February 2nd, 2012
Further further reading
For the commute home,
- Do groundhogs make better forecasters than economists?
- What Facebook can sell.
- The politics of political prediction markets.
- No one is ever wrong anymore.
- Why Europe really must pursue “structural reform”.
Seasonality bias in the ISM… fixed?
Wednesday’s ISM reading in the US was solid, but maybe the best reason to look favourably on it is that you can now trust the report more than you could in recent months.
We’ve previously written about
Breaking the Bank (in gilts)
This’ll be a controversial argument about the Bank of England’s buying of UK government debt, we know… but it comes from Philip Rush of Nomura:
Aggressive quantitative easing brings [gilt] market capacity constraints into play.
Bernanke: recovery now, thrift later, generic speeches in the meantime
Not much interesting in Bernanke’s testimony to the House of Representatives this morning, but given his many previous warnings that premature fiscal tightening could stifle the weak recovery, he probably hopes listeners will tune out this par…
CME’s farmer fund
This looks like a sign of the post-MF Global shift in the futures market…
CME Group has unveiled its own $100m insurance fund for family farmers and ranchers, co-operatives etc who are clients of its clearing members.
Markets Live transcript 2 Feb 2012
Markets Live chat transcript for the chat ending at 12:10 on 2 Feb 2012. Participants in this chat were: Paul Murphy Joseph Cotterill, FT Bryce Elder/FT PMHello from sunny, freezing London
China to rescue the Eurozone? Maybe
That’s the euro mid-morning on Thursday, reversing earlier weakness in an instant. Here are the snaps from Reuters:
But don’t get too excited.
This is just Wen having a chat with Merkel.
Who tapped the LTRO, cont’d [updated]
Just one name today, but hopefully it rams home why banks are using the ECB’s three-year liquidity. From BBVA’s latest results:
Making use of the new lending facility provided by the European Central Bank (ECB),
That Eurozone repo contraction, charted
We’ve had the results of ICMA’s European repo survey, but the following chart — by way of the ECB’s statistical data warehouse — offers a much more contemporaneous view thanks to data collected by the ECB via its MFI balance sheet reporting regulation .
The word from Zug – Xstrata confirms Glencore approach (Updated)
Xstrata statement:
Response to speculation
Zug, 2 February 2012
Xstrata plc (“Xstrata” or the “Company”) confirms that it has received an approach from and is in discussions with Glencore International plc (“Glencore”) regarding an all share merger of equals which may or may not lead to an offer being made by Glencore for Xstrata.
Further reading
Elsewhere on Thursday,
- You know what’s cool, $1bn in profits.
- Entering the intervention zone.
- Eurocrash, the MUSICAL!
- We’re blaming capitalism, but maybe we should be blaming corporatism.
Pink picks
Comment, analysis, and other offerings from Thursday’s FT,
Charles Goodhart: Longer-term forecasts are a step backwards
Neither central bankers, nor anyone else, have a good way of predicting future fluctuations in either output,
One brave Unilever executive… (updated)
Undeterred by his experience last year, Unilever chief financial officer Jean-Marc Huet has agreed to come back on Markets Live on Thursday to discuss the company’s year-end numbers.
He’ll be joining Bryce Elder and Paul Murphy here at 11am on Thursday,
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Thursday,
– Glencore and Xstrata close to $80bn merger – FT report.
– Year-end figs from Smith & Nephew, Unilever, AstraZeneca, Shell, and Deutsche Bank
– Shell sets out “growth agenda”
Further further reading
For the commute home,
- Dodd-Frank in one graph.
- Is it safe to resume ignoring the prophets of doom?
- Daily Intel reports that Lucas Van Praag has been asked to leave.
- Free Exchange on why the Deutsche Borse-Nyse Euronext merger failed.