May your meatballs be filled with granite.
Keep in mind, tomorrow “The Fly” will gift you imbeciles with the best market commentary, ever seen, read or heard of, on the internet. I have outrageous things to discuss, such as: “Gasparino and the art of meatball tossing,” “[[ABK]] and a few girls out,” “Maria and the cocaine crew,” “Pisani and the NYSE piss off the FBI,” and much much more.
Special praise and thanks to the second rate bloggers at iBC, who tried to fill my extra large shoes. And, finally, I would like to thank all of you “chinese food fuckers” (I have no idea what that means) who were buying [[FXI]] at higher levels.
I will see your FXI will a heavy dose of [[FXP]].
Be well, or not.
NOTE: iBC is preparing for war.
Developing…
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Welcome back. I changed my name while you were gone.
DOOMER
You were missed…..No Seriously. I walked around in circles looking for answers in your absence. Every foot needs a Big Toe and the Big Toe is back in da house.
FXI death crossed today by the way. FXP looking sweet, took Woodshedder’s advice last Friday and bought some at the close. Added more at yesterday’s close. Magic 8-Ball says…..”You pay now! Buy more!”
Back in the saddle.
I missed ya Fly, especially your extra-special profanity-laden sauce for our Gasparino meatballs.
Welcome back Alpha. Hope you’re doing alright.
Anybody watching Ag. start to breakdown?
What the fuck will happen to the markets when there is no fucking bull market, anywhere, not even in Ag?
Treepart, that was a sweet honey hole setup on FXI. Nice work.
Good to be back, Wood. It was a much needed break.
Now I’ll have to figure out what’s going on in the market. Doesn’t look like things have changed all that much in a week.
Alpha, nothing’s changed. Market nearly makes new lows, yet VIX in neutral area.
I think we consolidate until the NFP Friday.
Ha! You just got called a ‘Big Toe’. How does that make you feel?
Now, one day, when somebody overthrows you in a power struggle for the control of iBC, it will be called a ‘coup d’toe’.
Your site traffic will explode now that the great one is back.
Fly should make Gasparino the avatar for the PG Disgraced Peanut Hall of Shame …. a fitting mentor for sure!
Our fearless Leader has returned.
We now re-join our regular scheduled programming, already in progress.
The Fly is back, Game Over .
nice banner
The Big Toe is playing mutiny against the “Footsie”, et al eh, how ironic.
Commentary on FXP
Alias: BPOE
I could not stay awake the last two days. Without the FLY to give me a BUZZ. Welcome back!!!
fm minyanville
Brokers CDS blowing out!
Yep. The great credit unwind is upon us. Credit default swaps on all brokers, particularly Lehman (LEH) and Bear Stearns (BSC) are blowing out, big time. Why?
Put it this way. Look at what is happening to Thornburg (TMA). It supposedly only has a 0.44% default rate on its mortgage portfolio that it services but the bonds it owns are getting pounded. Result? Margin call. The worst part is that the company went to sell some bonds to settle the margin calls and couldn’t. The ultimate Roach Motel.
Enter LEH and BSC. LEH reportedly has two times the capital in CMBS and nearly five times the capital in ‘hard to price’ securities. Hard to price in my book equates to hard to sell. If you were TMA’s auditor would you sign off on its 10Q? I wouldn’t. BSC is actually in worse shape. It has irritated so many clients that its business model is broken.
What would happen if you told it to sell its ‘hard to price bonds’? The company couldn’t. No one has the balance sheet to absorb it. So you can see the vicious cycle developing.
CDS on LEH is now approximately 250 basis points and 350 basis points on BSC, out nearly 100 basis points in a month.
My firm remains negative on these names and we’re staying short the credit. In my book, they are insolvent. I feel bad for all my friends that work there, but I did the Drexel Burnham stint and I saw my stock go to 0. Yes, it can happen. Quickly.
fm Fleck
As to where we stand in the unwinding process, I’d like to share the view of my friend, the Lord of the Dark Matter, with whom I had dinner last night. He informed me that credit is rapidly being withdrawn across a broad spectrum. Especially prime brokers, which have served as enormous financial intermediaries, and are now raising the cost and haircuts to nearly all credit-oriented hedge funds. And, he said, the pace of massive deleveraging could accelerate further, which in all likelihood will feed on itself.
So, the quasi-cooperation that we’ve seen among financial institutions, to try to avoid the pain of price discovery, has been abandoned. We have now reached the point where problems are so serious that it’s every man (institution) for himself, and he who gets out first loses least.
It’s his view that some of the CDO structures are going to present big problems for various institutions, not least of which is Citigroup. As the scope of problems there becomes fully understood, my friend says it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Citi could see its stock trade dramatically lower.
Turning to the subject of the sovereign wealth funds, we both expect them to reduce their purchases of so-called distressed U.S. assets, due to the losses they’ve sustained. Thus, the folks who’ve seen that buying as a panacea for our credit problems should probably think otherwise. To sum up, the Lord of the Dark Matter says that the unwinding process is nowhere near complete, and unsupervised price discovery is the order of the day.
Charlie Can
Another mono-line bailout rumor in mid-day to change the market direction. Once again, it is a replay of the Gasparino story that caused the rally. The interesting thing this time is the almost “please don’t listen to me and invest based on what I say†story line when the breaking news was presented.
CNBC is getting to be a promo machine and little more. Whoever has a book deal seems to get free promotion. How proud they must be of themselves to offer shameless promotion over solid business reporting. Almost makes you want to switch over to FBN. (NEVER!!). Even Fast Money is getting old.
SRS looks relatively strong, should be good if we head back down. Too bad the call spreads are ridiculus on it.
It’s gratifying to see not only that such positive things happen, but that they are being REPORTED.