Posts from Monday Jul 30 2012

The Closer

| Jul 30 2012 22:45 | Comment |

ROUND UP

US stocks ended their recent rally despite hopes that policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic would undertake further measures to buoy the US and Eurozone economies. The S&P 500 closed down 0.05 per cent (Financial Times). Meanwhile, the US bond market quelled fears that the country could be heading into a period of deflation (Bloomberg). Read more

Wayne Rooney in a SEC filing

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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| Jul 30 2012 21:33 | Comment |

Manchester United’s filing for its $383m IPO, finally. Click to enlarge. Enjoy!

Related link:
Man Utd in deal with Chevrolet on jerseys – FT Read more

Quantifying “convertibility risk”

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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| Jul 30 2012 16:17 | Comment |

We thought Mario Draghi’s reference to “convertibility risk” in eurozone bonds — which might “come within our remit” — was pretty big news last week.

Though we wonder if it’s still being underrated. Read more

A painful Greek symbol

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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| Jul 30 2012 15:24 | Comment |

Greek cabinet ministers are meeting later today to finalise how they’re going to come up with €11.5bn in savings over the next two years as demanded by the Troika. Unsurprisingly, the most contentious and sensitive part is the €1.5bn in pension and wage cuts that are needed.

From the FT: Read more

When are insurers systemically important?

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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| Jul 30 2012 13:05 | Comment |

Banks are interconnected, and carry systemic risk to the economy. One doesn’t need the experience of a crisis to know this, it’s just intuitive.

On a similarly intuitive basis, are insurers systemically important? Read more

A response to market monetarists on IOER

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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| Jul 30 2012 12:00 | Comment |

A big thanks to economist David Beckworth, one of FT Alphaville’s favourite bloggers, for his characteristically smart and polite post in response to our thoughts on why lowering or eliminating IOER is a problematic idea.

(In our post we had asked what the market monetarists thought of the issues we raised.) Read more

Markets Live takes an Olympic hiatus

| Jul 30 2012 10:55 | Comment |

We apologise but Paul and Bryce partied so hard over the opening weekend of the Olympics that they need two weeks to recover…

A fellow reveller mirrors ML's slumber

 Read more

The (early) Lunch Wrap

| Jul 30 2012 10:42 | Comment |

Good morning, New York…

FT ALPHAVILLE Read more

HSBC join the results, redress and remorse camp

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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| Jul 30 2012 10:15 | Comment |

… with their 2012 interims.

The TL;DR version goes like this: Read more

The SNB eats euro cake

| Jul 30 2012 09:30 | Comment |

How many reserve assets does it take to screw a Swiss franc into a euro-sized peg?

Answer: this much (so far): Read more

Iron ore going down, down, 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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| Jul 30 2012 08:18 | Comment |

We related last week a forecast from Nomura that iron ore was going to keep falling, and probably more steeply, as it tends to follow Shanghai rebar futures (the most-traded steel futures) and those have plummeted of late. It looks like spot iron ore prices are indeed catching up (or down) with rebar, and that’s taken iron ore below the critical $120/tonne mark.

Why is $120 important? Because of the cost curve. This comes up a lot in the world of iron ore, so it might be worth revisiting what that means. Read more

Further reading

| Jul 30 2012 08:07 | Comment |

Elsewhere on Monday,

- The euro is like a bumblebee.
 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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| Jul 30 2012 05:34 | Comment |

Asian shares extended their gains on Monday, supported by expectations of stimulus from the Federal Reserve and the ECB, but the euro fell. MSCI’s Asia-Pacific ex-Japan index gained as much as 1.1% to a three-week high, after posting its biggest daily rise in a month on Friday with a 2.2% climb.  (Reuters).

Japan’s industrial output fell unexpectedly in June. Output fell 0.1% compared to the previous month while economists surveyed by Dow Jones and the Nikkei had expected a 1.6% increase. The third consecutive month of decline, the country’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry revised its outlook of industrial production, saying it was “flat” rather than in a recovering trend. (Wall Street Journal) South Korea’s manufacturers’ confidence index for August is 70, compared to 81 for July (Bloomberg) Read more