It Figures

5 Comments

    • Morningstar on Munis: What Kind of Credit Crisis Is This? [view article]
      Despite your elegant rant, Morningstar is right. Munis are cheap, on their own fundamentals.

      You make some interesting points, and have some good insights, but they are off the point of the Morningstar story. If all the monolines disappear tomorrow, muni default rates will probably perform as the underlying credit ratings imply. And on that basis, the credits are cheap.       Feb 25 08:11 AM
    • Chart of the Day: Stock-Bond Divergence [view article]
      ...or credit has overshot! Feb 24 03:19 PM
    • A Look at the Phillips Curve [view article]
      I'm with User 155076. Perhaps it should be re-named the "Phillips Inverted L", parrellel to X at lower X values, to Y at higher.


       Feb 24 03:14 PM
    • Which is the Most Accurate Home Price Index? [view article]
      I think it might be useful to approach the "which is best" question from the point of view of what you want to use it for. If you want it to help with trading, C-S probably does the trick, as it is what most others look at. But if you are looking for a read on housing's impact on the consumer, OFHEO could be more informative, as it probably eliminates non-owner occupied spec related transactions (overwhelmingly non-conforming loans), where a great deal of the "sell at any price" and/or walkaway behavior has been concentrated.

      Houses are not fungible, and neither are housing markets. To gauge the impact on the creditworthy owner occupied market (the bulk of which are going to look like the OFHEO data), I think it is useful to judge the degree of speculation in the market before coming to conclusions. Looked at this way, most markets are not declining Y/Y - just increasing very slowly. This is why the consumer spending numbers ( and WMT) keep "surprising" on the upside.       Feb 24 03:00 PM
    • Wal-Mart's Poor Customer Service Has Got to Go [view article]
      All you have to do to assess the "quality" of these points is look at this guy's bio. He works for the unions trying to undo WMT's success. Feb 20 06:26 PM
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