The Mole

Report from Europe: Stocks Up Ahead of Key Earnings Week

Well with the Xstrata bid, these days Anglo American are taking up a lot of space in the financial section.

Report from Europe: 10,000 Beckons for the Dow

A lot more than that has been traded on Xstrata today. That 5,490 that you saw was probably the amount traded on Xstrata's listing in the US. I noted on Yahoo! Finance that the volume was under 10k on the 14th. finance.yahoo.com/q?s=...

But Xstrata's main listing is in London. On the 14th, nearly 19 million shares were traded there. finance.yahoo.com/q?s=...

Preview from Europe: Mid-Day Sell-Off

Sorry if the times are confusing. Unfortunately, first and foremost, I write the Market Watch for readers in the UK and Ireland so I tend to leave the economic data times in their time zone. I'm absolutely delighted that I get US readers too though.

Preview from Europe: Markets Get a Temporary Reprieve

The real meat is in paragraph 13
www.bloomberg.com/apps...

Madoff’s secretary, she says, set up hotel meetings before the Willard encounter and made reservations in person “to ensure that the room would not turn up on his credit card.” Weinstein describes herself as smoking marijuana to relax. Madoff said his wife did too. Weinstein says she didn’t know if that was true.

Preview from Europe: Important Week Ahead for Economic Data

Hi Expat, that Open In A New Window problem should be sorted now for future posts.

Preview from Europe: Stocks End Quarter with a Whimper

Recall that Jim Cramer called the bottom in housing (again) the other day.

Check out the 100 year US housing chart below:
www.ritholtz.com/blog/...

Preview from Europe: Important Week Ahead for Economic Data

Hi Expat, I'm sorry but that's the way that Seeking Alpha have set it up. But if you right click on the link and hit Open In A New Window, that's possibly a way to do it.

Preview from Europe: Stocks Suffer as Financials Take the Strain

The key 200 day moving average on S&P 500 cash index comes in around 907, where the futures are currently trading, careful.

Preview from Europe: Stocks Snooze

The U.S. Dollar is weaker today and Treasury Bond yields higher on a report that Russia may be switching some more of its reserves into IMF bonds. Sabre rattling?

Preview from Europe: A Jobless Recovery?

Just to give you a big fat example of the lack of green shoots in an area I've been very worried about for some time - Tourism, which will have a horrible year this year and force a lot of price cutting and redundancy. So we weren't surprised to see the following…

Arcandor AG (one of Germany’s largest tourist operator and retail outlets) today filed for Insolvency. They employ over 80,000 people - go tell the initial 43,000 that will be tinned about the "Green" shoots and surely they will disagree. It’s going to get worse from an unemployment front. For what it’s worth, 60% of their business was tourism and 40% from retail. Just for the record they don’t have a word for Green Shoots in Germany, which is OK because they wont need it for some time??

Preview from Europe: Another Yo-Yo Day

Financials are the worst performing sector this morning - there is selling pressure across the space. The market is concerned about the possible writedowns at Belgina bank KBC (their shares are suspended) with press (The Tijd) now reporting they may write down as much as €4bn on their CDO portfolio. This has also brought the monoline exposure of European Financials into focus. On a conference call yesterday MBIA indicated that between 66-80% of losses on 2nd mortgage bonds and CDOs was tied to collateral that was ‘ineligible’ to be included in the deals. This has brought into question if Banks and Insurers may have to take further writedowns and how much of their monoline exposure will actually be insured. It is not a good sign that defensive sectors are outperforming. Expect further volatility.

I see the Central Bank of Ireland are recruiting. I hadn’t realised that things had become QUITE so bad over there:
www.centralbank.ie/fra...
So the revolution is coming eh?

Preview from Europe: Another Bumpy Day for Stocks

Moody’s rating agency says outlook on UK’s AAA rating stable, not under review.

Preview from Europe: Earnings to Test Market Strength

The story re the dodgy stress tests has been PULLED by Bloomberg so please disregard. Don't shoot the messanger.

Preview from Europe: Earnings to Test Market Strength

Bank "stress test" results obtained for top 19 banks, Turner Radio Network says. A copy of the stress test results were obtained by The Turner Radio Network, and the site says the results are "very bad." Out of the top 19 banks in the US, 16 of them are already technically insolvent and out of the 16 banks that are insolvent, none of them can withstand any disruption of cash flow or a further deterioration in non-paying loans. The results also show that the five largest U.S. banks are so under capitalized that there is serious doubt about their ability to continue as ongoing businesses.

Preview from Europe: Beware Wild Swings

Great point EdG. I never looked at New Zealand retail sales like that. Previously I simply looked at the impact it had on the New Zealand dollar. I'll keep an eye on how strong the correlation is with UK/US retail sales over the coming months.