From 80 to 18 degrees: Settling back in after last week’s travel. I’ll see if I can get some photos posted later this week.
More posts later
In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone. —John Kenneth Galbraith
Asian currencies continue to sell off vs the $ on the heels of the news yesterday that South Korea said they will look into hot money inflows stemming from the $ carry trade and the Bank of Indonesia said they are looking into the foreign buying of bills. This follows the news a few weeks ago that Taiwan was limiting foreign deposit holdings and Brazil was taxing foreign inflow transactions. As I mentioned yesterday, we may have reached a short term pain threshold in terms of $ weakness and foreign countries are fighting back as they certainly won't wait for...
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January 27th, 2009 at 7:33 am
Ha! Should have been in Australia at the tennis open today., It was 142F+ on court
Here in Calif., it should get into the 60’sF Tuesday.
January 27th, 2009 at 7:50 am
Welcome back. You earned that beach time by working 36 hour days in October.
It’s 3 degrees in Colorado, which is keeping a lot of the snow bunnies indoors.
Earnings reports are not too bad among the more traditional, less exciting parts of the economy. BMY, VZ were OK, although DD was dreadful and if you look carefully AXP was frightening.
This makes me wonder whether we will see a bifurcation in the economy later this year with industrials, energy and materials doing relatively well. Banks and purveyors of less essential services will obvously do less well.
January 27th, 2009 at 8:33 am
Barry, welcome back. Thanks to the miracle of the interwebthingy, we wouldn’t have noticed that you were gone unless you’d specifically said so. Posts were plentiful and lush….a but like the vegetation in the Caymans I guess.
Just wondering…did your iBook G4 battery last until the device kill advisory came on? (”Inquiring Minds” and so forth). I still get almost 5 hours out of my 3 year old iBook….anyway…
@leftback
“bifurcation” – what an absolutely lovely word.
Any time I hear or read it, I’m always reminded (for some utterly obscure and probably deeply Freudian reason) of a dog getting fixed at the vet.
Yes…quite. [cough] – So endeth today’s non-sequitur. I thank the assembled company for your collective indulgence. We now return to our regularly scheduled broadcast. Back to you in the studio Barry.
January 27th, 2009 at 8:42 am
@ Bogwad: Using words like bifurcation gets leftback a lot of chicks.
As further example of bifurcation, X just announced decent earnings. This is good news for leftback, as I own a lot of GMO, among other materials stocks.
I am short banks/tech today, waiting for another horrible Case-Shiller number at 9am to remind traders that housing prices are still tumbling and the common stock of banks is essentially worthless.
January 27th, 2009 at 9:12 am
BR, no first-hand observation(s) as to crowd size and/or lack thereof? Was the hotel full? The restaurants? The beaches? Were there lots of aquatic charters sitting dockside offering specials to lure biz? How was the pulse of the consumer?
January 27th, 2009 at 9:29 am
BR: Didn’t make it to Davos? Or is that for next year.
January 27th, 2009 at 9:47 am
You’d think with all his street cred he’d be running Davos by now
January 27th, 2009 at 11:00 am
or should they call that place Duhvos…
January 27th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
…Devols…