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Frontrunning: August 25

Tyler Durden's picture




 
  • Bernanke to print dollars for seven more years, as Obama is set to announce a $2 trillion increase to budget deficit (FT)
  • BofA denies misleading its investors on bonuses (WSJ), in other news its CRE loans are all fairly reserved at par
  • Ball in Shanghai stock market roulette falls on red today (MarketWatch)
  • Goldman's town hall (MarketWatch)
  • Futures up presumably as massaged Case-Shiller data leaked; market attention span drops to sub-minute levels (Bloomberg)
  • GM can't afford to retain open, must concentrate on US, trust chairman says, who apparently is unaware that GM has unlimited funding now courtesy of Obama's second term (Bloomberg)
  • Fewer catching up on lapsed mortgages (WSJ)
  • Unemployment in California hits post WW II highs (LA Times)
  • John Taylor's non-defense defense of the Taylor rule (Bloomberg)
  • Buy and hold is dead (LA Times), most betting on 00 appearing for 30 miliseconds
  • Anonymous blogging: take it or leave it (The Atlantic)
 

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Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:00 | 47202 Bodhi
Bodhi's picture

I think the GM story should read "GM can't afford to retain Opel..."

 

 

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 13:10 | 47609 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

I thought it read "GM can't afford to remain open"

And was not surprised one bit.

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:05 | 47206 mdtrader
mdtrader's picture

Redbook retail sales - continue to fall first 3 weeks Aug -0.7% v July. Down 4.4% YoY.

I wonder when Wall Street will wake up to the fact that a lower dollar means it buys further things. In other words it's a tax on consumption! Oh and wages are deflating!

 

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:08 | 47207 lizzy36
lizzy36's picture

Yippee!

Bernanke back for 7 more years. 

House prices up 1.4% m/m.

Everything is going to be alright. Buy, buy, buy!

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 10:39 | 47303 Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh's picture

We've had the Greenspan Put and the Bernanke Put on the market for 22 years now.  It seems as if there is now a Bernanke Call on the USD.

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 13:59 | 47447 payitdown (not verified)
Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:08 | 47208 Cheeky Bastard
Cheeky Bastard's picture

Futures up presumably as massaged Case-Shiller data leaked; market attention span drops to sub-minute levels

 

Arguably the best comment EVER

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:52 | 47250 Fruffing
Fruffing's picture

That BB story says Treasuries selling.  Note the 30 year is nicely bid.   Someone's taking the long view.

(Hardest captcha yet: (minus six) times 26 equals )

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 12:11 | 47465 cbxer55
cbxer55's picture

(Hardest captcha yet: (minus six) times 26 equals )

 

I assume you are being facetious!?

 

YAY! Big Bens back! Everything is gonna be okay! BUY, BUY, BUY!

 

No thanks, I'll keep saving thank you very much. I have more in the bank now, even though unemployed, than I have had in years.

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:10 | 47210 deadhead
deadhead's picture

Ball in Shanghai stock market roulette falls on red today

May be your best ever, seriously.  I laughed so hard, great start to the day. thank you TD.

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 18:50 | 48138 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

I read that and couldn't decide if that meant good or bad in red china

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:18 | 47212 mdtrader
mdtrader's picture

Consumption is continuing to fall, and devaluing the dollar will make it buy less. Genius! Perhaps Ben Bernanke could tell us how devaluing the currency will help an economy that is 70% consumption based, and has a consumer who is heavily dependant on the car?

I wonder at what price Wall Street flips like a maniac and decides that higher crude is bad for consumption. $75, $85, $100. I dunno.

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:16 | 47213 NoBull1994
NoBull1994's picture

Actually, BofA's CRE loans are reserved at about 107, not par.  Hasn't there been an executive order issued that all such fixed income securities be valued using a 0% discount rate?

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 13:59 | 47446 payitdown (not verified)
payitdown's picture

look at those FX bars in the last hour...  No messing around, squashing a chance at having a follow

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Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:16 | 47214 Oso
Oso's picture

a 1.4% MoM increase? during the height of the buying season?? with the most unbelievable amounts of stimulus??? is reason to celebrate?????????

 

Im sorry, with the HUGE level of shadow inventory, and the Alt-A reset surge upon us (but not in June really), there is NO way housing has bottomed.

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:22 | 47219 glenlloyd
glenlloyd's picture

Agreed.....prolly should be Opel, not open. GM has managed to kill everything it ever touched.

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:28 | 47223 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know what the numbers looked like for m-o-m change last year during the same time? ie, did we get a bump then in the case shiller too? I know we are down 15% y-o-y, just cant remember if we got excited last year at this time cause we thought FOR SURE housing had bottomed then....

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:41 | 47235 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

To my knowledge, C-S had been down from late '07 until last month consecutively.

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:42 | 47237 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

No bump in the NSA Composite 10 last year. Raw data can be found here: http://www2.standardandpoors.com/portal/site/sp/en/us/page.topic/indices...

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:46 | 47241 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

Go check out the calculated risk blog. He has several graphs that should answer your question.

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:48 | 47245 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

If you look at the seasonally adjusted numbers, it is only a 3/4% increase MoM. I have to go check, but my recollection was that the press picked up on the SA numbers last month, but this month it is the NSA?!?

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:37 | 47230 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

Just watched Bloomberg brush off 10% unemployment, with Alan Knuckman of Agora saying it was a lagging indicator and he'd rather look at the stock market or oil as an indicator of recovery than the daily data? These people are idiots!

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 10:06 | 47263 MountainHawk
MountainHawk's picture

I disagree, they're not idiots, rather, they're intentionally placed in media outlets to decieve teh sheeple...

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:40 | 47233 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

Someone has it wrong.

Case Shiller: 1.4% MoM increase.

National Assoc. of Realtors existing home sales report from last Friday (which coincidentally sent the market screaming up...):

" Prices are coming down which is one major reason for the improvement, at a median $178,400 for a 2.0 percent decline on the month. The National Association of Realtors, which compiles the report, doesn't expect prices to stabilize until year end. "

+1.4%, -2%... What is this, a confidence interval?

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:55 | 47253 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

You are comparing two very different methodologies which react quite differently to changes in the sales mix.

Most of the inventory selling is at the lower end which is depressing the median reported by the NAR.

Case-Shiller does a regression of same house sales, which is telling us that the frenzy at the low end is bidding up the price of that inventory a bit.

Also, the NAR numbers are for July, while C-S is for June.

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 12:19 | 47495 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

1.) If I read your post correctly you are saying that C-S increased because all sales occurred at the bottom end of the market. This allowed sales to uptick slightly for that range and, since few purchases are being made of homes above the median price, the slight sale price uptick in the lower bracket pulled the entire regression up. That would explain the falling median value reported by NAR. A market with transactions occurring purely in the "bargain" range is not a sign of economic strength. It seems very fair to say that C-S is overstating current housing conditions. This scenario seems to validate the original post.

2.) The June NAR report showed price declines too.

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:40 | 47234 They steal from...
They steal from us everyday's picture

Obama takes massive bribe from Big healthcare and lies about it to the american public:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/13/internal-memo-confirms-bi_n_258...

 

Then it turns out that he looted the taxpayer and lied about that as well:

 

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/08/breaking-white-house-confirms-...

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:46 | 47242 Miles Kendig
Miles Kendig's picture

WhoT!

As the residential real estate market troubles migrate to the "better" neighborhoods can it be any wonder that the median price index is up?

Wed, 08/26/2009 - 00:15 | 48433 docsdoc
docsdoc's picture

Interesting take...

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:48 | 47243 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

Rescued bank employee surmising that stocks have further to rise, especially financials, that Fed/Treasury bail out programmes should stay in place shocker...

The more I read the greater my concern grows. I peruse as much of the financial press as possible, listen to podcasts on economics, finance and markets, assess things myself. The (somewhat predictable) common theme is simply that 99% of interviewees, analysts, authors that either work for a bank or are somehow connected to the administration are bullish.

Yet the vast majority of 'independent' subjects and economists, those employed in pure brokerage positions (i.e. no inherent bull/bear bias) etc simply are not. I appreciate the obvious biases but the extent of the dichotomy is ridiculous.

Why does anybody care what an economist/analyst at a bank has to tell them? Sometimes I feel like I'm living in alternative existence. Really.

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:48 | 47244 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

AP:

"NEW YORK (AP) -- Home prices posted their first quarterly increase in three years, signaling the housing market has turned a corner"

Bloomberg:

"The S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index for 20 U.S. cities declined by the smallest amount since April 2008"

Only here in bizzaro land can a slowing of decreasing prices be interpreted as home prices increasing.

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:50 | 47248 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

Case Shiller will resume month-on-month drops. This little fillip is seasonal. Long-term, they're going to print money at a rate to allow houses to appreciate, fooling voters and letting banks get out from under their overhangs, but they'll appreciate at less than the rate of inflation, so in real terms savers will be fall progressively farther behind every year.

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 10:02 | 47257 Oso
Oso's picture

Consumer confidence at 54?? wtf???  something is very rotten here, VERY rotten......

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 10:06 | 47261 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

Of course it is 54, the market has been screaming higher...American consumers want nothing more than to spend and if the govt keeps the market higher then they will of course feel confident enough to spend...

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 10:06 | 47262 Miles Kendig
Miles Kendig's picture

Time to see how long markets can subsist on seconds since US consumers will not give first derivative anything to anybody.

Wed, 08/26/2009 - 00:18 | 48435 docsdoc
docsdoc's picture

Consumer confidence is just being pumped by MSM...that will change this fall

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 10:10 | 47273 che
che's picture

goldmans leaked the correct confidence number about 10mins before the announcement

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 10:19 | 47282 Grifter
Grifter's picture

Does anyone happen to know what time the FDIC quarterly report is released today?

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 11:32 | 47384 Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

OK, so if home prices in Cleveland are up 4.2% for the quarter that now means the house that cost $2500 in Q1 now costs $2605 in Q2...you think I am kidding, right? Uh, not exactly...this whole thing is a joke cause trust me there is nothing glorious about the housing market in Cleveland (and I happen to even like it here). The majority of sales in this market are probably well under $75,000

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 13:59 | 47445 payitdown (not verified)
payitdown's picture

arket review as proposed by Kaufmann, market up an additional 50. Bernie reapproved,

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