Portfolio Manager's Commentary on Investing and Trading in the U.S. Financial Markets
Monday, August 11, 2008
Bull Radar
Style Outperformer:
Small-cap Growth (+.68%)
Sector Outperformers:
Airlines (+5.21%), Gaming (+2.70%) and Homebuilders (+1.93%)
Stocks Rising on Unusual Volume:
AMZN, KSS, DISCA, CVC, TM, FEED, AFAM, MPWR, STST, TRLG, IPCM, ISIS, CMED, HLEX, SIGM, ENG, FELE, QSII, LMIA, CIEN, UAUA, KNDL, TTEK, PRGN, PTE, DBD, CRD/B, DSW, CYD, FSF, VRX and SYY
Stocks With Unusual Call Option Activity:
1) CCK 2) VRX 3) SYY 4) CRME 5) IP
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In Play
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NYSE Unusual Volume
NASDAQ Unusual Volume
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Dow Jones Hedge Fund Indexes
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Monday Watch
Weekend Headlines
Bloomberg:
- The euro dropped the most in more than three years this week, pushing the currency to a six-month low against the U.S. dollar, as traders pared bets the European Central bank will raise interest rates as the economy slows. ``What we have seen over the last few days is the recognition in Europe, in Australia, all around the world, that growth is slowing everywhere,'' said Mohamed El-Erian, co-chief executive officer of Newport Beach, California-based Pacific Investment Management Co., in a Bloomberg Radio interview. ``The euro is no longer as attractive as people once thought.'' The euro's decline below $1.53 and the break of the 200-day moving average at $1.5226 ``marks a significant change in sentiment for the dollar,'' pointing to a further decline to $1.46, Kevin Edgeley, a London-based technical analyst at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., wrote in a report yesterday. The greenback rose to a six-month high against the Australian dollar, and advanced to the highest since September against the New Zealand dollar on speculation the central banks will cut borrowing costs. Russia's ruble fell by the most in 2 1/2 years against a dollar-euro basket used by the government after Georgia's Interior Ministry said four Russian fighter-jets entered Georgian airspace and bombed the towns of Gori and Kareli, boosting the risk of war. ``This is the beginning of a new chapter for the dollar as Trichet and other central banks are paying more attention to the downside risk to growth,'' said Dustin Reid, a senior currency strategist at ABN Amro Bank NV in Chicago.
- Treasury Inflation Protected Securities show that traders' expectations for inflation over the next decade fell to the lowest in almost five years this week as prices of commodities tumbled. ``The bottom line is you've seen a significant turn in commodity prices,'' said Thomas Tucci, head of U.S. government bond trading at RBC Capital Markets in New York, the investment- banking arm of Canada's biggest lender. ``Going forward you're more likely to see inflation erode.'' Ten-year TIPS yielded 2.18 percentage points less than similar-maturity notes, the smallest difference since October 2003. The yield gap indicates the annual rate of inflation foreseen over the life of the security. Auctions of 10- and 30-year Treasuries this week drew better-than-forecast demand, showing investors are still attracted to the safety of U.S. government debt.
- Corn and soybeans fell to the lowest prices in more than four months, extending this week's declines, as a surging US dollar reduced the appeal of commodities as a hedge against inflation. The dollar rose to the highest since February against a basket of the euro, yen and four major currencies. The UBS Bloomberg Constant Maturity Commodity Index is down 15 percent since June 30, partly because of the dollar's rally. Since reaching records this year, corn is down 35 percent and soybeans are down 28 percent as favorable weather boosted crops. Index funds that invest in a basket of commodities cut net- long positions by 3.7 percent to 372,405 corn contracts last week, down 18 percent from a record 452,568 contracts in February. Index funds that invest in baskets of commodities reduced net-long positions by 0.9 percent to 148,734 soybean contracts in the week ended July 29, down 25 percent from a record of 198,707 on Feb. 19, the data show. ``We are finding out how bad it can be when the pension funds and other investors get out of commodities,'' said Dave Marshall, a farm marketing adviser for TOAY Commodity Futures Group LLC in Nashville, Illinois. ``The rapidity that we take out the bullishness is a hallmark of commodity trading, something these fund managers may now regret.''
- The average price of regular gasoline at U.S. filling stations fell to $3.85 a gallon, an industry survey showed. Gasoline dropped 15 cents in the two weeks ended Aug. 8, according to oil-industry analyst Trilby Lundberg's survey of 7,000 filling stations nationwide. U.S. gasoline demand fell a 15th consecutive week, as motorists cope with high fuel prices by driving less, a MasterCard Inc. report showed August 5. Demand last week fell 3.4 percent from a year earlier, MasterCard, the second-biggest credit-card company, said in its weekly SpendingPulse report. ``This year will probably be the lowest gasoline demand in the U.S. since 1981,'' Lundberg said.
- The European Union is intensifying efforts to end five days of combat between Georgia and Russia that left scores dead and threatens to disrupt a major energy transport route.
- Copper fell, capping the biggest weekly drop since May 2007, on heightened concern that slumping economies worldwide will erode demand for industrial commodities. Copper has tumbled 22 percent from a record in May and touched a six-month low today on signs of less consumption. China's home-appliance makers, the world's largest exporters of the products, are cutting purchases of copper as shipments of air conditioners and refrigerators slow, Jiangxi Copper Co. said this week.
- The cost of protecting Asia-Pacific bonds from default declined, according to traders of credit- default swaps. The Markit iTraxx Australia index fell 6 basis points to 139 as of 10:37 a.m. in Sydney, JPMorgan Chase & Co. prices show. Asia's index of 50 investment-grade borrowers outside Japan, including the Thai government and Hong Kong's Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., fell 3 to 142 and the region's benchmark of high-risk, high-yield borrowers declined 5 to 550, BNP Paribas SA prices show.
- China’s economy will be slowed instead of stimulated the next two months by the Beijing Olympic Games and Paralympics, according to Goldman Sachs(GS). “These measures will likely lead to a visible slowdown in real economic activities, both production and consumption, in August and September,” Goldman said. “We expect a gradually softening economic path in the second half of 2008,” the analysts wrote.
- Singapore said its economy expanded at the slowest pace in five years and predicts exports will decline for the first time since 2001, adding pressure on the central bank to allow the currency to weaken to boost growth. Gross domestic product increased 2.1 percent from a year earlier in the second quarter, after expanding 6.9 percent in the previous three months, the trade ministry said in a statement today.
- Australia's central bank says it will have more room to cut interest rates because of a ``significant moderation'' in domestic demand that will cut economic growth by half and drive up unemployment.
- Time Warner Inc.'s(TWX) Batman saga ``The Dark Knight'' became the third highest-grossing domestic film of all time with $442 million in sales as it topped the movie chart for a fourth straight weekend.
- Billionaire investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc.(BRK/A) posted its third straight profit decline as lower rates pressured results in insurance operations. Second-quarter net income fell 7.6 percent to $2.88 billion, or $1,859 a share, from $3.12 billion, or $2,018, a year earlier, the Omaha, Nebraska-based company said yesterday.
- Asian currencies slumped this week, led by Singapore's dollar, on concern slowing global growth will curb demand for the region's assets. Singapore's currency posted its biggest weekly loss in a decade after the Straits Times newspaper yesterday cited Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam as saying the economy is moving toward a slowdown and growth is unlikely to rebound ``anytime soon.''
- The armed conflict between Russia and Georgia deals a blow to U.S. aspirations of bringing the former Soviet republic into NATO's orbit and securing an emerging energy corridor linking Central Asia to Europe.
- Republican John McCain today vowed to improve medical care for America's military veterans if he is elected president. ``As president, I will do all that is in my power to ensure that those who serve today, and those who have served in the past, have access to the highest quality health, mental health and rehabilitative care in the world,'' McCain said in a speech at a meeting of the Disabled American Veterans.
- Democrat Barack Obama, beset this week with new attacks from Republican rival John McCain, says there will be little or no politicking over the next seven days as he takes a vacation in Hawaii. ``I'm going to go body surfing at some undisclosed location,'' Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, told the crowd at a welcoming rally yesterday in Honolulu.
- Egyptian inflation rose to an annual 22 percent in July, the highest since 1992, putting pressure on the central bank to raise interest rates for a sixth time this year. Urban inflation accelerated from 20.2 percent in June, the Cairo-based Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics said today in a faxed statement.
- U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said there are no plans to use his new authority to inject capital into mortgage companies Fannie Mae(FNM) and Freddie Mac(FRE), which both posted worse-than-expected earnings last week. Paulson, the former chairman of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said he won't remain as Treasury secretary after President George W. Bush's term ends in January, regardless of who is elected president in November.
Wall Street Journal:
- Intel Corp. is announcing branding plans for a new generation of chip technology, relying on a term the company has already spent heavily on popularizing.
NY Times:
- Reining in the runaway freight train otherwise known as the credit default swap market is a rising priority for regulators who oversee banks and insurers. One of the positives that heightened regulatory interest will bring to this huge market is a push to make participants more scrupulous about assigning proper values to their credit insurance stakes. This may be a rude awakening for many players in financial markets. Those who bought credit insurance as a speculation (hedge funds especially) have been joyously marking up their stakes to reflect the rising defaults. But the recent unwinding of a big credit insurance stake — bought by Merrill Lynch(MER) to cover potential defaults on risky mortgage-related collateralized debt obligations it held — suggests that such optimism may be overdone. Write-downs at these institutions may be imminent.
- Former Genesis singer Peter Gabriel, who found a second career as an investor in online music ventures, has started an Internet site which links advertising to free musical downloads.
- South Korean consumers and shoppers in Turkey are facing problems with soaring debt after lenders issued them credit cards with very little scrutiny to their credit history.
- Time Warner Inc.(TWX) CEO Jeffrey Bewkes is pegging the company’s future on movies and cable-television broadcasts.
- While Knol is only three weeks old and still relatively obscure, it has already rekindled fears among some media companies that Google(GOOG) is increasingly becoming a competitor. They foresee Google’s becoming a powerful rival that not only owns a growing number of content properties, including YouTube, the top online video site, and Blogger, a leading blogging service, but also holds the keys to directing users around the Web.
- Where the presidential candidates stand on energy and the environment.
- Obama partisans block Clinton faction bid to end caucuses.
Reuters:
- GATX Corp (GMT) is offering more than $3 billion for General Electric Co's (GE) rail car leasing business, a source familiar with the discussions said.
- In the first six months of 2008, demand for machine tools, which gives a sense of the pace of US manufacturing, stood at $2.318 billion, up 15.3 percent from $2.011 billion in the same 2007 period. "I think everyone is excited that the underpinning for productivity in our economic growth -- manufacturing technology equipment -- continues to grow at double-digit rates through the second quarter," AMT President John Byrd said in a statement.
Financial Times:
- Citigroup(C) on Friday confirmed a plan to shift its equity research business back into its securities unit, reversing a landmark move made six years ago when regulators were probing Wall Street's conflicts of interest.
- Leading private-equity firms are highlighting their transformation into investors in deeply discounted debt as they purchase more leveraged buy-out financing from banks. In the most recent deal, Royal Bank of Scotland is selling to Apollo, GSO Capital, Blackstone's debt investing arm, and TPG as much as $8bn in loans that financed acquisitions by private-equity firms.
- This week will be crucial in determining whether the dollar has broken free from its six-year downward trend, as speculation mounts that the US is in the best position to emerge quickly from the economic downturn. The dollar index, which measures its value against a basket of six major currencies, put in its best performance for over three-and-a-half years last week. Analysts say other central banks, unlike the Federal Reserve, have been slow to respond to a potential slowdown, refusing to cut interest rates as they focus on fighting inflation. Ulrich Leuchtmann at Commerzbank said in a note he expected the dollar to rise "like a phoenix". He said low US interest rates were not a burden on the dollar but an attraction, proof that the Federal Reserve was able to react quicker to turmoil than other central banks. He said that in a very short period, "sentiment turned by 180 degrees - the market now believes that the US economy once again will be able to leave a crisis behind very quickly". David Deddouche at Société Générale believes a wider adjustment is taking place that will send the dollar higher. He said the decoupling theory pushed the dollar down to multi-year lows. "We believe this is one of the weakest assumptions embedded in the pricing of financial assets," he said.
- European companies have slashed investments in China amid rising labor and transport costs at the same time as they expand in eastern Europe and Russia. Foreign direct investment from the European Union into China fell steeply last year from €6bn in 2006 to €1.8bn ($2.7bn). In Russia, it soared from €10.6bn to €17.1bn. "Lots of European companies are hedging their Chinese manufacturing positions," said David Bartlett, FDI expert and adviser to accounting network RSM International. "Industries are looking more and more at central and eastern Europe, which are plausible alternatives to China for moving production, particularly for costs such as transport."
- An emergency measure protecting a select group of financial stocks from abusive short-selling expires on Tuesday, probably leaving at least a two-month gap before a similar rule, currently being considered, is imposed. The US Securities and Exchange Commission has said that it would not extend the rule preventing "naked" short-selling in shares of 19 key financial entities, including mortgage groups Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac, and big Wall Street firms that include investment bank Lehman Brothers (LEH). some market participants are uneasy. "We remain concerned that during this interim time period our members will continue to be exposed to these "distort and short" campaigns," said Sarah Miller, senior vice-president of the American Bankers Association. Ms Miller wants the SEC either to extend the emergency order and include all banks or to issue a proposal as soon as possible. She said the growing volume of "failures-to-deliver" are indicative of abusive short-selling, and that a spike in FTDs is invariably accompanied by significant stock drops, not all of which can be attributable to market or bank-specific conditions. "We suspect that the volume of FTDs has only continued to grow, perhaps dramatically," she said.
- The recent fall in the price of oil is primarily the result of investors unwinding speculative positions that helped drive up oil prices this year, Alan Greenspan has told the Financial Times. The former Federal Reserve chairman said speculation was "importantly responsible" for the rapid move up in oil prices in late 2007 and early 2008. Mr Greenspan said financial speculation in oil was unlikely to resume in the near term and "there is little prospect of a renewed spike in oil while cyclical weakness continues". "Financial speculation did play a significant part in the rapid increase in oil prices," Mr Greenspan said. From 2004 onwards financial investors identified a one-time opportunity to profit from the expected increase in the price of oil caused by pressure of mounting demand on constrained supply.
TimesOnline:
- All signs indicate that euro’s joyride is at an end.
Sunday Telegraph:
- United Parcel Service(UPS) held initial talks to buy TNT NV for $15 billion.
Milano Finanza:
- Merrill Lynch(MER) CEO John Thain said the company may be able to pay a dividend. “In the short term we think that we should be able to generate necessary profits to cover the dividend, but it is something that’s always subject to evaluation,” citing Thain.
Economic Daily News:
- Scrap steel prices in
Emirates Business 24/7:
-
Weekend Recommendations
Barron's:
- Made positive comments on (XTO), (APC), (SCHW), (HCBK), (GE), (QCOM), (HOME), (HRC), (PCLN), (AUXL), (AWK) and (SU).
Citigroup:
- Reiterated Buy on (AMZN), target $97.
Morgan Stanley:
- Leading indicators for industrial demand in emerging markets point to growth, but also show some areas of weakness. Emerging market weakness would represent significant additional downside to earnings and share prices, particularly for infrastructure plays.
Night Trading
Asian indices are +.50% to +1.75% on avg.
S&P 500 futures -.20%.
NASDAQ 100 futures -.13%.
Morning Preview
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Earnings of Note
Company/Estimate
- (SYY)/.52
- (CNO)/.21
- (CPN)/.16
- (DISCA)/.15
- (CCO)/.19
- (FLR)/.78
- (NUAN)/.21
- (CUZ)/.25
- (MDR)/.77
- (CKEC)/-.19
- (BE)/-.07
Upcoming Splits
- (ALXN) 2-for-1
- (EBIX) 3-for-1
- (TWI) 5-for-44
Economic Releases
- None of note
Other Potential Market Movers
- The (GSX) analyst meeting, (AEZ) analyst meeting, (STSA) analyst meeting, (ESIO) technology tour, Keefe Bruyette Woods Bank Conference, EnerCom Oil & Gas Conference, CSFB Electrical Equipment Conference and the CSFB Tech Communications Conference could also impact trading today.
Weekly Outlook
Click here for Wall St. Week Ahead by Reuters.
Click here for stocks in focus for Monday by MarketWatch.
There are a few economic reports of note and some significant corporate earnings reports scheduled for release this week.
Economic reports for the week include:
Mon. – None of note
Tues. – Trade Deficit, IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism, Monthly Budget Statement, weekly retail sales reports
Wed. – Weekly MBA mortgage applications report, weekly EIA energy inventory data, Import Price Index, Advance Retail Sales, Business Inventories
Thur. – Consumer Price Index, Initial Jobless Claims
Fri. – Empire Manufacturing, Net Long-term TIC Flows, Industrial Production, Capacity Utilization,
Some of the more noteworthy companies that release quarterly earnings this week are:
Mon. – Conseco Inc.(CNO), SYSCO Corp.(SYY), Calpine Corp.(CPN), Clear Channel(CCO), Flour Corp.(FLR), McDermott(MDR), Cousins Properties(CUZ), Carmike Cinemas(CKEC), Nuance Communications(NUAN),
Tues. – BearingPoint(BE), TJX Cos(TJX), Bob Evans(BOBE), Nvidia Corp.(NVDA), Applied Materials(AMAT)
Wed. – Liz Claiborne(LIZ), Dr. Pepper Snapple(DPS), NetApp Inc.(NTAP), Intrepid Potash(IPI), Deere(E), Macy’s(M)
Thur. – Urban Outfitters(URBN), Red Robin(RRGB), Kohl’s Corp.(KSS), Agilent(A), Estee Lauder(EL), JM Smucker(SJM), Wal-Mart(WMT), Nordstrom(JWN), DeVry(DV), Briggs & Stratton(BGG), Autodesk(ADSK)
Fri. – Abercrombie & Fitch(ANF), JC Penney(JCP)
Other events that have market-moving potential this week include:
Mon. – (GSX) analyst meeting, (AEZ) analyst meeting, (STSA) analyst meeting, (ESIO) technology tour, Keefe Bruyette Woods Bank Conference, EnerCom Oil & Gas Conference, CSFB Electrical Equipment Conference, CSFB Tech Communications Conference
Tue. – (FEIC) investor meeting, (SIG) investor day, UBS Engineering & Construction Conference, EnerCom Oil & Gas Conference, CSFB Tech Communications Conference, CanaccordAdams Growth Conference, CSFB Electrical Equipment Conference, Keefe Bruyette Woods Bank Conference
Wed. – CanaccordAdams Growth Conference, JPMorgan Auto Conference, EnerCom Oil & Gas Conference, CSFB Electrical Equipment Conference
Thur. – CanaccordAdams Growth Conference, EnerCom Oil & Gas Conference, JPMorgan Auto Conference
Fri. – None of note