where’s the public anger at them?
    As impressive as this rally has been, we’re still a long way from where the market was. Going back to the beginning of 2008, the S&P 500 is still down by about 25%.
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  • Man who threatened Options Exchange guard with can of beer arrested
    Posted by on October 13th, 2009 at 3:34 pm

    The right to beer arms.

    A homeless man was charged with assault after allegedly raising a can of beer threateningly at a security guard and yelling obscenities at Chicago Board of Options Exchange patrons Monday night in the Loop.
    The 43-year-old man who lives at the Pacific Garden Mission was charged with misdemeanor aggravated assault, according to police who said the man was arrested on a sidewalk on the 440 block of South LaSalle Street outside the CBOE.
    Police were not immediately releasing the man’s name.
    At 9:30 p.m. a CBOE security guard told police he saw the man using obscenities and verbally abusing patrons of the exchange, according to police.
    The guard asked the man to leave the premises and the man was taken into custody after allegedly yelling at the guard, acting violently and raising a can of beer towards him in a threatening way, according to police.
    No injuries were reported.

  • Earnings Preview for Baxter International
    Posted by on October 13th, 2009 at 12:13 pm

    From AP:

    Specialty drug and device maker Baxter International reports its third-quarter 2009 results Thursday morning. The following is a summary of key developments and analyst commentary for the period.
    OVERVIEW: Baxter announced several high-profile product launches and agreements during the last three-month period.
    Last week the Deerfield, Illinois-based company said authorities in the European Union approved its swine flu vaccine. Baxter said preliminary trials of the Celvapan H1N1 vaccine is “well tolerated” by patients 18 and older.
    Baxter along with Sanofi-Aventis SA, GlaxoSmithKline PLC and several other pharmaceutical companies are rushing vaccines onto the market as governments around the world brace for a swine flu pandemic. Baxter has contracts to produce the vaccine for several countries in Europe, but not the U.S.
    BY THE NUMBERS: Baxter said in July it expects to report earnings of 95 to 97 cents per share for the third quarter.
    ANALYST TAKE: Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters have earnings per share of 97 cents per share on revenue of $3.2 billion.
    WHAT’S AHEAD: Baxter has already begun making shipments of its H1N1 vaccine to countries with which it has contracts, including Ireland and the U.K. The company is now studying whether a single dose of the vaccine will be enough to prompt an immune response to the flu.

  • Madoff Gets in Prison Fight
    Posted by on October 13th, 2009 at 12:10 pm

    And it was over stocks!

    Bernie “The Bruiser” Madoff got into a prison-yard tussle with a fellow inmate over — of all things — the stock market, eyewitnesses told The Post.
    And, by inmates’ accounts, the 71-year-old Ponzi schemer came out the winner.
    Madoff, serving 150 years at the Butner, NC, federal prison, was heard last week getting into a heated debate over the state of the market with another senior-citizen jailbird.
    The shouting match got so heated that the inmate pushed Madoff, who shoved back harder with both hands, causing his attacker to stumble.
    As the attacker tried to stand up straight, Madoff hovered over him red-faced and glaring, eyewitnesses said.
    The stunned attacker went chicken and took off — allowing Madoff to collect some “cred” among his fellow prisoners.
    “I didn’t think Bernie had it in him. He got the best of him; he was really aggressive, and the other guy was in shock that he fought back,” an inmate said.
    The shoving match occurred near a ball field at the lockup in front of about 20 inmates during a rare time when prison guards weren’t watching.
    An inmate said the two got lucky because if guards had seen the fight, Madoff and his pushing partner “would have went in the ‘hole,’ ” solitary confinement.
    The next day, Madoff and his attacker, described by inmates as a white male over 60 years old, made up and were spotted hanging out together.
    Prisoners interviewed by The Post said this was the first known physical altercation at the slammer for Madoff — who paid a consultant for a crash course in prison culture and survival tips before he was locked up.

  • The Microcredit Myth
    Posted by on October 12th, 2009 at 9:20 pm

    Three years ago, Mohammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in micro-finance. This was the idea that you could help the world’s poor, not by large aid projects, but by small loans to poor people in the Third World. The idea is extremely popular.
    There’s just one problem—it doesn’t work:

    But two new research papers suggest that microcredit is not nearly the powerful tool it has been made out to be. The papers, by leading development economists affiliated with MIT’s Jameel Poverty Action Lab, have not yet been published, but they are already being called the most thorough, careful studies yet done on the topic. What they find is that, by most measures, microcredit does not offer a way out of poverty. It helps a few of the more entrepreneurial poor to start up businesses, and at the margins it may boost the profits of existing microenterprises, but that doesn’t translate into gains for the borrowers, as measured by indicators like income, spending, health, or education. In fact, most microcredit clients actually spend their borrowed money not on a business, but on household expenses, on paying off other debts or on a relatively big-ticket item like a TV or a daughter’s wedding. And while microcredit champions point to microloans as a tool for empowering women, the studies see no impact on gender roles, and find evidence that if any one group benefits more, it’s male entrepreneurs with existing businesses.

  • Stocks Soar, VIX Plunges
    Posted by on October 12th, 2009 at 11:47 am

    The S&P 500 (^GSPC) broke out to a new 52-week high today. We’re now up to 1078. If you’re into the number stuff, that’s almost exactly the Golden Ratio times the March intra-day low (666.79 * 1.618 = 1078.89). Spooky!
    The VIX is below 23 again. The low point today was 22.67. During 2009, we’ve been lower intra-day, but not on a closing basis. If this holds up, the VIX will close at its lowest level since last September, just before Lehman went under.

  • Econ Nobel Goes to Two Americans
    Posted by on October 12th, 2009 at 11:05 am

    Congratulations to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver E. Williamson.

    The prize committee cited Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons,” and Oliver E. Williamson of the University of California, Berkeley, “for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm.”
    Ms. Ostrom becomes the first woman to win the prize for economics. Her background is in political science, not economics.
    “It is part of the merging of the social sciences,” Robert Shiller, an economist at Yale, said of Monday’s awards. “Economics has been too isolated and these awards today are a sign of the greater enlightenment going around. We were too stuck on efficient markets and it was derailing our thinking.”
    The prize committee, in making the awards, seemed to be influenced by the credit crisis and the severe recession that in the minds of many mainstream economists has highlighted the shortcomings of a unregulated marketplace, in which “economic actors,” left to their own devices, will act in their own self-interests and in doing so, will enhance everyone’s well-being.
    The committee, in effect, said that theory was too simplistic and ignored the unstated relationships and behaviors that develop among companies that are competitors but find ways to resolve common problems. “Both scholars have greatly enhanced our understanding of non-market institutions” other than government, the committee said.
    “Basically there is a common understanding that develops even among competitors when they are dealing with each other,” Mr. Shiller said, adding “when people make business contact, even competitors, they can’t anticipate everything, so an element of trust comes in.”
    That is what the Nobel committee recognized, he said, in citing Mr. Williamson and Ms. Ostrom.

  • The Market Is Not Overvalued
    Posted by on October 9th, 2009 at 10:45 am

    Joe Weisenthal notes David Rosenberg’s comments that the stock market is overvalued. I’m sorry, I just don’t see how you can argue against this market on a valuation basis. Could there be a double-dip? Sure, that’s a risk and I can’t say how large. But the idea that the market is not only high, but dangerously high, makes no sense to me.
    Rosenberg writes:

    While we will not belabour the point, when all the write-downs are included, the trailing P/E on “reported” earnings just widened to its highest levels in recorded history of nearly 140x (see chart below), which is three times the levels prevailing during the height of the tech bubble.

    Yes, but that’s extremely depressed trailing earnings. When the economy tanks like that, these metrics lose some of their usefulness. Also, whenever the stock market initially spikes, it’s common for the P/E Ratio to rise since stocks are going up while earnings are still going down.
    Rosenberg notes this criticism and compares today’s valuations to previous depressed earnings environments. Still, outside the great depression, the historic comparisons aren’t in the ballpark. Once we get Q4 2008 off our backs, then things will start to look like normal and we can again use traditional metrics again.
    Another fact that the valuation argument must address is the low interest rates. As interest rates go down, valuations tend to rise in order to be competitive so I would expect higher multiples.
    Rosenberg rightly notes that relying on future earnings is tricky since these are rarely correct. That’s true, but this is a crucial point and it goes back to my disagreements with Nassim Taleb. The forecasts and models don’t need to be perfect. They simply need to be reasonable.
    In making a valuation judgment we need to make reasonable assumptions. For example, I recently said that corporate profits are likely to grow faster than the economy for the next few quarters (say three year).
    Here’s a look at corporate profits’ share of GDP.
    image861.png
    As you can see, it looks to be below trend. Note that I’m not predicting exactly where it will go, but based on past info, I’m making an assumption that profits will take up a larger share of the economy in near future.
    This is why I believe the Street estimates of $92 earnings for the S&P 500 in 2011 are reasonable, which makes the market well priced, if not a little on the cheap side.