Archive - Jun 30, 2009

A quick look at New Zealand's increasing trade surplus

Dennis Kneale takes a stab at Zero Hedge and its readers. Zero Hedge stabs back.

Two odd press releases after the close today, both pertaining to our favorite REIT focused fund. According to the first, Cohen & Steers Advantage Income Realty Fund, Inc. ("RLF"), Cohen & Steers Worldwide Realty Income Fund, Inc. ("RWF"), Cohen and Steers Premium Income Realty Fund, Inc. ("RPF") and Cohen & Steers Quality Income Realty Fund, Inc. ("RQI") have all merged with and into RQI. It apeears that even despite the magical ramp of all REITs this quarter, those pesky "size matters" issues have reared their ugly heads for the 4 various closed-end funds.

David Rosenberg on the mother of all jobless recoveries

An unexpected drop in consumer confidence data saw equity indices fall on concerns the economic recovery will be slow. Lower WTI prices weighed on the major US averages after the release of consumer confidence sparked a flight to safety in the USD. In turn this saw Exxon (-0.95%) top the laggers table in the S&P 500 index. Following the initial downward move in equity indices, prices were range bound and trading sideways, though did move slightly higher after positive comments on the economy by Fed’s Bullard. Finally, at the closing bell DJI closed down 0.96% at 84447.53, S&P 500 closed down 0.85% at 919.34 and NASDAQ100 closed down 0.44% at 1477.25

The tyranny of email registration has been lifted.

More and more economic data manipulation is coming to the fore, none of which as blatantly obvious as the California housing market. Some of it is palatable, but when home sales in San Diego get revised from 89% to 6.5% due to a "data glitch", it is no wonder that increasingly more Americans realize every single day they are being blatantly lied to by an Administration whose sole purpose in life is to give out 10 pair of rose-colored glasses to every possible voter in the next election.

Zero Hedge is happy to present readers with the NYSE's response to the earlier post on dropping program trading data. I would love to see clarity on what it is that the NYSE classifies "account type indicator data" as opposed to old reliable DPTR. I imagine there will be significant statistical data adjustment post fact. Furthermore, in allowing the SLP program to go into effect on an expedited basis, the SEC said it did so because the program did not affect the protection of investors and impose any significant burden on competition.

Since we started unraveling Project Enigma, we have been literally inundated with requests for Zero Hedge paraphernalia.

We have decided to give in.

Now is your chance to wear Zero support... proudly.

Round three of the Taibbi - Van Pragg welterweight death-match will be brought to you compliments of the MGM Mirage (in exchange for 3 bond coupon waivers).

In the meantime, here is Matt's Round 2.

In a move set to infuriate and send many Zero Hedge readers over the top, the NYSE has taken action to make sure that nobody will henceforth be able to keep track of the complete dominance that Goldman Sachs exerts over the New York Stock Exchange. This basically ends our weekly Program Trading updates disclosed every Thursday indicating that Goldman has singlehandedly captured all of NYSE's program trading.

It has been Zero Hedge's understanding that traditionally lobbies of any kind tend to at least make a tacit acknowledgment of their conflicts of interest. This is especially true when the "lobby" in particular is none other than Wall Street legal powerhouse Wachtell Lipton, which in a series of machine-gunned missives which Zero Hedge has recently obtained, did everything in its power to persuade the SEC to adopt every possible action that would essentially destroy short-sellers in the days after the Lehman collapse.

The last time we got a -2.42 standard deviation between confidence and the market, things got real ugly, real fast.

Zero Hedge's favorite artist Geoffrey Raymond hits the streets and captures the creative process in action. Also, for all who want to share their thoughts first hand (and thus become a part of history) on the "giant vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money", the annotation of the "Big Lloyd 3 (The Root)" will occur this Friday behind ground zero (85 Broad) - not to be confused with "Big Lloyd 1 (,6 Billion)". Pens will be provided.