Posts tagged 'Capital Markets'

On stabilising the gold price

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 08 16:30 | Comment |

Almost a year ago the Telegraph’s Thomas Pascoe put out an interesting piece on gold. We’ve decided to reprise it this Friday because we think it offers an interesting and useful perspective on current developments in the gold market:

One of the most popular trading plays of the late 1990s was the carry trade, particularly the gold carry trade. In this a bank would borrow gold from another financial institution for a set period, and pay a token sum relative to the overall value of that gold for the privilege.

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So Popular it just can’t stop buying itself

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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| Nov 12 2012 16:35 | Comment |

Spain’s Popular bank has got backing for a €2.5bn rights issue. But here’s the thing we think deserves a touch more attention — in the run up to the rights issue, Popular once again ramped up its holdings of its own shares, from 0.588 per cent in July to 3.979 per cent on the second of November (data here). We still find this odd…

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Markets Live redux: starting at 10am New York, 3pm London

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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| Oct 03 2012 14:56 | Comment |

Our London colleagues had a tech blowout earlier today, but Paul and Bryce will be on with us for part of the session to cover some of what we missed.

Otherwise, we’ll be talking US macro ahead of this Friday’s job numbers, the T-Mobile/MetroPCS tie-up talk, the Google-Samsung-Apple patent wars, the latest out of Europe, and yes, that other thing that happened this morning. Read more

The task force vs the banks (finally) (maybe)

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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| Oct 02 2012 20:35 | Comment |

David Dayen of Firedoglake has a useful summary of the ways in which the New York Attorney General’s lawsuit against JP Morgan mirrors the previous Ambac case. He concludes on a pessimistic note (our emphasis):

The larger point is this. Not only does there seem to be no new evidence or investigations or legal theories in this case, but the bulk of it was copied off a separate case filed by someone in Schneiderman’s office years ago. Gretchen Morgenson says that the subpoenas in the case all came from Schneiderman’s office in April 2011, long before the RMBS working group ever existed. The Justice Department will apparently try to take some credit for interviewing Clayton Holdings employees in the case, but again, the Clayton Holdings element of this case has been public knowledge through the FCIC and Cuomo’s time as AG going back many years. And if DoJ was so helpful, why didn’t they bring any charges? No federal charges were filed in this case, which represents fairly obvious federal securities fraud. And they have longer statutes of limitations available to them, meaning they would be able to sue for more money, since the cutoff would not be October 2006 but much further back. … Read more

Chipotle Einhorned

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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| Oct 02 2012 17:32 | Comment |

A less dramatic reaction than when he told the world to wake up and smell the Green Mountain Coffee, but Chipotle is a modestly-sized company and was already down more than 6 per cent on the year before David Einhorn made the short sale recommendation at a conference today.

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Don’t call it money printing, Rubik’s cube edition

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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| Oct 02 2012 17:01 | Comment |

Last week FT Alphaville drew attention to the fact that HSBC had joined the cohorts of the “don’t call QE money-printing” brigade. We thought this was great progress for the mainstream analyst community.

Moreover, we thought their explanation was really good. Read more

Rajoyed

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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| Oct 02 2012 16:50 | Comment |

Spotted on Tuesday — a market getting itself in a lather as soon as the Spanish prime minister denies that a bailout is ‘inminente’. (Via Google Finance)

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Moody’s on Spanish banks and others on the bailout muddle

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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| Oct 02 2012 11:24 | Comment |

The Oliver Wyman report landed last week. The headline was that Spain’s banks would need almost €60bn in new capital and that seven out of the 14 Spanish banks under review failed the ‘bottom up’ test.

The actual recap figure was €59.3bn, falling to €53.7bn because banks are allowed to count in both mergers in which they’re involved and deferred tax assets. We expressed some scepticism about those DTA’s and the rather hopeful proposition that… Read more

The Russia liquidity house

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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| Oct 02 2012 10:25 | Comment |

Quick. Someone grab a samovar! Russian liquidity it is on-tap.

In fact, Russia’s recent liquidity operations have been so substantial, they almost make Chinese efforts look puny in comparison. Read more

Hedgie billionaires: we’re a sleeper cell of battered wives headed by the pope…

| Oct 01 2012 20:06 | Comment |

… or something. You can’t make these people up:

[Anthony] Scaramucci, the organizer of the dinner, told me the next day that the guests had witnessed the “activation” of a “sleeper cell” of hedge-fund managers against Obama. “That’s what you see happening in the hedge-fund community, because they now have the power, because of Citizens United, to aggregate capital into political-action committees and to influence the debate,” he said. “The President has a philosophy of disdain toward wealth creation. That’s just obvious, O.K.? We talked about it all night.” He later said, “If there’s a pope of this movement, it’s Lee Cooperman.” Read more

Preemptive fiscal folly

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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| Oct 01 2012 18:09 | Comment |

It’s really hard to predict the eventual outcome of the fiscal cliff negotiations that will take place after the elections, but the media reports that there is little enthusiasm for extending the payroll tax cut (in place since January 2011) are starting to pile up.

Annie Lowrey in this morning’s NYT: Read more

US PMI bucks global trend

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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| Oct 01 2012 15:20 | Comment |

Something of a surprise given the weakness of the overnight numbers in China and in Europe:

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Cœuré on collateral scarcity

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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| Oct 01 2012 15:10 | Comment |

Fact du jour on collateral accepted at European Central Bank liquidity ops, via Benoît Cœuré, ECB executive board member:

...non-marketable assets and above all, credit claims (i.e. normal bank loans) have become the largest single asset class in our collateral portfolio. Read more

FSOC pushes ahead on MMF reform

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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| Sep 28 2012 19:53 | Comment |

UPDATE: A Treasury official got in touch with us after reading this post to explain a little more clearly what happens next.

First a bit of background. Dodd-Frank section 120 authorises the FSOC “to provide for more stringent regulation of a financial activity by issuing recommendations to the primary financial regulatory agencies to apply new or heightened standards and safeguards… if the Council determines that the conduct, scope, nature, size, scale, concentration, or interconnectedness of such activity or practice could create or increase the risk of significant liquidity, credit, or other problems spreading among bank holding companies and nonbank financial companies, financial markets of the United States.” Read more

Black clouds, and Fitch

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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| Sep 28 2012 18:58 | Comment |

Fitch judges the risk of a fiscal financing crisis to be negligible…

But the rating agency still cranked up the negativity on the UK’s AAA rating on Friday. They affirmed it, but have been on negative outlook since March. Read more

Those Spanish stress test results

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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| Sep 28 2012 17:15 | Comment |

Seven (many already nationalised) lenders, comprising 37 per cent of Spanish banks’ loan portfolios, failed and need more capital. Seven lenders passed.

It’s almost €60bn, as initial estimates had suggested in June. Read more

Accorinti and others v ECB

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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| Sep 28 2012 16:20 | Comment |

Big props to Bloomberg for putting this little-known case on the radar (don’t worry, we’ll explain):

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HSBC: Don’t say printing!

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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| Sep 28 2012 15:52 | Comment |

This is reassuring (or not – we can’t decide). The Global fixed income strategy team at HSBC *believe* they’ve come up with a non-consensus view on the effects of QEternity:

Our non-consensus view is that QE3 will drive US Treasury yields to new lows Read more

Compare and contrast, crude stock edition

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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| Sep 28 2012 15:14 | Comment |

From BNP Paribas’s Harry Tchilinguirian and Gareth Lewis-Davies on Friday.

The latest crude and product stock position in the United States: Read more

European repo is on the rise

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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| Sep 28 2012 14:00 | Comment |

US money market funds are still cautious about building up exposure to European banks.

However, according to Fitch’s latest Macro Credit Research report on Friday, they seem much more confident about building up exposure on secured terms. As a result, repos as a percentage of exposure to European banks is on the rise to new post-crisis levels: Read more

“As the only person in the room who has apparently never written a line of computer code…”

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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| Sep 28 2012 13:02 | Comment |

Presenting, a rather charming tale from Nicholas Colas, group chief market strategist at ConvergEx, who recently attended an algorithm-themed conference, and discovered — to his surprise — that quants aren’t really like regular people.

(Emphasis from Colas.) Read more

The ‘Tin Man’ and the ‘Johor shuffle’

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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| Sep 28 2012 12:23 | Comment |

First there was Copper Fingers. Then there was Choc Finger. Later we had The Whale.

What all of these traders respectively had in common (and no, they weren’t all Bond villain rejects) was that they all became the markets they were trading. Read more

You can’t stand under my umbrella… ella… ella…

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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| Sep 28 2012 09:19 | Comment |

No clouds in my storms
Let it rain, I hydroplane into fame
Comin’ down like the Dow Jones
When the clouds come, we gone

We Roc-A-Fellas
We fly higher than weather Read more

Research in comMotion

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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| Sep 27 2012 22:34 | Comment |

What a strange week it’s been for Research in Motion.

Last Friday the company had another of its periodic power outages, and on the same day that Apple launched its new iPhone no less. Read more

Geithner encourages FSOC to pick up ball dropped by SEC

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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| Sep 27 2012 22:03 | Comment |

We’re talking about money market fund reform, of course.

It was just August 23 that Mary Schapiro threw up her hands when it became clear that she wouldn’t get the necessary two additional votes from SEC commissioners for her proposal after an intense lobbying effort by the industry. Read more

The expectations bluff

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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| Sep 27 2012 19:13 | Comment |

“Mad. Mad. Mad. Bernanke’s gone totally MAD, I tell you!”

“What’s he thinking with QEternity? It’s so inflationary. AGHH!” Read more

HSBC: This is now about structural woe

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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| Sep 27 2012 12:16 | Comment |

If you’re seeking a counter view to the one expressed on Thursday by a Bear in a Bath, look no further than the latest note from Stephen King’s team at HSBC.

Some great stuff from the global head of economics today, including thoughts about the UK’s productivity puzzle, the US jobless recovery, the pointlessness of QE and whether a structural shift may under way. Read more

The dawn of systemically important commodity traders

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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| Sep 26 2012 17:48 | Comment |

Presenting some very insightful comments about developments in commodity financing from a speech by Timothy Lane, deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, given to the CFA Society Calgary on September 25.

Emphasis, FT Alphaville’s: Read more

The decline or the redefinition of labour?

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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| Sep 26 2012 15:22 | Comment |

Felix Salmon at Reuters has picked up on the following chart from Margaret Jacobson and Filippo Ochhino at the Cleveland Fed:

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Reminder: US Markets Live today at 10am New York, 3pm London

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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| Sep 26 2012 14:49 | Comment |

Just a reminder that after a brief hiatus, we’re back to our usual weekly time slot. Izzy will be joining us for an unusually tech-heavy session; expect some chatter about Research in Motion, the new Myspace and Tesla’s recent update, plus US housing and consumer data, and of course the latest out of Europe.

At the usual place! Read more

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