The old adage to sell in May and go away for the summer certainly held true for 2011. As the summer draws to a close, hopefully so does the thrashing that markets have taken since May 1st. It’s tough to remember that at one point this year the S&P 500 was up almost 9%. Since then we’re down 10.5% on the S&P, sitting below where we started the year at 1255.
Monthly Archives: August 2011
Top Worldwide Spirits by Volume
Brown Forman, the makers of Jack Daniels and Southern Comfort (among other spirits) reported earnings today.
TBF Comparison to 30 year Treasury Yield
Up until mid 2009, the only inverse long bond ETF that a bond bear could utilize was TBT. TBT is a 2x inverse ETF though, and due to the properties of double levered ETFs, it has been a particularly poor long term holding. A TBT holder who bought in January ’09 has lost 30% even though the 30 year bond yield is about 40% higher over the same period.
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Click to Enlarge. (Unfortunately the scale is slightly skewed because the two series are plotted on separate axes.) |
Comparing ADP and Payrolls
ADP data will be released tomorrow morning, and Nonfarm-Payrolls data will be released on Friday. Typically ADP gives a good sense of what the payrolls data will show, but it’s not always perfect. Below is a comparison of the two measures since 2008. Since the beginning of ’08 ADP has exceeded the employment number reported by the BLS by an average of 20k per month. As a result of the difference, ADP counts 850k fewer jobs lost since January ’08–5.95m jobs compared to 6.8m.
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Look who’s showing some life
What incremental capital pool is going to purchase treasuries?
Adjusted for Deficit Nominal GDP Still Below Peak
The second estimate of GDP for 2Q11 was reported today and real GDP growth was revised downward to 1.0% from 1.1%. Optimists will note that although real GDP is still slightly below its 2007 peak, nominal GDP hit a new peak, just under $15 trillion.
Of course, no one knows what that line would look like with no stimulus at all, but with chatter growing for new rounds of stimulus, the question has to be asked–what’s it worth?
Spotlight on Insurers
For stock analysts, insurance is typically an industry that doesn’t get much attention. Of course, all that changes a few times a year when a hurricane is barreling towards the eastern seaboard. For those brief moments, everyone likes to look at insurance companies.
On CNBC this morning they’re throwing around a $10B loss estimate (Katrina was a $40B loss event for comparison). Below is a comp table for some of the largest property casualty insurers in the US, “EqTotA” is the book value of the equity on the insurer’s balance sheet. This group has a combined capitalization of $367B, so $10B is just a drop in the bucket, especially considering that a large portion of any losses will be shared with reinsurers not listed here. So, the hurricane shouldn’t move the needle too much for insurers, but while the insurance industry has our attention, I took the opportunity to put some non-hurricane related data in front of readers.
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Time for Gold to Move Sideways?
It’s been a volatile week for gold, which fell $100 on Wednesday and sits today at $1785, up slightly from the recent lows. So far the move has been pretty typical for the metal, which over the past 3 years shows a clear pattern of hitting overbought peaks followed by a sharp drop and then a few months of sideways consolidation back to the 50 or 100 day moving average.
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Top 20 US Retailers by Sales per Square Foot
I stumbled across this blog looking for the data presented below. I was pretty impressed with the way these guys aggregate data and would encourage those looking for quick numbers on a retail company to take a look. It’s a good resource for anyone who isn’t paying 30k per year for a Bloomberg terminal.
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