Gary Tanashian submits: Pssst... come 'ere. Did you hear the one about the guy who's still bullish the US dollar? Yes, he actually exists. No no, I am not including the perpetually dollar bullish Prechter and Hochberg. They are a given. But aside from them, I heard a rumor that this other guy actually exists. Fear not, however, Hope '09 participants; what are the odds that this lone guy would be right against an entire financial world on the other side of that trade?Complete Story »

  The big overnight news from Asia comes in the form of a surprisingly strong Australian jobs report, which has helped bump the local dollar up sharply against currencies of lower yielding nations. Elsewhere China’s State Council also fleshed out measures to boost consumption in order to maintain its health above-8% GDP growth but without encouraging excesses that have led to the highest pace of home price increases in many years.The RBA’s deputy governor told reporters today that owing to the yield differential between the Aussie and other developed nations’ currencies, the “carry trade appears to be back in vogue.” Expectations for further interest rate increases in the nation nicknamed “the wonder from down under” were stepped up following the addition of 30,200 jobs of which only 300 were part-time. To put things in perspective, while the market was only anticipating a rise of 5,000 full and part time jobs overall, today’s report for November brings the total number of jobs created to just 500 short of 100,000 in three months. Complete Story »

  Quantum (QTM) is a global storage device maker specializing in backup, recovery and archiving technologies. Of late, the company has begun to reap the benefits of the cost-cutting strategies management implemented over the course of last year. In the second quarter of FY2010, QTM delivered strong bottom-line results and other impressive milestones including the highest non-GAAP gross margins in 10 years, the highest operating margins in 9 years and the most profitable Q2 in 9 years. The most compelling aspect to QTM’s turnaround story resides with its DXi7500 disk-based backup product line, targeted at the data de-duplication market. For those unfamiliar with the term, data de-duplication is a technology that eliminates the need to store unnecessary data, allowing users to reduce disk requirements for backup while also reducing network bandwidth requirements for replication of backup data. In non-Geek-Speak terms, it allows a company to back up its most important commodity, its data, more efficiently and economically, thus extending the size and value of its data center.Complete Story »

  Jim Delaney submits: After a really a really bad fall, regardless of whether that comes while skiing, skateboarding, or in my case riding anything with two wheels (both powered and unpowered), the first reaction is an internal systems check. 'Can I move everything big: legs, arms, neck?' followed byan investigation of less critical things e.g. how bad are the cuts, scrapes and bruises? If all of that checks out reasonably well it’s on to, 'how badly damaged is the thing I was on?' and can I use it to get the heck out of here? The market and its move up this year seemed to go through a similar process with the initial shock being felt in people’s wallets vs. on their persons. The relief of continued existence, albeit in some cases barely, has powered us from the devil’s doorstep (S&P 500 666.79 low on 3/6) to what are, in comparison, rather lofty heights.Complete Story »

  Last week we saw unusually high volumes of short sellers in the COMEX futures market. On Friday, 4th December, we saw the biggest volume of sellers in the SPDR (GLD) ETF in its 5 year history. In four working days, between the 3rd – 8th December, Gold has had a sharp sell off, dropping more than $100. Together, these show the volatility of investment demand and draw into question whether this is a top for the gold price...The SPDR Gold Shares ETF is the second largest ETF in the world. Today the SPDR holds 1,116.25 tonnes of gold bullion. That’s more than the central banks of Russia, China and India [See the official central bank holdings here].Complete Story »

  Colin Peterson submits: US Concrete Inc. (RMIX) has been on my radar of distressed situations for a while. Someone recently mentioned to me that he was interested in buying the equity, which prompted me to take another look.RMIX has two segments producing different concrete products: ready-mixed and precast. Of course, the concrete business depends on construction and has suffered from the credit bubble collapse. Charts of residential and commercial construction spending give a sense of how unusually high construction spending was during the years that RMIX experienced peak revenue and profitability.Complete Story »

  Karl Smith submits: By Adam OzimekFelix provides some counterarguments, anda dash of -probably deserved- snark, to my defense of housing investment. I’ll try and respond, sans snark but with graphs.Complete Story »

  Trader Mark submits:We continue to see interesting developments involving Greece, which at this point the markets have sniffed at in "see no evil, hear no evil" attitude. As with all things in markets, it will only matter.... when it matters. [Nov 27, 2009: UK Telegraph - Greece Tests the Limits of Sovereign Debt as it Grinds Toward Slump] If things play out to fruition, the end game will be the same one Ben Bernanke faced in the US - will the European Union bail out "too big to fail" Greece? Since the largest economic member of the European Union is Germany, I found an interesting article a bit lower in this piece fromDer Spiegel, so we can see how they view this slow boil.First via Bloomberg Greece Rating May be Cut for 2nd Time by S&PGreece may have its credit rating cut for the second time this year by Standard & Poor’s as the government of Prime Minister George Papandreou struggles to shore up its finances. The country’s A- long-term sovereign rating was placed on “creditwatch with negative implications,” the company said in a statement from London today, signaling the classification may be lowered within two months.The decision reflects “our view that the fiscal consolidation plans outlined by the new government are unlikely to secure a sustained reduction in fiscal deficits and the public debt burden,” a team of S&P analysts led by London-based Marko Mrsnik said in the statement. Without further measures, debt will reach 125 percent of gross domestic product next year, the highest among the 16 countries using the euro, S&P said.Credit-default swaps on Greece’s debt rose 6 basis points to 189, according to CMA DataVision prices. That means it costs $189,000 a year to protect $10 million of the country’s debt from default for five years.For those unfamiliar with CDS, this is how John Paulson made the "trade of the century" - buying credit default swaps against US mortgages. Now we are talking CDS for countries... not nonsense mortgages.Complete Story »

  TraderRob submits:Last week you could have thrown a dart at the floor of the CME and almost assuredly poked the eye out of a commodity bull. This week there's no telling who you'd maim. Blood and gore aside, the sideways pattern of the past three weeks is over, as far as crude oil is concerned. The WTI contracts for January delivery dove from $80+ to touch the $70/barrel mark on Wednesday before popping back into $71 territory; concluding the six day sell-off was nothing to shrug at.First, we're going to look at the WTI continuous spot chart and identify some selling momentum that we haven't seen since the bottom in crude in December.Complete Story »

  The Daily Bail submits: Still a few more posts to go on the fiat devil's reconfirmation hearings. In response to a question from Sen. Jim Bunning in November of '05, the only Senator who had the courage and foresight to vote 'nay' in the 99-1 shellacking that officially seated B-52, the failed Chairman said the following:Complete Story »

  Karl Smith submits: A few posts back I asked Arnold Kling about Gross Job data and a recalculations story. However, I think it is worth examining how we think about recessions in general. My tendency has been to describe recessions as periods in which people “lost their jobs.” However, the JOLTS data suggest that we might more accurately think of recessions as periods in which it is hard to find a new job. Calculated Risk provides the graph (click to enlarge):Complete Story »

  

  Mark Krieger submits:On the face of it, Kroger (KR) reported a subpar quarter and Mr. Market punished it harshly for its sins. KR’s drubbing spilled in to the rest of the sector as Safeway (SWY) and SuperValu (SVU) took major sympathy hits. But is the glass half full or half empty? I think it’s half full, because the stock was cheap before its results, and now after a 13% drop, it represents an even better value. If you calculate KR’s forward multiple incorporating its reduced guidance of $1.65, you end up with a very reasonable 12 times earnings estimates. The shares are way oversold and due for at least a “dead cat bounce”, when bargain hunters and shorts covering to book profits begin to emerge. The shares are now near their three year lows and at the same price they were in March before the Dow ran up nearly 4000 points. Yes! You can buy KR now at the same price it was when the Dow was at its worst levels of the year. Why I like the sector: Complete Story »

  Rolfe Winkler, CFA submits: I’ve got a question below, but first the story: “Citi positioned to repay TARP, report” (Eder/Wilchins, Reuters): Citigroup Inc (C) is in a position to repay TARP, the bank’s chairman, Dick Parsons, told cable television network CNBC on Wednesday.Complete Story »