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Here’s my take on the markets today, May 18, 2012. If you’d like to read more of my articles, click here. Credit gauges are mostly deteriorating again today. The 2Y Swap Spread is falling -2.4% to 35.75 bps. The France sovereign cds is down -1.6% to 217.34 bps. The Italian/German 10Y Yld Spread is falling [...]
This week’s featured ETF is the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology (IBB). The ETF tracks the NASDAQ Biotechnology index. The top holdings include Alexion Pharmaceuticals and Amgen. Here is a complete list of the top holdings. The top ten holdings make up about 50% of the fund, so the concentration is not too bad. The trailing P/E multiple [...]
Here’s the transcript of this week’s chat at TradingWithCody.com, a service not affiliated with MarketWatch. All right guys, ask me anything. Q. Any idea or explanation why some important AAPL suppliers have completely different behavior? QCOM,BRCM more or less are following AAPL (about -10% since their earnings report) and others ( SWKS and mostly CRUS [...]
We haven’t learned any lessons from the ethanol debacle. Subverting our food supply chain in search of energy is one of the dumbest trades of all time. So when I see headlines like this from the Denver Post, I fret: Fracking bidders top farmers at water auction By BRUCE FINLEY The Denver Post DENVER—Front Range farmers [...]
Here’s my take on the markets today, May 16, 2012. If you’d like to read more of my articles, click here. Credit gauges are mostly deteriorating again today. The 2Y Swap Spread is falling -3.7% to 36.7 bps. The Spain sovereign cds is down -1.7% to 537.22 bps. The Italian/German 10Y Yld Spread is falling [...]
With half of the month of May in the books, the S&P 500 (SPX) is lower by 4.81% for the month and has declined 6.45% from its recent high. So, despite all of the seeming panic out there, this is just a garden variety pullback. The markets were cruising along yesterday until the last hour [...]
Talking babies notwithstanding, Etrade has seen better days. It’s the rare company that got clobbered by Web Bubble 1.0 AND the ownership of subprime debt. Here’s a chart of its all-time performance: ETFC Facebook recently added Etrade as an underwriter along with usual suspects like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley (lead underwriter), Citigroup, J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, [...]
We had another ugly session yesterday with Greece and Europe once again being the locus of the problem. Greece continues to falter politically and economically as the country is unable to form a coalition government. There are a series of games of chicken being played in Europe. One is the ECB versus Greece. The other [...]
I wrote the following on November 21st, 2009: -===–==-=-=-=-=-=–=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Before I begin this evening, I would like to comment on my absence for the last week. I gave a talk on Friday to the Southeastern Actuaries Conference. I found myself behind the eight-ball, because of my many other projects, and so I had to block [...]
