Presenting at UBS Private Bank Morning Call
This morning, I will be sharing my regular blather with the UBS team from the NYC offices, broadcast globally to their private bankers. I will get the slide deck posted later this morning. Be back shortly . . .
JPMorgan’s Addiction to Gambling on Derivatives
JPMorgan’s Senior Officers’ Addiction to Gambling on Derivatives By William K. Black JPMorgan’s flacks and apologists have, unintentionally, exposed the fact that their cover story – hedging gone bad – is false. JPMorgan runs the world’s largest gambling operation in financial derivatives. The New York Times reported the key facts, but not...
How oversold is the S&P500?
The S&P500 has given up almost all of its gains for the year, is down 7.9 percent since May 1st, and has fallen 11 of the 13 trading days during the month. The S&P500′s Relative Strength Index (RSI), which is a momentum indicator that measures the speed and change of price movements, is currently at...
Watch the Bounce
click for updated futures Good Monday morning. Following last week’s down 4% mess, markets are set to bounce. Investors are advised to watch the quality of this bounce to discern any insights about what the near futures might hold. Negative headlines have been driving sentiment issues — start with the Greek Exit (Grexit?...
Syndicate: If You Can Get It, Run The Other Way
Given the insane hype surrounding the Facebook IPO, it should really have come as no surprise to anyone that it’s being perceived as a massive flop. (A search at the NY Times website turns up no articles about Cisco Systems 1990 Initial Public Offering (Feb 16, 1990 at a split-adjusted price of $0.06); it does...
Succinct Summation Of Week’s Events (05/18/2012)
Succinct summation of week’s events: Positives: 1) Cheers to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook for building an incredible business and whose reward today is hugely deserved and exciting to watch. 2) April Housing Starts back above 700k for 4th month in the past 6 at 717k, above est of 685k and March revised up by 45k to...
Crude Oil Inventories
Click to enlarge: Bloomberg.com – Unlocking the Crude Oil Bottleneck at Cushing The U.S. oil infrastructure is the product of four decades of rising imports and falling domestic supply. As those trends have reversed over the last few years, America’s network of pipelines has failed to keep pace. Designed in part to ferry oil and...
More Facebook Insiders Cashing Out
click for larger graphic > Source: Facebook Insiders Boost Plans to Cash Out in IPO SHAYNDI RAICE, ANUPREETA DAS and LYNN COWAN WSJ, May 16, 2012 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303448404577407774136362662.html
The Never Ending Attempts to Eliminate Regulations, Or Why Has Canada Figured This Out While the US Acts Like a Nation Run by Warlord-Banker-Lobbyists ?
Courtesy of snarling bank critics Chris Whalen & Josh Rosner, have a look at 1994′s GAO/GGD-94-133 — its in the Think Tank doc FINANCIAL DERIVATIVES: Actions Needed to Protect the Financial System. Reining in bank recklessness seems to be a never ending task. Unless and until we either go full blown Canadian, or alternatively ringfence...
Factors Institutional Investors Are Favoring
Every year since 1989, Merrill Lynch surveys a few 100 institutional investors using a broad variety of quantitative, valuation, process and modeling questions. Their responses get summarized in a 39 chart, 27 page report. You can get a sense of the depth and breadth of the report in just a few charts — but overall,...
If Information Is Power, What Is Lack Of Information?
I’m going to take the charitable (though probably mistaken) view and say that Representative Daniel Webster was not deliberately trying to turn out the lights on Americans’ access to critical data when he proposed an amendment to defund the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS). I tried (unsuccessfully) last year (here, here) to salvage the...
Highest & Cheapest Gas Prices by Country
Awesome set of data from Bloomberg: Click to enlarge: ˜˜˜ Most expensive gas ranking: Price per gallon of premium gasoline: Norway $9.69 Denmark $9.37 Italy $9.35 Netherland $9.35 Greece $9.23 Sweden $8.97 Hong Kong $8.89 Portugal $8.85 United Kingdom $8.84 Belgium $8.82 France $8.72 Finland $8.59 Germany $8.56 Ireland $8.34 Switzerland $7.95 Slovakia $7.93...
