Daily Reading – November 23, 2010
The Big Picture: Zombie Bears: Time to Admit the Recession is Over.
“Dude, you really love a good bloodbath, don’t you? You actually have fun when the market is getting killed.“
The Big Picture: Commodity prices – on a knife’s edge.
The prices of industrial metals find themselves at crucial levels as indicated by the Economist Metals Price Index in U.S. dollar – the latest number is my estimate…
The Big Picture: The End of Stock-Bond Correlation?
One of the odder aspects of the financial crisis was the full on correlation of various asset classes. During October 2008, normally non-correlated assets began moving in lockstep. As the psychology of the crisis shifted from denial to panic, stocks, bonds, commodities all moved towards a correlation of 1.0…
The Big Picture: Introduction to Warfighting, a class at West Point.
As if there weren’t enough things to focus our market minds on and in the category of ‘what can they possibly be thinking,’ North Korea has to play the part of jilted kid desperate for attention…
The Big Picture: Is ‘Buy And Hold’ Still A Viable Investment Strategy?
An investor who used index funds and stayed the course could have earned satisfactory returns even during the first decade of the 21st century…
FT Alphaville: Chinese bond gyrations.
This is the benchmark Chinese seven-day repo market rate (chart via Reuters)…
FT Alphaville: Spanish contagion heads for the bonds [updated].
Nope. Not good.
Just a day after Ireland’s up-to-€90bn bailout, Spain went to the market to sell €4 to €5bn worth of three- and six-month debt. The results of that auction are out…
FT Alphaville: European banking binary bet.
European banking stocks are under pressure again on Tuesday morning as investors continue to fret about the eurozone sovereign debt crisis…
FT Alphaville: Around the eurozone in distorted CDS curves.
They’ve gone all weirdly hump-shaped…
FT Alphaville: Unpredictable (Korean) geopolitical risk, illustrated.
brupt fighting over in Korea is not what the market would have wanted right now…
FT Alphaville: A Chinese diesel crunch.
If you were wondering why distillate spreads improved over the last month in Europe, apparently there has been a unique demand situation heading over from Asia — prominently China — as well as Latin America…
FT Alphaville: Irish bailout *fail*
RTRS-IRISH FIVE-YEAR CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS AT 530 BPS, 25 BPS WIDER ON DAY
Macro Man: Armchair Generals.
A large component of the populace of Financial Markets is made up of commentators, advisors, strategists and so called “experts” and they are all there to “help” you make the right decision in your investment process. Whilst their existence can be poo-pooed as unnecessary and a drain on the efficiencies of the market, the very fact that they can survive in one of the most efficient and cut throat of arenas means that someone thinks their services are worth paying for…
Macro Man: Gangsta Style- North Korea.
One member of TMM has been to North Korea and noted that amongst the very, very few goods you could buy there was music…