Archive - Aug 8, 2011 - Story

A snapshot of the European Morning Briefing covering Stocks, Bonds, FX, etc.
Market Recaps to help improve your Trading and Global knowledge

Over the past 48 hours we had heard pervasive rumors that at least one, maybe more, banks in Europe are on the verge of collapse. Our thought was, naturally, Dexia, which is the modern equivalent of AIG, not to mention the bank most rescued by none other than the Federal Reserve. Well, we were wrong. And if the Daily Mail is correct, the two banks about to kick the bucket are French SocGen and Italy's UniCredit. While the fact that these two banks are in trouble has not been lost on the market, which has been sending their CDS to near record highs, the speculation that they are far closer to implosion likely means that the equity value of the European banking sector is about to be decimated. As the News reports: "The merest hint a major bank might fall is likely to reignite panic tomorrow in the stock market, which is already feared to react badly to the credit downgrade of the U.S. by rating agency Standard & Poor’s." Well, it's now tomorrow.

On Friday, when we discussed that the EFSF could potentially be expanded to a ridiculous E3.5 trillion, we made the following observation in advance of the prediction that Germany would eventually throw up all over the creeping euro bailout proposal, we said:  "In the meantime, short Bunds (or to borrow a Gartmanism, go long gold in Bund terms) ahead of the market's realization that peak risk transfer from the periphery to the core is now in process." Well, the first eurobond prints are in (we already know where gold is trading), and the losers (and winners) are...