• What to Expect from the Fed
    Posted by on August 12th, 2009 at 9:22 am

    I remember when Fed meetings used to be interesting:

    The Federal Reserve is expected to give a nod to signs the U.S. recession is waning but will likely warn that the recovery will be slow and dampen any expectations it will soon start to raise interest rates.
    The Fed’s policy-setting committee, which meets on Tuesday and Wednesday, is expected to hold its benchmark overnight rate in a range of zero to 0.25 percent. A statement on the decision is due about 2:15 p.m. EDT on Wednesday.
    “The markets have begun pricing in a near-term increase in interest rates. That is extremely unlikely. The Fed is going to want to discourage that,” said former Fed Governor Lyle Gramley.
    The Fed is likely to decide to let its $300 billion Treasury purchase program expire, as scheduled, in September. Fourteen out of 16 primary dealers polled by Reuters last week said they expect the Fed not to extend the controversial program.

  • The Case Against Talented Coin Flippers
    Posted by on August 11th, 2009 at 4:10 pm

    Proponents of Efficient Market Theory often dismiss the track records of superior money managers as something that ought to be expected given normal probability. They claim that it’s like calling a person who just nails ten heads in a row a superior coin flipper.
    Sorry Mr. Buffett, old sport, you just got really, really lucky.
    The problem I have with this is that the folks who are often listed as the top money managers seem to share some key traits—specifically they’re often value investors who have no time for EMT. If it truly were an odds game, I doubt we would see these traits appear so often.
    Megan McArdle links to a post of managers who have excellent long-term track records. At the top is the late Bill Ruane who was a good friend of Warren Buffett. They met at Ben Graham’s value investing course at Columbia. In other worlds, they took the same class, learned the same lessons and both generated superior returns. There are plenty of other Graham-and-Dodd guys like Peter Lynch, or the guys at Leucadia National (LUK), and the guys at Danaher (DHR), who went on to trash the market year after year.
    So it’s not just good coin tossing—it’s good coin tossing following the same coin-tossing lessons, the same coin-tossing methods taught by the same coin-tossing teachers. At what point do we agree that it ain’t just luck?
    The Forbes list of billionaires contains lots of shrewd investors. I’m not aware of any that are pure technical guys. There are people who follow every conceivable strategy from astrology to Elliot Wave. Yet, time after time, it’s the value guys who rank near the top.

  • Stocks Hate the President — Any President
    Posted by on August 11th, 2009 at 10:49 am

    I had never heard this one:

    According to research from the folks at Ned Davis dating all the way back to 1959, stocks do better when the public thinks the man in the White House is doing worse.
    In fact, in weeks when the presidential approval rating sagged below 50 percent, stocks rose at an annual rate of 9 percent — versus only 2 ½ percent when the president in office sported a wildly popular 65 percent approval rating in the polls.
    Americans witnessed this phenomenon firsthand on Inauguration Day; despite the national excitement about an Obama presidency and an approval rating near 70 percent, the Dow plunged 332 points.

  • Outlook for Q3 Improves
    Posted by on August 11th, 2009 at 10:29 am

    Here’s an interesting chart. This shows the Intrade contract betting that third-quarter GDP will be positive.
    chart12472168946618627.png
    When the market was at its low in March, it was widely assumed that Q3 would be another bad quarter. Since then, the outlook has steadily improved and now it’s assumed that GDP will be positive. (Don’t read too much into that last downward data point, it seems to be a trade going off at the bid.)
    One positive quarter doesn’t mean the recession is over. Also, it’s possible to see the numbers jump thanks to inventory rebuilding which may not mean that the underlying economy is improving. Still, the Intrade contract seems to match the resurgence of stock prices. We won’t get our first report on Q3 until late October.

  • Productivity Surges
    Posted by on August 11th, 2009 at 8:51 am

    People were complaining that Q2 earnings reports were good simply due to cost-cutting. That’s true, but they said it as if it doesn’t count. Improving productivity is crucial for an expanding economy:

    The productivity of U.S. workers grew in the second quarter at the fastest pace in almost six years as employers squeezed more out of remaining staff to bolster profits.
    Productivity, a measure of how much an employee produces for each hour worked, rose at an annual 6.4 percent pace, more than forecast, after a 0.3 percent gain the prior three months, Labor Department data showed today in Washington. Labor costs fell by the most in eight years.
    Lower expenses mean companies may need to fire fewer workers as sales stabilize, the first step toward ending the worst employment slump in the post World War II era. Efficiency gains also help curb inflation, giving Federal Reserve policy makers, meeting today and tomorrow, extra time to remove stimulus.

  • Local currencies cash in on recession
    Posted by on August 11th, 2009 at 8:47 am

    Be the Greenspan of your community:

    The stimulus for this mill town turned artist’s colony arrived in the form of green bills bearing sketches of herons, turtles and trees.
    A few dozen local businesses banded together this spring to distribute the Plenty — a local currency intended to replace the dollar. Now 15,000 Plenties are in circulation here, used everywhere from the organic food co-op to the feed store to, starting this month, the Piggly Wiggly supermarket.
    Last popularized during the Great Depression, scrip, or locally created stand-ins for U.S. currency, is making a comeback. Pittsboro, population 2,500, is one of a handful of communities that launched its own money in recent months. It reports an avalanche of calls from other communities that have lost faith in the global financial system.
    “The Plenty is not going to get siphoned off to Wall Street, or Washington, or make a stop in Bentonville on its way to China,” said B.J. Lawson, a software entrepreneur who is president of the board of the Plenty cooperative. “It gives us self-reliance.”

    I think Mr. Lawson is a bit confused on the self-reliance concept.

  • Someone Saw this Coming
    Posted by on August 11th, 2009 at 12:43 am

    GM is now selling its cars…on eBay.

  • Singapore’s GDP +20.7%
    Posted by on August 11th, 2009 at 12:38 am

    Wow!

    Singapore’s economy expanded by a seasonally adjusted 20.7 per cent in second quarter, underpinned by strong gains in the manufacturing sector.
    This represents a significant improvement from the 12.2 per cent contraction in the first quarter, said the Ministry of Trade and Industry in a statement on Monday morning.
    Compared to a year ago, GDP contracted by 3.5 per cent in the second quarter. As a result, the Singapore economy contracted by 6.5 per cent in the first half of the year.
    MTI said it would maintain the GDP growth forecast for this year at -4 to -6 per cent.
    Manufacturing output increased by 49.5 per cent, compared to the previous quarter’s contraction of 18.5 per cent. This was largely due to a surge in the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients in the biomedical manufacturing cluster and an increase in inventory restocking in the electronics sector.

  • Dow Theory Says Buy
    Posted by on August 10th, 2009 at 1:27 pm

    But with caution.

    Dow Theory, one of the oldest stock market forecasting methods, has shown a new buy signal: the Dow Jones Transportation Average joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average to close above January highs, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
    However, the bank’s analysts said on Monday that a momentum indicator known as breadth thrust, which focuses on the proportion of advancing to declining stocks, shows a pull-back of 15 to 20 percent this fall when combined with the Dow Theory buy signal.

  • Wall Street Bum
    Posted by on August 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm