February 8th, 2012
Further further reading
For the commute home,
- Gavyn Davies assesses the impact of QE. Short version: it’s working.
- S&P 500 valuation charted against NGDP.
- How many jobs has the app economy created since the recession started?
- Don’t put venture capital at risk,
American swap regulation: a class apart
Take a moment to imagine what it must be like to be an American regulator. There are plenty to imagine being: the OCC, the Fed, the CFTC, SEC, FDIC, and that thrift one, until it subsumed into the OCC. Got one?
So there you are,
Dystopia — safe assets edition
A familiar theme in this year’s Barclays Equity Gilt Study (57th edition, just out)…
(Click charts to enlarge)
But there is a twist — Barclays Capital tried to estimate the percentage of “safe”
Greek funny money
Greece is not printing its own money already. No drachmas are being issued by Greece, nor is there monetisation of public debt. However….
And with that rather tantalising intro — Stephane Deo of UBS blows the lid off something we’ve been wondering about Greece for a while.
Natural gas outrage of the day
The natural gas market has always behaved a little oddly.
First, it’s always been hugely seasonal, thus responsible for many a widow-maker trade. But now investors and traders have to contend with the impact of fracking too,
Markets Live transcript 8 Feb 2012
Markets Live chat transcript for the chat ending at 12:07 on 8 Feb 2012. Participants in this chat were: Paul Murphy Bryce Elder/FT neil collins PMMornin PMWelcome to ML on time
UK banks are good to go
RBS is still in its loss making phase (1) which inevitably gives us communication challenges. The losses ironically are a measure of our recovery success…
– Stephen Hester’s memo to staff on Tuesday.
European repo has been contained!
From Icap’s latest repo weekly report:
See that? That’s Italian general collateral trading more-or-less in line with the Eonia OIS curve after a good few months of haywire behavior. What’s more,
Greece’s biggest holdout, dealt with? [updated]
Goodbye to one massive FT Alphaville bugbear, anyway? An interesting story from Stephen Fidler of the WSJ/DJ FX Trader:
The ECB has agreed to exchange the government bonds it purchased in the secondary market last year at a price below face value,
Overplaying the role of haircuts in the crisis
ICMA’s European Repo Council has taken a look at the role of haircutting repo collateral in the current crisis on Wednesday. It’s decided that, overall, (and especially in Europe) there is little reason to believe the practice of discounting repo assets’ market value has had much of an impact.
Further reading
Elsewhere on Wednesday,
- Roubini is bullish; time to short everything!
- What on earth has Bill Gross been reading?
- Extreme optimism.
- New year, new CLO structures.
- Repackaging austerity.
Pink picks
Comment, analysis and more from Tuesday’s FT,
Martin Wolf: Crisis must not change India’s course
What do the financial and economic crises of the high-income countries mean for emerging and developing countries? I addressed this in New Delhi last week,
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Wednesday,
- Statoil raises 2012 capex, Q4 beats forecasts – statement.
- Supergroup sales growth slows in January – statement.
- SAS posts fresh loss, boosts cost-cut pace – statement.