Apollo Group Inc. (NASDAQ: APOL) Raised to Overweight at Barclays.
Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR) Maintained Outperform but raised target to $74 from $60 at Credit Suisse.
Costco Wholesale Corp. (NASDAQ: COST) Started as Perform at Oppenheimer.
Dendreon Corporation (NASDAQ: DNDN) Maintained Neutral but cut target to $13 at Credit Suisse.
FreightCar America, Inc. (NASDAQ: RAIL) named as Value Stock of the Day at Zacks.
Genuine Parts Co. (NYSE: GPC) Cut to Hold at Argus.
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (NASDAQ: GMCR) named as Bull of the Day at Zacks.
Host Hotels & Resorts Inc. (NYSE: HST) Cut to Hold at Argus.
Infosys Limited (NASDAQ: INFY) Cut to Neutral at Janney.
Newmont Mining Corp. (NYSE: NEM) Cut to Hold at TD.
Nokia Corporation (NYSE: NOK) Cut to Underperform at Oppenheimer.
priceline.com Inc. (NASDAQ: PCLN) Reiterated Outperform and raised target to $790 from $710 at Credit Suisse.
Tata Motors Ltd. (NYSE: TTM) Started as Overweight at Morgan Stanley.
USG Corporation (NYSE: USG) Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan.
Willis Group Holdings, Plc (NYSE: WSH) named as Bear of the Day at Zacks.
Monthly Archives: February 2012
In Play and On the Wires
How Long Can Bond Yields and Equities Stray From the Normal ?
Durable Goods: Prior 3%, Market Expects -1.4%, Actual -4%
Economist Forecasts U.S. Interest Rates to Pop to 3.75% This Year
“The NYT’s Binyamin Appelbaum takes a tour through the mysterious world of ultra-low interest rates, observing, for example, that the US government had the same interest payment outlays in 2011 as it did in 2006, despite the fact that the national debt had doubled during this time.
The article also explains how bond investors are basically paying the US government for the privilege of lending to it.
And of course, the tone is: Well it’s only a matter of when, not if, bond yields rocket at some point. He even uses the word “bubble” to describe what’s happening in Treasuries.
This part at the end shocked us:
John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York, expects rates on 10-year Treasuries to reach 3.75 percent this year, up from about 2 percent now, as investors awaken from what he described as “extreme risk aversion.”
But he added that he didn’t understand why rates had remained low for this long.
“I have to say that it’s a bit of an enigma,” Mr. Ryding said. “It’s a conundrum.”
That would be quite the shock to almost everyone if it turns out true.”
Comments »Gridlock Abound on Tax Reform
Will ECB Lending Actions Spurn Bond Investors ?
“The European Central Bank’s willingness to ride roughshod over bondholder rights risks pushing up borrowing costs for indebted governments by making investors less willing to lend.
The ECB swapped about 50 billion euros ($67 billion) of Greek bonds for new securities, identical to the old ones in every way save for identification numbers. The switch makes the ECB senior to other investors, exempting it from the largest sovereign restructuring in history as Greece rewrites the terms of its notes to ensure lenders forgive 53.5 percent of the debt.
“Bondholders are effectively being subordinated every time the ECB gets involved — not legally, but economically,” said Saul Doctor, a credit strategist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in London. “Foreign investors are going to be less willing to buy sovereign bonds when the ECB can exert itself.”
The ECB has immunity to the losses imposed by the bond-swap plan, designed to trim Greece’s debt burden by 106 billion euros and enforced by the threat of retroactive collective action clauses that prevent holdouts. Greek 10-year yields are almost 35 percent, valuing the securities at 20 percent of par, after Standard & Poor’s yesterday cut the nation’s debt rating to “selective default.”
“They’ve thrown away the rulebook of crisis resolution,” said Gabriel Sterne, an economist at London-based brokerage Exotix Ltd. “It’s a cynical move that will affect the world for years to come and they did it because they can get away with it. It’ll push up costs for other stressed sovereigns so they’re shooting themselves in the foot.”
Comments »Merkel Wins Parliamentary Vote for Greek Aid
“Chancellor Angela Merkel won a parliamentary vote on Greek aid after warning German lawmakers that pushing Greece out of the euro would risk “incalculable” damage, defying a public backlash against more bailout funds.
In a ballot that showed dissent in her coalition growing, 496 members of the lower house, or Bundestag, backed the 130 billion-euro ($174 billion) package yesterday in Berlin; 90 voted against and five abstained. While questions on Greece’s remaining in the euro “have their justification,” Merkel warned that a failure of the euro might endanger the European Union and the global economy.
“Angela Merkel’s strident insistence that bailing out Greece is vastly preferable to the alternative was important,” Kit Juckes, head of foreign-exchange research at Societe Generale SA, said in a note today as he forecast the euro rising to $1.50. “Europe’s leaders have always stepped back from the edge of the abyss after flirting with disaster.”
Merkel’s government pushed through the measure to stave off a collapse of the Greek economy amid signs of growing resistance and as one of her Cabinet ministers said Greece should leave the single currency. Euro leaders will now shift their focus on whether to bolster the region’s bailout firewall as they prepare for a summit meeting in Brussels on March 1-2….”
Comments »Copper Rises on Rising Consumer Confidence
“Copper rose to a two-week high in New York on signs consumer confidence is strengthening and gains by the euro after German legislators approved a second bailout for Greece.
A gauge of confidence in Germany will reach a 12-month high in March, GfK SE said. The country was the world’s third-biggest copper consumer in 2010, according to researcher CRU. Figures today may show U.S. consumers are more confident, according to a Bloomberg News survey of economists. The euro advanced as much as 0.5 percent against the dollar.
“The metals remain buoyant for now, lifted by a weaker dollar, good economic data and less concern over EU debt now that Greece’s second bailout seems to be making progress,” William Adams, an analyst at Basemetals.com, said in a report. “With the good news flows, there seems little to unnerve the markets, and therefore the steady tone seems set to continue.”
Copper for May delivery climbed 1 percent to $3.928 a pound by 7:45 a.m. on the Comex in New York. Prices reached $3.9345, the highest level since Feb. 10. Copper for three-month delivery rose 1 percent to $8,625 a metric ton on the London Metal Exchange.
Prices also gained as euro-area confidence in the economic outlook improved more than economists forecast. The Conference Board’s gauge of U.S. consumer sentiment, due at 10 a.m. New York time, climbed to 63 this month, the survey showed. Still, another report set for release 90 minutes earlier may show U.S. orders for durable goods fell for the first time in four months….”
Comments »Italian and Spanish Bond Yields Continue to Hit New Lows Before Tomorrows ECB Funding
Oil Slips for a Second Day on Price Destruction Issues
Peugeot May Sell 7% Stake to GM in Alliance
“PSA Peugeot Citroen (UG) may announce as soon as this week plans to sell a stake of about 7 percent in the French carmaker to General Motors Co. (GM) as part of a development alliance, people familiar with the matter said.
The deal would involve a standstill agreement by which GM would not take a greater holding in the Paris-based carmaker without permission, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. Peugeot may offer additional shares through a rights issue as part of the transaction, the people said.
A GM-Peugeot alliance may include developing engines and building vehicles together in the region, a person familiar said last week. GM, the world’s largest carmaker, is looking for ways to turn around its unprofitable Opel brand, while Peugeot is seeking to stem a growing debt load. Peugeot and Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) began cooperating on engines for the German carmaker’s Mini brand in 2002, expanding the partnership with a 100 million-euro hybrid joint venture last year….”
Comments »The Euro Gains Strength Ahead of a Second Round of ECB ‘Unlimited Funding’
European Economic Confidence Rises
Global Markets & U.S. Futures Creep Higher
Odius Fucking Twats
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q24mXJSN91o 450 300]
Comments »Never Forget: For the Corporation by the Corporation
Facebook Caught Spying on User Smartphone Text Messages
Left or Right Does Not Matter; Corporations Come First
Stratfor Is a Joke and So Is Wikileaks for Taking It Seriously
The corporate research firm has branded itself as a CIA-like “global intelligence” firm, but only Julian Assange and some over-paying clients are fooled.
Left, Stratfor chief George Friedman in his Austin office in 2004. Right, Wikileaks’ Assange at a press conference today. / AP
On June 2, 2009, Anya Alfano of Stratfor, which describes itself as a private “global intelligence company,” sent an email to a colleague requesting some global intelligence on a certain trans-national civilian group on behalf of a powerful international client. That email has now been released to the world, along with five million others like it, by global transparency group Wikileaks, thus revealing Stratfor’s shadowy scheme.
According to Anya Alfano’s email, Stratfor’s target was PETA, the animal rights group, and its client Coca-Cola. Their top secret mission was to find out “How many PETA supporters are there in Canada?” and other tantalizing global secrets that could only be secured through such top-secret means as calling PETA’s press office or Googling it. Alfano concluded her chilling email, “I need all the information our talented interns can dig up by COB tomorrow.”
Shortly before the release, Wikileaks told the world to prepare for “extraordinary news.” In announcing today’s release, Wikileaks describes Stratfor as “a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations.” The group’s announcement says that the released emails “show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods” and calls the company “a money-making scheme of questionable legality.” It adds, “The material shows how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients.”
Maybe what these emails actually reveal is how a Texas-based corporate research firm can get a little carried away in marketing itself as a for-hire CIA and end up fooling some over-eager hackers into believing it’s true.
The group’s reputation among foreign policy writers, analysts, and practitioners is poor; they are considered a punchline more often than a source of valuable information or insight. As a former recipient of their “INTEL REPORTS” (I assume someone at Stratfor signed me up for a trial subscription, which appeared in my inbox unsolicited), what I found was typically some combination of publicly available information and bland “analysis” that had already appeared in the previous day’s New York Times. A friend who works in intelligence once joked that Stratfor is just The Economist a week later and several hundred times more expensive. As of 2001, a Stratfor subscription could cost up to $40,000 per year.
Read the rest here.
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