Archive for April, 2008

Financial Firm Results

Monday, April 7th, 2008

I mentioned in my original post this morning that earnings season will begin in earnest this week. The excellent blog Accrued Interest has a recent posting with a listing of dates when some major financial firms report.

Some Opening Comments for April 07 2008

Monday, April 7th, 2008

 Prices of Treasury coupon securities tumbled in overseas trading as a confluence of factors powered equity markets higher and gave hope to those who believe that the credit storm has passed. Merrill Lynch advised clients thar crisis is nearly over. The giant and troubled brokerage firm advised clients to buy ...

Some Sunday Evening Links

Sunday, April 6th, 2008

The Maestro defends his reputation. An apparatchik at the IMF calls for a policy of global fiscal stimulus to combat the credit crunch. ANZ increases its charge for "credit impairment"to $975 million for the six months ended March 31 2008 from $567 for all of 2007. The company cited global market turmoil, ...

Closing Commentary April 04 2008

Friday, April 4th, 2008

 Prices of Treasury coupon securities surged today as the weaker than expected labor data reinforced the notion that the economy is in a weak patch and that the Federal Reserve would continue on its recent easy money path. The buying which resulted touched every asset class as mortgages,agencies,swaps and mortgages ...

Agency Market Recap

Friday, April 4th, 2008

 Agency spreads are three basis points to five basis points tighter across the curve but have lagged swaps by one basis point to two basis points. Dealers report robust buying by end users. One trader noted that off the run paper and MTN paper outperformed the benchmarks which is a ...

MBS

Friday, April 4th, 2008

 Mortgage product is tighter ,too. It is off the best levels of the day but is about 5 ticks tighter to Treasuries. Some of the improvement has resulted from the drop in vol as the release of the labor data has removed some uncertainty. The crystal ball is a little ...

Corporate Bond Redux

Friday, April 4th, 2008

The IG10 index is tighter by 11 basis points and holding. There is another index, the HVOL, which tracks the 30 most active names and it is tighter by 25 basis points. Those indices are liquidity vehicles and macro players who wish to express an opinion on spreads often use it ...

Corporate Bonds

Friday, April 4th, 2008

 Spread product is trading very well this morning. Corporate bond spreads are tighter by 7 basis points as measured by the IG9. Cash spreads are tighter by 5 basis points to 8 basis points but little is trading. Here is a little golden nugget which someone shared with me which indicates ...

Labor Data Spell Recession

Friday, April 4th, 2008

 The Labor Department released the monthly employment data and they were ugly. The unemployment rate jomped to 5.1 percent and the economy shed 80K jobs in March. Revisions to prior month's data show that the economy lost and additional 67K jobs in those months which brings the reported losses today ...

Truncated Opening Comments April 04 2008

Friday, April 4th, 2008

 Prices of Treasury coupon securities have barely budged in overseas trading as market participants of every stripe wait for the Godot which is the monthly labor market report at 830AM New York time. The 2 year note yields 1.89 percent and the 5 year note sits comfortably at 2.73 percent. ...