Archive - Aug 13, 2009

Courtesy of Finviz, the ratio of insider buying to selling transactions is 10 to 136. Total transaction value: Buys: $60.1 million; Sells: $1,146 million. This compares with last week's buys for $13.4 million and sells for $1,042 million. Over $2.1 Billion in insider sales in two weeks.

• 4.54% high yield vs. exp. 4.556%
• 2.54 Bid-to-cover vs. Avg. 2.08 (Prev. 2.14)
• Indirect bids 48.1% vs. Avg. 33.21 % (Prev. 32.85%)
• 1.72 Bid-to-cover on indirects accepted to tendered
• Alloted at high 16.77% (BBG)

All Hail Octavia!
U.S. government stages fake coup to wipe out national debt

The FASB's rule mandating quarterly disclosure of Fair Value of toxic loans indicates that most financial firms are still very deep underwater. Case in point: Regions Financial, whose entire Stockholders' Equity would be in the red (and the firm would be in conservatorship at best) at this moment if the firm were to assign fair value to its loan book.

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

Remember when the dollar bounced back after the "phenomenal" GDP numbers? Neither do we. But at least stocks are up. More of a cushion for after the "even more phenomenal" 30 Year auction results come out today.

Read on for some major exciting changes to market structure.

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.

• Initial jobless claims increased by 4,000 to 558,000 last week, higher than 545,000 estimate (Bloomberg)
• Retail sales also fall more than expected, amazing what a major recession will do to rosy expectations (Bloomberg)
• Yet more people shopping at Wal-Mart (Bloomberg)
• China's growth an accounting miracle (ContrarianEdge)
• No "Mission Accomplised" for the Fed (Barron's)

• 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.

UK and Europe highlights for 13th August 2009. Lots of data out of Eurozone and the CEE region. Funnily, I think I have beaten Bloomberg, Reuters and just about every other news wire in reporting the Russian International Weekly Reserves data! Other economic data will be updated as its released. Some interesting notes on Raiffeisen International of Austria, jump in...