You can see how beautifully my tooth has done since I had a root canal redone last year. Note the lovely bit of bone that’s regenerated.
(The complete series of posts: Root Canal Redo, Root Canal Redo (II), Root Canal Redo (III))
I can’t say enough good about my dentist here. He’s skilled, patient, and best of all, he doesn’t drive a Mercedes.
China Property Bubble Bursts in Bond Market as Kaisa Drops
“China property developers paid coupons as high as 14 percent to issue dollar debt this year, compared with an average 9.2 percent for other companies in Asia and 6.2 percent for U.S. property companies. On average, Chinese property companies are paying a 10.875 percent coupon.”
“The yield spread on $350 million of 13.5 percent notes sold by Shenzhen-based Kaisa last month widened… to 16.52 percentage points from 11.07 percentage points. An investor who bought the company’s 2015 bonds at par would have lost 15.5 percent.”
Looks like they pushed it out, er, privately placed it in the nick of time, probably to a bunch of hapless German banks and other “sophisticated” suckers.
“Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd., a property developer in China’s Pearl River Delta, hired Credit Suisse Group AG, Citigroup Inc. and UBS Group AG to help it sell senior notes denominated in U.S. dollars.”
Those investment bankers — white-toothed, firm-gripped, strong-chinned — earned every dime for their “help.”
(Michael Lewis in today’s amusing op-ed: “Washington will attempt to limit our ability to exploit the idiocy of institutional investors a.k.a. our ‘customers.’ … If they curtail our ability to shaft German investors in one way, we will simply find some other way to do it.”)
Here’s British Petroleum’s daily stock chart. The Deepwater Horizon rig exploded late on Tuesday, April 20, I believe, and the first mention in the news was on April 21. It’s interesting that BP’s stock price didn’t really react until the next Monday, April 26, and then tanked for real on April 29 when the news hit that the leak was many times worse than originally thought.
It’s always fun to look at stock charts along with a collection of news headlines to see how well the market works. In BP’s case, the early reports on the leak were 200 barrels a day, then 1000, then 5000, then 25000, and I believe it eventually hit 75000 (Update: 70,000). Be nice to line up those growing numbers with the shrinking share price. 
Sugar has been the worst-performing commodity over the last year, but it has stopped falling at the moment. From here it can go up, down or sideways. If you want a better answer than that you’ll have to ask one of those guys who appears on TV with capped teeth and an expensive haircut. His guess is as good as the next guy’s, but he’ll look good and sound convincing.
(Spot sugar hit a 29-year high of 30.4 cents on February 1, 2010)
There is a sugar ETN, but it’s very thinly-traded (20-Day Average Volume: 26,115). Inception date 06/24/2008.
I joked the other day on Twitter that the new highs list was sponsored by the New Normal because it was filled with discount retailers like Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar Stores. My newsletter subscribers and I are long retail (since March 2009) through a retail ETF (ticker symbol XRT), but I’m not sure what kind of weighting the discount retailers have within it.
Here’s a relative performance chart since the beginning of the year showing, DG, DLTR, FDO, and the broad market (SPY):
I wrote about the importance of watching for the 120 min reversal yesterday. I guess this will be my last update on the Euro for awhile since I’m probably boring people (i.e., non-currency traders) even more than usual. The bottom line is the problems in Europe are deep and it’s wise to continue to approach the EUR from the short side and hit it when the time is right for the time-frame you’re trading.
Follow me on Twitter, if you’d like.
Related: Trend Trading the Euro
End of day screenshot on the 20th
It makes sense that within minutes of my posting an Update on the Euro urging readers not to listen to the siren song of the countertrend, it began a huge countertrend run. Here’s the updated 120-min chart. Once we see a breakdown on this timeframe, it should be safe to once again go in and hit and run from the short side on smaller time frames.
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Related: Trend Trading the Euro
End of day screenshot on the 20th
The flash crash exposed not only structural problems but also the underlying fragility of the market. Subscribers and I took quite a few losses two Monday’s ago (the 10th), got long the bonds (TLT) on the same day, and expect to take some more losses among other stock holdings next Monday.
It’s not all bad — I’m pleased with our exits from Agribusiness (MOO) about a month ago (April 19) — one of our oldest positions bought back in December 2008 — and EAFE (EFA) earlier this month (May 3). You have to take the bad with the good.
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Following up on my multi-time-frame post for the Euro, you can see that the 30-minute chart remains useful for picking spots to get short. This news out of Germany is a sign of weakness and no one can “ban” selling the EUR. Favor the short side and keep an eye on all time-frames.
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Update: end of workday screenshot from Thursday.
Last month my maternal grandmother died (she was 95). I knew she was ailing and that my mother had rushed to Germany to be with her, but I didn’t know exactly when she died until a few days after it happened.
Anyway, the odd thing is I was sitting in traffic in Beijing, halfway around the world, on the way home from the office and I spontaneously started crying. I thought it was odd since there was nothing particularly different about my day than any other. Only later did I learn that my “episode” coincided with the time my grandmother died. Odd, isn’t it?
Has anyone else experienced, or know anyone who has experienced, this kind of paranormal thing?
