Yentervention Wednesday – Kan Baffles Bulls
by Phil - September 15th, 2010 8:22 am
As we discussed yesterday, it was meet the new boss, same as the old boss in Japan as Naoto Kan’s re-election sent the Yen to new highs as he was considered the least likely candidate to back intervention. Well surprise, surprise this morning as Japan officially intervened in the FOREX markets and sent the Yen down a full 2.5% as they used their Yen to purchase an undisclosed basket of currencies.
Since the Dollar is up today against both the Pound ($1.55) and the Euro ($1.29), we can assume the dollar is one of those currencies and demand for Dollars means upward pressure on rates so that should be the end of the TLT bounce for the moment. Stock boys want bonds to die so the money can come this way and bond boys want you to fear the stock market so you will let them hold your money (and charge you fees) at ridiculously low rates of interest. That’s they Yin and Yang of the markets.
“Investors were starting to doubt the government’s commitment to its pledge that it would take bold action,” said Yoshimasa Maruyama, a senior economist at Itochu Corp. in Tokyo. Kan and Noda in recent weeks repeatedly said that Japan was ready to take “bold” measures to stem the currency. The Japanese government official said European and U.S. officials were informed of the move in an effort to avoid a negative reaction. It took a while to convince Europe because authorities there didn’t like the idea, the person said.
We’ll see if the stronger Dollar today puts pressure on commodities but we’re in pretty good shape as this rally, for a change, has not been led by commodities as the market is now flat to the August despite an 8% drop in oil prices (see USO on chart):
I often complain about rallies that are led by Financials and Commodities as those are things that suck money OUT of the economy and are not long-term drivers of growth. The entire 2006-7 rally was this kind of rally and I bitched about it all the way up. We also had housing back then, another type of commodity, but that’s so dead now it’s hardly worth mentioning, is it? Actually housing is where we used a lot of commodities like lumber and copper etc. 33 months after the onset of the Great Recession, new home sales are still down 70% and non-residential construction is down 36% – that market is dead, dead, dead.
We get housing starts next week but who really cares? …
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JPMorgan, RBS, Barclays Charge Fees on ‘Black Box’ Reverse Convertibles that Exceed Maximum Yields
by ilene - June 25th, 2010 3:31 am
JPMorgan, RBS, Barclays Charge Fees on ‘Black Box’ Reverse Convertibles that Exceed Maximum Yields
Courtesy of Mish
Bloomberg reports Fees Exceed Maximum Yields on ‘Black Box’ Reverse Convertibles.
Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Barclays Plc are charging fees on some structured notes that equal or exceed the securities’ highest possible yield, as sales of the opaque products draw scrutiny from regulators.
On June 15, RBS gave brokers a 2.75 percent commission to sell a three-month reverse-convertible note with a 2.56 percent potential yield, according to a prospectus. Last month, JPMorgan charged 5.25 percent in fees and commissions on a three-month Citigroup Inc.-linked note that paid 5 percent interest, and Barclays offered brokers a 2 percent commission on a security paying 2 percent interest, according to other prospectuses.
Reverse convertibles generally pay higher interest rates than corporate bonds, with last month’s notes yielding an average of 15.7 percent per year, Bloomberg data show. Their risk lies in so-called down-and-in put options built into the products that allow banks to repay buyers with shares if an underlying stock declines a certain amount. Investors in RBS’s note could lose money if Alcoa Inc. drops by more than 25 percent.
Down-and-in put options aren’t traded on exchanges, making them difficult to value without a computer model. The customized contracts are privately negotiated by banks and their clients in the $615 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market, where trades and prices aren’t reported publicly.
Investors in JPMorgan’s reverse convertibles, which pay 5 percent interest over three months, are exposed to losses if Citigroup declines more than 20 percent. JPMorgan collected a 5.25 percent fee for selling $784,000 of the securities on May 25, according to the prospectus. Barclays’ $1 million offering on May 10 is linked to the stock of Apple Inc., with the option triggered if shares drop more than 25 percent.
Undisclosed costs, such as a profit for the issuer, are generally included in the notes’ sale price, according to Finra. It is “all but impossible” for investors to determine the size of these costs or “whether the reverse convertible represents a good deal,” Finra said on its website.
“It’s pretty easy to build in extra fees because retail investors aren’t in a position to price the embedded options,” said Janet Tavakoli, founder of Chicago-based consulting firm Tavakoli Structured Finance, in a
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Testy Tuesday – Dow 9,650, Berkshire $60 Edition!
by Phil - November 3rd, 2009 8:14 am
Wheee, this is fun!
Just two weeks ago, on October 17th, I warned in the Weekly Wrap-Up that it was "Dow 10,000 or Bust" for the next week and we failed that one and last Wednesday we were looking to hold NYSE 6,900 and THAT failed too. Now we enter into the second phase of our limbo game where the deep-voiced guy asks the question "how low can you go?" and we’ll be setting our next bar at our long-standing 9,650 target for the Dow, which we are already hitting in pre-market trading. If that fails, we’ll have to look down to S&P 1,000. As you can see from Jesse’s Chart, we took a nice bounce off serious resistance yesterday but we’re just not feeling it yet, even though the market is now as technically oversold as it was in March.
Yesterday was like a roller coaster and my first Alert to Members of the morning targeted 9,775 as the on/off line for our bullish/bearish posture on our DIA covers. We whipped past that line right about 10 am as we got good reports from ISM, Pending Home Sales and Construction Spending but by 12:45 we had broken back down so I sent out an Alert calling to refocus back to 55% bearish by adding the DIA Jan $100 ($5) and Jan $102 puts ($6.20), already covered by the Nov $99 puts ($2.50).
The reason we mess around with our covers is we don’t want to flip in and out of our option positions, which are generally either straight bearish or well-hedged long positions, is because options carry a relatively large bid/ask spread and cost you money every time you get in and out. So, on the whole, we’d rather let our over-riding cover plays, like our DIA spread, adjust our stance as conditions change, making a single adjustment that keeps us balanced as we ride out the market waves.
It’s been a couple of weeks since we had a good, old-fashioned stick save but we got a mother of one yesterday (as seen in Dave Fry’s chart) which was right on schedule as Kustomz bought it up in Member Chat at 3:09 and I agreed at 3:19 that "It does feel like a pre-stick move" and we grabbed VIX $25 puts at .85 to protect ourselves from a sudden surge in complacency.
By 3:33, my next comment to Members was: "The stick lives!" but…
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Jobless Thursday – REITs Turn Rotten
by Phil - October 1st, 2009 8:28 am
Look out below!
I warned yesterday that the end of the quarter may well mark the end of Goldman and their Gang of 12′s Global pump job and what better way to pull the rug out from under the markets then for Goldman Sachs themselves to issue a report that warns that REIT valuation seem "stretched" and they are projecting "flat to down 15% returns next year" with concerns that they are "just beginning what could be a multi-year down-cycle."
Other headlined charts (and Zero-Hedge has the full scoop) are:
- Still a long road ahead for a recovery in credit.
- Cap rates to rise substantially.
- Deleveraging process just beginning for the REIT sector
- Despite pipeline reductions, development remains a risk
In other words, all the stuff I’ve been saying for for the last couple of months as they IYR has climbed 50% since July 15th is now the subject of a GS report on Oct 1st. I was fine with the sector rising 20% (IYR $36) but the move to $46 was completely without merit and, as I noted in a post last week, we shorted it there and went very long on SRS (ultra-short on the IYR). In fact, just yesterday, in the morning post, I discussed Friday’s multiple plays on SRS. We also have short positions on BXP and, of course, we’re still overall short on the whole market as a correction in the real estate sector is not going to be an isolated incident.
Fortunately, at PSW, we don’t have to wait for Goldman Sachs to tell us a sector is overvalued because we understand valuations and we practice sound fundamentals – something that is sorely lacking in the larger investing community. There’s a reason REITs usually trade at 10x multiples and it’s the same reason commodity producers usually trade at 10x multiples as well – because the underlying commodity, whether it is land or oil or gold or copper, can fluctuate in price over time and will sometimes spike earnings up and sometimes spike them down so, on the whole, they are WORSE long-term investments than say AAPL, MCD, KO or PG, who tend to steadily grow their business over time and deserve stronger multiples.
When the REITs were trading at 5x earnings in March, we were loading up on them but when they crossed 12x in August, we flipped negative. That’s called buying low and selling high, something GS and their traders (like Cramer – and congrats on that…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(