Porsche Headquarters Raided For Stock Manipulation Investigation
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/20/2009 - 11:43The world's formerly largest hedge fund, which had a luxury car maker subsidiary is about to meet its regulator maker, the BaFIN . Only took them about a year. Which is still one tenth the lag demonstrated by their US counterparts.
Notable Discrepancy In Goldman Equity And Credit Trends
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/20/2009 - 11:03
While over the past several weeks Goldman's stock price has been steady as a rock (except to precipitate an occasional headfake in a volumeless and directionless market), its CDS has spiked wider by about 50% since its lows (from low 90s to mid 140s). Either some arb desk is currently collecting all its possessions in banker boxes as it is escorted out of the building, or look for a convergence of these two trades soon.
$109 Billion In Treasury Bonds, $88 Billion In Bills On Deck
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/20/2009 - 10:54Tim Geithner just can't get enough of testing the indirect bidders' desire (the directs', not so much) for soaking up rapidly deflating US Sovereign debt: next up on deck $109 Billion in Treasury Bonds, as well as 88 Billion in Treasury Bills.
Rosie On Inflation
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/20/2009 - 10:04"We should probably add here that even though the moves by the Fed have provided ample liquidity, they have not stopped the underlying fundamentals from deteriorating — see Corporate Bond Defaults Hit Record on page 19 of the FT. (S&P just reported that 201 companies with $453 billion of debt have defaulted this year, exceeding the entire tally of 126 defaults covering $433bln in ALL of 2008). The 12-month speculative-grade corporate default rate has risen to 8.58%, as of July, from 8.25% in June (the rating agency is forecasting that the default rate will rise to 14.3% by the first quarter of 2010, taking out the prior record of 12.54% set in July 1991)." David Rosenberg
Last Week's Insiders Transactions: 18 Buys For $30 Million, 131 Sells For Over $889 Million
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/20/2009 - 09:43Courtesy of Finviz, the ratio of insider buying to selling transactions is 18 to 131. Total transaction value: Buys: $29.7 million; Sells: $889 million. This compares with last week's buys for $60.1 million and sells for $1.15 billion. $3 Billion in insider sales in three weeks.
The Recovery Is Here
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/20/2009 - 09:25
Just don't tell that to delinquent loans: now at 9.24% of all loans.
Philly Fed, Yet Another Diffusion Index, Posts Highest Reading Since November 2007
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/20/2009 - 09:20The trend of polls beating expectations continues, while actual results indicate no real improvement. The latest indication of this comes from the Philly Fed current activity diffusion index, which skyrocketed from -7.5% to 4.2% as the market kept on ramping higher, while more employees were let go, and margins declined yet again.
Latest DTCC CDS Update (Week Of August 14)
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/20/2009 - 08:49After several consecutive weeks of equity market mimicking and rerisking, the CDS market finally saw a net derisking in the week ended August 14, across virtually sectors, with the biggest action concentrated in the financials arena. Total net notional change was substantially higher than last week's -$14.5 billion, increasing to $66.1 billion, with a marked derisking in financials at $62.6 billion. Other notable derisking spaces were Consumer Services at $27.6 billion (again) and Utilities at $20 billion.
Frontrunning: August 20
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/20/2009 - 07:42- Jobless claims rise by 15,000 to 576,000 (Bloomberg), even "as the economy stabilizes"
- SEC plays keep-up in high-tech race (WSJ)
- Germany braces for second wave of credit crunch (Telegraph, h/t Jake)
- Andy Xie: New bubble threatens a V-shaped recovery (Caijing, h/t Yaser)
- Jonathan Weil: Insurers' biggest writedowns may be yet to come (Bloomberg)
Daily Highlights: 8.20.09
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/20/2009 - 07:14- Appliance makers counting on "cash for clunkers"-type rebate program to revive sales.
- Asian stock markets were mixed on Thursday. Shanghai's index rebounds 2.1%.
- China's first-half current-account surplus reported down 32%.
- Crude oil futures hit 2-month high as US inventories fell unexpectedly by 8.4M barrels.
- Democrats prepare to go it alone on health care overhaul without GOP support.
- GDP in OECD countries stabilized in Q2, with support from exporters Germany, Japan.
- Obama administration to cut 2009 budget-deficit estimate to $1.58 trillion.
- Obama administration developing plans to wind down clunker rebates program.
China's Bogus Boom?
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/19/2009 - 19:09"The worst outcome for China would be one that includes ever-rising inflation pressures, as money and
credit flows augmented by “hot money” capital inflows push the inflation rate up to a level that threatens China’s stability. Since that would be most likely under a scenario in which industrial economies are not recovering in the second half of the year, we could see a situation in which disappointment over the recovery in the big three economies coincides with disappointment about the sustainability of China’s planned 8 percent growth path. That outcome would coincide with a likely bursting of the stock and property market bubbles that are inflating in China now on the hopes that a second-half recovery will validate China’s goal of sustained 8 percent growth in 2009."
Market Spike Explained By Second Stimulus Rumor, And Other Observations
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/19/2009 - 18:08All you need to know about how the markets operate these days, courtesy of Nic, an analyst at ICAP.
Obama To Reduce Budget Deficit By $262 On "Fewer" Than Expected Bank Failures
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/19/2009 - 17:31Archive this one for the funny pages. It has been leaked by administration officials (and sponged up by Bloomberg), that on August 25, when the CBO releases its updated budget estimate, the 2009 deficit is expected to decline from $1.825 trillion to $1.58 trillion. And, get this, one of the reasons for the reduction is the FDIC spending $78 billion less, presumably due to "fewer bank failures than the administration anticipated." Pardon us, but last time we checked, not only did the FDIC have no cash left in the FDIC, and was effectively in a debtor position vis-a-vis the administration, but of the top 4 banks pending for blow up, Colonial was under (granted with some arbitrarily optimistic loss expectations), Guaranty was about to be hawked over to a few siesta loving left midfielders, and Corus was about to... well, we are not quite sure what the hell Corus is doing these days.
Daily Credit Summary: August 19 - Swiss And Sweet
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/19/2009 - 16:59Spreads widened in general today in the face of a surprisingly resilient US equity market as overnight saw more Asian angst and dollar doldrums. HY underperformed IG but both were wider as indices underperformed intrinsics and low beta underperformed high beta. Intraday ranges were wider than average in IG and HY today but both closed much nearer their wides than tights, as stocks closed at their highs. HY's resilience yesterday (following the AXL debacle) seems to have run its course with both IG and HY now wider on the week. IG and HY are both significantly wider than their Friday closes and Monday opens whereas the S&P seems modestly worse than Friday's close but considerably better than Monday's open - infer what you will.
Barofsky Complies With Grayson Request For Citi Audit
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/19/2009 - 16:00Two months ago Zero Hedge first wrote about Alan Grayson's request to the SIGTARP to audit the $300 billion in federal guarantees received by Citigroup. Neil Barofsky has taken the request seriously, and has announced that he will "examine why the guarantees were given, how they were structured and whether the bank’s risk controls are adequate to prevent government losses."
