Bloomberg:
The S&P 500 may rise 21% to 1,100 by the end of 2009 from yesterday’s closing price of 909.7, Goldman’s chief investment strategist David Kostin wrote today. The S&P 500 will go “meaningfully higher” as the government takes steps to revive the economy, access to credit improves, home prices stabilize and bank writedowns decline, Kostin wrote. Credit Suisse strategists forecast the main benchmark for American equities will end 2009 at 1,050.
- The cost of protecting corporate bonds from default fell for a second day as the U.S. government moved closer to agreeing a bailout for General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC. Credit-default swaps on the Markit CDX North America Investment Grade Index of 125 companies in the U.S. and Canada decreased 1.5 basis points to 258.5, according to CMA Datavision prices at 12:45 p.m. in New York. Contracts on the Markit iTraxx Crossover Index of 50 companies with mostly high-risk, high-yield credit ratings dropped 13 basis points to 1,002, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. prices.
- The Brazilian real’s four-month, 33 percent tumble is prompting Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. and Standard Chartered Bank to abandon calls for an early 2009 rebound and predict further declines. The real may fall as much as 11 percent by year-end to 2.75 per dollar, said Win Thin, a senior currency strategist at New York-based Brown Brothers, which manages $42 billion. Standard Chartered, the U.K. bank that makes most of its profit from emerging markets, revised its first-quarter forecast last week to 2.7 from 2.15.
- The cost of borrowing in dollars for three months in London fell as traders bet the Federal Reserve will cut its key interest rate to as low as 0.25 percent next week to drag the U.S. economy out of a recession. The London interbank offered rate, or Libor, that banks say they charge each other for three-month loans in dollars dropped three basis points to 2.16 percent today, the lowest level since Nov. 21, the British Bankers’ Association said. The comparable euro rate tumbled eight basis points to 3.42 percent, the weakest since September 2006.
- Michael Lewis, head of commodities research at Deutsche Bank AG, says $30 oil is new ‘low point.’ (video)
- Crude oil fell for the seventh time in eight days after the U.S. forecast that global demand will decline this year and in 2009 for the first time since 1983.
- Cisco Systems Inc.(CSCO), General Electric Co.(GE) and Emcor Group Inc.(EME) may be winners as President-elect Barack Obama seeks to revive the U.S. economy by rewiring classrooms and libraries for high-speed Internet service and repairing bridges and highways.
- Pressure from insurers such as Aetna Inc. and WellPoint Inc. and the need to cut hospital costs are speeding a move by doctors to computer recordkeeping, said Glen Tullman, chief executive officer of Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions Inc.(MDRX)
- Airline industry losses in 2009 may shrink to half this year’s level as a decline in fuel costs more than makes up for a reduction in the number of people flying.
- Harvard University, the University of Texas and other U.S. university endowments might decrease their hedge-fund holdings because of commitments to private-equity investments, according to a survey. Sixty of the largest U.S. endowments put $23 billion in hedge funds in the past two years, the London-based research company InvestHedge said in an e-mailed statement today. Those top university endowments, which invest donated money to fund school operations, have $63 billion in hedge funds. “The future growth of these portfolios is obviously in jeopardy given the current market crisis,” InvestHedge said. Hedge funds might be put “on the backburner” when endowments have obligations to provide cash for investments arranged by private-equity managers, it said.
- Treasuries rose, pushing rates on the three-month bill to negative 0.01 percent, as investors gravitate toward the safety of U.S. government debt. “It’s the year-end factor,” said Chris Ahrens, an interest-rate strategist in Greenwich, Connecticut, at UBS Securities LLC, one of the 17 primary dealers that trade directly with the Federal Reserve. “Everyone wants to be in bills going into year-end. Buy now while the opportunity is still there.” “It’s been such a horrible year people want to show they have the good stuff on their balance sheets, not the bad stuff, but with yields already so low it pushes these even lower,” said Theodore Ake, the head of Treasury trading in New York at Mizuho Securities USA Inc., another primary dealer.
Wall Street Journal:
- EU Emission Curbs Stoke Up Steel Firms. Industry Says Carbon-Dioxide Trading Market, Caps on Factories and Power Plants Threaten High-Paying Jobs. The European Union is facing mounting pressure from European-based steel companies to reshape the world's largest carbon-trading system or face a massive loss of jobs. The conflict pits the EU's environmental goals against its desire to keep high-paying jobs on the Continent.
- Federal regulators are preparing a rescue plan to shore up the finances of some large credit unions, using billions of dollars in new government borrowings. The plan, expected to be announced this week, involves tapping into a $41 billion lending facility that Congress made available to credit-union regulators in September.
FINalternatives:
- Lessons Learned From 2008: Hedge Funds Need to Diversify Custodial, Operational Risk.
CNNMoney.com:
- Citadel under siege. Ken Griffin’s $15 billion firm was flirting with disaster this fall. In a rare interview, he explains how it survived.
Chicago Tribune:
- U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald said today that federal authorities arrested Illinois Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich this morning because the governor went on "a political corruption crime spree" that needed to be stopped. Fitzgerald said secret tape recordings showed Blagojevich was attempting "to sell the U.S. Senate seat" that President-elect Barack Obama recently vacated. Fitzgerald said, "We make no allegations" that Obama was aware of any alleged scheming by Blagojevich. The governor has the sole power to pick Obama's replacement under the state constitution. "The conduct would make Lincoln roll over in his grave," Fitzgerald said, quoting Blagojevich as saying the Senate seat is "a bleeping valuable thing. You just don't give it away. ... I've got this thing and it's bleeping golden."
LA Times:
- US scrap paper prices have fallen as much as 75% in the last six weeks, with much of the decline due to a drop in demand from China, citing industry executives including Peter Wang, CEO of America Chung Nam Inc., the largest US wastepaper supplier.
Washington Post:
- Internal Freddie Mac(FRE) documents show that senior executives at the company were warned years ago that they were offering mortgages that could pose dangers to the firm, hurt borrowers and generate more risky loans throughout the industry. At Fannie Mae(FNM), top executives were told it was necessary to develop "underground" efforts to buy subprime mortgages because of competitive pressures, although there were growing risks and borrowers often didn't understand the terms of the loans, documents show.
Oil Voice:
- The status of the global economy has become the most important driver of oil consumption growth and EIA’s oil consumption projections continue to be revised downward in response to lower forecasts for global economic growth. As a result, global oil consumption is expected to decline by 50,000 bbl/d in 2008 and by 450,000 bbl/d in 2009, which would mark the first time in 3 decades that world consumption would decline in 2 consecutive years. In both years, growth is concentrated in countries outside of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), especially China, the Middle East, and Latin America.
Lloyd’s List:
- New ship prices will drop by a third next year and the number of orders will decline 60%, citing Bao Zhangjing, an official at the China Shipbuilding Economy Research Center. Owners will defer orders in anticipation of falling prices, Bao said at a conference in Shanghai today.
Kommersant:
- Russia Rail Shipping Fell 20% in November.
recast to "
Valor Economico:
Energy use my increase 4% this year compared with a previous forecast of a 4.9% gain, citing Mauricio Tolmasquim, head of the government’s energy research agency.
No comments:
Post a Comment