Archive for December, 2013

Very Dry Humor Re the Importance of a Comma

Wednesday, December 11th, 2013

I thought this was funny. You need to view the well circulated photo of our President and the Cuban dictator shaking hands and then slide down to the text below. It is via a University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor who has a blog with some similarly funny stuff.

FX Note

Wednesday, December 11th, 2013

Economic forecasting firm Action Economics in a morning note to clients posted some key levels to watch on the Euro currency. The firm notes that there are chunky options expirations over the next week at levels between 1.3790 and 1.3810. If we can breach that area on the charts,then the ...

Meriill on Volcker

Wednesday, December 11th, 2013

Here is another Merrill Lynch research piece. This one covers the Volcker rule and says that it is not as bad as it could have been and dealers have some small amount of wiggle room. I did a cut and paste and it did not come out as expected but ...

Notes on Consumer Spending

Wednesday, December 11th, 2013

Merrill Lynch research suggests that post Thanksgiving spending was robust . The firm has some proprietary (I guess I can still use that word when I write without the thought police shutting me down) gauge which tracks credit card spending. Here is the pice from Merrill. Via Merrill Lynch: Focus on shopping. ...

December 11 2013 Open

Wednesday, December 11th, 2013

Prices of Treasury coupon securities are manifesting small and very mixed changes in overnight trading. The overnight news is mixed,too. Asian equities tumbled with healthy declines in China, Japan and Australia. China stocks declined on fears that planners would reduce growth targets. Stocks in Japan declined as the Yen recovered ...

MBS

Tuesday, December 10th, 2013

This might be slightly aged as far as the price changes go because I have been acting in my role as a grandfather today. As of about 30 minutes ago MBS were besting Treasuries by about 4 ticks. The 5 year Treasury is better by about 4 ticks and the ...

Three Year at 100PM

Tuesday, December 10th, 2013

The US Treasury will offer $30 billion 3 year notes at 100PM today. Dealers note robust buying of 3 1/2 year through 4 year paper in recent weeks by an eclectic group of clients (hedge funds, money managers and central banks). That is a sweet spot on the curve and ...

Weekly JPM Survey

Tuesday, December 10th, 2013

JPM Treasury Client Survey, 2nd December 2013 All Clients Date     Long   Neutral   Short  Changes 12/9      13      66       21        6 12/2      13      64       23       13 11/25     21      60       19       11 11/18     26      55       19       19 Actives Date     Long   Neutral   Short  Changes 12/9       8      69       23       15 12/2       8      54       38       31 11/25     23      46       31       15 11/18     39      38       23       38 In the All ...

Perfect Storm

Tuesday, December 10th, 2013

There is a beautiful winter snow storm outside my window here at the sprawling and palatial complex which is Acrossthecurve.com global headquarters. There is also a perfect storm swirling in the Treasury market as the price action is neutering the shorts. In my early morning post I wrote that there was ...

Rotation

Tuesday, December 10th, 2013

Merrill Lynch research has an interesting post based on data in the Flow of Funds report from the Federal Reserve yesterday. The report notes that in Q3 investors rolled out of equities and back into bonds. The analyst cites higher rates and out performance of equities as the principal catalyst. Via ...