Daily Reading – Friday, July 8, 2011
The Big Picture: Lakshman Achuthan: Leading Indicators, Slowing Jobs Data
Insight on how this data will indicate where the markets are going, with Kevin Caron, Stifel Nicolaus and Lakshman Achuthan,The Economic Cycle Research Institute.
The Big Picture: Reporting Season Farce
Albert Edwards is the uber-Bear who sits on the Global Strategy Team at Société Générale. Edwards notes: “It’s that surreal time of the quarter, just ahead of the reporting season, when US companies cajole compliant analysts into reducing their profit forecasts so that on the day the company can record a positive earnings surprise.”
The Big Picture: NPR: 150,000 Foreclosed Lawns to Mow
“When you are the nation’s largest owner of foreclosed homes, even little things can get expensive fast. Such is the case for mortgage giant Fannie Mae, which as of March 31 had a mind-boggling 153,000 foreclosed homes on its books.
One example — mowing the lawn. Two men swoop in on a foreclosed town house in Lanham, Md., quickly mowing and edging the small front yard. Fannie Mae owns this home, so it’s paying for the lawn crew to come every two weeks or so to keep up the curb appeal…”
FT Alphaville: #ECBCollateral
Thursday’s ECB press conference — in which the Jean-Claude Trichet suspended ratings requirements for Portuguese bonds — is being neatly summed up on Twitter…
FT Alphaville: Chart du jour, US long-term unemployment edition
FT Alphaville: Bahrain: the “most improved” sovereign
CMA Datavision on Thursday released its Q2 2011 report on the world’s best and worst sovereign debt performers.
FT BeyondBRICs: Fund flows: steady as she goes
Investors still like emerging market equities, with funds putting $1.35bn into EM equities in the week ending on Wednesday, according to data from EPFR, the US-based fund tracker.
Macro Man: A Tale of Two Sh1tties
We have been pondering for the past 4 days what to do and our preponderance has been based on our heads saying buy equities sell vol and gear for a phase of growth, especially in the US, but being tempered by our concerns that Europe can blow up again dragging everything down again. But our indecision on how to handle this has been simply rectified. Having yesterday asked the question of how contagious Europe actually is to the rest of the world, we are gong to separate the two concerns and play this as a decoupling.
Bloomberg: Paulson’s Main Fund Lost 11% on Sino-Forest
John Paulson lost 11 percent in his biggest fund in June, according to an investor, as the firm sold off Sino-Forest Corp. (TRE) after a short-seller’s allegations.
The Slope Of Hope: Photo Essay On Impermanence