Down go the dominoes. The out-of-the-loop financial media will probably blame this largely on the Fed ending its MBS program but let’s be honest about the real factor behind it: remedial economics. Surprise surprise; when the market is flooded with supply with few takers, you get bond auctions like we got last week.
For more than a year, analysts have been warning that record sized debt sales by the US Treasury were at odds with a 10-year yield sitting comfortably below 4 per cent. This week, the yield on 10-year notes jumped from 3.65 per cent to a peak of 3.92 per cent on Thursday. On Friday it was 3.87 per cent.
I’m afraid someone has to point out the obvious here: credit markets don’t like getting the crack unceremoniously taken away, no more than the investors who have been buying into this ridiculousness thinking the free money will never end. Guess what? It’s over.
Mortgage investors got an unwelcome wake-up call last week after Treasury yields surged, a jolt that indicated that the Federal Reserve’s exit from the market may not go as smoothly as thought.
As the yield on 10-year Treasury notes jumped, yields on Fannie Mae’s benchmark 30-year bond followed, rising to 4.45% from 4.33%. That sent mortgage rates above 5%.
It was an unsettling surge as the Fed prepares to end its $1.25 trillion program of buying mortgage securities on Wednesday. Many in the market had come to believe the Fed’s exit would have little effect on mortgage bonds. They reasoned there were enough investors hungry for extra yield that they would step in to buy once the Fed left.
Here’s what I see… the skittish Fed, scared to death to let markets work out their own kinks lest they allow the cancerous bits to rot off (that might put Fannie and Freddie in an uncomfortable position), backpedals on its plan to start unloading MBSs and instead holds on to (and/or increases) its holdings to wait out the expiration of the first-time homebuyer credit in April, despite dismal numbers after the December extension. If you call 180,000 new…
Things are escalating quickly... with US Treasuries beginning to look a lot like JGBs: the 5Y soared +18bps to the highest since August 2011, the 10Y +13.5bps touches 2.32% widest since March 2012, 30Y +8bps, and credit markets are getting monkey-hammered. There is no joy in Newport Beachville.
5Y the worst!!
Credit majorly underperforming...
Nikkei surged (on JPY weakness) and has corrected (even as JPY remains at its lows)...
No change to the statement as expected and Ben is speaking now. Basically he is dovish – one takeaway which I mentioned quite a few months ago but he reiterated today. The 6.5% unemployment rate is a threshold NOT a trigger. What that means is if inflation is benign when 6.5% unemployment returns, the Fed will be in no rush to raise interest rates. i.e. the goalposts are soft, nor hard. The market rallied on that… but it's not new news really.
Also the majority of members do not anticipate selling MBS off the balance sheet – this is part and parcel with the view that the balance sheet will not...
We no longer have a free market. The world’s financial asset prices have become a plaything of central banks and the sovereign wealth funds of a few emerging powers.
Julian Callow from Barclays says they are buying $1.8 trillion worth of AAA or safe-haven bonds each year from an available pool of $2 trillion. Nothing like this has been seen before in modern times, if ever.
The Fed, the ECB, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, et al, own $10 trillion in bonds. China, the petro-powers, et al, own another $10 trillion. Between them they have locked up $20 trillion, equal to roughly 2...
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In advance of today's FOMC meeting outcome and Chairman Bernanke's press conference, let's take a quick look at a couple of items in the latest Wall Street Journal survey of economists -- this one conducted June 7-11. With the recent controversy over the direction of Treasury yields, a key issue addressed in the survey is where economists expect the 10-year yield to be across six timeframes: mid-year and year end 2013 through 2015.
The survey was sent to 52 economists, 46 of whom responded, and of the 46, some skipped individual survey questions. Here is a table showing the major response statistics: Low, Median (middle), Average (aka Mean), Mode (most frequent) and High.
As we readily see from the table, the responses for ...
PDC Energy, Inc. ("PDC" or the "Company") (Nasdaq: PDCE) today announced that it closed yesterday, June 18, 2013, on the previously disclosed sale of its non-core Colorado natural gas assets.
The Company's non-core Colorado assets were sold to Caerus Oil and Gas LLC for approximately $185 million in net proceeds, subject to customary post-closing adjustments. Under the purchase and sale agreement, the transaction was given economic effect as of January 1, 2013. The assets sold are approximately 99% natural gas in terms of reserves and include an estimated 85 billion cubic feet equivalent (Bcfe) of net proved developed producing reserves as of December 31, 2012. The assets produced approximately 40 million net cubic feet of natural gas equivalent per day in the first quarter of...
LZB - La-Z-Boy, Inc. – Shares in furniture producer, La-Z-Boy, Inc., increased as much as 3.9% to $19.80 at the start of the session, the highest level since 2004, ahead of the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report after the closing bell today. Options volume is up ahead of the report, with roughly 400 contracts in play this afternoon versus average daily volume of around 80 contracts. Trading in La-Z-Boy call options is outpacing puts, with the call/put ratio up above 4.3 as of the time of this writing. Some traders appear to be p...
The market responded well today to good economic news and to the positive and somewhat surprising response to the election of a moderate Iranian President. Some moderation in Turkey didn’t hurt either, and overnight positive markets in Asia and Europe gave bullish investors enough encouragement to buy equities broadly.
This drove all three major domestic indices up about 1% before a late small selloff left the S&P 500 Index up nearly 1% and the Nasdaq and Dow Jones Industrial Average both up well over 0.5%. We think it likely this week that the market will challenge highs set in late May.
NEW: Writers are available to chat with Members regarding topics presented in SWW, comments are found below each post.
Click here for the latest Stock World Weekly. Sign in with your PSW user name and password, or sign up for a free trial. There's an interesting option trade on LULU presented in the newsletter this week.
Trivia on lululemon via Paul Price, article found in NYTimes.
Reminder: OpTrader is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
This post is for all our live virtual trade ideas and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).
We also indicate our stop, which is most of the time the "5 day moving average". All trades, unless indicated, are front-month ATM options.
Please feel free to participate in the discussion and ask any questions you might have about this virtual portfolio, by clicking on the "comments" link right below.
To learn more about the swing trading virtual portfolio (strategy, performance, FAQ, etc.), please click here
Reminder: Craigzooka is available to chat with Members regarding his virtual portfolio performance, comments are found below each post.
By Craigzooka
I am going to share with you how I manage my IRA and the power of reducing your cost basis. My goal each year is a 20% return in my IRA. Sometimes I make it and sometimes I don't, but I believe that all of my success is due to reducing my cost basis. To illustrate the power of reducing your cost basis here are some trades we did last year. These trades are taken from an educational portfolio we ran in a paper-trading account for a little more than a year.
We bought RIG on 5/15/2012 for $44.13, sold it on 1/18/2013 for $46 but booked a profit of $1,154.
We bought MT on 1/4/2012 for $19.24, sold it on 12/21/2012 for $15 but booked a profit of $454.
We bought CHK on 1/27/2012 for $21.93, sold it on 10/19/2012 for $18 b...
Stock market posts another record setting week, but the big news came after Friday’s close.
Courtesy of NASA
The stock market put on another record setting show with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) closing at a record high 15,118 and the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) closing at 1633.70, another all time closing high.
For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) gained 1%, the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) climbed 1.2%, the Nasdaq Composite (NYSEARCA:...
Reminder: Pharmboy is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
Well, well, well....it is good to know that there are others in the scientific arena who believed that YMI Bioscience's data (cough - Gilead) is a better drug than Incyte's Jakafi. Now, the definitive data are still unknown, but there was enough evidence from a Phase 2 trial to take a small risk for a huge reward. So, let's forget about Apple (AAPL), and do nothing but biotechs from now until Congress passes universal health care coverage for prescriptions....and drive the prices down so that research and development is no longer feasible to conduct in the US. Even Seattle Genetics (SGEN) has been on a tear as of late...
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(
