Bits Bucket And Craigslist Finds For November 2, 2007
Please post off-topic ideas, links and Craigslist finds here.
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
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Blood on streets…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ft/20071102/bs_ft/fto110120072249061435;_ylt=Ajn8QQhKv6OkXw4APDGfuFb2ULEF
The Largest Bank in in our country, and perhaps the world?
Gets treated like subprime slime?
Priceless…
“Five-year credit default swaps tied to Citigroup widened to 60 basis points, meaning it cost $60,000 annually to insure Citigroup’s debt against default for five years. A couple of weeks ago, that figure stood at $27,000.”
To be more precise, it costs $60k annually to insure $10m of Citi’s debt. The total cost to insure Citi is much higher.
Well, the 3/4 point drop in short term rates has trashed the dollar, but otherwise it has accomplished exactly what in terms of the interbank market?
“Confidence in Citigroup (NYSE:C) and Merrill Lynch, as measured by their credit default swaps, slumped to lows not seen since the height of the credit squeeze in August.”
all for naught.
They can keep dropping the rates but it won’t help. They’ve painted themselves (and all of us) in a corner.
Yes - but all we hear about is subprime - Any word on Alt-A losses. It seems like that should be the next shoe to drop.
At this point in time, all losses of any sort will be labeled ’sub-prime’. WalMarts sales will drop and be labeled sub-prime difficulties.
Well the loans weren’t called sub-prime when they were issued, but they look it now. They’re past their prime. In fact they might very pass for 43 in the dark with the light behind them.
It all looks like Sub-Prime meat, that was left in a unplugged refrigerator…
Lucky for you,
Internet-Smellorama has not been perfected yet.
burn baby, burn … I would love to see all these sleazebags go under and have legions of naughty lawyers sue the hell out of all the managers.
I heard an analyst discussing DaimlerChrysler on BloombergRadio last nite. He indicated that DCX is preparing for “the downturn” yet the MSM and government spews sunny optimistic BS constantly.
Here’s a standard issue article about the Chrysler layoffs:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-ap-chrysler-job-cuts,0,2507924.story
Chrysler said Thursday it will cut 8,500 to 10,000 hourly jobs and 2,100 salaried jobs through 2008, or about 15 percent of its work force. The cuts come on top of 13,000 Chrysler layoffs that were announced in February.
At least DCX is a private company, so we don’t have to watch its stock price go up.
DCX is no more. It’s back to Daimler AG I think (or Daimler-Benz), and Chrysler LLC is owned by Cerberus.
1,100 contract workers were laid off Wednesday.
New symbol is : DAI
You know Robert Nardelli was going to cut all the meat off the bone. That’s what he does. He is a cost cutter. He cannot make a company grow and everything suffers, customer service, quality, at the expense of cost cutting. He will make his money and Chrysler and Detroit will be worse off. He is basically strip mining this company.
Yet they just hired some other guy from Toyota or somewhere for several million bucks.
Corporate compensation has gotten totally out of hand.
How does Nardelli get that gig after his Home Depot debacle?
IIRC correctly, he’s known as a cost cutter. Plus, since he got a big go-away package, from HD, he was hired on by Cerberus for $1 plus “incentives.”
Thus Cerberus has no down side with him moneywise, and lots of upside from all the expenses (read: employees) he’s going to cut.
As Carlin says: “It’s a club–and you’re not in it!”
I have been considering looking at a Chrysler minivan in a couple years because I liked what I saw on a commercial. However, with these layoffs and Nardelli known as a cost cutter, I can’t think that many employees are too happy. I have to think that it will have an impact on the quality of the cars.
I have been considering looking at a Chrysler minivan in a couple years…
Don’t rush into it.
RE: I have been considering looking at a Chrysler minivan in a couple years because I liked what I saw on a commercial.
I rented a 2007 Dodge Avenger for the Columbus OH P-51 Mustang gathering.
With 10k on the odo, there were nasty vibrations coming from the engine and a lot of the interior gadgetry wouldn’t work.
I’d never buy a Chrysler/Dodge after the experience.
The company’s toast.
Build junk-suffer the consequences.
I have to think that it will have an impact on the quality of the cars.
Examine what happened to Home Depot’s once-lass-leading customer service after the Nardelli The Home Despot was finished slashing and burning the employees. That’s likely what will happen to vehicle quality under a monomaniacal cost-cutting regime.
I rented a 2007 Chrysler 300C - V6 with 6200 miles on the odometer. A speaker was blown, the car was underpowered with the V6, but worst, when it was cold, the transmission slipped and shuddered a lot. I’ve had Chevys with 200,000 miles not even do that. I would be scared to buy a Chrysler product.
It isn’t “DaimlerChrysler” any more, it’s Daimler AG and Chrysler LLC.
Here’s today’s local article about Chrysler:
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071102/BUSINESS01/711020321
Chrysler (and GM and Ford, too) need to cut out the crap and focus on producing three or four really good car models, rather than living in the past. I’m not sure any of them have decent longterm prospects.
before American vehicles can be reborn, the big three must die, a slow painful death…
the barrier to entry in this space is filled with tiny fingers overseas.
I’d be interested to know the percentages of non-U.S.-made parts in Big 3 cars versus the others. In the ’70s, “foreign” car repair parts went through the roof because of the collapse of the dollar. How/why would it be different this time?
Prisoners…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21580018/
Crazy.
I know. Going bankrupt, missing most of the housing boom, then spending $9253 to payoff discharged debt so you can get $267000 home loan (now).
Some people are addicted to credit. And the enemy knows it
Unbelieveable! Is there no limit to sleazy tactics by debt buyers? Buying debts discharged in bankruptcy? Are they nuts? That guy with the mortgage should have sued Capital One AND all three of the credit bureaus! He would have won easily!
There is no limit. This year I had some slimeball collection agent call me repeatedly over a 15 year old state tax bill for having a car supposedly still registered in Ct after I had left the state. $700 or so, with $3000 of interest.
Figured it cost him about $5 to buy the claim, then $1 in phone calls to try to get a settlement for $100 or so, or hit the jackpot and make the debt collectible.
Told him it was time-barred and he should go away. Eventually, he did, but I’m sure he will sell it to someone else for $1, and the process will repeat
She filed for protection from creditors in November, 2005, in part, she says, because a friend-turned-identity-thief opened credit-card accounts in Hedge’s name and ran up $12,079 in bills. In March, 2006, most of her debts, including two credit-card accounts with Capital One totaling $2,414, were discharged by the U.S. bankruptcy court in Knoxville, Tenn. “Once you file, they’re supposed to cease all contact,” says Hedge.
Okay, why would someone declare bankruptcy because they were a victim of identity theft? Maybe the key words here are “in part.”
This kind of crap happened to me with the county assessor…They claimed I owed $279….I disputed it but they refused…I tld them to kiss my ….Next time I got a mortgage, as a condition of approval the lender said I had to get the county to remove the lein…You know the answer…I wrote a check for $279…
The debt collectors aren’t right, but neither is this guy for buying a house. He went bankrupt in 2002 and he’s getting a 274k mortgage now. What about the 7 year wait.
I was wondering about business opportunities for the coming Greater Depression. Buying discharged debt is a great one! (It’s a bit too sleazy for me, though.) It’ll only work well in the early stages of the Greater Depression, though.
savvy?
http://finance.yahoo.com/focus-retirement/article/103808/Hot-Spots-That-Have-Cooled-Lure-Savvy-Retirees?mod=retirement-lifestyle
When Merrill last reported earnings, people wondered what happened to half of its CDOs. According to the Journal:
“Merrill has been making the rounds asking hedge funds to engage in one-year off-balance-sheet credit facilities,” Janet Tavakoli, who consults for investors about derivatives, told clients in a recent note. “One fund claimed that Merrill was offering a floor return (set buy-back price),” she said in the note, “so this risk would return to Merrill.” Ms. Tavakoli said such transactions would explain how Merrill’s mortgage-related exposure dropped in the third quarter.
WSJ: http://tinyurl.com/2pjcjs
Jay Gould, a securities lawyer at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, says if a firm is unloading securities from its books “without a real commercial purpose other than to create a value for pricing purposes, that can be a problem.”
Let the race to the courthouse begin. Lots of red meat for lawyers in this.
Could the hedge funds themselves also be sucked in based on collusion??
Someone named Jay Gould is speaking out against corporate shenanigans?
Things ain’t what they used to be.
Intelligently designed theory of financial evolution?
“One fund claimed that Merrill was offering a floor return (set buy-back price),” she said in the note, “so this risk would return to Merrill.” Ms. Tavakoli said such transactions would explain how Merrill’s mortgage-related exposure dropped in the third quarter.
“
High finance Kick-the-Can! This stuff sounds exactly like Joe-Six-Pack transfering a CC balance from card to card, or, sorry to say, the Bush administration promising a turnaround in Iraq “within the next six months.” These 6-figure high finance guys are playing games, using fifty-cent MBA words to confuse us, muttering under their breath “if we can just make it through ONE more quarter…” or more accurately, “if we can just keep up the illusion that we can make it through one more quarter…” [until Bleeding Heart Hillary bails us out.]
Disgusting.
the Bush administration promising a turnaround in Iraq “within the next six months.”
In case anyone is interested, an unusually accurate article on the Ramadi situation
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21517052/
“…We essentially made a gated community out of a city of 300,000 people.”
And when the “Gate Keepers” are gone…distributed violence & chaos.
There is such optimism & hope about “long term” promise of this war…that USA diplomats are “dying” to get a posted position in Baghdad.
I agree 100%….
State department had been a bastion of socialism in the US. I wish most of these FSOs were assigned. I have never met a more clueless bunch of weasels.
What, you think it’s “unusually accurate” because it’s positive news, or have you actually been there? All the bad news is lies by the liberal MSM, right? Everything is going great over there. Puhlease.
I am here currently in Iraq and I fly over Ramadi almost every day and the war (in Ramadi) is completely different and better than it was 11 months when I left the last time. Too many people have opinions without fact, I though I would try to add clarity based upon what I see. Too many Americans who have very little knowledge yet are full of beliefs. I have a frame of reference and I have first hand knowledge of the situation.
Many people post about how the MSM does a lousy job reporting on Real Estate, Well it is not just Real Estate they do a lousy job reporting on. American ‘’sheeples” opinions are based upon 15 second sound bites rather then in depth point - counter point discourse. To be honest I was rather shocked at the condition in the Al Anbar province when I returned. I will say I am pleasantly shocked at the major turn around here. I think America’s public opinion has swayed to the point that even good news is discounted similar but opposite situation with Housing bubble euphoria” One needs to keep and open mind or else you will become a “sheeple” as well
My post seem to be getting lost. The answer to the question of have I been there? Yes 2 times and I am there currently. I fly over that town almost every day.
“High finance Kick-the-Can! This stuff sounds exactly like Joe-Six-Pack transfering a CC balance from card to card, or, sorry to say, the Bush administration promising a turnaround in Iraq “within the next six months.” ”
The housing bubble / credit crisis is in its last throes.
Executive Severance
http://www.stockmania.com/index.php?showimage=84
No lie. Where can I get a job like that?
I haven’t had much luck.
Kahunabear,
Thanks and keep creating!
Great one keep it coming
Somehow i thought that your were only posting links. here.
You get on to some major media doing cartoons for them.
Not unexpectedly Neumann Homes (Chicago) filed a Chapter 11 yesterday, “becoming the second-largest such company to seek Chapter 11 protection from creditors as the U.S. housing recession enters its third year.”
See: http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=69303
Bloomberg identifies something we can exports that other parts of the world actually need.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a9R.dwXkar1U&refer=home
said:
====
One consequence of Chinese becoming richer may be more sex selection, not less. Improving ultrasound and amniocentesis technology is making it easier for parents to abort girls, and reports of female infanticide are becoming routine. The same is true of India; the wealthier the region, the wider the gender divide is likely to be.
====
Heard a report this week about Chinese factories. Young women from the provinces living and working at the facility for several years, head down, making about 12 years provincial family income per year.
What the farmer needs is several farmer’s daughters, not one son.
The Chinese and the Indian government may run into problems with this when it becomes clear that those millions of missing girls are not available as wives or even as sexual partners for the millions of “extra” boys. Could be destabilizing in traditional societies to have millions of men without the hope of ever marrying or establishing their own families.
I’ve said for years that China will “need” a war to get rid of the excess males. That many men without the responsibilities of family or the discipline of military isn’t good for society. The easiest solution is to put them in the military and then start a war.
In China a son’s duty is to support the parents in old age. To kill off those “excess” sons mean for each male death two people lose their old age support system.
Under the old system if a son got killed there still were still male children to support the parents in old age. Now with the one child policy your son is more important than ever. If he dies nobody will take care of you in your old age. If many only sons die it would shake the Chineese system to the core. I would argue this is the last thing China wants and is a reason not to get into a large war.
Bloomberg’s essay on this today is telling…India and China both face economic and social problems with missing 40-60 million girls by 2020.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a9R.dwXkar1U&refer=home
That’s a lot of testosterone with no place to go. It’s not only destabilizing for those countries but I fear for the entire world. It can’t be a good thing when a hundred million males can’t find mates. The potential is for a lot of aggression.
In China, the problems are already occurring, and are even at times being reported upon.
We can export American Technology to make them gay! Start with those fruity iPods and iPhones. (And the iPods will make them deaf, too, which will make them less effective soldiers.)
You have good ideas, that’s for sure.
This straight male prefers Creative Zen (Black) w/ MP3s. I like music I won’t get locked out of in the future.
Maybe the women should have harems in China .
I predict the return of the “bride-price.” Of course this will lead to some degree of cross polination between urban elites and rural poor as poor daughters are married off to rich city dwellers. Of course rural men will be poor AND permanantly single.
Don’t know about China, but already happening in India
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/04/02/1143916403268.html
A lot will end up in a Very Big Red Army, which will keep them out of trouble. Keeping that VBRA out of trouble is another story.
‘Mars Needs Women!’
“…They argue that biology, sociology and history suggest the imbalance will lead to crime and social disorder.”
Not the scholar…but I would argue the imbalance tends toward WAR…civil or territorial…”soldiers of misfortune”
6+ Billion…and growing…no wonder Buffet is into “batteries”
A friend of mine spends quite a bit of time in China and he has related lurid tales of girls in far-flung rural areas being kidnapped and forcibly married, etc. to urban men who can’t find wives. No wasting money with the bride price, even.
He also has the most hair-raising accounts of the environmental damage that is ongoing in China.
I heard that NewZealand has a surplus of females; probably that is related to excess emigration of Chinese women to NZ?
also, I have read several times that the problem is mostly in the official numbers, in the countryside many Chinese females are missing from the official records for obvious reasons.
Does anybody believe anything coming from the Federal Government these days? Here’s a snip from the Bloomberg report on the nonfarm payroll report:
“Payrolls at builders fell by 5,000 after dropping 14,000 a month earlier. Service industries, which include banks, insurance companies, restaurants and retailers, added 190,000 workers last month after gaining 127,000 jobs in September. Retailers cut 21,500 jobs after eliminating 12,300 in September. Government payrolls expanded by 36,000 during the month after rising 23,000 in September.”
So… almost all of the job “growth” was from the banks hiring 190,000 people last month while everyone else (except government) cut jobs. Riiiiiiiight.
And this just in: Everything is peachy-keen. Whew! That was a close one… Carry on, Wall Street.
“The Labor Department said employers added 166,000 jobs to their payrolls in October, the most since May. The number was nearly double the 85,000 additional positions Wall Street economists had expected, according to a survey by Thomson/IFR. “
Yes and i send out 20 resumes a week all with return receipts and maybe 3 or 4 will send it back, then i call them and they never answer the phone or return a phone message. So where are these “jobs” i am so desperate for work.
This week i am fighting with Air America Radio for a damn intern job, so i can have something recent on my resume. Its for the Lionel show, and Mark Green who ran for mayor against Bloomberg (his brother bought Air America so its now a family business) is refusing to answer my phone calls because i had the audacity to ask such a horrible question:
“Am i too old to be Lionel’s intern”
Is Lionel the talk show personality that has an opening song that sounds like the one from “Chico and the Man” ?
WNYC sometimes lets older people volunteer on their daytime shows. Listen to the end of the show when they list the “with help today from…” Got to be volunteers.
There may be some ‘other’ reason you’re not finding work other than ‘there being no work.’
is Air America actually still on the air? LOL
Is this an actual quote? ‘Cause in the first sentence retailers were part of the group that added workers, and in the second sentence they cut jobs. Maybe the distinction is people who “work” versus those who just have “jobs”.
Well, that’s just my point, isn’t it? I mean they say “created” on one hand and “lost” on the other. What’s a rational person to think?
Got it. Yeah, well the operative word there is “think,” and as far as I can tell, there aren’t a whole heckuva lot of people doing that these days.
Market initial move was down
So I guess the answer is no, people don’t believe the #’s or they understand that the jobs created in gov, and military will only last as long as the credit card being used to pay for them.
Actually, the initial move was UP, then it dropped like a rocket. So, looks like they bought the jobs report but were swayed by other bad “news” (like Deutsche Bank’s analyst’s report on mortgages, e.g.), which isn’t really news at all.
Payrolls increased by 166,000.
“Manufacturing jobs fell by 21,000 in October and 203,000 over the year.
Jobs were also lost at banks and mortgage brokers, where employment fell by 5,000 in October, bringing the cumulative loss to 56,000 since February.
Job growth was strong in many of the services, where employment rose by 190,000, the most since May.
Food services added 37,000, health care added 34,000 jobs, and employment services added 34,000, reversing steady declines earlier this year. ”
Dont’ we expect temp and McDonalds hiring before the holiday season?
Jobs which pay below the poverty level for a given area should not be counted.
GH, there wouldn’t be any job gains to report in that case resulting in the masses finally letting go of their denial and admitting we’ve had a hollowed out economy for 25 years.
Hey! Snap Out of IT!
American citizens and American corporations DO NOT impose financial abuse of their fellow low educated impoverished citizen’s…that would be UN-American…Don’t you realize how many “wealthy” people go to “various” churches all across America and reaffirm their commitment to “live” the “moral” golden rule: Lend money to others…at an interest rate…that you would what lent to you.”
Who was the Prophet that said: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”?
William Shakespeare.
whats employment services ?
I think its temps….not sure
Now THERE’s a concept. All the realtors and FB’s can become corporate recruiters. Then instead of selling houses to each other, everyone can be a corporate recruiter and find jobs for each other as a corporate recruiter, and charge a fee based on “projected” income from recruiting recruiters.
There would be endless job growth and a recruiter bubble.
i’m thinking it means people who do job placement for all the unemployed masses…
??
…or maybe:
HR: “You can pack your things and leave, layoff starts immediately. No severance package and if you have a problem with that, just talk to my new assistants, Guido, and Tiny…”
Nice to see there’s still mfg. jobs out there to lose.
Although one of the arguments some used to support the proposition that the decline in MEW wouldn’t lead to a recession was the fact that since we didn’t actually MAKE anything in this country, declining consumer spending wouldn’t lead to manufacturing job losses.
October payroll gains…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21594324/
“Job gains were logged for professional and business services, education and health care, leisure and hospitality, and for the government. Those employment increases more than offset jobs losses in manufacturing, construction and retail — casualties of the problems plaguing the housing market.”
We are taking big leaps further from a manufacturing economy to a service and government economy.
Stocks will gain on this. It’s a lot of volatility. You will see wild swings based on good news and bad news.
It’s also an opportunity, might as well make the most of it while the knuckleheads duke it out.
–
Especially, the govt economy. Who needs communism! Corpgov is like a super govt.
Jas
Our manufacturing economy is in the tank because every, excuse my french, moron, thinks he/she deserves things for showing up. I’m sorry but when the starting point of a discussion is that everyone must have 60K job because they have two financed cars with $460/mo payments each, spend $3k a month on mortgage, and want to be able to spend $300/week in a restaurants in addition to their “other” expenses while working in a machine shop, we won’t have any manufacturing industry
My cousin use to have a factory job. Screwing blots onto leg braces or something. Most the workers there, he told me, were former meth addicts. Said if you stayed on long enough the company had a good 401K thought meth being the beast that it is, most couldnt hold on for long
The average U.S. manufacturing wage is about $17/hour or $34,000 per year, hardly a fortune given the cost of living.
Here’s a funny video that confirmed for me how I had guessed financial markets work (although a little politically incorrect in spots). Saw this on another site; sorry if this is a re-post here. At last the mysteries are revealed!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ_qK4g6ntM
Prediction.
Stocks will rally today. You just don’t see it drop after a day like yesterday. Will it be a dead cat bounce? Probably, but you know the shorts will cover and the scavengers will be looking for opportunity.
I think you are right. Stocks will rally on the jobs report, because it is ‘good news’. Within a week, Wall Street will realize that ‘good news’ is really ‘bad news’, because strong jobs growth reduces the chances of the FED lowering interest rates. That realization will be more ‘bad news’, which is really ‘good news’ because negative sentiment will drive down the market, causing Bernanke to spike the punchbowl again. Rinse and repeat. Until Ben runs out of ammo. Then what?!?
When does he run out of ammo? Lies are cheap and plentiful.
You can only cut interest rates to zero, if that…
no, you can drop rates effectively below zero by introducing a savings tax; B-52 Ben has written about that a few years ago, I don’t doubt he is willing to test this in real life (just like his other crazy ideas).
I saw the second drop in two days in CFC and, despite feeling a little funny about it, sold my 5 APR 08 $10 puts that I bought just Wednesday for $1.25 for $1.90. That’s a great rate of return and now I can pounce on a new entry point of my choosing.
The transaction costs for trading options are huge. The bid-ask spread at this price point is 10% plus another 2% for comission. Dont be trading in and out, buy to hold.
The 5 Apr 08 puts are $0.65. If CFC goes bankrupt you get $5, otherwise nothing. The market is thus saying there is 13% chance that CFC goes bankrupt before April. I put the chances at about 90%. This is a great bet. Put down $65, and get $500 when CFC goes bankrupt; almost 8x your money; with only $65 premium as the downside risk.
Get a better trading platform. It may take a while to fill but I typically have no issue buying on the bid and selling on the ask.
What trading platform do you use?
I actually use some custom stuff but anything that allows you to route to options to ISE should do quite well.
–
CNBC Shouts… “WHERE WERE THE REGULATORS”
That is what everyone wants to know. I think that they were deliberately ignoring the problems to keep the economy going.
Jas
Agree. Telling how no one was saying, “Where ARE the regulators?” (except the folks here) while things were spinning upward out of control.
Weren’t the some of the same people whining “where were the regulators?” now whining about government intervention in free markets and “picking winners,” when this mess was being made? Unlike the little red hens’ bread, everyone wanted to be around when this poopie was being made, but nobody wants to either eat it or hear the complaints of those who’ve bougt it.
Where was Greenspan ?
Where was Congress?
Where were the honest appraisers ?
Where were the honest lenders and mortgage brokers ?
Where were the honest real estate agents >
Where was the FBI and police ?
Where were the underwriter of loans ?
Where was the main stream media ?
Where were the honest buyers and sellers ?
Where were the planning commissions ?
Where were the escrow officers and title companies ?
Where were the honest brokers? I got into the mortgage biz for three years while going through the divorce from hades and caring for dying mom. Needed some hours flexibility, could not afford a hit to reputation in my “real” profession. It was an honorable effort to learn a new industry. I have had significant B2B sales success and can run the discount factors and yield spreads in my head. I should have been at least a passable performer.
I was canned from three jobs in three years because I didn’t “make the loans work”.
Sadly, Mom did die. Psychopath could not extend the duration of the divorce process and that is over. Am now safely anonymous, several states away, back to my “real” profession.
Jim Rogers this morning on Bloomberg TV and FT.com.
He’s obviously bearish on the US dollar, Housing, financials and bullish on commodities.
He also mentioned agriculture/agribusiness and I know that fellow HBBer Hoz likes agriculture as well. Does anyone have any ideas on how to play this? Rogers said he likes a Merril Lynch agri ETF, but didn’t mention it by name.
moo - may have gone too far already
Market Vectors Agribusiness ETF (MOO) - This ETF follows the DAXglobal Agribusiness Index (DXAG) and includes stocks from 40 companies engaged in agriproduct operations, agriculture equipment, ethanol/biodiesel and livestock operations. The companies within MOO generally generate 50% of their income from agribusiness.
PowerShares agricultural ETF (DBA), http://www.dbfunds.db.com/dba/index.aspx
Careful with this stuff…most AG is very dependent on oil.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=POT
POT: Is there a hygrophonic home-grown marijuana ETF?
VT.TO - Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, “doing business as Viterra.” This is the largest Canadian grain handler, marketer and farm supplier. Trades in Toronto alone and is thus denominated in Canadian dollars - even if it goes sideways, it’s a hedge against falling US$. This industry has been beaten into the ground for an entire generation and has begun to perk up only in the past year.
DBA - Deutsche Bank Ag index - comprised of Soybeans, Wheat, Corn and Sugar. Not a bad dollar-cost but I wouldn’t buy it all at once.
BG - Bunge, Inc. - jagnormous multi-national with two hundred years in the business. Went public for the first time five or six years ago. Stock has been on a tear but might qualify as “best of breed.”
-None of this is investment advice-just ideas as requested-
The market never moves in a straight line.
Between Oct 19 and Nov 1 the S&P 500 recovered 67% of the drop from Oct 9 to Oct 19. This is based on a quicky review of closing prices. I’ll bet if we look at intraday prices we see a Fibonnaci 68.2% correction.
This bodes well for a further downturn - not necessarily in one day, but over a few days or a couple of weeks time.
As Hoz noted yesterday…
40% of the S & P’s are financials~
Walk The Plank___
A key plank in the Government’s strategy of increasing the economy’s speed limit is keeping the stock market up. “Watch your driving Ben, looks like a big speed bump ahead.”
And a lower high on the S&P plus higher lows on the VXO.
Finally!
http://www.financialweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071101/REG/71101004/1036
IRS probes hedge funds and private equity firms for possible tax abuses
This link is better.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ak2Y6HV1zHqM&refer=home
Little asides:
Last Saturday after my wife’s meeting in SJ were went to the mall on Stevens Creek around 2pm. Took forever to get a parking space. Lots of people but few shoppers outside of the food court and small item purchases. I wanted to stop in the Apple Store for computer part but couldn’t get pass the line at the door. Store was completely packed. Ended up walking in the Bose store were my wife heard the Bose Wave II playing; short version, walked out the door with a unit along with another customer in the store. My wife loved it and suggested that it would be our Christmas present to us.
Bose Wave II ….
They are super…I got three…One in the bedroom, Kitchen & garage workshop…
Hey, now’s the time to buy! This guy on MSNBC said so:
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/SimpleStrategies/BetNowOnTheRealEstateRebound.aspx
AND THE BETTER NEWS is we CAN ALL BE RICH, because the same guy said so:
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/StartInvesting/GettingRichIsSimplerThanYouThink.aspx
Gosh, this guy knows it all.
Hey New York HBBers. I’ve heard from a few of you. Let’s try to get together and tilt our elbows at a local purveyor.
Email me at kanapali@gmail.com and we’ll make a plan.
FYI. Some bank is in a lot of trouble, as they were denied a loan from the Fed it can be indirectly determined.
http://benbittrolff.blogspot.com/2007/10/wtf-happened-to-federal-funds-rate.html
Start:
“Last week some $75 million of “fed funds” (that is, interbank overnight credit) was transacted at a rate of 15%, and “a bunch” went through in the low to mid 7s.
No, I didn’t mistype that. You can find the actual data at this link.
Originally I, and everyone else, assumed that the “high” was an error. A bad print. That there was no chance this was “real”.
It was. Yes, “EFF” (effective fedfunds) was right where “it should be” according to The Fed - across all transactions.
Now let’s think about this one for a minute here folks.
“Someone” transacted a $75 million overnight loan that they needed to meet reserve requirements at an absolutely outrageous interest rate - about what you pay for credit card money. A bunch of “someone else’s” transacted a bunch at 7-7.5%.
They had the discount window available to them at 50 bips of penalty to EFF, which is a direct overnight loan from The Fed, but didn’t use it.
Are you going to try to tell me that some banks actually paid nearly 10% more as an interest rate than they had to?
On what planet are we having this discussion?
There is only one possible explanation for this particular behavior - The Fed would not take the alleged “collateral” these institutions tried to put up, and the market didn’t think it was worth much either, even on an overnight basis, and as such “the market” priced the interest rate similar to how Guido would for your “short-term” loan!
This raises the spectre of something truly terrifying in the credit markets –
The Fed may be inches away from losing control over the FF Rate entirely!”
As of yet, I have no idea how serious these developments are and will be doing research on the matter. I hope to follow up with a more detailed post after market close.
Ah, the small, the insignificant…circumstantial evidence…like when you find a trout in your glass of milk.
Took the $$ on NOv puts. Until there’s a give up and people stop trying to hide in BIDU and MSFT, this is subject to spikes back up.
So you made a few bucks, but not enough for a vacation???
Q: if you had a large block of MSFT (say 10k shares) that you had been sitting on for a long time, would you hold or bail? I’m very curious as to what has been going on with it.
It depends on what you are holding. I periodically hedge my long-term longs during periods of uncertainty with either puts or with entering identical short position.
Looks like Ryland is kicking off a 25% off sale next weekend. That is a fair haircut to take.
http://www.ryland.com/
They are offering 47.8% off condos in Fredericksburg VA…
http://www.rylandsavings.com/va_washington-dc-virginia.html#CentrevilleCrossing
To somebody out of the area, this sounds good. However, with the traffic situation in this area, both of the Northern Virginia developments on sale require 4 hours per day RT commutes to the major job centers, Tysons and DC. You can get around that if you leave at 5 AM — but, since this is also a ‘mission-driven’ culture where face time counts, you can’t get away with leaving at 2:20 pm. So, you leave your house at 5 am - get to work at 6 am - and have to hang around until 4:30 pm at least, at which point you get to enjoy a two hour commute home.
Of course, you could always use them as a working base for a home based business: However, if your business fails to make cash flow, you’re back to looking for a salaried job and the commuting starts anew. Let’s also build in a sensitivity for commuting affordability at the point where gas is at $8/gallon.
The stress on quality of life is unbearable. You would have to pay me my current salary, annually, to live in the advertised areas.
Casino Windsor Limited
Windsor, ON
Facing added competition from Detroit’s casinos and the fallout from a strong Canadian dollar, as many as 200 union and non-union employees will be laid off at Casino Windsor. There are currently about 3,300 employees at the casino.
Approximate Affected Workforce: 101-500
Source: Windsor Star - November 2, 2007
So much for gambling being immune.
bettor off.
“The severe drought tightening like a vise across the Southeast has threatened the water supply of cities large and small, sending politicians scrambling for solutions. But Orme, about 40 miles west of Chattanooga and 150 miles northwest of Atlanta, is a town where the worst-case scenario has already come to pass: The water has run out.
The town has received a $377,590 emergency grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that Reames hopes will be Orme’s salvation. A utility crew is laying a 2 1/2-mile pipe to connect Orme to the Bridgeport, Ala., water supply. The work could be finished by Thanksgiving.
“It’s not a short-term solution,” Reames says. “It is the solution.”
He says the crisis in Orme could serve as a warning to other communities to conserve water before it’s too late.
“I feel for the folks in Atlanta,” he says, his gravelly voice barely rising above the sound of rushing water from the town’s tank. “We can survive. We’re 145 people. You’ve got 4.5 million people down there. What are they going to do? It’s a scary thought.”"
Full story at
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,307437,00.html
If you were here in WA in the rainy season you would swear that there is more water around than anyone would ever need, but it’s not so. A small coastal town here in Washington state ran out of water last summer. Can’t recall the name, although I certainly ought to, since water is a big deal in my life and daily dealings. Thurston co, for example, gets all its drinking water from the ground, has no reservoirs, and water issues in the eastern part of the state are really starting to pop up, etc, etc.
I try not to rant about water too much on here but I may have, once or twice, lightly mentioned developers who have managed to get away with putting giant jam-packed subdivisions atop aquifer recharge areas, pave over the wetlands and streams… Jeebus! Water! People don’t think about it until they want some and it’s not there, or if it is, it’s contaminated–and that’s not the time to start thinking about it.
shorted ETF s. rumor. watch out! hahahah
Which ETFs, out of curiousity??
HAHA I think this was based on truth
http://www.achewood.com/
An analyst on Bloomberg just recommended shorting the entire financial sector, although he indicated it can be risky because there are periods of “euphoria”. I’m going to add to my short positions during each “euphoric” period.
Drinking an Olde English $800, baby…
Too little securitization to create new ABX series….
———
Only three deals qualify for new ABX.HE 08-1 index, says Wachovia
News Digest, 18 October 2007
The prospect for another ABX.HE index in the near future is not looking very bright, say Wachovia analysts in a research report today. Based on their analysis only three deals out of the 25 deals issued in the second half of 2007 would qualify for the new ABX.HE 08-1 index.
While several of the deals issued are meeting most criteria, some deals are falling short, specifically in the deal size requirements which are $500 million, they say. Thirteen of the 25 deals do not meet the size requirements. Further, four of the deals that met the $500 million deal size did not meet either the weighted average life or $15 million tranche size limit for the triple A class.
3 ways to follow the Fed’s rate cut
http://biz.yahoo.com/brn/071102/23711.html?.v=1
Get a better loan
Call up your bank and find out if it has cut rates on various loans. If you have any high-interest-rate loans or loans with adjustable rates, you can speak with a loan officer to see if you can get a fixed-rate loan at a lower interest rate instead.
Struggling homeowners have a good opportunity here, says Jones.
“Lenders may be willing to refinance to a fixed-rate mortgage even if you are one or two payments behind on a recently adjusted ARM,” says Jones.
She says this is possible because the lender wants to see if your current delinquency resulted from an increase of your mortgage payment.
Also, check to see if the current rate on your home equity loan or line of credit will drop as well as your monthly payment. If it doesn’t, find out if competing banks have lower rates.
Jones warns that using a home equity loan to pay off credit cards is not the right answer for everyone, no matter how low the interest rates. She says for a home equity loan to work, you have to be able to afford your living expenses without relying on the cards.
how is this going to help?!!? the majority of those Struggling homeowners are already under water!! the only good advise this broad is giving, is at the end of the article where it says:
Save money
Dollar crash:
http://quotes.ino.com/chart/?s=NYBOT_DX&t=f
Gold rocket:
http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html
PPT is early today. Only 1:15 EST . It must be because it is Friday and they want to leave early.
Two part question:
Part I
How much in losses are banks NOT counting in their writedowns because they think the loss is protected by insurance?
Part II
How much of these losses will actually show up eventually as losses?
I suspect the answer the both questions is measured in the tens of billions, and goes up every time home prices fall by another percent…
I don’t know the answer to part I but the answer to part II is pretty obvious. All of the losses will show up less the amount of capital that the financial insurance companies have on their books. MGIC (ticker MTG) has a book value of $4 billion with further losses and writedowns to come. Their Insurance in Force is nearly $200 billion. Since they only insure the last 20% or less (in lieu of a down payment), they are insuring mortgages with a face value of at least $1 trillion. You can see how thinly capitalized they are and how little it would take to put them in BK. I’ve been short them for months and will likely ride the stock all the way to zero. They cut their dividend 90% this quarter and will probably eliminate it altogether soon so there is big positive carry in the trade as well.
Usually when PMI companies insure a loan they underwrite the file is pretty good . I would say in general that there is a better chance that the foreclosures would be less on a PMI deal . Also ,from what I understand ,if fraud is involved in the loan application the PMI company doesn’t have to pay . This is not to say that in my opinion the PMI companies aren’t going to have a major ongoing loss .
A 4.28% Series I savings bond somehow feels much better than being stuck with increasing mortgage payments. on an AMT. My 2001 series I bonds are earning 6.08% now. Sweeeet!
But now that gold crossed over $800 per ounce, I’m happy with that performance. Now gold is about $400 per ounce priced in 1980 dollars. We ain’t seen an end to the increase in precious metals prices. Most pundits knew for weeks the helicopter took off and Bernanke was about to dump the dollar out in buckets. We’ll also see oil price hikes.
Hi Bill, yep it looks like Gold is getting popular again and I sold my NEM on the off chance Bernake would not lower rates but he did and gold is off to the races. Well I kept my silver stock and oil stocks and dry bulk shippers but I miss my Gold!! looking to buy back in. I expect the financials to continue to panic the market and will use any big down draft to buy another gold miner or two. I’m betting Bernake and crew panic and cut rates again in 2008 to save the stupid banks. Just makes all of us who work for dollars pay for the housing bubble through a devalued dollar.
Cheers