ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
MasterCard Set to Open An Online Shopping Mall – NYTimes.com Through a new partnership with an Internet company that specializes in personalized shopping, MasterCard is set to introduce a Web shopping mall on Monday that it says can pinpoint with considerable accuracy what its cardholders are likely to purchase. The site, called MasterCard Marketplace, relies … Read more
Greece Wins EU45 Billion Aid Pledge to Blunt Crisis (Update3) – Bloomberg.com European governments offered debt- burdened Greece a rescue package worth as much as 45 billion euros ($61 billion) at below-market interest rates as they try to end its fiscal crisis and restore confidence in the euro. (tags: Greece debt euro IMF)
I was very skeptical of Bernie Schaeffer’s choice of XRT, the SPDR S&P Retail ETF, as one of his top three recommendations in late November. He chose XRT as a contrarian play in the face of heavy skepticism about the health of the consumer. XRT slogged and churned for over two months before breaking out … Read more
China reports rare trade deficit Officials blame the $7.2bn deficit on rising volumes and prices of the raw materials the country needs to import to power its economy. The officials, who announced the figures at an economic conference in Hainan, say the deficit is likely to be a short-term phenomenon. (tags: China economy) LA faces … Read more
Former Fed chief Greenspan: 'I was wrong 30% of the time' – ABC News From the councils of government to the paneled boardrooms of Wall Street, the idea of Alan Greenspan erring once would have seemed rank heresy. Those days, however, are long gone. Pressed Wednesday to defend his stewardship of the U.S. economy in … Read more
Home Depot Is Adding Jobs for First Time in 4 Years (Update1) – Bloomberg.com Home Depot Inc., the largest U.S. home-improvement retailer, is adding store jobs for the first time in four years in anticipation of a rebound in sales. (tags: HomeDepot economy jobs)
For most of this year, I have interpreted the Federal Reserve’s policy to maintain “exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period” as the equivalent of low rates for at least the next six months from each new confirmation. This interpretation came from a January interview with New York Federal Reserve … Read more
Is the Stock Market Cheap? …every time the P/E10 has fallen from the first to the fourth quintile, it has ultimately declined to the fifth quintile and bottomed in single digits. Based on the latest 10-year earnings average, to reach a P/E10 in the high single digits would require an S&P 500 price decline below … Read more
Over the past several quarters I have looked to Acuity Brands (AYI) as a potential signal of the earnings season to come, especially when it comes to commercial real estate. For several quarters, AYI has reported dour news about its industry and the economy. Sometimes traders and investors sold the news, sometimes they bought it. … Read more
Commercial Bankruptcies Jumped in March – WSJ.com The total number of companies filing for bankruptcy in the U.S. jumped by more than 20% in March over the previous month, as business failures in the first quarter outpaced last year's total. The total number of commercial bankruptcy filings hit 8,208 in March, a sharp rise from … Read more