Italian Debt – Not Kicking the Can Far
Italy has issued €157 billion of debt between November of last year and the end of last week. This is direct Italian government issuance and doesn’t include any of the debt the government has guaranteed in the meantime, which seems to be at least €70 billion more, but hey, who counts guaranteed debt. Of the […]
The T Report: Scratching my head til it bleeds & the 5 classes of Corporate Bonds
The market has rallied more than 2% since the lows on Friday morning. The rally has been almost exclusively central bank and government driven. On Friday the rally started with rumors of ECB bond purchases, it continued Monday morning with Merkel softening her stance on how much Germany is willing to risk, and momentum accelerated […]
Afternoon T: Big Ben to the Rescue
The ECB helped on Friday, Merkel helped this morning, and then Big Ben came to the rescue and gave the markets more than enough QE and accommodation talk to drive stocks relentlessly higher. I’m not sure that the S&P has moved down 2 points from any level all day. Basically everything but infinite central bank […]
After this weekend the world is no longer Orwellian.
The world can now be described as Sue Collinsish (though maybe we need something catchier than that). I can now finally admit I read the books over a year ago and found the world she creates somewhat interesting. We don’t yet make foodstamp recipients in District 12 (I mean Detroit) submit their names for a […]
Leveraged ETF’s – Path Dependent
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/leveraged-etfs-why-do-we-have-them#comment-2290614 I couldn’t figure out how to publish it properly on our site – working on fixing, but it did go out nicely formatted on the e-mail distribution if you want to be added to that: http://parishoffice.ipower.com/TFMA/emailsignup.htm
The T Report: ECB, SMP, ESM, and Fed
Stocks and stock futures are generally better today though the IBEX (Spain) has been a noticeable outlier. German confidence seems to have given a boost, but the German’s were just as confident last month and that wasn’t a good indicator of anything in the European economy. Ignore the confidence as just a sign that the […]
Homer Simpson’s Financial Markets and “Fixed Income” Products
Stop tomorrow’s problems today. Just this week we had: TVIX – an ETN that provides double the daily change in the vix futures. Who is smart enough to be able to take big bets on VIX futures that doesn’t have a futures account? Who is this designed for? MF Global & “customer money” – months […]
Very Early Afternoon T: Fed and ECB
Why is the market off the lows? The two answers that make the most sense are that rumors of the ECB buying Italian debt started and both Spanish and Italian bonds bounced hard off the lows to finish stronger (significantly stronger in the case of Spain). For now I will take late Friday trading with […]
TVIX and the VIX – Problem was Feb 21, not yesterday
So TVIX became the ETN story of the day yesterday, but the reality is it should have become “ETN” story of the day a on February 21st when Credit Suisse suspended the creation of more shares. Up until that day, TVIX tracked NAV closely. If it was trading too rich or too cheap, some investors […]
The T Report: What would be the catalyst?
Over the past few weeks, the market has fully bought into the notion that everything is contained. That the central banks have done enough to at least delay problems if not fix them. Much of that was based on moves in bond yields in Europe. It was circular that moves specifically designed to improve bond […]