Bloomberg – ECB Said to Expand Covered Bond Purchases From Spain to Germany The European Central Bank bought Spanish covered bonds in a third day of asset purchases that has seen it acquire notes from Italy to Germany, according to people familiar with the matter. The ECB is adding to French and Portuguese securities it… Continue reading More On The ECB’s Corporate Bond Program
The Financial Times – Falling oil price to cut shale costs As oil prices have fallen, the cost of production from US shale has emerged as a critical question for investors. In a downturn, higher-cost supply is most at risk, and the need for horizontal wells and hydraulic fracturing – “fracking” – in shale reserves… Continue reading U.S. Crude Oil Production
The Telegraph – Oil slump leaves Russia even weaker than decaying Soviet Union Russia had the chance at the end of the Cold War to build a modern, diversified economy, with the enthusiastic help of the West. That chance has been squandered It took two years for crumbling oil prices to bring the Soviet Union… Continue reading Oil Prices And Russia
The Financial Times – Eurozone crisis fears re-emerge Markets unsure if ECB bank stress test results will be positive Is a second eurozone crisis looming? Or are we merely seeing the aftershocks of the last one? Premonitions of problems re-erupting in Europe’s 16-year-old monetary union go a long way to explain why global financial markets… Continue reading Trouble In Europe
The Washington Post – Election Lab Like most forecasting models, Election Lab uses the past to predict the future. To predict House and Senate elections in 2014, we draw on the elections from 1980-2012. We first look at how well key factors were related to outcomes in those past elections. Then, we gather information about… Continue reading The Mid-Term Elections
Daily Journal – Survey: Wage increases grow scarcer even as US hiring remains strong; sales also slow U.S. businesses were much less likely to boost pay in the third quarter than in previous months, even as hiring remained healthy, a sign that wage gains may remain weak in the coming months. A quarterly survey by… Continue reading U.S. Wages
Bloomberg View – Credit Crunch Lives on in Housing Don’t be fooled by low mortgages rates, which once again are below 4 percent: Credit for buying a home or refinancing an existing mortgage has almost never been tougher to get. What’s behind this? Leading up to the financial crisis, the U.S. housing bubble was a… Continue reading Credit Has Never Been Tighter
<Click on chart for larger image> Financial Sense – Is This the Beginning of a New Bear Market? Important Signs to Watch – Global stock markets lost over $5.5 trillion in value during recent sell off. – Central bankers took to the speaking circuit to arrest the market decline. – Fear readings and oversold conditions… Continue reading Is This The Beginning Of A Bear Market?
Dealbook (NYT Blog) – How Quantitative Easing Contributed to the Nation’s Inequality Problem Janet L. Yellen, the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, is regarded as a person of the highest integrity. And that is what’s so utterly confounding about the speech she gave in Boston last week about inequality. She did a wonderful job highlighting… Continue reading QE And Inequality In The U.S.
The Financial Times – Interest rate turmoil leads to Chicago Mercantile Exchange trading record While Wall Street watched with trepidation as markets whipsawed violently last week, 800 miles away the mood at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange was rather lighter. Interest rate turmoil has been a boon for the largest US futures exchange, providing further evidence… Continue reading Trading Record At The CME
Bloomberg.com – Loan Market Losing on All Fronts as CLO Rule Change Looms The $800 billion U.S. leveraged-loan market is losing mutual-fund investors just as it’s about to need them more than ever. Regulators are approving new rules this week making it more expensive to create funds that are the biggest source of demand for… Continue reading The Loan Market
DealBook (NYT Blog) – Peter Eavis: Seeking a Cause After 10-Year Treasury Bond’s Unnerving Move Bond market experts, however, are looking for other culprits for the volatility, rather than just sheer demand. One suspect is the computerization of Treasuries trading in recent years. Algorithms across Wall Street may sometimes overreact in unison to the information… Continue reading Computer-Driven Trading In The Bond Market