morgan stanley

The Euro rallied 2% today against the USD causing a sharp reversal of crisis-fearing “risk off” trades which have been working against all financial markets around the world. The Euro rallied based on indications that France and Germany are going to work seriously towards recapitalization of the European banking sector. This has been one of…

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faucet dripping

Positive data and developments on the real economy front are being ignored while increases in financial stress are being focused on. The pervasive gloom in the financial markets is a result of growing fears of another financial crisis. If this were to unfold, the financial crisis would surely cause a global recession but I’m remaining…

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one euro

The European sovereign debt crisis has dominated financial news and been the primary driver of markets for the past month. I would argue that we are in an actual crisis in Europe and this is no longer about fears of a crisis. When banks can’t finance independently through the market and when large countries can’t…

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Why was the market up 5% yesterday after the Fed meeting? At first the market sold off 2%. Subsequently, the market came back to unchanged and rallied another 5%. Whoa. Our “green light” to buy worked out, if just for a day. Of course what everyone cares about is what to do going forward. We…

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green light

The markets are completely destabilized and due for a bounce from dramatically oversold conditions. For those investors who are bullish and wish to take the view that the US and global economy will not be in a recession in the next 6-9 months, we advocate buying while the buying is good and other investors are…

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stir fry

The Chinese CPI is not an apples-to-apples measure relative to the CPI (consumer price index) that is reported here in the US. Some are attributing the overnight leg-down in the S&P futures (down another 24 or 2.25% at 11:00pm) to the fact that Chinese inflation came in at 6.5% when the consensus was 6.4%. Crackerjack…

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tattered flag

The downgrade of the US sovereign credit rating is sure to cause continued jitters in the financial markets on Monday morning. In actuality, there may be net-positive developments this weekend as it now appears clear that the ECB will engage in buying the debt of Italy and Spain. Drawing a “line-in-the-sand” for Italy and Spain…

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chinese model

Crackerjack continues to hold the view, that what transpired in the markets is a crisis of confidence, more so than an actual crisis. There is a big and important difference. During the real-deal 2008-2009 economic crisis you had actual insolvent institutions as the value of mortgage securities declined when the US housing market imploded. The sovereign…

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wall street crowd

It goes without saying, that the DOW dropping 500 points, and the S&P 500 losing close to 5% will put enormous pressure on Europe tomorrow morning. We will be watching Spanish and Italian bond yields and European stock markets very closely in the wee hours of the morning. The Non-farm payrolls report is a side-show…

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light at end of tunnel

Fears of a Crisis Grow Interesting market reactions this morning. While many market participants are clearly being terrorized by a crisis of confidence (and this is always a risk) there look to be some genuinely better pieces of information. Markets are selling off based on rhetoric from the ECB. As we discussed yesterday, the ECB…

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rome

Click Here for Formatted Europe PDF “I think we need a bigger boat!” The words of Martin Brody, played by the late Roy Scheider, ring true today with regard to Europe’s spluttering attempt to avoid a sovereign debt crisis. Now that the side-show spectacle regarding raising the US debt ceiling (i.e., whether the US would…

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