Archive - Jun 27, 2009

If anyone knows what the hell is going on with the market since the Fed release (aside from South Carolina Governor Sanford being a big fan of the Buenos Aires Hustler Club), please advise.

Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in April suggests that the pace of economic contraction is slowing. Conditions in financial markets have generally improved in recent months. Household spending has shown further signs of stabilizing but remains constrained by ongoing job losses, lower housing wealth, and tight credit. Businesses are cutting back on fixed investment and staffing but appear to be making progress in bringing inventory stocks into better alignment with sales.

From Citi - Outlook for 2007: Will Protection Buyers Finally Emerge? The market may have, therefore, come to realize several truths that seasoned CMBS veterans have pointed out for some time: there is little or nothing that could actually cause a principal loss on a super-senior triple-A CMBS, and even the subordinate investment-grade tranches are unlikely to experience severe performance issues in the first few years of the deal.

Inflation expectations last seen at a local Duane Reade buying lots of vaseline.

Developing story: The Swiss - US monetary war is now officially on.

And in other news, documents obtained by the US House Committee indicate apparent dissension among senior Fed officials about BOFA bailout, impact on Fed's bal. sheet. Obama soon to nominate BB for Dictator Czar (yes, yes, I get it).

eLuxury is finished - another example of the retail collapse starting to reach ever higher into the "aspirational" segment.

So much for the "wildly successful" 2 Yr UST auction yesterday. If you bought in: congrats - you are now under water. Looks like the 2007 special Goldman 8x leveraged HY bond issue "flip 'em" game has now moved to front end Treasuries.

Everyone's favorite Goldman REIT analyst is still not downgrading CBL to a Conviction List Sell. In fact, Habermann is doing all he can to salvage whatever he can. That being said, we give this stock at most 3-4 weeks before it gets whacked if not to a Sell to at least a "Conviction List" Hold.

The FDIC announced a proposed extension of the first of many alphabet soups currently propping up the banking system. In this case, it is the Transaction Account Guarantee (TAG) component of the TLGP program. The proposed extension (the first of maaaaany) will push the maturity from December 31, 2009 to June 30, 2010.

UK faces quite considerable headwinds
UK banking system not in strong position to lend
UK recession put downward pressure on inflation
BOE has bought GBP 96 billion of assets in APF
"If you withdraw stimulus too quickly face risk of renewed downturn"

Deja vu all over again: failed green shoot, no volume, high beta break out, one or two brokers gunning the SPY (here's looking at you 85 Broad): the tried and true script over the past 3 months seems to have a little life left in it still, with all rational cash players sitting on the sidelines as always, doing Starbucks breaks every hour and waiting for the release of RenTec's results indicating Medallion made double the combined negative "return" of REIF and RIFF (and JPM torn between trading for the latter and its own Highbridge).

The second most favorite German soap opera on Zero Hedge (just after the Volkswagen - Porsche melodrama) looks set for a second season. Bloomberg reporting that lenders who hold half of Conti's humongous €11 billion debt load will do all they can to prevent the merger. It's funny it took lenders only about a year to get their case of buyer's remorse sufficiently well crystallized.

Hi-fi quants are like pigs in a trough today, driving the market on horrible new home sales numbers just as State Street is back to its usual antics and (or as a result of which) Fidelity disclosing no IWM borrow available. In the meantime, Moody's has released its Credit Card Index update: charge off rates for May have now surpassed 10%.

Jim Cramer was spot on with calling the housing bottom. Oh wait - he was dead wrong again about this as he is about everything else: downward prior revision and lower than expectations. At least he is consistent at batting 0: almost as good as someone batting 1000.

The name of the game last week was the roll, with the expiration of the June contract leading to over $300 billion in Matured Transactions. New protection creation was delayed into the roll and this week will likely see a comparable pick up in new protection purchasing.