The Big Picture |
- Weekly Eurozone Watch, December 28, 2012
- Bye
- Simon Beck: Trampled Snow Art
- America’s Cars and Appliances Are Getting Old
- Congrats to Peter Boockvar
- 10 Friday AM Reads
- The Tiresome Holiday Sales Forecast Pattern
- Rookies Manning the Terminals
- Efficient Bailouts?
| Weekly Eurozone Watch, December 28, 2012 Posted: 28 Dec 2012 03:00 PM PST Key Data Points Comments Source: Guardian and Telegraph
(click here if charts are not observable)
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| Posted: 28 Dec 2012 10:30 AM PST After 18 years and 2 months I am leaving Miller Tabak to join Leon Cooperman and Steve Einhorn at I thank you for reading my notes and tolerating my occasional rants over the many years. I hope to remain in good touch. My email for the next week after today will be pboockvar -at- yahoo.com. Happy 2013! |
| Posted: 28 Dec 2012 09:30 AM PST We have some more snow coming this weekend — it time to make Trampled Snow Art:
Source: This is Colossal |
| America’s Cars and Appliances Are Getting Old Posted: 28 Dec 2012 09:00 AM PST
A potentially bullish data point: All of this stuff eventually has to get replaced. The question is how much of this economic activity falls to the US economy; I’d guess well over 50%.
Source: |
| Posted: 28 Dec 2012 08:14 AM PST Peter Boockvar who runs the microblog Macro Notes in our side column, is moving from the sell side to the buy side. He sent an email to his clients from his desk at Miller Tabak, he is leaving to Leon Cooperman’s Omega Advisors as a strategist and PM. Good luck in your new haunts, Peter! |
| Posted: 28 Dec 2012 06:50 AM PST Good Friday morning — your order of reads is ready:
What are you up to this weekend?
Market’s Fear Gauge Reaches Critical Level |
| The Tiresome Holiday Sales Forecast Pattern Posted: 28 Dec 2012 05:30 AM PST • Reuters – U.S. retailers scramble after lackluster holiday sales The 2012 holiday season may have been the worst for retailers since the 2008 financial crisis, with sales growth far below expectations, forcing many to offer massive post-Christmas discounts in hopes of shedding excess inventory. While chains like Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Gap Inc are thought to have done well, analysts expect much less from the likes of book seller Barnes & Noble Inc and department store chain J. C. Penney Co Inc. Shares of retailers dropped sharply on Wednesday, helping drag broader indexes lower, as investors realized they were likely to be disappointed when companies start to report results in a few weeks' time. • The Daily Caller – US holiday retail sales growth weakest since 2008 U.S. shoppers spent cautiously this holiday season, a disappointment for retailers who slashed prices to lure people into stores and now must hope for a post-Christmas burst of spending. Sales of electronics, clothing, jewelry and home goods in the two months before Christmas increased 0.7 percent compared with last year, according to the MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse report. That was below the healthy 3 to 4 percent growth that analysts had expected — and it was the worst year-over-year performance since 2008, when spending shrank sharply during the Great Recession. In 2011, retail sales climbed 4 to 5 percent during November and December, according to ShopperTrak.
Comment: This pattern is getting tiresome as we see it year after year.
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| Posted: 28 Dec 2012 04:56 AM PST
When you are trading on a Level III Terminal, you can see the full order book and market makers. If you were trying to fill an order, you had to be cognizant of the big boys, who could push prices around easy. When GSCO or MLCO were bidding size, if you were a buyer, it meant you were going to pay up, and if you had stock for sale you got the hell out of the way. You had a price range on most orders and squeezing an extra teeny (1/16teenth of a cent) was a good thing. Back in the days when I was sitting on a trading desk, I was amused by days such as these. Volumes were much lower than the rest of the year, institutional activity was light, and anomalies existed everywhere. The day before and after Thanksgiving was like that, as was July Fourth week and President’s Week in February (You mean some people could afford to leave work for a week and go on vacation?) But the mother of all rookie trading sessions was the week between Xmas and New Year’s Day. Anyone worth a level 3 was gone, and the rookie kids (like me) left manning the terminals were given strict orders: Don’t Screw Up. That was good advice, and most guys tried to follow it. Back then, I had very little trading authority and not a lot of discretion. I was more than a clerk, less than a trader. I was curious and experimental, and could not help but notice that it didn’t take much to move a Goldman or a Merrill out of the way. So that’s what I occasionally did. It was fun, so long as I did not lose money. We all went home (mostly) flat each night — no one wanted to have to explain it to the boss on January 2nd why we had a huge loss. I suspect the action we are seeing today is similar — the kids are running the show, and no one wants to take a hit. Josh called this week Garbage Time, and I agree. I also imagine some of the big long only full invested shops (i.e., Mutual Funds, Pensions, etc.) have a standard practice for the traders that states “Any day X happens, do Y.” When we sold off over 1% yesterday on essentially no news, these buy programs may have kicked in. If cash is sitting around, but the PM and the fam are lying on a beach, that’s how it happens. Hence, yesterday’s ugliness and reversal. Be cautious about reading too much into the action this week or Monday. A full reboot awaits us all next Wednesday, January 2nd. |
| Posted: 28 Dec 2012 03:00 AM PST |
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