Goldman Traders Made $100 Million In A Day 68 Times Last Year
by ilene - March 1st, 2011 4:59 pm
Courtesy of Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider, Chart of the Day
The Goldman 10-K is out!
Here’s a look at how it did trading wise. It had 68 days of making more than $100 million from trading.
It only lost money on 25 days for the year.
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WHY AREN’T EQUITIES SELLING OFF MORE SIGNIFICANTLY?
by ilene - September 3rd, 2010 7:23 pm
WHY AREN’T EQUITIES SELLING OFF MORE SIGNIFICANTLY?
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
The deterioration in the economy has been clear in recent months, but the equity markets have confounded many investors. Stocks are just 10.6% off their highs and have shown some remarkable resilience, particularly in the last few weeks. There’s a great tug-of-war going on underneath what appears like a potentially frightening macro picture.
A closer look shows that what we’ve primarily seen is deterioration in the macro outlook and not so much in specific corporate outlooks. Despite the persistently weak economy, earnings aren’t falling out of bed. Without a sharp decline in earnings there is unlikely to be a sharp decline in the equity markets (outside of some exogenous event such as a sovereign default).
The most distinct characteristic I can recall from the the 2007/2008 market downturn was the persistent deterioration in earnings. Like dominoes we saw the various industries go down one by one: housing, then banks, then consumer discretionary and on down the line. While the macro picture has deteriorated recently we haven’t seen the same sort of deterioration in earnings that we saw in 2007 and 2008.
In a recent strategy note JP Morgan elaborated on the divergence between the macro outlook and the earnings outlook:
“What matters for equities is earnings and not GDP growth. US GDP growth projections are being cut, but earnings projections have been little affected so far. Investors and analysts are hoping that, to the extent the soft patch in US GDP growth lasts for only a few quarters and does not spillover to the rest of the world, US companies will be able to protect their revenues and profits. Indeed, this is what happened during 2Q, when US companies were able to deliver strong top line and EPS growth even as US GDP grew at only a 1% pace.
It is a prolonged soft patch that poses the greater threat for corporate earnings and equity markets as it raises the specter of deflation and profit margin contraction. Why is deflation bad for corporate profitability? When nominal interest rates are bounded at zero, a fall in expected inflation causes a rise in real interest rates and the cost of capital, hurting corporate profitability. In addition, nominal wage rigidities mean that deflation reduces output prices by more than input prices putting pressure on corporate profitability. Indeed, the
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But, You Sputtered, I’m Just A Hack….
by ilene - May 27th, 2010 3:07 pm
But, You Sputtered, I’m Just A Hack….
Courtesy of Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker
That is, with all my pesky math and charts like this:
Remember that I’ve been preaching for a while that we embedded a roughly $500-600 billion structural deficit into the economy post-2000? And that now, in response to this recession (and in a refusal to admit that we have been playing credit drunk) we’ve now embedded a roughly 10% structural deficit – three times the former?
Before you consider me a chucklehead for having the temerity to look at the math you might take it up with the BIS - the Bank of International Settlements, or the "bankers’ bank" – which agrees with me:
According to the Bank for International Settlements, the United States’ structural deficit — the amount of our deficit adjusted for the economic cycle — has increased from 3.1 percent of gross domestic product in 2007 to 9.2 percent in 2010.
Gee, you mean they looked at the same chart I’ve been preaching from?
This stuff isn’t hard folks!
Now Einhorn of Greenlight Capital, a rather-well-known hedge fund manager, is sounding off. He said:
A good percentage of the structural increase in the deficit is because last year’s “stimulus” was not stimulus in the traditional sense. Rather than a one-time injection of spending to replace a cyclical reduction in private demand, the vast majority of the stimulus has been a permanent increase in the base level of government spending — including spending on federal jobs.
Yep.
This is exactly what I’ve been saying now since this mess began and the "response" became clear: Government didn’t "stimulate", it instead built in structural deficits – just as it did in 2003.
But you can read David’s missive any time you’d like, or the BIS’.
The key question is why would the government take such a step?
Some would claim that it was about trying to exert more control over the economy, as of there is some sort of grand conspiracy extant to take every piece of control you have over your life and transfer it to government.
I’m a bit more realistic in my assessment – and less conspiratorial.
Government did this because it was the only way to avoid having to admit that we have too much debt in the…
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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 site