RIEF: Down 3.43% For First Week Of August, Underperforms S&P By 5.85%

And the current week isn't shaping up much better. When will the pain for the gullible ones finally end?

Credit Suisse On Flash Trading And Dark Pools, And General Regulatory Status Update

Read on for some major exciting changes to market structure.

BATS Exchange Releases Short Volume As Part Of Increasing Disclosure, Suprising Results

As part of the recent initiatives by Exchanges, ECNs and ATS to provide much needed transparency into daily trading practices, BATS recently started disclosed not only daily volume breakouts of total daily and short volume, but also detail into every single transaction occuring during the trading day. The complete data can be found here: the transaction level detail is staggering.

Daily Highlights: 8.13.09

• Asian Stocks rise as Fed says recession easing; MSCI Asia Pac Index posts its biggest gain this month.
• Chinese stocks rebound after sharp decline, led by banks and metals.
• China wants more say over iron prices, plans moratorium on new steel projects.
• Euro rises against dollar in morning European trade on positive economic news.
• Euro area contracted only 0.1% in Q2 after unexpected growth in Germany, France.
• Euro zone industrial production fell in euro zone in June, reversing May's gain.

The $500/Email Bankruptcy Bonanza, Or Does Capstone Heart Flight Club

Bankruptcy advisors are increasingly having to defend the exorbitant fees (expenses, not so much - see below) that they are charging from their zombied clients, which in the absence of traditional banker products has become one of the primary sources of revenue for whatever is left of the financial advisory industry. A wonderful case in point is today's defense by Evercore of the ridiculous fees they collected for quote-unquote advising on the most predetermined and advice-remote transaction in the history of bankruptcy, i.e. the nationalization of General Motors via the stalking horse legitimization mechanism.

Daily Credit Summary: August 12 - Bearish Breadth

Spreads were mostly wider in the US today as ExHVOL is the only index tighter thanks to HVOL's underperformance (with HY underperforming IG as the former broke above 800bps intraday). Indices generally outperformed intrinsics (as it appears single-name protection buyers were hedging with index protection) with skews widening in general as IG's skew decompressed as the index beat intrinsics, HVOL outperformed but widened the skew, ExHVOL outperformed pushing the skew wider, XO's skew increased as the index outperformed, and HY outperformed but narrowed the skew. IG opened gap at its wides and did leak tighter most of the day but intrinsics did not follow and the weakness in HY suggests that investors were looking at HY-IG decompression.