FT Alphaville
Further reading
Elsewhere on Friday,
- Quant on Demand.
- And 15 ways to destroy the earth.
- The Economist gets its peak oil on.
- In Greece, the rise of Golden Dawn.
- Being a finance professional makes you more susceptible to bias.
Spanish bond auction
From Reuters:
09:39 RTRS – SPAIN SELLS 1116 MLN EUROS IN 2014 BONDS
09:39 RTRS SPAIN SELLS 1425MLN EUROS IN 2022 BONDS
09:39 RTRS SPAIN 2014 BOND BID-TO-COVER RATIO 3.3 (LAST AUCTION 2.0)
A media scrum in payrolls…
Heather Scott: So you’ll guarantee that every agency will be connected to the Internet at exactly the same millisecond?
Carl Fillichio: I’m not going to guarantee anything.
Heather Scott: So it won’t be a level playing field?
Carl Fillichio:
Citi and second liens
Three’s a trend — Citi’s joined JP Morgan and Wells Fargo in reclassifying home equity (junior lien mortgage) loans as bad assets this quarter.
From a footnote in its Q1 results:
The first quarter
The (early) Lunch Wrap
Good morning, New York…
FT ALPHAVILLE
The Glenstrata glitch: Can it really be true that advisers to Glencore and Xstrata did not envisage a referral to the competition authorities in Brussels when planning their $90bn $80bn merger? Seems so according to the statement.
The (early) Lunch Wrap
Good morning, New York
FT ALPHAVILLE
Get Carnwath: Who is Alison Carnwath and why is PIRC, the British shareholder activist group, encouraging shareholders to oppose her reappointment as a non-executive director at Barclays? Apparently because she was chairman of the bank’s remuneration commmittee.
Facebook acquiring Instagram [updated]
Kara Swisher reports that it’ll be for $1bn in cash and shares. From a note posted to Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg:
Update (9pm UK time) — some thoughts. Or, acquiring it before it kills you, Facebook edition.
The (Long) Weekender
Easter service announcement… FT Alphaville’s open during New York hours on Monday, though posting will be light to non-existent in Europe time. Because you’re all on holiday over there!
To tide you over until then,
Non-farm payrolls 120,000, unemployment drops to 8.2 per cent
Just one month, lots of statistical noise in this series, will be revised later, etc…
Caveats aside, the headline payroll number of 120,000 jobs in March is obviously a disappointment. The unemployment rate dropped a tenth of a percentage point to 8.2 per cent.
The closer
Round-up
US equity markets ended the day slightly down as trading thinned going into the long Easter weekend, and earlier in the day Spanish bond yields climbed to multi-month highs to make this their worst week of trading this year.
The (early) Lunch Wrap
Good morning, New York
FT ALPHAVILLE
Hannam, spun: Just when we were considering launching the Ian Hannam is Innocent OK? campaign, Hannam goes and gets himself all PR-ed up. Read Murphy’s take on the case here.
The Lunch Wrap
Good morning, New York
FT ALPHAVILLE
Glencore’s recent deal-making spell has been assessed by rating agencies. Moody’s says they are uncertain, whereas the company was previously on the block for an upgrade.
Don’t call it a come-BATS [update: BATS IPO *withdrawn*]
Update (1945 UK time): Erm, no come-BATS. Period.
*BATS withdraws IPO
_________________________
Presenting Friday’s IPO let’s-try-that-again fail:
BATS BZX Exchange – BATS Symbol Will Not Open Today March 23,
Always a few BATS AAPLs… [updated]
Alternative title: BATS in the belfry…
Or: When one stale share price quote gets out and triggers a circuit-breaker in the world’s biggest stock.
That’s what seems to have happened in the events that struck Apple (and the BATS exchange) on Friday.
Babel, banks and broken business models
In the first book of the Old Testament, God punishes the builders of the Tower of Babel for their folly. The choice of punishment is revealing… The costs of that original sin are still being felt.
Re-securitising commodities financing
French banks are stepping back into funding commodities trades, after pulling back on lending last year due to a dollar liquidity shortage.
But this time, it’s securitised. As the FT reports:
Commodities bankers and industry executives said the securitisation would allow the industry to access fresh credit.
Further reading
Elsewhere on Wednesday,
- In praise of partnership, Goldman edition.
- Would European banks have passed US stress tests? Maybe.
- More on Bronte’s Falcone obsession.
- Does ‘people equity’ ever make sense?
- China’s non-rebalancing problem.
Further reading
Elsewhere on Tuesday,
- Why Felix Salmon is playing the lottery.
- Bundesbank: “We have to keep a watchful eye on the money.”
- Richard Gere has the guilts for glamorising financiers in Pretty Woman.
This is every MF Global creditor, named
Click for file. Thanks, KPMG.
Related links:
MF Global clients angered as KPMG publishes details – FT
The final, dramatic days of MF Global - FT Alphaville
Bryce and Murphy are off to the races
Strictly for news-gathering and source-development purposes, the Markets Live team will be visiting the Cheltenham Festival on Friday, Gold Cup day.
That day’s London ML session will come from the Betfair tent,
Rally Monkey hearts Fed/BHC planning fail
Via the WSJ:
The Federal Reserve will release the results of its latest stress tests today at 4:30 p.m. Eastern time, two days before it had planned to unveil the sensitive review of big banks.
The schedule change came after J.P.
Jamie Dimon would survive a doomsday scenario quite well, thank you very much
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) today announced the following actions taken by its Board of Directors:
- Declared a quarterly dividend of $0.30 per share on the corporation’s common stock,
The 6am Cut is changing (for the better)
Good news! Yes, actual good news.
FT Alphaville’s 6am Cut, a thrice daily newsletter that keeps you to up-to-date on the latest twists and turns, finance-wise, is going to be completely free from Monday.
Stanford found guilty on 13 out of 14 counts
Just across the wires:
Tuesday, March 06, 2012 12:53:57 PM RTRS – ALLEN STANFORD FOUND GUILTY ON 13 CRIMINAL COUNTS, NOT GUILTY ON 1 COUNT OF WIRE FRAUD
UPDATE — from the FT’s Kara Scannell:
Actually, everything is falling faster than Putin’s tears
One of those days that has surely challenged writers of Markets do X because of Y stories.
Our favourite entry for Y, naturally, comes from the home team…
A patch of global growth angst is weighing on sentiment and encouraging traders to pare positions in riskier assets after their recent good run.
Alan Beattie, cantankerous metaphor-wielding zombie killer,* has a question…
… and he asks it in one of those electronic not-quite-long-enough-to-be-a-book things that are becoming increasingly popular (click cover for Amazon link):
We plan to run a Q&A with Alan about the book,
Gekko latest: I am fictional
Well, some people do confuse “tutorial” and “satire” in Wall Street, Liar’s Poker etc
As the FT’s Kara Scannell reports on Monday, Michael Douglas is doing anti-insider trading PSAs for the Feds. Here’s a taste:
The “L-troh”, the credit crunch, and the carry trade
Yes, “L-troh”. So ubiquitous is the ECB’s three-year liquidity op getting that we’re turning the acronym into a word. Like Nato or Isda. So sue us!
With the second three-year Ltro on Wednesday, the release from the burden of the acronym has come just in time for another bout of guesswork on how ‘big’ it will be,
An (EFSF) credit derivative is born
Anyone remember the EFSF’s ersatz CDS?
They announced it back in November 2011. Another measure to eke the bailout fund’s resources out a bit more in a bad patch of the eurozone crisis.
A societe anonyme would be hived off the EFSF,
Further reading
Elsewhere on Tuesday,
- Greece’s bailout: mission improbable, not to mention unsustainable.
- And here’s what it’s really about.
- The IMF welcomes the “new eurozone understanding on Greece”.
- While Greeks may not be buying German.