Archive for July, 2009

Credit Market Overview
July 17, 2009
Two years after it was formed in 1978 the Entertainment Sports Programming Network or ESPN as it is more commonly known began broadcasting 24/7/365.  Great for sports fanatics but a headache and a half for the person responsible for filling up all of that air time.
The solution was to include various… »

Credit Market Overview
July 16, 2009
As the SPX was climbing like it was going to make a new high for the year in the next 10 minutes yesterday a story came across Bloomberg with the headline, “Credit Market Rally Sputters as Investors Doubt Growth Rebound”.
The article cited Barclay Capital Inc. index data showing spreads on high… »

Credit Market Overview
July 15, 2009
Meredith Whitney’s appearance on CNBC recently has done much for those that have hoped, since the bubble first burst, that all of the problems would simply go away.  Issuing the first “buy” rating her eponymously named advisory group has issued since its inception (albeit a short time ago).
The herd has taken… »

Credit Market Overview
July 14, 2009
Albert Einstein described compound interest as the ninth wonder of the world.  Given his other contributions to science and society one would probably have a pretty hard time taking the other side of that argument.  If, however, they are accepting suggestions for the 10th I would like to see “correlation” get… »

Credit Market Overview
July 13, 2009
The Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb known technically as GBU-43/B and affectionately as the Mother Of All Bombs is a 30 foot, 22,600lb honey that actually explodes about 3 feet above the ground and clears a 900 foot circle around wherever it strikes.
Since it first blasted on to the scene in… »

Credit Market Overview
July 10, 2009
On March 9th of this year investment grade spreads on the CDX index peaked at 262bs and the high yield index peaked at 1925bps.  The S&P had its lowest close on this very same day at 676.53.
For all intents and purposes that still holds as the closest thing we know as… »

Credit Market Overview
July 9, 2009
They say it’s not what you have but how you use it.
Alcoa (AA) has the aluminum, and reported 2Q09 results last night and Boeing (BA) uses aluminum to make planes and they’ve been plagued by a litany of problems in trying to get their new Dreamliner off the ground, literally, so… »

Credit Market Overview
July 8, 2009
A list of the ironies that have associated economic events for the last two years and the market place’s reaction to them could fill an encyclopedia no less this humble page.  Not the least of which is that after the 10th wettest June since records began being kept in 1872 the… »

Credit Market Overview
July 7, 2009
Humpty Dumpty, which we all now know as an egg, was a poem originally written as a riddle 1810 for which “an egg” was the answer.  Egg shells crack when you drop them from a wall or even a few inches and the size of the mess is fully dependent on… »

Credit Market Overview
July 6, 2009
Since August of 2007, when BNP Paribas froze withdrawals in three investment funds because of losses on CDO’s constructed with subprime mortgages and the world realized that if an institution with no clear link to U.S. housing could be thusly affected, than the everyone was pretty much fair game, there has… »