ROUND-UP
US equities finished in the black for the first time in more than a week, following a marginally positive performance in Asia and Europe. But as the FT reports, “any new-found optimism is being contained by worries about the eurozone’s difficulties and the health of the global economy, following weak Chinese trade data”. (Financial Times) Read more
From the bank’s first-quarter 10-q, just out:
Since March 31, 2012, CIO has had significant mark-to-market losses in its synthetic credit portfolio, and this portfolio has proven to be riskier, more volatile and less effective as an economic hedge than the Firm previously believed. The losses in CIO’s synthetic credit portfolio have been partially offset by realized gains from sales, predominantly of credit-related positions, in CIO’s AFS securities portfolio. As of March 31, 2012, the value of CIO’s total AFS securities portfolio exceeded its cost by approximately $8 billion. Since then, this portfolio (inclusive of the realized gains in the second quarter to date) has appreciated in value. Read more
The sweet spot — you’re young, Hispanic, have a college degree, work in mining, are married and live in North Dakota.
It’s a rare combination, of course, but these are the characteristics commonly found among people who have found jobs in the difficult US labour market since February 2010, according to ConvergEx analysts. Read more
If Greece ends the reform process it has undertaken, then I can’t see that the respective tranches [of aid] can be paid out.
– Guido Westerwelle Read more
They had one, BofA had none — sorry, we couldn’t resist the tease. From Goldman’s first-quarter 10-q:
Just when someone’s gone and put a decent dataset together, someone has to go and mess it up. Thanks, Spain and Australia. Really, thank you. None of us really cared that much anyway about the data being comparable from one period to the next. Whatevs.
– FT Alphaville’s Internal Monologue Read more
Here is a lengthy and ambitious shopping list from Willem Buiter and Ebrahim Rahbari at Citi. Essentially, they want central banks to do more…. much, much more, including (with our emphasis):
(i) reducing rates, first by lowering them all the way to zero (UK and euro area), then by eliminating the effective lower bound on nominal interest rates (all four currency areas) [essentially: go negative, my friends] Read more
“Live by the sword, die by the sword” does not translate into Kurdish, it seems.
Gulf Keystone Petroleum Ltd. (AIM: GKP) Read more
Back in early 2011, a very intriguing thing happened in the oil markets.
As if by magic — (well, over the period of about a couple of months) — the market collectively and spontaneously moved from using WTI as its primary benchmark for pricing product spreads over to the Brent contract. The era of the “Brent crack” was born. Read more
Live markets commentary from FT.com
Good morning, New York…
FT ALPHAVILLE Read more
When the economy is tanking the shadow economy benefits. That’s the theory and a new study into the rise of the grey economy, from Ceyhun Elgin and Oguz Oztunali of Bogazici University and presented at VoxEU, seems to add weight to the argument.
The author’s put together a 161-country panel dataset over the period 1950 to 2009 (using the multiple indicators and multiple causes method) which attempts to estimate the size of the shadow economy in various regions. Read more
Elsewhere on Thursday,
- If Facebook is worth $100bn, then Apple is worth $2.7tn. Read more
Asian shares were mixed amid lingering concerns about Europe’s debt crisis although sentiment was boosted by positive profit guidance from Toyota, says the FT.
The MSCI Asia Pacific index was up 0.2 per cent while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.3 per cent. Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average was down 0.5 per cent, falling below 9,000 for the first time since February and South Korea’s Kospi Composite index receded 0.5 per cent. Read more
Spain has taken a 45 per cent stake in Bankia, reports the FT, and the country will force its banks to set aside tens of billions of euros in additional provisions against property loans as part of a fresh restructuring plan for the country’s lenders. The plan will be announced on Friday and is expected to require more than 30bn in new provisions for the whole sector. Questions were being asked about the wisdom of having created and floated the Spanish lender in the first place, says the FT separately.
Deutsche Telekom is considering a deal that would combine its T-Mobile USA business with MetroPCS Communications, a US wireless provider, reports the FT, citing two people familiar with the matter. The deal is not final but could see Deutsche Telekom pursue a stock-swap transaction that would give it control of the new entity, which would be US listed. Read more
1'Collectively, humanity has yawned and decided to let the dangers mount'
2Man walks into a gold bar. Au!
3The end of QE?
4Rise of the funding altruists
5The persistent supply-side constraints in US housing
Show more6Bird, plane, Abe
7Bove vs Bloomberg, redux
8Risk goes on, Risk goes off
9A glorious episode in the history of the Revenue
10Stress you next year
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