Posts from Thursday May 24 2012

The Closer

| May 24 2012 22:17 | Comment |

ROUND-UP

Stocks shuffled forward, closing higher on optimism over Europe. Comments from the Italian prime minister were blamed for the move. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 0.3 per cent at 12530, while the Nasdaq fell 0.4 per cent 2839. The S&P 500 closed mostly flat, up 0.1 per cent at 1,321 (Wall Street Journal). Read more

Car-driven GDP growth

Cardiff writes mostly about US macroeconomic issues, with daily excursions into other topics about which he claim no expertise. Before Alphaville, Cardiff spent a little more than two years as a reporter at Dow Jones Financial News covering investment banking, asset management, and private equity. Along the way he has written freelance pieces on a variety of other topics from behavioural psychology to Muay Thai, the latter also being a personal interest that involves frequently getting kicked in the shins (and torso, and head).

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| May 24 2012 19:50 | Comment |

Our US econo-stat of the day:

Vehicle purchases by consumers alone accounted for 30% of all the GDP growth in the last two quarters. Read more

Showing Goldman how Twitter works…

Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)

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| May 24 2012 16:10 | Comment |

Trouble getting this stuff through compliance…?

Just the one tweet so far from Goldman Sachs on its own shareholder meeting. Read more

A mysterious Swiss franc sale

David joined the FT in 2011 as a Marjorie Deane fellow. He covered emerging markets, equities and currencies before making the jump over to FT Alphaville in May 2012.

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| May 24 2012 14:27 | Comment |

After EURCHF had been so boring for so long — the euro spiked against the Swiss franc on Thursday:

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The weight of the eurozone PMIs

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company.

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| May 24 2012 12:35 | Comment |

Eurozone flash PMIs for the month of May are out Thursday morning. It’s got us thinking about how the eurozone PMI should be interpreted, but more on that later. First, the highlights:

Flash Eurozone PMI Composite Output Index at 45.9 (46.7 in April). 35-month low. ƒ Read more

‘The death of equities’… again?

Masa joined the FT in 2009 and has worked on a number of desks across the paper, including Companies, Markets and Comment. She spent much of 2010 in New York covering the US equity markets. But earlier this year she finally saw the light and moved to Alphaville.

She started her career in the investment banking division at Lehman Brothers in the summer of 2007, timing it perfectly with the beginning of the credit crunch.

She studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University.

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| May 24 2012 12:12 | Comment |

Thursday’s FT declares “the end of a six-decade passion for equities”. Quite a claim.

Institutional investors, from pension funds to mutual funds sold directly to the public, have slashed holdings in the past decade. Stocks have not been so far out of favour for half a century. Many declare the “cult of the equity” dead. Read more

Markets Live transcript 24 May 2012

Paul Murphy is the founding editor of FT Alphaville.

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| May 24 2012 11:01 | Comment |
This is a Markets Live transcript. Read more

Live markets commentary from FT.com 

Germany has all but turned Japanese

Paul Murphy is the founding editor of FT Alphaville.

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| May 24 2012 10:42 | Comment |

Here’s the spread between the 30 year bund and its 30 year Japanese counterpart over the past 12 months. It’s just about ceased to exist.

 Read more

The (early) Lunch Wrap

| May 24 2012 10:37 | Comment |

Good morning, New York…

FT ALPHAVILLE Read more

Further reading

Masa joined the FT in 2009 and has worked on a number of desks across the paper, including Companies, Markets and Comment. She spent much of 2010 in New York covering the US equity markets. But earlier this year she finally saw the light and moved to Alphaville.

She started her career in the investment banking division at Lehman Brothers in the summer of 2007, timing it perfectly with the beginning of the credit crunch.

She studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University.

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| May 24 2012 08:15 | Comment |

Elsewhere on Thursday…

- Bail-ins: damned if we do, damned if we don’t. Read more

The 6am Cut London

Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.

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| May 24 2012 05:40 | Comment |

Not much came out of the informal EU summit on Wednesday evening and apparently not much will happen at the June summit, either.   No decisions were made regarding the region’s bank, but EU institutions were asked to draw up proposals relating to closer fiscal co-ordination, “including plans that could include a path towards a Europe-wide deposit guarantee scheme and, in the longer term, commonly-backed eurozone bonds,” reports the FT. Hermann van Rompuy said the June meeting would be similarly limited to integration-related “building blocks” and “working methods” rather than specific measures on banking union or mutualising eurozone debt.

China’s May flash PMI was 48.7, indicating this will be the seventh month of contraction on the HSBC index, and at a faster rate than April’s 49.3. (Statement) Read more

Overnight markets: Down

Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.

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| May 24 2012 05:08 | Comment |

Asia markets steadied on Thursday after Wednesday’s slide with investors looking for hopeful signals that Europe can remedy its debt crisis despite no breakthrough from the informal EU talks, says the FT. But wobbly sentiment was compounded by figures showing China’s manufacturing activity continued to slow in May.

The euro fell to a 21-month low against the dollar overnight. Read more

China flash PMIs point to contraction, again

Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.

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| May 24 2012 04:53 | Comment |

[Updated] The number for May is 48.7, compared to 49.3 in April. This is the seventh straight month of contraction and the more important components of the index look fairly bad.

Here’s a summary of the direction and speed of movement of each component: Read more

EU summit: the full nothingness

Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)

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| May 24 2012 03:02 | Comment |

Tonight’s text on Greece from the EU summit. Not much, to be honest.

(Click to image for full doc – more/less from Van Rompuy, here) Read more