Battle Royale
In a continuation of the Battle Royale, we have in one corner Ben Bernanke, a former professor and his fellow economist elves with their econometric models and grand experiment and in the other we have the MARKET, half of which are foreign investors as we throw into the ring almost $60b of Treasury supply with more Fed purchases this week. With respect to the stock market, the hopes and wishes rally seen over the past month will be met with the reality of earnings season and we’ll see what dreams come true and which get scorched. Earnings will be ugly but commentary about Q2 will be most relevant. In our current environment of consumer deleveraging, Feb Consumer Credit data is out at 3pm and is expected to fall by $3b and would be the 4th month of the previous 5 of declines. Retailers don’t like it but its part of the painful, necessary process of withdrawal. Australia unexpectedly cut rates by 25 bps to 3%.
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The Baltic Dry Index fell for a 20th straight day by 1.3% and has now retraced a bit more than 50% of its bounce from the depths of early December but remains 121% above that low.
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April 7th, 2009 at 9:37 am
I wonder who these idiots are that are buying into what is obviously a bear market rally. But then I also wondered 4 and 5 years ago about the idiots, rich and poor, who bought house at prices that were inflated by over 200%.
April 7th, 2009 at 9:51 am
just out of curiosity, how does this Math: “has now retraced a bit more than 50% of its bounce from the depths of early December but remains 121% above that low.” -work out?
April 7th, 2009 at 10:04 am
What gives with YahooFinance and GoogleFinance? Neither are yet reporting SPX this a.m.
Short of acquiring a Bloomberg terminal, suggestions for best sites for tracking multiple exchanges/stox?
April 7th, 2009 at 10:46 am
If you look at the Baltic Dry, credit spreads and the P/E ratio on the S&P 500 it’s not a pretty picture.
April 7th, 2009 at 10:48 am
@batmando,
You can track everything @ http://www.bloomberg.com (the free Bloomberg). It has all the exchanges and all the stocks, and even does graphs and stochastics (whatever the hell that is) and all manner of other neat stuff. You can even sign in an create a tailor-made tracking system for the stocks you wish to focus on. And it doesn’t cost a dime.
April 7th, 2009 at 11:08 am
@batmando
YahooFinance uses ^GSPC for the SPX here: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=%5Egspc&x=0&y=0
April 7th, 2009 at 11:12 am
or check the S&P at quote.com
http://www.quote.com/us/stocks/quote.action?s=%24SPX
April 7th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
@AmenRa
Thx for the tips.
Yes, I was using ^GSPC for SPX on finance.yahoo.com but from 9:30 to 10:10 it displayed only yesterday’s close.
Same on Google Finance. Thought there might have been some trouble with data transmission from the exchange since it was happening on both sites.
April 7th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
I think it always does that when at the open everyone is running for the exits.
April 7th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
The Balic Dry Index/shipping rate is getting swamped with new tonnage coming online. The past high rates enticed the shipyards build enough to double the fleet. But now the BDI has collapsed — from both demand and supply of ships. Chinese and other nations shipyards going bankrupt will reduce some of the 9,000 commissioned vessels coming online.
Now for the BDI to stay afloat, then China’s demand will need to double.
453 empty container ships (11% of world’s current capacity) now float — empty — outside the harbours of SE Asia.
—-see Economist, March 28th, 2009: “Sink or swim”
April 7th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
In response to an earlier query on the Baltic Dry Index:
The BDI bottomed at approximately 663 in December 2008. It then rose to 2298 in March of this year. The close yesterday was 1486.
Based on the above, we saw a “bounce” of about 1635 points and have seen a retracement as of yesterday of about 812 points, or just about 50% (Note: the BDI it is probably down more today, which could take it past the 50% retracement mark).
You can do the math from here — it is more than 120% above the December low.
April 7th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
OT:
Hey Barry, long-time fan and reader, 1st time post.
Please tell me what the heck happened to Mr. Mortgage? He’s done one post since joining you, I think, and disappeared after that.
Did you eat him for lunch? Hog-tie, gag and place in the closet?
I’m counting on you, Diana Olick, & Mark to help me understand where the bottom in the housing market will be so I really feel I’m missing some ammo without Mark.
Thanks much for all you do for us, and for any reply!
Russ
April 7th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
BigD,
thanks for pointing that out, I guess it comes down to the diff. between ‘just about’ and ‘a bit more than’
NBD..
Russ,
http://mrmortgage.ml-implode.com/
**PLEASE NOTE – I AM MOVING as of today…I will be delivering reports via email for a couple of weeks until the new site is up. Please ’subscribe’ for email delivery of content so I have your address. My new site will not be up for a few weeks so if you do not subscribe you may not be able to find me. Just enter your email address in the box to the right and ’subscribe’ and I will add your address. You can subscribe after the end of January and I will still get your address. IMPORTANT – you will get back a confirmation email that may go to your spam filter so be sure to look for it….”
April 7th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Mark,
The BDI dropped today to 1466. Given today’s quote the numbers line up perfectly with Barry’s post — there is now a retracement of more than 50%, and the index is 121% above the December low.
Barry probably had access to today’s BDI quote, which I lacked until now.
April 7th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
663 to 2298 ~1635
2298 to 1466 ~832
1466/663 ~2.2112
832/1635 ~.5089
2298/663 ~3.4660
it was the last ratio, I was overlooking..
thx, BigD, and, btw, the post’s is Peter Boocker’s.
Peter,
sorry for the confusion/oversight..
April 7th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Boocker=Boockvar !
April 7th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Mark, yes and thank you for the reply.
I subsribed to Mr. Mortgage’s site a couple weeks before he moved and I’ve received a couple alerts.
But it’s been a couple months since he posted and that’s fairly unusual comparitively speaking.
I figured Barry could clue us in if he’s just too busy with his latests ventures, or if Barry asserted his kingdomly self to silence Mr. Mortgage. :-)