Archive for June, 2009

Credit Market Overview
June 16, 2009
When someone is on life support the discussion regarding whether or not to remove them portends something very bad or reasonably good.  The world’s financial markets were in a very bad way for all of last year and most of the 1st quarter of 2009.  Since then ample media attention has… »

Credit Market Overview
June 15, 2009
We have all heard the adage “Cash is King” but it would appear that in addition to being royalty it can also confer said regalness as the amount of money ($3.592TN given an estimate by the WSJ) being pumped into the world’s economies is beginning to have an effect.  It is… »

Credit Market Overview
June 12, 2009
One of the basic premises of technical analysis is that all of the information that is known about a specific entity is reflected in its price.  All of the factors effecting supply and demand are distilled down to a figure which represents how much it costs to buy or sell that… »

Credit Market Overview
June 11, 2009
Cross currents in the commodity markets are currently swirling worse than Hell Gate at the height of ebb tide.  Hell Gate, for those who don’t know, is that dicey stretch of water between the Bronx and Queens that leads from Long Island Sound to the East River.  If you imagine Connecticut… »

Credit Market Overview
June 10, 2009
“Grasping at straws” is a phrase we here from time to time and its etymology is actually “A drowning man will catch at straws” first tracked back to ‘Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation’ (1534) by Thomas More (1478-1535). First cited in the United States in ‘Colonial Currency’ (1720).  (Thank you Yahoo!… »

Credit Market Overview
June 9, 2009
In support of the cynically tinged axiom that “No good deed goes unpunished” I offer you Ford Motor Co. (F).
With both GM and Chrysler now wards of the state and the recently dismembered finance arm of the first making loans for both, the bond holders of the latter won a temporary… »

Credit Market Overview
June 8, 2009
The release Friday of the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s “Change in Nonfarm Payrolls” came in at about 2/3rds of the number that was expected because of the “birth-death factor”.  The adjustment was 220,000 jobs which begs the question, even on a Monday, if the adjustment is equal to 40% of what… »

Credit Market Overview
June 5, 2009
We used to call my Grandfather “Baba” and he used to call oil, “erl”.  Regardless of what you call it; after an initial pop in late March and a bit of indecision in back end of April the “black gold” made from dinosaurs bones, has done a pretty good imitation of… »

Credit Market Overview
June 4, 2009
The purpose of this note each day is to look at the relationship between the credit and equity markets to examine what is moving and why.  At times it is necessary to step back and take a look at the forces that are simultaneously affecting both of these markets.
Timothy Geithner returned… »

Credit Market Overview
June 3, 2009
Usually, when I mention “unintended consequences” in this space it is in reference to some ham fisted attempt by government to legislate human nature or more correctly attempt to change human nature via legislation.  We have seen multiple of examples of abject failure but still no lessons learned.
There is, however, an… »