It’s fair to say that many of those following Argentina’s grand bond holdout battle have been simply flattened by this week’s turn of events.
(Sometimes, literally so.) Read more
The Catalan elections are on Sunday, and perhaps unsurprisingly there’s been an escalation of tensions ahead of the vote. The question is how this might benefit the CiU, the main separatist party. Read more
What we love about Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s ‘Liquid Insight’ team is that when they make calls on Treasuries and rates, they account for the impact of collateral markets and the repo effect — not to mention the general shortage of safe assets.
Take the following chart from their latest note: Read more
And the Societe Generale strategist (who says he will “resurface on the buy side early next year”) is going out in style — taking a leaf from the book of the order Blattodea.
From Dylan Grice’s last Popular Delusions note:
All good things come to an end, sadly. So it is with my time here alongside Albert, Andy and the rest of the gang at SG. I’m signing off, checking out, moving on to pastures new. It’s been a wonderful time. But after three years of trying to sound clever it’s time for me to do something altogether more difficult, and actually be clever. So early next year, I will join a small but outstanding investment practice. Naturally, I hope it will be a great success. But what makes a great success? Since there are few more accomplished species on earth than the lowly cockroach where better to start looking for an answer?
Not really, of course. Everyone at Alphaville is a fan of Nassim Nicholas Taleb and his gnomically sweeping ecophilosophy. We’re also more than willing to take a bit of constructive criticism on the chin.
Live markets commentary from FT.com
Progress made on breaking EU deadlock || Stores lure Black Friday bargain hunters || Mersch joins ECB board || China stops filling strategic oil reserve || Fitch: Sony at greater risk than Panasonic || Walmart suspends India employees || Markets update || Opec’s new foothold in Asia || Sohn conference cheat sheet || Poker with Judge Griesa || Magnus on China’s investment cliff Read more
First there was plain old commodity inventory.
Then “in-the-ground” inventory — funded by pre-pay deals — started to make an appearance. Most recently, there’s even been the tendency towards “just-in-time” inventory in energy markets. Read more
Elsewhere on Friday,
- Why is housing such a popular investment? A psychological take.
- Steve Cohen as ‘Don Quixote fighting windmills‘.
- Hedge funds still struggling to shake off 2011 losses. Read more
Asian shares higher || Progress made on EU budget deadlock || Argentina responds angrily to NY bond ruling || Anglo American shareholders want asset sales, cost cuts || Rothschild raises $270m for Bumi proposal || Dalman to take on executive duties at ENRC || Banks tout idea of sharing bond data || Olam says it can withstand ‘stress’ || Why milk costs €1.50 a litre in Greece Read more
Let’s say you took part in Argentina’s original, 2005 debt restructuring.
You exchanged your luckless bonds for securities worth around 30 cents of your original dollar. You took your lumps – and you checked, very carefully, the complicated payment structure designed to ensure the Republic can’t stiff you in the future. Read more
ROUND-UP
FT markets round-up: Encouraging signs from the Chinese economy helped buoy global equity and commodity prices and offset fresh uncertainty over the outlook for the eurozone. But activity was relatively light given the closure of US markets for Thanksgiving. Hopes that China would avoid a hard landing were boosted by a preliminary November reading on the HSBC-Markit manufacturing purchasing managers’ index of 50.4. By contrast, the latest PMI data from the eurozone did little to soothe concerns that the region remained stuck in recession. A well-received auction of Spanish sovereign debt also helped sentiment towards riskier assets, analysts said. The more optimistic mood helped push the euro higher. It briefly touched $1.29, its highest for a fortnight, and reached a seven-month high versus the yen. Read more
For the complete experience of Judge Griesa ordering Argentina to pay holdouts in full and, even more importantly, extending duties to comply with that order to a very wide range of third parties…
Make sure to read his opinion on the pari passu basis; then the amended order to pay; and also — and a red rag to the bull for a government which is very unlikely to make that payment — a ruling that “threats of defiance” from Buenos Aires have pushed him to December 15, 2012 as the due date. No waiting around for the gavel to strike, here. Read more
For the benefit of all, George Magnus of UBS sums up the chief problem now facing China in one neat mathematically charged paragraph:
The maths are problematic. If investment is 50% of GDP and the growth rate falls from 15% to say, 5% per annum, consumption growth has to accelerate from about 8% to an unprecedented 12% per annum or so if the underlying GDP growth rate is to stay at 7.5%. You can do the maths of alternative scenarios at leisure, but the bottom line is that rebalancing requires investment to grow more slowly than GDP, and consumption significantly faster over an extended period of time. Otherwise the model isn’t changing.
Hedge fund managers piled into the Marriott on Grosvenor Square earlier this week for London’s first Sohn conference. The headlines were dominated by Carson Block’s announcement that his next target was Olam International, but we wanted to give you a quick run through what the others had to say. Read more
Section 348 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 is what the FSA refers to when one calls to get information on most things that are of interest. Their hands are tied. Even if they are bursting to share information, they can’t. Should it be this way? Read more
Nothing like systemic risk to bring the banks together. The crisis at times left little between them. Eventually though, the market will start to differentiate more. As Huw van Steenis and his colleagues at Morgan Stanley put it in a recent note Read more
Live markets commentary from FT.com
Brussels set to clear Glencore-Xstrata || GM buys Ally Financial foreign units || Santander considers IPO of its US car financing unit || Fed’s Williams says plenty more bond-buying to be done || Renault plans to expand in Spain || Olam sues Muddy Waters after accounting questions || Argentina loses bond payout bid || Sony and Panasonic junked Read more
For quite a while now we’ve been wondering whether a quite bullish forecast by Nomura’s Zhiwei Zhang and Wendy Chen will prove correct. They believe that China’s Q4 GDP growth will be 8.4 per cent — a big jump from 7.4 per cent last quarter. Not surprisingly, today’s flash PMI has made Zhang more confident in his forecast.
We were rather sceptical when first considering it in October, because a lot of Zhang’s argument related to the local government plans that were being announced in great number in the third quarter of this year. Read more
*The unofficial ones, that is — the official PMI survey went above 50 last month and now it looks like the HSBC/Markit Economics PMI survey will do the same in November. Today’s preliminary (aka ‘flash’) PMI number for November was 50.4; the best in 13 months. However the indications about domestic and export demand contradict those shown in the latest official survey. Read more
China HSBC PMIs break through the 50-mark || Asian shares rise, except in Shanghai || Ally Financial sells foreign units to GM || Santander may IPO US car loans unit || Renault to hire more Spanish workers || Argentina loses bond payout bid || ‘Excessive plasticiser’ in Chinese liquor Read more
FT markets round-up:”Oil prices swung in a 2 per cent range, as traders reacted to developments in the Middle East and to signs of tighter supply in the US. The announcement of a ceasefire to end a week of violence between Hamas and the Israelis briefly interrupted the commodity’s upward trajectory, but by late in the day Brent crude was back up 1.1 per cent at $110.99 a barrel. WTI, the US benchmark, was also 1.1 per cent higher at $87.66 a barrel. Traders were also surprised by data showing a decline in inventories in the US, where signs of an improving economy suggest higher fuel demand in the near-term. The Energy Department said oil inventories decreased by 1.5m barrels last week to 374.5m barrels, the first decline in three weeks. The wider markets shrugged off a failure to agree the latest bailout for Greece, though trading was light ahead of the US Thanksgiving holiday. The FTSE All-World equity index was just 0.2 per cent higher at 213.69, recovering losses from earlier in the session, following the release of some encouraging US data.” Read more
Does US-listed Pacific Drilling look like a credible takeover target? We think it probably does, 0n balance, and we’d very much like to find out more. Read more
Some interesting stuff on corporate balance sheets from SocGen’s Albert Edwards on Wednesday.
Edwards observes, for example, that corporate leverage is finally recovering after a temporary retraction:
Live markets commentary from FT.com
The turkeys would be HP/Autonomy — and anything else we care to talk about on pre-Thanksgiving US Markets Live this Wednesday at 10am New York, 3pm London, with Cardiff and Joseph. See you there! Read more
Live markets commentary from FT.com
Older entries
1Magnus on China's investment cliff
2Randomness by Fool
3A Chinese recovery, but for how long?
4Poker with Judge Griesa, part two
5Booking bondholder flights to Buenos Aires?
Show more6A reason to be bullish short-term USTs
7Rising tensions before Catalan vote
8Opec's strategic foothold in Asia
9Poker with Judge Griesa, part one
10European banks: same, same, and eventually different
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