Archive - Aug 10, 2012 - Story

• World’s Oldest Shipping Company Closes In Industry Slide (Bloomberg)
• Japan Growth May Slow to Half Previous Pace as Exports Wane (Bloomberg)
• China Export Growth Slides As World Recovery Slows (Bloomberg)
• Weidmann tries to muffle not spike Draghi's ECB guns (Reuters)
• Draghi lays out toolkit to save eurozone (FT)
• Concerns grow over prospects for sterling (FT)
• RIM Said To Draw Interest From IBM On Enterprise Services (Bloomberg)
• UN urges US to cut ethanol production (FT)
• Goldman Sachs Leads Split With Obama, As GE Jilts Him Too (Bloomberg)
• New apartments boost US building sector (FT)

There was a time when Bill Ackman, constantly misperceived as a retail investing genius, blew up an entire fund solely dedicated to investing in Target, mostly via calls as in something out of Whitney Tilson's wettest dream (incidentally, another "investor" who could not get enough of JCP at $27), Pershing Square IV (full hilarious letter from Pershing Square Capital Punishment to the PSIV investors here). His current massive investment in JCP is luckily not a standalone fund, but it is now certainly stalked by the ghost of PSIV as JCP literally blew up overnight and any hope of the rumored "10-15 return" that Ackman predicted in the stock has now gone up in smoke. Oh well: there is always the gamble on Procter and Gamble.

The markets have been treading water over the past week, yet courtesy of the non-existant volume and the lack of sellers, VWAP algos have been levitating the S&P ever higher despite the lack of any new or credible reason for it to do so. Call it the Merkel vacation doldrums. It is so slow in Europe even Rajoy - now the gatekeeper for the next European phase of sovereign bailouts - is soaking in the sun somewhere, whether or not he may want to return to his job is another matter. As Reuters reports, his popularity is plummeting meaning the government will not survive if and when Rajoy demands a Spanish bailout: "Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy faces a cloudy return from his short summer break as his expected request for European aid in September will spur protests on the street and deepen cracks emerging in his conservative People's Party... According to an official poll released this week, if a general election were to take place now, Rajoy's People's Party would still win but would get only a 36.6 percent of the vote, down from 40.6 percent in a poll in May and 44.6 percent in the November vote." Which in turn means that Spain demanding a bailout could well mean a violent government overthrow and a follow through mimicking precisely what we saw in Greece, with the opposition party set to undo any bailout request by Rajoy (who knows all of this). In the meantime Bloomberg confirms that sentiment in Europe is resuming its turn as European markets fall led by the Spanish and Italian markets, 10yr yields in those countries rise. Chinese import & export data and French industrial production data were below estimates earlier. The euro is weaker against the dollar and commodity prices fall led by industrial metals. U.S. import price data is released later.