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http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog - FT Alphaville from FT.com
Selected reads from FT Alphaville this week,
- Weird waterfalls and the synthetic CDO stumper.
- A Minskian roadmap to the next gold mania.
- The Daily Mail discovers contango.
- The Daily Mail re-discovers contango.
- T-bill terror.
- All roads lead to retranching in CRE crunch.
- ...
Stocks
Wal-Mart
Betting on life expectancy, as investors in so-called life settlements do, is fraught with risk - not least that people will live longer than models suggest they will.
Investors in two Deutsche Bank funds -- db Kompass Life 1 and 2 -- that invested in US life settlements have learnt ...
Stocks
Exchange-Traded Funds
Deutsche Bank
Gavan Nolan of Markit wrote this CDS report
The difference between sovereign and corporate CDS spreads in Europe this week reached its smallest level since February as public finances came under increasing scrutiny. The Markit iTraxx SovX Western Europe hit 65bp on Thursday, its widest level ...
Government
Credit Default Swap
The pixels are flying: Felix Salmon at Reuters on Thursday took a gratuitous swipe at The Business Insider's Henry Blodget, over the latter's alleged failure to disclose the details of his past wrangles with the SEC and Eliot Spitzer, which involved a $4m "disgorgement" by Blodget.
The former ...
Stocks
Financial Crisis
SEC
Merrill Lynch
Michael Bloomberg
Televisa
Here's a Friday mystery. Presenting December ICE dollar index futures as traded on November 20:
So what could that peculiar spike be down to?
We're not sure. As MarketWatch reports, the exchange is at least on to it:
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- The IntercontinentalExchange is probing trades in ...
Stocks
David Dollar
Dow Jones & Company
Alright, blindingly obvious is a tad harsh. But it surprised us that the proposals for improving mortgage underwriting standards made by John Dugan, US comptroller of the currency, were not already in force.
In a speech in Tokyo, Dugan proposed that "regulators around the world should address ...
Government
How do you solve the problem of excessive risk-taking and systemic risk?
FDIC chairman Sheila Bair had an idea back in October:
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Ensuring secured creditors face losses when a financial institution fails could help rein in excessive risk-taking and strengthen the financial ...
Government
On Thursday, the Federal Reserve became the latest institution to feel a sudden, aggressive backdraft.
A joint ambush by Republicans and Democrats of the House Financial Services Committee left America's central bank facing a comprehensive audit of its activities for the first time, and, by ...
Government
On FT Alphaville Friday morning,
- T-bill terror.
- Day 2 of the Daily Mail tanker outrage!
- Goldman sees a holly, jolly, rally-filled Christmas.
- The GOD (glut of distillate) delusion.
- Japan equities: The 'midget is limbo-dancing'.
- Cadbury-Hershey merger: the Carnival solution....
Other
Could the world finally be catching on to the distillate glut problem? (Despite the Daily Mail getting completely the wrong end of the stick on the story).
We note even the normally media-shy physical trader Trafigura warned about the matter via Reuters on Thursday:
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - ...
Other
Markets live chat transcript for the chat ending at 12:14 on 20 Nov 2009. Participants in this chat were: Neil Hume, FT (NH) Bryce Elder (BE) NH:rightNH:it's 11.03NH:and timeNH:for Markets LiveNH:FT Alphaville’s daily markets round-upNH:Bryce is here this morningNH:and it’s day two of the ...
Other
Duh duh duh!
The yield on some short-term Treasuries, T-bills, turned negative on Thursday. That means that investors are piling into Treasuries to such an extent that they're now willing to pay the government for the benefit of owning them. The last time we saw this happening was in 2008, in ...
Stocks
Bill Clinton
The hate-fest surrounding Japan appears to have "risen to new highs in recent weeks", says CLSA's Damien Kestel in his weekly newsletter Bits & Pieces. In fact, he cites the Oxford (American) dictionary's word of the year, "Unfriend":I don't know who selected this word or for what reason but ...
Other
The hurdles to a Hershey-Cadbury tie-up are by now well aired.
Hershey has a smaller market cap than Cadbury, would need to take on crippling amounts of debt to finance a deal, and the Hershey Charitable Trust would be loath to relinquish control in any new company.
Yet the industrial logic of ...
Stocks
Look who's happy!
WASHINGTON-November 19, 2009-Commercial Mortgage Securities Association today applauds Reps. John Adler (D-NJ), John Campbell (R-CA), Dennis Moore (D-KS) and Gary Miller (R-CA) for working on an amendment offered by Reps. Walt Minnick (D-ID) and Melissa Bean (D-IL) to the ...
Stocks
CA Inc.
It's day two of the Daily Mail's campaign against tankers parked off the British coast. In case you missed "how the Daily Mail broke the story yesterday" you might care to check out FT Alphaville's coverage here.
The post attracted a healthy level of discourse, including the following analogy ...
Commodities
Day Trader
British Retail Consortium
Because December is traditionally a very good month for European equities.
And the better the year, the better the December, according to the kitten-cuddling bank.
Here's the basic idea from Goldman Sachs' European equity strategy team:
Recently, there has been a lot of talk in the investor ...
Stocks
Goldman Sachs
Elsewhere on Friday,
- Investing fads and themes by year, 1996 to present.
- Unintended consequences on Wall Street.
- Chart of the day: How the old gold bugs lost control.
- Analyst date night: Honey let's hit that BofA protest.
- The unbearable pain of 0.01%.
- Wall Street's Grinch ...
Other
Comment, analysis and other offerings from Friday's FT,
Martin Wolf: Tax the windfall banking bonuses
Windfall taxes are a ghastly idea, writes Wolf. They are a sop to prejudice, a burden on risk-taking and a form of arbitrary confiscation. No sensible person should support them. So why do I ...
