Archive - May 13, 2009

TrimTabs notes that in the second half of April (Apr 16-30), short interest on the Russell 3,000 stocks dropped to 13.62 billion shares ($260 billion / 2.88% of market cap) from 13.95 billion shares ($259 billion / 2.94% of market cap) on March 31.

• US AAA credit rating at risk, former GAO director claims (Reuters)
• GM sinks to fresh low as Chapter 11 looms (FT)
• Social Security, Medicare will be depleted much earlier than expected (Bloomberg)
• Airbus orders nosedive, profit tumbles (

"Buy CDS" - that was the overarching theme from last week as $141 billion of rerisking occurred across all major sectors. Absent some nominal CDS derisking in Oil & Gas and Tech/Telecom, every single space saw credit traders betting that risk will increase. Of course, absent some swooning on Monday of this week, irrational exuberance 2.0 still dominates the equity markets, once again implying that credit is either generally more pessimistic than equities, or that CDS traders are much faster to bail at the first whiff of the squeeze ending.

"Buy CDS" - that was the overarching theme from last week as $141 billion of rerisking occurred across all major sectors. Absent some nominal CDS derisking in Oil & Gas and Tech/Telecom, every single space saw credit traders betting that risk will increase. Of course, absent some swooning on Monday of this week, irrational exuberance 2.0 still dominates the equity markets, once again implying that credit is either generally more pessimistic than equities, or that CDS traders are much faster to bail at the first whiff of the squeeze ending.