Posts from Tuesday Mar 12 2013

The Closer

| Mar 12 21:28 | Comment |

ROUND-UP

FT markets round-up:“Stocks are struggling for traction as the bull run that has taken many equity barometers to multiyear or, in some cases, record highs endures one of its periodic pauses. The FTSE All-World index is down 0.2 per cent, retreating from its latest four-year peak as the FTSE Eurofirst 300 gained 0.1 per cent and after the Asia-Pacific region shed 0.3 per cent. Wall Street’s S&P 500 is slipping 4 points from its best close in five years of 1,556, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average is trading near its previous record close of 14,447.” (Financial Times) Read more

Corporates always gonna get theirs first in recoveries

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 12 19:52 | Comment |

Last week continued a healthy discussion of the national income share that goes to capital versus labour. Or in layman’s terms, companies versus workers.

An earlier version of the discussion focused on whether technology or monopolistic behavior or some other non-cyclical reason was to blame. But the more recent iteration has been more about whether the trend has been exacerbated in the current recession-and-recovery period, contrasting the robustness of the corporate recovery against the sluggishness of jobs and income growth. Read more

Do markets dream of electric androids?

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 12 18:21 | Comment |

ROBOTS! AUTOMATONS! CYBORGS! ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE! ARGHH!!!

Last weekend I attended Robots on Tour, a robotics, humanoids and cyborg exhibition put together by the Zurich-based Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Zurich. Read more

Beyond month 60 in the bunker, life was getting pretty tetchy

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 12 15:37 | Comment |

Another update by NIESR of its monthly UK GDP projections… another prediction of flatlining growth, now extending into the first two months of 2013.

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Breaking bad

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 12 15:05 | Comment |

Rising inflation expectations and a diving Great British Krona helped another leg downhill on Tuesday by dire production data.

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Markets Live: Tuesday, 12th March, 2013

Paul Murphy is the founding editor of FT Alphaville.

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| Mar 12 11:01 | Comment |
This is a Markets Live transcript. Read more

Live markets commentary from FT.com 

China’s shale frenzy and the technology hurdle

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 12 10:50 | Comment |

Hardly anyone, it seems, believes that China’s shale gas efforts are going to hit paydirt any time soon.

Reuters wrote yesterday that the shale gas revolution risks ‘running further off track’ — and this is before it has even begun to produce any significant volumes. Read more

The (early) Lunch Wrap

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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| Mar 12 09:49 | Comment |

Good morning, New York

It’s the second business day that London and NYC are only four hours apart thanks to Daylight Savings Time. Just think of how much easier transatlantic communications would be if it was always like this. Sigh… Read more

This is your lending scheme. This is your lending scheme on drugs. Any questions?

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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| Mar 12 09:38 | Comment |

Breaking: deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has hit soundbite pay dirt.

In Tuesday’s FT he is quoted as saying that the Funding for Lending Scheme, whereby financial institutions get cheap loans from the Bank of England to boost credit to the wider economy, should be “put on steroids”.

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Further reading

| Mar 12 08:27 | Comment |

Elsewhere on Tuesday,

- What’s cheap?

- The Fed, illustrated.

- Europe’s hungry. 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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| Mar 12 05:03 | Comment |

Asian shares lower || Yen weakens on Iwata comments || FLS ‘on steroids’ || Commerzbank’s £5bn sale draws interest || Finance industry sector fights TBTF || Hungary goes ahead with constitutional changes || Gross cuts Treasuries || Heritage-Tullow Ugandan tax case begins || Dead pigs in Shanghai water supply Read more