The T Report: Europe has its Parti Quebecois Moment
I have said and written that I expect to see more nationalism come into play as the crisis continues. I may have been a bit early, but we are seeing growing signs of it, with Marine le Pen’s strong showing in yesterday’s French election being the most obvious example. The Dutch Parliament’s failure to approve […]
TFMkts: Best ideas Update
Short Nasdaq (ND futures, QQQ cash) We initiated this position at 2734 on the ND futures on April the 10th in the pre-market. I had originally target 2,690 as a take-out, but expected ES to hit 1,359 first so focused on closing that trade first. Short SPX (ES Futures, SPY cash) We set this […]
TFMkts: Weekly Fixed Income Allocation Review
Fixed Income had a decent week. Treasuries are pure rate products were a little more volatile than more credit focused products like high yield, but in the end most fixed income asset classes had small gains. We made no changes to the allocation mix during the course of the week, but expect to make some […]
The T Report: Weekly Firewall Edition
Volatile or Not? It is strange to start a weekly update and not be sure whether the week was volatile or not. North American stock indices ranged from -0.4% for Nasdaq to 0.6% for the S&P. Not much to look at there. U.S. fixed income finished with small weekly gains. The 10 year treasury was […]
One Quick Firewall thought
The firewall should be helping Spanish and Italian bond yields the most, yet Spanish yields were higher across the board today, and Italian bonds 5 years and out were all weaker. If the firewall doesn’t help those bonds, why should it help the market so much? We saw in Greece, that switching who a country […]
The T Report: Garbage In, Garbage Adjustments, Garbage Out
It is hard to ignore the fact that this year is shaping up a lot like 2011 and 2010. I’m not a big fan of seasonal patterns, so what else could it be. Could it just be that all of our adjustments are a total mess? I understand why we attempt to “seasonally” and otherwise […]
DVA analysis from October 2011
Debt Valuation Adjustment by Dummies So on October 5th, Charlie Gasparino broke the story that Morgan Stanley was going to have a great quarter and in fact beat Goldman Sachs. That got us to wondering to how the MS CEO could be so confident and we decided it was likely because Morgan Stanley’s biggest asset […]
The T Report: The Check is in the Mail and other Lies
Somehow my frustration level is high today. Just feels like we are being lied to, and no one wants to question the lies. Spanish auctions were a big “success”. That was the story. It wasn’t surprising at all since everyone knew how closely the auction was being scrutinized. What they forgot to manipulate is the […]
The T-Report: T-Bill Day in Europe
Stock futures have had another interesting overnight session. They hit a 4 day low, breaking 1,360 but once again failed to break 1,358 which seems to be a pretty strong resistance level. Stocks then managed to climb as high as 1,373 and are trading off a little now. So another large move and we haven’t […]
Reading the Tea Leaves when there is No Tea
Everyone is trying to figure out what is going to happen next. Investors are looking clues and signals as to the next big move. The problem is that liquidity is so poor, moves that might normally signal a shift in sentiment or risk, are now just noise. We can look at 10 year Spanish yields. […]