The T Report: The Fed will Disappoint but it Won’t Matter

Posted by on Aug 1, 2012 in Uncategorized | No Comments

Hard to Believe but the Fed Just Isn’t A Big Deal Today The Fed is highly unlikely to take any action. The ECB has taken the spotlight. Either the ECB will act aggressively tomorrow and the Fed may be able to hold off on more stimulus here, or the ECB will fail, and the Fed […]

The T Report: All Hands on Deck or Abandon Ship for the EU

Posted by on Jul 31, 2012 in Uncategorized | No Comments

It’s Time For Europe to Stop Screwing Around Enough of summits, 30 page MOU’s, convoluted documents needing approval, “aid” in stages with so many strings attached that the next round is always in doubt. It’s time to act and get money out there and use the firewall. We have the Fed tomorrow, which while important, […]

LIBOR: Non-linearity in a world that struggles with basic arithmetic

Posted by on Jul 30, 2012 in Uncategorized | No Comments

How 5 Liar Banks Could Get Away with it. Let’s say you could prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt that 5 banks all lied by 20 bps on Libor on a particular day, what is the lowest impact on LIBOR? ZERO. How could 5 liars have zero impact? It is possible for 5 banks […]

Investment Grade CDS going to zero.

Posted by on Jul 30, 2012 in Uncategorized | No Comments

Is IG18 going to zero? Probably not, but I think we could see an “eclipse” this week where IG18 trades lower than HY18. That has often been a sign of continued bullishness (though it failed in March) and I think IG could set new tights for the year. I don’t particularly like U.S. equities here. […]

High Yield High Beta CDS Can be High Reward

Posted by on Jul 28, 2012 in Uncategorized | No Comments

Where is the value in the market? Where is the value in this market? What looks cheap? What has good risk/reward? That is a constant complaint. The high yield market is trading at pretty tight levels. Big liquid names have been picked over, so you have to go for less liquid names or story credits […]

The Weekly T Report: From QE to PE

Posted by on Jul 28, 2012 in Uncategorized | No Comments

Don’t the Markets NEED QE? No. While QE has helped support the market and was the main reason the S&P 500 managed to stay above 1,300 in spite of weak data, it isn’t necessary. Taking the most “disruptive” scenarios off the table in Europe is more important. If Europe can stabilize, then the markets could […]

The T Report: Curing the Disease Will Alleviate the Symptoms

Posted by on Jul 27, 2012 in Uncategorized | No Comments

Weak Economic Data is a Symptom not the Disease Every day we get a new dumping of bad economic data. Our own data is marginal at best and Europe’s is somewhere between hideous and heinous. But that is a function of the complete uncertainty there. Europe is grinding to a halt as the threat of […]

How Much has Germany PROFITTED from the Bailouts?

Posted by on Jul 26, 2012 in Uncategorized | No Comments

Profits not “Costs” from the Bailout For all the talk about how much the bailouts are “costing” Germany and other countries, they have so far been very profitable. Minimal Cash Outflows In the early days, the countries did provide some funds. They may also have to provide the IMF with money (though the IMF also […]

The T Report: Draghi Responds to my “How Dumb is Draghi?” Report

Posted by on Jul 26, 2012 in Uncategorized | No Comments

Looking like the answer is “not so dumb” The key take away from yesterday was that Europe was on the cusp of contagion that was so obvious that policy makers would see it and finally react – we got a taste of that today with Draghi’s aggressive comments Markets are thin and can easily reverse […]

The T Report: How Dumb is Draghi? The Fed and AAPL too.

Posted by on Jul 25, 2012 in Uncategorized | No Comments

How Dumb is Draghi? The bear case continues to make a lot of sense. We have a global economy that is slowing. Profits are slowing. I see that and generally agree with it. I think housing may be stabilizing more than people give it credit as many of the problems slowly work themselves out, but […]