The world is becoming intimately acquainted with the technical ins-and-outs of the Bloomberg LP empire.
There is Bloomberg’s bread-and-butter business of selling sophisticated data terminals to thousands of banking, hedge fund and regulatory authorities around the world. There is also the well-respected news wire run by Matt Winkler. Read more
Message from the CEO of Bloomberg
Dear Client, Read more
Here’s a moderately informative activity for a Friday afternoon.
Log on to your Bloomberg terminal. Type UUID <GO> Read more
Following their absolutely stellar advice to short gold on April 10, Goldman Sachs announces on Tuesday it is now time to take profit on that position:
We have closed our recommendation to short COMEX Gold, as prices moved above the stop at $1,400/toz. We have exited the trade significantly below our original target of $1,450/toz, for a potential gain of 10.4%. The move since initiation was surprisingly rapid, likely exacerbated by the break of well-flagged technical support levels. Our bias is to expect further declines in gold prices on the combination of continued ETF outflows as conviction in holding gold continues to wane as well as our economists’ forecast for a reacceleration in US growth later this year. Read more
Some deep thoughts from Goldman Sachs, by way of Jeffrey Currie and team, on the drivers of the current commodity sell-off (and no, their short gold advice from last week isn’t listed as one of them):
The sharp sell-off in gold was triggered by growing fears that the central bank of Cyprus would sell its gold reserves, potentially reflecting a larger monetization of gold reserves across other European central banks. The decline in prices was exacerbated by the breach of key technical price support level at $1,530/toz and then at the $1,434/toz 200-week moving average, creating the largest one day decline. Spillover from gold and renewed European and EM macroeconomic concerns also created sharp sell-offs in crude oil and base metals, that were mostly front-end driven, crushing spreads (the carry), as longer-dated prices remained remarkably stable.
Last week it was SocGen that declared the gold era was over. Now the precious metals team at Goldman is taking a similar view.
This is from their latest commodity research note: Read more
It was supposed to be one of the best trades of 2013 – buy mining stocks to get leveraged upside to the global economic turnaround. But as we approach the end of the first quarter, only one half of that equation is working. The world economy is recovering strongly but the big miners are being well and truly left behind – Australian Financial Review.
Yep, the miners as a ‘leveraged play on global growth” is not going exactly to plan: Read more
The latest commodity advice from Goldman Sachs suggests the current sell-off may be overdone.
Here are the key points from Monday’s note:
Shifting to near-term overweight as commodity sell-off overdone
Commodity markets declined sharply in February along with emerging market (EM) equities due to renewed concerns over China, which we believe is overdone. Although our price targets other than gold remain unchanged, this pull back has pushed our near-term return forecast from 2.0% to 6.0%, making commodities the asset class within the ECS coverage universe with the most robust near-term outlook. However, our 12-month neutral recommendation remains unchanged as our returns forecast is still a more subdued 3.0%, as we continue to remain structurally neutral on long-dated oil and commodity prices due to the structural supply-side response to persistently high prices.
There’s been a fierce and fascinating response from the SEC to evidence of clairvoyant dealings in Heinz ahead of news of the Buffett/3G Capital takeover offer. The statement is here and the full SEC complaint is here.
Following reports of unusual activity in Heinz call options on Nasdaq on Wednesday – the day before the Heinz news broke — the SEC has obtained an emergency order freezing assets in a Zurich, Switzerland-based trading account which it reckons benefited to the tune of $1.7m from the Buffett/3G bid. Read more
FT Alphaville doesn’t tend to follow the nickel market too closely, but the research from Goldman Sachs on Thursday did strike us as interesting (our emphasis):
2012 nickel market summary: Weak demand growth and lower input costs As background, nickel underperformed in 2012, starting the year at $18,910/t, rising to $21,700/t in early February, and finishing the year at $16,998/t, declines of 10.1% and 21.4%, respectively. Overall nickel prices averaged $17,536/t in 2012, down 23.4% yoy from 22,900/t in 2011. Price weakness reflected a combination of soft global consumption growth set against significantly higher low-cost nickel pig iron supply in China, and, importantly, a shift down of the nickel cost curve in 2H2012 (largely reflecting lower energy and nickel ore input prices).
Add Goldman to the list of large US financial institutions to report expectations-beating earnings for Q4.
From the release:
NEW YORK, January 16, 2013 – The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE: GS) today reported net revenues of $34.16 billion and net earnings of $7.48 billion for the year ended December 31, 2012.
Remember the whipsawing days of 2008? The days when commodity prices couldn’t get crazier?
GOLDMAN SACHS HAS A SECRET PROPRIETARY-TRADING UNIT THAT IS RISKING THE BANK’S OWN CAPITAL BY MAKING INVESTMENTS AND CEO LLOYD BLANKFEIN SAID GOLDMAN WASN’T PROP-TRADING ANYMORE AND THAT IS WRONG AND HE LIED AND HE SHOULD BE HOG-TIED WITH HIS OWN BLACKBERRY CHARGER.
That’s a typical reaction to this Bloomberg piece on Goldman’s “secret” prop-trading team for you. Read more
The following chart, we propose, has the potential to inspire a whole new way of looking at the gold and Treasury market:
Via the press release, here are the lucky few (lucky seventy to be precise) to make the Goldman Sachs partners list; the highlight from what we can see is one David Schwimmer.
This ever-so-slightly anachronistic ceremony takes place every two years and the numbers have been steadily falling… nice cash to go with the cachet, though.
From Bloomberg:
[The number of new partners is] down from 110 in 2010 and 94 in 2008. Partners, known as participating managing directors, typically receive a $900,000 salary, up from $600,000 two years ago, and a cut of a special bonus pool that’s awarded primarily in stock, according to a person with knowledge of the firm’s policies.
Goldman’s analysts, long-time oil bulls, are now expecting a “flatter oil price environment” in the next few years. In other words, they think prices in 2013 and 2014 will be “marginally” lower than current spot levels, and drift down to $85 by 2016.
Goldman’s Q3 is out, and it’s raised the roof in trading / the dividend:
The Board of Directors of Group Inc. increased the firm’s quarterly dividend to $0.50 per common share from $0.46 per common share…
As the FT reports, total net revenues doubled, to $8.35bn, and it’s a marked changed from the third quarter last year.
Although, does this count for something? — 1 per cent quarterly growth in FICC: Read more
Fun scoop du jour from Tom Braithwaite and Tracy Alloway:
Goldman Sachs has told its board of directors that an internal investigation found little substance to allegations made by Greg Smith, the disaffected employee who claimed the bank has a “toxic environment” where bankers refer to clients as “muppets”. Read more
This rather nice chart is from Goldman Sachs:
From the bank on Tuesday…
NEW YORK, September 18, 2012 — The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE: GS) today announced that Harvey M. Schwartz, the global co-head of the Securities Division, will become Chief Financial Officer at the end of January 2013. After a distinguished 32 year career at the firm, including 12 years as the Chief Financial Officer, David Viniar has decided to retire and will join the Board of Directors as a non-independent director at that time. The firm expects to appoint additional independent directors to its board in the near term. Read more
Maybe it’s because it’s August. Or maybe people got round to reading J Cotterill on the matter. Either way, stocks are up, sharply, and peripheral sovereign yields are down, pretty much across Europe.
Finding out that you are dealing with a terminal disease is never easy.
The natural reaction is to seek out a cure, no matter how bleak your chances. You will, for the most part, do almost anything to live. That includes changing your habits, your lifestyle, your friends, your profession or, for that matter, doing things you never previously considered doing. Whatever it takes to get just one more day of life. Read more
Click for Goldman’s ‘living will ‘ for regulators, listing how it would try to resolve by selling parts of its business under bankruptcy:
First of all, a big congratulations to Goldman Sachs for jumping on board the safe assets debate approximately 12 months late.
And, in so doing, challenging (but not really challenging) what we still think is the biggest trend of the post-crisis era. Read more
Just in case the real trophies never get cast, here are the advisers to the $90 $80 $70 $60 $55(?)bn putative merger between Glencore and Xstrata. Click to enlarge.
First there was the foul-up over competition issues. Unbelievably, Glenstrata had not factored in the likelihood of a referral to the European authorities. Read more
Trouble getting this stuff through compliance…?
Just the one tweet so far from Goldman Sachs on its own shareholder meeting. Read more
Goldman Sachs’ latest commodity note considers the influence of China’s bonded warehouses, chock-full of copper, on the underlying market for the metal.
First, they admit that the popularity of copper financing deals led to about 640-650kt of copper being stored in Chinese warehouses at its peak at the end of April. This, however, is now on the decline. Their latest assessment of the market puts Chinese bonded warehouse stocks at about 550-570kt. Read more
An interesting passage from a recent CreditSights note on Goldman, following a meeting with the bank’s CFO, David Viniar (emphasis ours):
Lastly, Goldman explained that a further defense against a stressed funding situation driven by problems rolling over the repo book was what it referred to as its “secured funding excess.” Goldman noted that it raises repo funding in excess of current financing needs, in order to reduce its secured funding rollover risk. Read more
Older entries
1Man walks into a gold bar. Au!
2The end of QE?
3The persistent supply-side constraints in US housing
4Bird, plane, Abe
5Bove vs Bloomberg, redux
Show more6A glorious episode in the history of the Revenue
7Stress you next year
8An unusual bear market
9The short arm of the SEC
10Breaking up is hard to do - Rio Tinto edition
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