Singing “Davos Done and We Need Another Loan”

by Phil - January 31st, 2010 7:40 am

Debt-O, debt-uh-oh
Interest come and we need another loan
Debt-O, debt-uh-oh
Interest come and we need another loan

Work our lives just to lose our homes
Interest come and we need another loan
Stack default swaps till they come undone
Interest come and we need another loan

Come on Economists, tell us some more BS
Interest come and we need another loan
Come on Economists, tell us some more BS
Interest come and we need another loan

6%, 7% - it’s a credit crunch
Interest come and we need another loan
6%, 7% - it’s a credit crunch
Interest come and we need another loan

Debt-O, debt-uh-oh
Interest come and we need another loan
Debt-O, debt-uh-oh
When interest comes we’ll need another loan
 

It was the best of times (with the IMF predicting 3.9% Global growth) and the worst of times (with Roubini saying we’re all doomed) at Davos this week as the men who rule the world gathered to divide the spoils over card games while vying with each other for podium and TV time so they could talk their various books from the safety of the Swiss mountains.  Davos, a tiny village perched on a mountain with just two main streets, lacks the protests of other Global gatherings.  During the annual meeting, the town is taken hostage by thousands of police.  “Anyone who looks like a protester can be thrown off the train,” says Marco Leutholz, head of the local Socialist party (and that train often overlooks steep cliffs!).  Sir Howard Davies (director of the LSE) writes:

The mood is certainly better than last year, when the world was ending, but it is worse than at the beginning of last week. Alessandro Profumo of Unicredit acutely observed that Davos is likely to accentuate whatever mood you arrived in, rather as alcohol does, I guess. So those who arrived nervous about the economic prospects are leaving even more jittery. If you arrived feeling pessimistic, you will leave somewhere between suicidal and homicidal.

The market background has not helped. Anxiety about Greece has grown over the past three days. In the circumstances, it was strange to see both the Greek prime minister and his finance minister here. Maybe the subtext was to show that there can be no crisis if they are munching muesli in the mountains, but though some may have been reassured, more people asked who was at home minding the taverna.

Hey I like that guy - let’s sign him up as a regular writer!  Let’s NOT sign up Bill Gates, as Captain Obvious posted on his blog: "One of the big topics of conversation here in Davos is the economy."  They say retirement makes your brain…

Tags: Cramer, Davies, Davos, Gates, Greece, Roubini, Sarkozy, Sorrell, Stiglitz, Whitbread

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Wednesday - End of Quarter, End of Pump?

by Phil - September 30th, 2009 8:29 am

Yesterday could not have gone better!

I titled the morning post "Confidence is Key" and decided that, since my targets were dead on Monday, that we should stick to our bear plan into the Consumer Confidence report which was, as we expected, a huge disappointment.  My 9:50 Alert to members suggested the DIA 9/30 $99 puts for $1 into the report and then we got a nice 100-point drop for the rest of the day that ran those puts up to $1.60 (up 60%).  Also, in that same alert, we went back into SRS (now dubbed "The Widow-Maker") at $9 and those finished the day at $9.50 (up 5.5%) and the Nov $8 puts we sold for .75 dropped to .60 (up 20%).  These are not bad trades to make while we wait around for the market to pick a real direction.

In addition to a poor Consumer Confidence report (53.1 vs 57 expected), we also got a very poor Investor Confidence reading at 118.1, down from 122.8 in August, which was a 5-year high.  "There is a recognition that a portion of the recent rise in global equity prices can be attributed to liquidity expansion rather than fundamental opportunities. Institutional investors are pausing to assess this balance," study says. 

Speaking of investors who are not confident, GE’s own Jeff Immelt, unlike his army of pump-jocks on CNBC, isn’t willing to sully his own reputation by mindlessly cheerleading the economy.  He was in Singapore yesterday and said that: "high unemployment and slower lending will drag on U.S. economic growth, likely resulting in the weakest recovery in decades… Easing up money has always been the elixir to keep the economy in recovery mode," Immelt said. "But once you get interest rates to zero percent, you can’t go much below that, which is kind of where we are right now.  A lot of the jobs lost in financial services and construction are never coming back."

If you don’t think Immelt is in touch with the economy despite GE’s Global footprint and $180Bn in sales, perhaps we can listen to WMT CEO Robson Walton (yes, nepotism), who oversees $400Bn in annual sales and he said at yesterday’s CEO conference: "The World recovery is going to be led by Asia although it’s going to be very challenging.  I think this recovery is going to be a slow one - sales have been tough."

As noted in David Fry’s Daily S&P chart, volume the last two days fell off a cliff…

Tags: China Anniversary, CIT, debt, GDP, IMF, Sarkozy, SPY, USO

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