The Yellow Brick Road - the Wall Street Examiner blog

Links for 2009-07-03 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 PDT

To Dennis Kneale: You're An Idiot - The Market Ticker
There are two types of recessions, if you happen to know more about economics than you knew about options a year ago, when you were caught asking on the air "what's the VIX?" The types of recessions are inventory driven recessions, the most common, and credit driven recessions. The last material credit driven recession was in the 1930s. We called it the "The Great Depression."

Nostalgia: Cramer is calling the market bottom

Andy Bebut — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 03:48:28 +0000

Jim Cramer is the wisdom of CNBC, I love to citate him again and again. First link: Pushing toy stuffed bears through a meat slicer, the screaming, peripatetic CNBC anchor Jim Cramer declared that he “had unbelievable guts to call a bottom,” and said: “I am indeed sticking my neck out right here, right now, declaring emphatically that [...]

Currency Swaps

Andy Bebut — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:20:40 +0000

This is the follow-up after my post on the role of the dollar as the international reserve currency. I was arguing that the logic of the world trade was pulling the dollar out of United States to facilitate all foreign transactions and that had an adverse effect of forcing the huge trade deficit. I was [...]

K-wave: The Master Bubble

Andy Bebut — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 01:47:19 +0000

All the last two years I’m writing about Kondratieff wave on the regular basis, and as a former scientist I’m trying to abstract from any particular economy as if K-wave just happens every time and everywhere with equal force. But it simply doesn’t work that way and again, as a former scientist I want to [...]

Links for 2009-05-21 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 22 May 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Not all GM bondholders fit the 'evil billionaire' category | HeraldTribune.com | Sarasota Florida | Southwest Florida's Information Leader

Bonds vs Stocks

Andy Bebut — Fri, 22 May 2009 03:25:36 +0000

Back in 2007 I was writing that during the Kondratieff Spring, Summer and Autumn Treasury bonds and stocks are trading generally in the same direction, with bonds leading. During the Winter they are trading in opposite direction. At this chart the black line is 10 year bond price and red line is S&P. You can observe [...]

Links for 2009-05-18 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 19 May 2009 00:00:00 PDT

GM shows signs that bankruptcy filing is coming - USATODAY.com

WH - 1.9% GDP growth

Andy Bebut — Sat, 16 May 2009 03:59:02 +0000

The official Obama’s budget is projecting a 1.9% GDP growth this year, in 2009. With the economy sinking at 6% rate this quarter one would say - impossible. I will say - let’s look at it. 1.9% GDP compound for 1 year is about $260 billions. So the economy has to manufacture $260 bln of extra [...]

Links for 2009-05-01 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 02 May 2009 00:00:00 PDT

The Washington Independent » Scientific Reports Suggest Possible Link Between Swine Flu and Industrial Pig Farms
"the swine can be asymptomatic, yet still be carriers of the virus" i.e. the Smithfield claim that they don't have an outbreak among their pigs doesn't mean anything.

Links for 2009-04-30 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Funds holding Chrysler debt in talks with Treasury | Deals | Reuters
"We have a fiduciary responsibility to all those teachers, pensioners, retirees and others who have entrusted their money to us," the bondholder group said. "Much as we empathize with Chrysler's other stakeholders, the capital is just not ours to contribute to their cause by accepting a deal that is outside the well established legal framework and cannot be rationalized as being commercially reasonable."
Shanky's Technical Analysis and Market Commentary: Possible short play on Swine Flu
Looks like SFD started all this. Ground zero.

Playing the pullback safe

Andy Bebut — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:41:28 +0000

This is not an investment advice, I’m not good at that, but rather an invitation for discussion. The pullback is due. The daytraders who watch the tape all the day know what to do. But what we should do, ordinary investors who check the charts after work, when the market is closed? The popular leveraged and [...]

Dissecting the Stress Test

Andy Bebut — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 02:28:57 +0000

Tomorrow the criteria of the stress test will be disclosed. What should we expect?I simply want to see some logic. So, why the stress test was initiated to begin with? If we were a banana republic I would say the stress test is needed to demonstrate foreign investors that everything is perfect. So everybody would pass [...]

Links for 2009-04-20 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Zero Hedge: Stress Test Results Leaked?
Probably garbage, but anyway

Links for 2009-04-19 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 PDT

David Fiderer: Hank Paulson, The Unnamed "Decider" In The Merrill Lynch Saga
December 14, 2008: BofA's CFO tells Ken Lewis that there are not enough days before year-end for Merrill's mark-to-market positions to recover. So Lewis considers backing out of the Merrill acquisition. From Lewis's deposition at Andrew Cuomo's office: Q: Did there come a time when you considered undoing the merger between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch? A: Yes. Q: When did you first consider doing that? A:.... I'm pretty sure it was December 13th...[later corrected to December 14th] and what triggered that was that the losses, the projected losses, at Merrill Lynch had accelerated pretty dramatically over a short period of time, as I recall, about a week or so.

Red Alert

Andy Bebut — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 03:00:18 +0000

I have a habit of checking H8 Fed report of banking activity every Friday evening. For the week ending April 8 the outstanding banking credit fell by $62 bln. It is also down $278 bln from last October. Comparing with 6-month decline this weekly decline is quite significant. Of course I also check the commercial [...]

Emotions win, wisdom loses

Andy Bebut — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 03:37:21 +0000

Today we saw a spectacular fiasco of the “economist” community. The retail sales were expected to rise at 0.3% but instead fell 1.1%. The miss of this magnitude is rare. What did they smoke? I suppose this is an example of how the human brain works. They simply extrapolated the stock market rally and the success [...]

The Wink and Nod recapitalization

Andy Bebut — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:17:52 +0000

The recent surprise from Wells Fargo is probably reflecting the new reality of Fed-banks relationships. They needed some time to come with a plan and once the plan was executed the new funny money is to be found in the balance sheets. The idea is that somehow Feds managed to deliver the idea that GSEs are [...]