Skip to content

Archive:

January 2010

Hoenig Dissent Only Surprise in FOMC’s Statement

As anticipated the FOMC reaffirmed that it “will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and continues to anticipate that economic conditions…are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period.”  But, a hawkish sign came in the form of a dissenting […]

Home Sales All Around Disappoint

New Homes sales plummeted to a pace of 342K units in December, falling 7.6% from a revised 370K in November (originally 355K). The current Bloomberg consensus forecast was for a pace of 368K. The supply of new homes climbed during the month to 8.1 months versus 7.6 in November. The median new home price rose […]

An Ominous Sign From the Philly Fed

Every month the Philadelphia Fed releases the State Coincident Indexes measuring the current economic activity for each of the 50 states. This morning’s release (covering December) showed the diffusion index — a compilation of each individual state’s performance drop to -74 after peaking at -22 in November. (Levels below 0 reflect contracting conditions.) The Philly […]

More on China

Following up on my comment from early this morning, Uncertainty of Chinese Tightening Continues to Weigh on Asian Markets, I wanted to mention that, surprisingly, the Chinese central bank, during its regularly scheduled Tuesday auction, did not increase the yield on its one-year paper, keeping it constant at 1.9264%. It is widely expected that once […]

Uncertainty of Chinese Tightening Continues to Weigh on Asian Markets

According to China’s 21st Century Business Herald, Chinese banks made $212 billion in loans during the first 19 days of January. This large jump could help catalyze further tightening by Chinese officials. According to Credit Suisse Chinese Banks have suspended new lending since the 19th, which could have a ‘meaningful’ impact on manufacturing during the […]

Cantor Upgrades DryShips (DRYS) To ‘Buy’ From ‘Hold’

From Cantor Report: “ Cantor/DRYS: We Upgrade DRYS To BUY (From HOLD) On Valuation, Rig Exposure * We raise our price target to $8 (from $7) based on our 7.0x EV/EBITDA multiple to our new 2010 EBITDA forecast of $558 million (from $544 million). Given the discrepancy between our target and the current stock price, […]

China Begins to Rein in Speculative Real Estate Purchases

China’s Xinhua News Agency has reported that a new policy in the city of Nanning will ban the sale of uncompleted commercial residential properties. Government officials stated that this program is intended to, “regulate the order of real estate market”. I expect this could be the first of many similar policies around the country to […]

US Economics Week Ahead: Nothing’s Certain

Over the past two weeks new uncertainties have begun pouring into the markets, like the deluge of rain currently striking the west coast—I spent part of last week in Los Angeles.  However, unlike what’s happening over the west coast, the storms investors faced were mostly avoidable.   It all began with legitimate concerns over tightening Chinese […]

The Markets Facing a Barrage of Uncertainties

As I mentioned in my US Week Ahead, any indications that Chairman Bernanke may not be reconfirmed could send ripples through the market. This morning I woke up to this headline “Senate Dems Not Sure They Can Get Enough Votes to Reconfirm Bernanke”. The market is still walking on broken glass after overcoming its biggest […]

A Telling Sign from China’s National Bureau of Statistics

In this morning’s press release China’s National Bureau of Statistics removed the phrases ‘appropriately loose’ monetary policy and ‘expansionary’ fiscal policy from their press release. This is further evidence of the Chinese government’s shifting stance toward it’s monetary policy and could add support to rumors of a potential 27bp rate hike on Friday, which can […]