Archive - Apr 2011
April 28th
The Animated Federal Reserve For Dummies (Literally)
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/28/2011 16:47 -0500
From the bears who explained Quantitative Easing, we now get a crash test dummy simplifying the Federal Reserve's current outlook on life, the universe and everything, courtesy of yesterday's press conference. All confusion abandon ye who enter.
IWM After Hours Flash Smash
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/28/2011 16:16 -0500
One wonders just what algo told the IWM to not only lift every offer but to do so for a whopping 10% higher than the overall market. Because if you like this market about 50% overpriced, you will love it at 60%. Or was this just Brian Sack telegraphing what the endgoal for the Russell 2000 is before QE2 ends? In other news does anyone even recall what a capital market is like without at least one Chinese fraud being exposed, or at least one synthetic CDO, read ETF, doing some Circque De Soleil acrobatics? We can't wait to hear what the exchanges will use as an excuse for this inverse flash crash.
America's Economy Explained In One Picture
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/28/2011 16:04 -0500
One animated gif is worth a thousand FOMC press conferences
Did You Sell Your Crude Today? Might Have Been A Bad Idea...
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/28/2011 15:56 -0500From Reuters: SYRIA'S MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD MOVEMENT CALLS ON SYRIANS TO TAKE TO STREETS TO DEMAND FREEDOM - DECLARATION ISSUED AHEAD OF FRIDAY PRAYERS .
And so it just became religious.
RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 28/04/11
Submitted by RANSquawk Video on 04/28/2011 15:51 -0500RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 28/04/11
McDonalds Hires 62,000, Turns Away Over 938,000 Applicants For Minimum Wage, Part-Time Jobs
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/28/2011 15:39 -0500This is what the US economy has been reduced to: McDonalds reports that as part of its employment event to hire 50,000 minimum wage, part-time (mostly) workers, subsequently raised to 62,000 it received a whopping 1 million applications, or a Tim Geithner jealousy inducing 6.2% hit rate (h/t X. Kurt. Osis). Alas, the US economy is now so pathetic that the bulk of the population will settle for anything. Literally anything. And the saddest part: over 938,000 applicants were turned away. Here's hoping to Burger King needs a few million janitors in the immediate future too. And yes, aside from reality, things in America are really recovering quite nicely.
RIMM Halts Stock, Cuts Guidance, Cites Shortfall In Blackberry Sales, Hockeysticks Rest Of Year Estimates
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/28/2011 15:14 -0500Not good for long-suffering RIMM shareholders: "RIM now expects fully diluted earnings per share for Q1 to be in the range of $1.30-$1.37, lower than the range of $1.47-$1.55 previously forecasted by RIM on March 24, 2011. This shortfall is primarily due to shipment volumes of BlackBerry smartphones that are now expected to be at the lower end of the range of 13.5-14.5 million forecasted in March and a shift in the expected mix of devices shipped towards handsets with lower average selling prices. Gross margin for the first quarter is expected to be similar to the 41.5% previously guided. This mix shift is also expected to result in revenue that is slightly below the range of $5.2-5.6 billion guided on March 24. Expected shipments of BlackBerry PlayBook in the quarter continue to be in line with our previous expectations and we have not experienced any significant supply disruptions in Q1 due to the impact of the Japan earthquake."
Reality Check - How Much is that Priced in Euros?
Submitted by ilene on 04/28/2011 15:02 -0500We are right on track for the next American revolution but it's a slow train so grab those fish while you can, my friends - you may need them to barter with down the road!
Can I sell My Gold and Silver Now
Submitted by Zero Hedge on 04/28/2011 14:14 -0500Gold prices seem to be setting new highs daily. Of course those would be highs not adjusted for inflation or debasement of the dollar. If we were to set real highs, we would have to see gold prices rise near $2400 per ounce - maybe higher! Obviously, a dollar today is worth far less than a dollar was in 1980 when gold and silver hit long-standing record highs of $850 an ounce and $54 respectively.
Just to help you put things into perspective, in 1980 a postage stamp was $.15 cents, a gallon of gas was $1.25 and the Median Household Income was $17,710.00. Our entire Federal Debt was just $909.1 billion and government spending was a paltry $590.95 billion. Here's one more little tidbit, the Dow reached a high of 1000 and a low of 759.
More Americans Believe The Country Is In A Depression Than Growing
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/28/2011 13:59 -0500Probably the only piece of economic news that matters today, and possibly all year, no scratch that, since the "End Of The Recession" (NBER TM) - according to Reuters: "The April 20-23 Gallup survey of 1,013 U.S. adults found that only 27 percent said the economy is growing. 29 percent said the economy is in a depression and 26 percent said it is in a recession, with another 16 percent saying it is "slowing down," Gallup said." That means that more Americans think the country is in a Depression, let alone recession, than growing. Cue crickets and a Bernanke press conference where he discusses alien abductions and 8 toed mutant Madagascar lemurs.
Former SAC PM Pleads Guilty To Insider Trading
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/28/2011 13:41 -0500Former SAC portfolio manager Donald Longueuil has just pled guilty to charges of insider trading (before the (in)famous Judge Jed Rakoff) in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Dealbook reports: "Mr. Longueuil described in court how after reading news reports about the government’s insider trading last fall he destroyed his hard drive that contained incriminating evidence. The government, however, dropped its obstruction of justice charge against Mr. Longueuil. Under the plea agreement with the government, Mr. Longueuil faces a prison sentence between 46 months to 57 months. Judge Rakoff could depart from those guidelines." And he certainly will if Longueuil, who is a cooperating witness, drops some juicy bombs about every DA's public enemoy number one: ole Crown Lane, Greenwich residing blue eyes himself.
Simon Black Podcast: The Most Sound Opportunities Are Outside The Western World
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/28/2011 13:17 -0500"In the long run, as decades of capital misallocations and inefficiencies in the global economy get shaken out, there’s going to be a redistribution of the wealth. And I think the wealth is going to go to where it’s treated best. And at the end of the day, that’s really what I’m looking for: the places that have the most solid fundamentals and the best growth potential." So states Simon Black, who travels the world (over 20 countries in the past 3 months) in order to assess and report on the investment and lifestyle opportunities offered by various international destinations for the readers of his blog, SovereignMan.com. His boots-on-the ground observations lead him to conclude that there are a number of resource-rich and fiscally-sound developing nations that are much better positioned to meet the future than the US and its developed counterparts. Smart investors, in his opinion, can't afford to ignore the stability and returns (both financial and lifestyle) these countries offer. They should be asking themselves: do I have sufficient exposure to these opportunities?
Crispin Odey: "The West Will Become Flooded With Inflation"
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/28/2011 12:58 -0500Some interesting observations from the transcript of Crispin Odey's Q1 2011 conference call. In a nutshell: inflationary re-exports from the developing world back into the developed is about to make life for chairprinters a living hell.
Indirects Flee From Poor 7 Year Auction Which Pushes Bond Curve Wider
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/28/2011 12:13 -0500Today's final auction of the week just closed in the form of a $29 billion 7 year bond issue (Cusip: QG8). While we will find out whether or not this is the auction that broke the debt ceiling camel's back when everything settles on Tuesday of next week, the internals were downright ugly: the WI of the bond was trading at 2.68% when the auction priced at 2.712%, a surprisingly wide tail into what everyone claims is a risk free asset. As a result the entire curve has been dragged wider on the news. Among the internals, the Bid To Cover came at 2.63, far weaker than both the previous (2.80) and the average (2.79). But the most notable metric as usual was the Indirect Bid, which traditionally strong at the belly of the curve, saw only 39.1% of the auction going to foreign bidders. This compares to 49.31% in the last auction and 51.45% on average. This meant that Primary Dealers, better known as Brian Sack, were forced to preemptively monetize 53% of the auction, and 7.8% going to Directs. Overall a very poor auction, considering that conventional wisdom was that when the Fed launches QE3 it will focus on bonds at the belly and to the right, in order to moderate inflation. Hopefully (for some) this is not a harbinger that the Bill Gross thesis is finally starting to materialize.
As One Million Exhaust Jobless Benefits, A Look At What Recent Deteriorating Layoff Trends Means
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/28/2011 11:56 -0500In addition to today's broad economic disappointment that once again nobody could have foreseen (save for a few comments from us back in January predicting just this most recent contraction), another incrementally negative development which will force the spin doctor to earn their overtime is the observation that over the past year at least 1 million unemployed have now officially fallen off the 99-week gravy train, and exhausted their entire jobless benefits. Luckily, for 10% of the US population there is the magically levitating S&P. For everyone else, there are foodstamps (for now).. and of course the worthless dollar. And in other news, Peter Tchir looks at the recent deplorable jobless claims numbers (wonder why you aren't hearing much about today's initial claims on CNBC? that's why) and comes to the following logical conclusion: "Currently expectations for next Friday's NFP is 183k. I think the
number will be 160k, but in this world it makes no difference since that
will encourage belief in QE3 which will trigger dollar weakness which
will cause stocks to go up. Since its hard to go long stocks with this
logic, it leaves me looking at precious metals." Tchir is not the only one doing so.




