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Comments »“So last night Europe announced a bailout for Greece, but today markets in Europe are selling off.
Is it just a sell the news kind of thing? Perhaps, although SocGen thinks there’s a little more:
The agreement consists of a number of changes – some examples include, private bond holders will take a greater loss (reported at 53.5%), the interest margin is reduced, and the ECB and central banks will not take profits on its holdings of Greek bonds. Together, this is estimated to bring the debt to GDP figure to 120.5% by 2020. It still has to be ratified by national governments and while this is expected to be passed it stretches out the uncertainty factor further. The front page of the FT “Greek nightmare laid bare”, however, has largely undermined the announcement effect, and we’d expect further consolidation today in asset classes.
So basically, the fact that the headlines are already saying that the bailout probably won’t work isn’t doing any wonders for confidence in the wake of the announcement.”
Comments »Citi’s big equity strategist Tobias Levkovich is cooling on the market rally.
In a note out today, he cites two charts indicative of a possibility of a market rollover.
The theme of them is the same: fundamentals are turning down, and it’s likely that stocks will catch up.
Citi
“Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (ALIBABZ), in talks to buy back a stake owned by Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), offered as much as HK$19.6 billion ($2.5 billion) to privatize a listed unit and gain full control of China’s biggest corporate e-commerce site.
The company bid HK$13.50 a share for the 27 percent of Alibaba.com Ltd. (1688) it doesn’t already own, according to a Hong Kong Stock Exchange statement today. That’s a 46 percent premium to the last closing price.
Alibaba Group Chairman Jack Ma may take over the listed unit and purchase the Yahoo stake as he tries to turn around the company after a fraud scandal and drop in subscriptions. Alibaba.com today reported quarterly profit that missed estimates and predicted that vendor growth would slow….”
Comments »Crude oil leaped to fresh nine-month highs and breached the $105 level on Monday as geopolitical jitters increased after Iran cut oil exports to the U.K. and France over the weekend.
The higher energy prices threaten to put new pressure on or even derail the U.S. economic recovery, which in recent months has surprised many by meaningfully picking up steam.
Traders bid oil prices higher after Iran reacted to new European Union sanctions by curtailing crude sales to British and French companies.
European officials said they are “well stocked” with oil and petroleum products and Saudi Arabia has pledged to help, but that didn’t prevent the energy markets from responding to the news.
“The fact is prices are going up as world oil demand is going up. The geopolitics in the Middle East is playing a big role in that,” Andy Lipow of Lipow Oil Associates told FOX Business. “It is really shocking what we’ve seen over the last six weeks.”
Lipow, who projected as much as a 30-cent rise in gasoline prices over the next two months, said he believes there is at least a $12 a barrel risk premium in the current price of oil due to fears over a supply disruption.
The last trade on the current March contract was $104.92 a barrel, up $1.68, or 1.63%. The final trade on the April contract was $105.26, up $1.66, or 1.60%. The April contract traded as high as $105.80 — its highest intraday level since May 5. Brent crude rose 47 cents a barrel, or 0.39%, to end at $120.05, leaving it just under 18% away from its all-time record settle of $146.08 set in July 2008.
In addition to concerns about Iranian exports, some are worried about Iran’s threat to shut down the crucial Strait of Hormuz or the repercussions of a potential military attack by Israel on Iranian nuclear sites.
A number of British and French companies are believed to have already stopped importing Iranian crude even before the new EU sanctions take effect on July 1 to stop buying the country’s oil.
Besides the Iranian worries, crude oil benefited from news in the beleaguered eurozone, which is expected to sign off on a $172 billion bailout of Greece. By approving the rescue package, the monetary union won’t have to deal with a potentially disastrous default by Greece, for now at least.
The rise in oil prices comes after crude jumped 4.6% last week, its strongest weekly gain since the week prior to Christmas. Crude is now on track for its fifth rally in the past six sessions and is off less than $10 from its 52-week high of $113.93 that was set in April 2011.
Triple-digit oil prices mean increased headaches for consumers and businesses alike. Most Americans will feel the pain through higher gasoline prices, while businesses need to grapple with higher transportation and manufacturing costs.
At $3.56 a gallon, gas prices are at their highest level ever for this time of the year, according to AAA. Regular gas prices stood at $3.565 a gallon on Monday, up 1.53% from a week ago and 12.5% from a year ago when they were $3.168.
Lipow said he believes the national average price of gasoline will be as high as $3.90 a gallon this month and significantly higher on the coasts. He said for oil prices to meaningfully drop in the near term, there would need to be a “breakthrough” in the negotiations with Iran over nuclear weapons.
U.S. equity markets were closed on Monday in observance of Presidents’ Day, but stock futures still ticked higher despite the oil-price jump. In late afternoon action, the S&P 500 was up 0.50% to 1366.50.
Read more: http://trade.cc/anpaixzz1mz4HMZKb
Man Trapped In Car for Two Months in Sub-Zero Temperatures Survives By ‘Hibernating Like a Bear’
Updated: Monday, 20 Feb 2012, 10:31 AM EST
Published : Monday, 20 Feb 2012, 8:14 AM EST
By NewsCore
UMEA, Sweden – A Swedish man who was found alive after spending two months trapped in a car in freezing temperatures survived by eating snow and hibernating “like a bear,” according to one theory.
The man, identified by various media as Peter Skyllberg, was recovering in Norrlands University Hospital on Monday after being rescued last week.
The 44-year-old was found Friday by a man on a snowmobile who sighted Skyllberg’s snow-covered vehicle on a deserted road near the northern town of Umea, just south of the Arctic Circle.
When rescuers arrived at the scene, Skyllberg was emancipated and barely speaking. He had no food or water with him, only cigarettes and comic books, the Daily Mail said. It was believed he had been eating snow.
On Sunday, medical experts were puzzling over how Skyllberg — who told police he had been in the car since December 19 — managed to survive in temperatures as low as -22F (-30C).
Dr. Stefan Branth, from Uppsala University, suggested that Skyllberg may have stayed alive by hibernating, The Guardian reported.
“A bit like a bear that hibernates. Humans can do that. He probably had a body temperature of around 31C [88F], which the body adjusted to. Due to the low temperature, not much energy was used up,” Branth said. Normal healthy body temperature is around 99F (37C).
However, that theory was dismissed by Norrlands University Hospital’s chief medical officer, Dr. Ulf Segerberg, who said that Skyllberg’s car likely kept him warm by providing insulation similar to an igloo.
“Igloos usually have a temperature of a couple of degrees below 0C [32F] and if you have good clothes you would survive in those temperatures and be able to preserve your body temperature,” Segerberg said.
Segerberg added that Skyllberg, who is estimated to have lost up to 44 pounds (20kg), was “feeling well” as he recovered from his ordeal.
While it was not immediately clear why Skyllberg had been in his car since December, reports emerged Sunday that he suffered numerous personal setbacks recently and may have been trying to take his own life.
“He had a girlfriend but she ran out. And then he also had problems paying bills and the rent,” a source close to Skyllberg said, according to Aftonbladet newspaper.
Aftonbladet’s report, cited by The (London) Daily Telegraph, added that Skyllberg’s debts totaled 1.6 million Swedish Kronor (US$238,000), and a court in December ordered the seizure of his rental properties.
Read more: http://trade.cc/anop
Comments »Germany once prided itself on being the “photovoltaic world champion”, doling out generous subsidies—totaling more than $130 billion, according to research from Germany’s Ruhr University—to citizens to invest in solar energy. But now the German government is vowing to cut the subsidies sooner than planned and to phase out support over the next five years. What went wrong?
Subsidizing green technology is affordable only if it is done in tiny, tokenistic amounts. Using the government’s generous subsidies, Germans installed 7.5 gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity last year, more than double what the government had deemed “acceptable.” It is estimated that this increase alone will lead to a $260 hike in the average consumer’s annual power bill.
According to Der Spiegel, even members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s staff are now describing the policy as a massive money pit. Philipp Rösler, Germany’s minister of economics and technology, has called the spiraling solar subsidies a “threat to the economy.”
Germany’s enthusiasm for solar power is understandable. We could satisfy all of the world’s energy needs for an entire year if we could capture just one hour of the sun’s energy. Even with the inefficiency of current PV technology, we could meet the entire globe’s energy demand with solar panels by covering 250,000 square kilometers (155,342 square miles), about 2.6 percent of the Sahara Desert.
Unfortunately, Germany—like most of the world—is not as sunny as the Sahara. And, while sunlight is free, panels and installation are not. Solar power is at least four times more costly than energy produced by fossil fuels. It also has the distinct disadvantage of not working at night, when much electricity is consumed.
In the words of the German Association of Physicists, “solar energy cannot replace any additional power plants.” On short, overcast winter days, Germany’s 1.1 million solar-power systems can generate no electricity at all. The country is then forced to import considerable amounts of electricity from nuclear power plants in France and the Czech Republic.
Indeed, despite the massive investment, solar power accounts for only about 0.3 percent of Germany’s total energy. This is one of the key reasons why Germans now pay the second-highest price for electricity in the developed world (exceeded only by Denmark, which aims to be the “world wind-energy champion”). Germans pay three times more than their American counterparts.
Moreover, this sizeable investment does remarkably little to counter global warming. Even with unrealistically generous assumptions, the unimpressive net effect is that solar power reduces Germany’s CO2 emissions by roughly 8 million metric tons—or about 1 percent – for the next 20 years. To put it another way: By the end of the century, Germany’s $130 billion solar panel subsidies will have postponed temperature increases by 23 hours.
Using solar, Germany is paying about $1,000 per ton of CO2 reduced. The current CO2 price in Europe is $8. Germany could have cut 131 times as much CO2 for the same price. Instead, the Germans are wasting more than 99 cents of every euro that they plow into solar panels.
It gets worse: Because Germany is part of the European Union Emissions Trading System, the actual effect of extra solar panels in Germany leads to no CO2 reductions, because total emissions are already capped. Instead, the Germans simply allow other parts of the EU to emit more CO2. Germany’s solar panels have only made it cheaper for Portugal or Greece to use coal.
Read the rest here.
(Reuters) – Hedge funds are cranking up their bets in equities and credit in 2012’s buoyant markets in the belief that the euro zone, U.S. and Chinese economies will fare better than many were fearing last year.
Many funds think the European Central Bank’s long-term refinancing operations (LTRO), which flooded markets with 489 billion euros ($644 billion) of cheap cash in December and provide more this month, are a turning point in propping up the region’s battered banks.
They are also betting that China, which is facing a fifth successive quarter of slowing economic growth, will experience a so-called ‘soft landing’, while the U.S., which saw its fastest growth in one-and-a-half years in the fourth quarter, is firmly on the recovery path.
The average hedge fund rose 2.6 percent in January but this was behind the S&P’s .SPX 4.5 percent gain, according to Hedge Fund Research, and some funds missed out on the rally after taking a cautious stance towards the end of a turbulent 2011.
Many managers are now hiking borrowing to make their favorite bets punchier, or shifting the balance between their long and shorts to help them profit from market gains.
“What we’re hearing from a number of managers is that the appetite for risk has risen,” said Frank Frecentese, global head of hedge fund investments at Citi Private Bank.
“Their view on Europe is that the possibility of an extreme left-tail event has lessened, the U.S. is doing moderately better than expected and the risk of China … heading for a hard landing has lessened.”
Read the rest here.
Comments »Comments »
Haven’t dropped your $250 yet for a piece of the Packers? You’ve got nine more days to “invest” and can do so even if you favor the Blue Bombers or Roughriders.
By Kirby Lee, US PresswireThe Packers announced Monday that their stock is now available in Canada.
“Since launching our sale in the United States, we’ve received a lot of interest from our fans in Canada,” said team President/CEO Mark Murphy in a statement. “After receiving approval from the NFL, we have now clarified the regulatory requirements in Canada and are excited to offer ownership to our fans there.”
As of last week, the team had 17,000 shares remaining after making 280,000 available in December.
Though the stock doesn’t appreciate in value, the sale has raised money the publicly owned franchise is reinvesting into the latest expansion of Lambeau Field.
Tuesday:
Wednesday:
Thursday:
Friday:
Note: Earnings Date are subject to change, please check date for accuracy.
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