Goldman High Frequency Strategist EPS Range Includes 700-900 Low End Target on the S&P for 2012

“….now openly contemplating downside cases to his EPS forecast. And with 2012 EPS numbers thrown around like $91 based on what is certainly an upcoming (but for now still hypothetical) margin contraction, $82 based on a 2% drop (almost guaranteed) in GDP Y/Y, and $75 based on historical earnings plunges in a recession, it may be time to listen up, because apply a traditional contractionary multiple of about 9-10x, and you have yourself a tidy little range of 700 – 910 on the S&P in about a year, absent yet another round of fiscal and/or monetary stimulus.

Kostin on the sensitivity between GDP and EPS:”

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“China may ease up on buying Treasurys as U.S. growth slows and instead focus on developing internal demand, says Stephen Roach, the non-executive chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia.

China traditionally buys Treasurys to help finance the U.S. economy so Western consumers will buy goods made in China, but less demand here leaves the Asian giant little choice but to do what many say needs to be done anyway: export less and buy more at home.

“This is China’s wakeup call,” Roach tells CNBC.”

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“The U.S. has entered a bear market and will stay there for a while thanks to a weak economy at home and a debt crisis in Europe that threatens to punish the global financial system, says investors Dennis Gartman.

“We are in an unmitigated bear market,” Gartman, author of The Gartman Letter, tells CNBC.

The bad news gets worse, Gartman adds.”

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“I happen to feel that somewhere in the world we can make 7 percent on equities for the next 10 years,” Faber tells MarketWatch. “I can buy you a portfolio of high-dividend stocks in Asia that would have a yield of 5-to-7 percent.”

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From what i hear not only soda but candy and junk food can be bot with food stamps; but you can’t buy protein powders and many small business or independent food stuffs at health food stores.

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Obama says congress has slowed the U.S. recovery by blocking “common sense measures;” republicans say the president has responsibility to act.

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Uncle Sam is good at inflating prices huh….

Large corporations expect a 7.2% jump over the 7.4% jump in 2010.

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After three warnings to leave the parks police started hauling in protesters.

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This means thousands of more pink slips; however it is not clear if this is in addition to the 3500 job cuts recently announced.

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Belgium is willing to give support and feels that issuing bonds will not tip the balance. Merkel insists it is not a good idea and will lead to instability. Also once issued Merkel feels that there will not be any ability to “force discipline” upon the countries who roll over there debt.

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Thousands of striking Verizon workers will return to work Tuesday, though their contract dispute isn’t over yet.The 45,000 employees, who have been on strike since Aug. 7, agreed to return to work while they negotiate with Verizon Communications Inc. on the terms of a new contract. The workers are employed in nine states from Massachusetts to Virginia in the landline division.Among the issues in dispute is the company’s move to freeze pensions and its demand that workers contribute to their health insurance premiums. The company argues that it has to reduce benefits as the landline business deteriorates. More Americans are forgoing such lines in favor of mobile phones.

FULL STORY HERE
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/verizon_workers_going_back_to_work_kXlDmn7sK7NqC6agt2p97N#ixzz1VcrZPuvK

“Nobody Uses them”

FULL STORY HERE

Follow on Reuters Here

Developing…

Investors around the world are quickly losing faith that policymakers will find a credible solution to end Europe’s most serious crisis since the euro’s inception more than a decade ago.As stock markets plunge and fear ratchets higher, some are clinging to an intriguing concept: euro bonds. In an effort to bring Europe towards fiscal, not just monetary union, bonds would be jointly sold by the euro area’s 17 nations — likely at far lower interest rates than those offered to troubled countries like Greece.
While the idea of euro bonds is staunchly opposed by the current German government, some believe these securities could help heal Europe, but only if they are linked to painful and politically unpopular steps to wean nations off their addiction to debt and get their economies growing faster.

Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/08/19/are-euro-bonds-key-to-solving-europes-debt-disaster/#ixzz1VasJtA1R

____________________

FROM REUTERS

The overall economy may be struggling against a double-dip recession but in farm country the boom times have rarely been better.
Farmland prices are setting records and farmer incomes have been buoyed by exports and biofuels, easing the pain of some rough summer weather from drought, floods and fires.
Amid China’s voracious appetite for grains and worries about climate hurting crops and food supplies in many countries, U.S. agriculture’s attraction as the world’s breadbasket has become a beacon for Wall Street.
Firms like Omaha-based Gavilon, owned by Ospraie, a hedge fund associated with George Soros and Canada-listed Ceres Global Ag have been buying up grain elevators from Wyoming to Toronto.
That is unusual: investors owning grain silos. But analysts say it’s not what it seems. No one wants to hold corn as a long-term asset, like gold bullion. But storing and moving grain for others has now become a very profitable business.
William Wilson, a consultant and professor at North Dakota State University, said that 10 years ago you could store grain at elevators 2-1/2 to 3 cents per bushel per month. Now costs can be 8-10 cents a month depending on location or grain.
“We’ve seen a lot of big new entrants into the agricultural commodity industry including White Box, Gavilon and others who are expanding,” Wilson said, referring to Minnesota-based hedge fund White Box Advisers, once an owner of grain storage.
“One reason has been the shift to ethanol having a bigger part of the market, where they demand quick access to corn on a 12-month basis,” Wilson said.
“Most of the time when you hear of private capital moving into agriculture they are talking about buying farms. But storage is a logistical function of the marketplace,” he added.
Wilson said special market factors, such as changes to the Chicago Board of Trade wheat contract, have also had the cumulative effect of raising prices for grain storage.
“It’s very important that in the last five years the market price of storage has increased,” Wilson said. “That has provided incentives to construct storage and has provided incentive for new players to enter into this world.”
Don Grambsch, president of Riverland Ag Corp, a Minnesota firm owned by Ceres, operates 14 grain facilities in Minnesota, North Dakota, Wyoming, New York and Ontario with capacity to store 50 million bushels of grain. He said they don’t have investors storing grain as long-term holdings.
“I have not heard of them wanting to buy physicals,” he said. “We are a conventional grain company and store for third party users … They are not financial people, they are processors, beverage companies and so on.”
FARMLAND PRICES SOAR
Wall Street investors and hedge funds also continue to push money into speculative vehicles like grain-related indexes and funds that trade grain derivatives. Corn gains in the last five years look almost as impressive as gold’s.
But the traditional asset play on agriculture by Wall Street — farmland — has also pushed to dizzying heights.
The Chicago Federal Reserve Bank on Wednesday said farmland prices in the Midwest in the second quarter were up 17 percent from a year ago — the biggest jump in 34 years.
Most of the 226 bankers questioned in its quarterly survey said they expect prices to level off in the next three months — but a third also said they expected even more gains.
“Demand for farmland remained strong from both farmers and investors,” the Chicago Fed said.
It is the same story in the Plains. The Kansas City Fed on Monday released its own banker survey showing similar results with farmland values up more than 20 percent from a year ago.
University of Illinois economist Gary Schnitkey attributes the soaring value of farmland to the sluggish economy and the inability of the United States, the European Union and other sovereign debtors to come to grips with fiscal imbalances.
“The threat of long-run instability places a premium on real assets over financial assets. This suggests that a more stable general economic outlook would lead to less aggressive growth in farmland prices,” Schnitkey said.

DREADFUL. There is no way he survives this. Sino-Forest is excluded from this list.

No. Ticker Inst. Holdr. (% outstanding) Institutional Holder 1-month Return
1 PMI 3.09 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -72.73
2 FCH 4.58 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -52.17
3 BZH 7.61 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -49.84
4 SPMD 16.81 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -49.62
5 DEXO 7.31 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -45.69
6 SHO 4.23 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -43.10
7 BEE 4.58 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -42.15
8 CBG 4.15 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -41.69
9 BYD 4.64 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -39.66
10 MGM 8.96 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -38.83
11 AHT 4.92 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -38.81
12 ANR 9.93 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -37.15
13 RF 1.54 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -34.92
14 FHN 2.92 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -31.52
15 STI 6.39 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -30.97
16 BZ 6.59 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -29.84
17 WY 5.89 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -29.39
18 C 1.41 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -29.36
19 MNI 9.78 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -28.15
20 BAC 1.22 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -27.48
21 GEN 6.69 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -27.34
22 HIG 9.86 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -25.36
23 LNG 4.05 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -24.95
24 WHR 3.87 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -24.76
25 MYL 6.12 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -24.74
26 MTN 6.21 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -23.59
27 RKT 9.64 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -23.00
28 ACAS 12.40 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -22.52
29 GGP 2.07 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -22.02
30 CNO 9.73 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -21.98
31 BPOP 6.55 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -21.57
32 LEA 4.00 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -19.87
33 APC 4.27 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -19.75
34 IP 2.29 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -19.55
35 RIG 7.63 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -18.42
36 HHC 5.78 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -18.01
37 BLK 1.04 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -17.56
38 VECO 7.36 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -17.02
39 SNI 2.24 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -16.38
40 BAX 1.40 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -15.96
41 COF 3.92 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -14.82
42 ARG 1.78 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -14.72
43 BSX 5.26 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -14.43
44 NVS 0.27 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -11.90
45 XL 0.00 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -10.84
46 AON 2.81 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -9.41
47 FDO 2.87 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -8.11
48 NG 8.47 PAULSON & COMPANY, INC. -7.54

View the world in similarity as opposed to differences

Hats off to Scott. Perhaps we should employ his model

Courtesy of The PPT: