Archive for March, 2014
Sunday, March 16th, 2014
The FT has a story on the overexposure of Canadian pension funds to the Canadian real estate market. The article highlights the involvement significant involvement of the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, Ontario Teachers and Caisse de Depot. According to the article over the last ten years Canada's largest pension ...
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on From the Oh Canada Department
Saturday, March 15th, 2014
I posted an article last night about the Obama Administration decision to surrender control of internet administration to an international organization in September 2015. I admitted in that post that I have very little background on the topic and had no guess as to what the ramifications of that act ...
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on More on Internet Control
Saturday, March 15th, 2014
Via FT:
Ukraine repels Russian military incursion
By Roman Olearchyk in Kiev
A group of pro-Moscow bikers fly the Russian flag in front of city hall in Simferopol, the Crimean capital
Ukraine’s military on Saturday claimed it had repelled the first Russian military incursion onto mainland territory, using aircraft and paratroopers to push back ...
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Escalation in Ukraine
Saturday, March 15th, 2014
Via WSJ:
Asia Markets
China Allows Wider Currency Fluctuation
Central Bank Move Seen as Step Toward Establishing Market-Based Exchange-Rate
By
Lingling Wei
Updated March 15, 2014 8:29 a.m. ET
BEIJING—China took a major step toward making the yuan a freer currency by further loosening its daily trading limits, indicating the leadership's belief that the country's economic growth, ...
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on PBOC Widens Daily Trading Band
Friday, March 14th, 2014
Russian companies are withdrawing money from Western banks as they fear that if sanctions are imposed next week following an Anschluss with Crimea the money will be frozen and unavailable.
I posted several times today on the huge decline in custody holding of central banks at the Federal Reserve in the ...
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Friday, March 14th, 2014
I will confess to real ignorance on the topic of the mechanics of the Internet and how it functions. I just learned that the US had significant control over the administration of the internet for such functions as domains names and numbers. The US will surrender that control in September ...
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Internet Control
Friday, March 14th, 2014
Mortgages are a + to 1 tick tighter to Treasuries in 3 percent to 4 percent coupons. Higher coupons are marginally wider to Treasuries. Earlier mortgages were as much as 2 ticks to 3 ticks tighter to Treasuries. Origination flows are light but dealers are anticipating some supply later this ...
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on MBS
Friday, March 14th, 2014
I just marked benchmark Treasuries and the 10 year is "en fuego". The 5s 10s 30 spread was trading at 16.9 basis points. One friend of the blog noted that we had not traded that fly that rich since late October when 10s traded down to 2.52 percent. That was ...
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Friday, March 14th, 2014
This time via Pierpont Securities: I have previously posted this and this.
Via Pierpont:
THOUGHTS ON FED CUSTODY HOLDINGS
There has been a fair amount of discussion around the massive drop in Fed custody holdings in the latest week. While Fed custody holdings for Foreign Official & International Accounts have been declining fairly ...
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Central Bank Selling Part 3
Friday, March 14th, 2014
This is a very interesting Bloomberg article on the unemployment rate for those out of work for less than six months. That rate is at multi year lows and signals labor market tightness to some economists.
Via Bloomberg:
Inflation Signs Lurk in Broader Labor Data Yellen Seeks at Fed
2014-03-14 04:00:01.6 GMT
By Victoria ...
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Labor Market Tightness?