Archive for August, 2009

Credit Market Overview
August 31, 2009
If there is one thing that has been consistent lately it is inconsistency.  The reasons we hear for the market’s movement one day are the exact opposite of the reasons we heard the day before.
Friday an article in the WSJ by David Weidner reasoned that the movement in 5 stocks; C,… »

Credit Market Overview
August 28, 2009
You read this piece, every day I hope, to find out what is happening in the relationship between the credit markets and equities.  From time to time however we take a step up and look at a macro factor that is affecting all markets.  Sometimes this occurs in grandiose fashion and… »

Credit Market Overview
August 27, 2009
Over the past two days we have seen numbers for residential house price indices, mortgage applications and new home sales.  There are caveats that go along with these numbers e.g. how many sales were foreclosures, how much of the bidding wars were investors paying cash with the intention of renting out… »

Credit Market Overview
August 26, 2009
Anyone unfortunate enough to have watched any of the Congressional hearings on any of the myriad of topics that that august body deemed necessary enough to haul someone in front of them for showed the Nation if not specifically their constituents that our hard earned tax dollars really are(n’t) at work… »

Credit Market Overview
August 25, 2009
One of the interesting things about markets is how supply is created by demand.  If there is someone willing to spend money there will be someone that figures out how to sell them something.
One of the ways in which this has manifested itself during the thaw that has occurred since Lehman’s… »

Credit Market Overview
August 24, 2009
In this age of constant contact we email, IM and now Twitter with such rapidity that time itself seems be passing even faster than it actually is.
It would appear the stock market is in tune with the new trend as corrections barely get above the 3% level and are over in… »

Credit Market Overview
August 21, 2009
How many gas stations have you been to in your life?  It’s a nuisance to stop at one so there is not a high value attached to the experience, but a very good majority of people would say “more than I can remember”.
So, how about if you only had stopped at… »

Credit Market Overview
August 20, 2009
In today’s batch of economic statistics there are the headliners: Initial Jobless Claims, Leading Indicators, and the Philadelphia Fed Business Outlook Survey.  The statistic for the number of Delinquencies as a % of Total Loans is also due out this morning and while not a marquee stat it is one that… »

Credit Market Overview
August 19, 2009
We hear the phrase “When pigs fly” when we’ve asked a question for which a simple, polite, “no” is beyond the bounds of human compassion or when someone is euphemistically trying to describe the very low probability of something occurring.
Unfortunately, anyone using that phrase has never watched what goes on in… »

Credit Market Overview
August 18, 2009
A man is not a whole and complete man unless he owns a home and the ground it stands on.”  Those words came not from Bill Clinton on the launch of National Homeownership Day in 1995 or George Bush when he pledged his commitment to “an ownership society”.  They came, instead,… »