Posts from Wednesday Mar 6 2013

The Closer

| Mar 06 22:51 | Comment |

ROUND-UP

FT markets round-up: “Global stocks extended gains as sentiment was boosted by the sight of record levels for Wall Street blue-chips, following optimism over the US economy and expectations of continued stimuli from central banks. Away from equities growth-focused assets were less upbeat, however. Copper fell 0.7 per cent at $3.48 a pound and Brent crude traded below $111 a barrel for most of the session. This left so-called commodity currencies muddled relative to the greenback, the Australian dollar rose up 0.1 per cent but its Canadian namesake is off 0.4 per cent, the latter also impacted by a weak Ivey purchasing managers’ survey and after the country’s central bank held interest rates at 1 per cent. Yet, perceived fixed income havens generally struggled as they lost favour to stocks. Prices for Treasuries and Bunds eased back, forcing yields up 4 basis points to 1.93 per cent and 1bp to 1.46 per cent, respectively. The FTSE All-World equity index rose 0.2 per cent to 235.8 as it gained support from mildly firm performances in Europe and the US.” (Financial Times) Read more

The age of infinite equity?

Izabella Kaminska joined FT Alphaville in October 2008. Before that she worked as a producer at CNBC, a natural gas reporter at Platts and an associate editor of BP's internal magazine.

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| Mar 06 19:29 | Comment |

Financial pundits, academics, fund managers and analysts all have an amazing tendency to over-complicate matters.

Sometimes, however, it takes just one person spelling out the obvious to really get to the root of the problem. Read more

February the strongest month ever for US buybacks

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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| Mar 06 18:35 | Comment |

That’s according to a note this morning by Birinyi Associates, which adds: Read more

Pari passu, the cross-sovereign contamination

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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| Mar 06 18:16 | Comment |

Some excerpts from a lawsuit filed by the Export-Import Bank of China (Taipei) against Grenada in a United States district court on March 4, 2013…

If you have been following the pari passu saga on ratable payment of sovereign debt — they tell their own story. (Click to enlarge all images.) Read more

Raising the RUFO in Argentine bonds

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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| Mar 06 17:02 | Comment |

In case you didn’t fancy ploughing through our 3,000+ words on NML v Argentina last week at the Second Circuit…

Barclays’ analysts have boiled down the next turning point in the pari passu saga into two paragraphs, in their March 5 note (irresistibly titled ‘Cram-down or sanctity of contract? Is there a way out?’): Read more

Markets Live: Wednesday, 6th March, 2013

Paul Murphy is the founding editor of FT Alphaville.

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| Mar 06 11:01 | Comment |
This is a Markets Live transcript. Read more

Live markets commentary from FT.com 

The (early) Lunch Wrap

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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| Mar 06 10:47 | Comment |

Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez dies || Samsung buys stake in Sharp || FBI joins SEC in computer trading probe || Legal and General dividend rise allays investor gloom || Microsoft faces EU fine for breaking pact || North Korea mixes Dennis with menace || Bolshoi star confesses to acid attack || Markets update: Global stocks are on course for a fresh four-year high Read more

Don’t kill the old, pander to them

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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| Mar 06 09:52 | Comment |

“Whatever we can”, you say? Encouraging words from BoJ governor nominee Kuroda over the weekend (even if comparisons with Mr Draghi are overblown). If Cullen Roche is correct, what happens in Japan over the next year or many could change the future of economic policy. So it’s worth spending a bit more time on what Kuroda’s “can” might actually be.

We’ve argued already that much of the low-hanging fruit of expectations and verbal intervention has already been plucked. Read more

HFT woes Down Under

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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| Mar 06 09:26 | Comment |

Australian authorities have been considering how to deal with algorithmic and high-speed trading since 2010. Long story short; the local Australian Financial Review says that the federal Treasury has decided that fees on high frequency trades orders are the way to go.

This prompted protests from the chief of Chi-X Australia, Peter Fowler, that market makers should be treated differently: Read more

Further reading

| Mar 06 08:12 | Comment |

Elsewhere on Wednesday,

- Funding-for-Lending’s fatal flaws.

- There is no magic investing policy.

- Chavez unfondly remembered in two charts. Read more

The 6am Cut

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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| Mar 06 05:35 | Comment |

Asian stocks climb || Chavez dies || Osborne anti-bonus cap bid fails || Samsung to take stake in Sharp || Permira cuts fund-raising target || Martin Wolf on the BoJ’s challenges || ECB likely to hold yet again Read more