September 26, 2007
Most Read Stories (26-Sep-2007 10:01:15)
Here are the top five most read stories on the Bloomberg in the last day with selected excerpts (and my comments, if any, in italics).
As of 26-Sep-2007 at 10:01:15 (Beijing time):
- Subprime Panic Freezes $40 Billion of Canadian Commercial Paper
- Lennar Reports Biggest Loss in Its 53-Year History
- The Fall of Detroit: Insider Sees Errors of 1970s in GM Strike
- Crude Oil Falls Below $79 as Naimi Says Markets Are in Turmoil
- Perot’s Magna Carta May Take $30 Million at Sotheby’s
“The funds run by companies such as Coventree paid interest of about 4.6 percent for 30 days, compared with three-month Canadian government bills that yielded 4.35 percent. The debt is backed by mortgages, corporate bonds, and car loans that typically yield as much as 1 percentage point more than commercial paper … On Aug. 13 Coventree said it couldn’t find enough buyers to refinance C$950 million of short- term debt and its banks refused to provide emergency funds.”
Coventree management obviously wasn’t playing enough golf with their bankers.
“‘The days of no verification, no downpayment and low credit scores are past,’ CFO Bruce Gross said.”
You mean the days of dumb lending are past? And the chartists looking for LEN at $15 may be right!
“During our 30-minute lunch breaks, we sat in our cars and listened to Jimi Hendrix as we smoked marijuana, drank beer and took Desoxyn and other methamphetamines before returning to the line.”
So much for quality control.
“Crude oil prices have risen 31 percent since Jan. 18.”
“Ross Perot’s foundation will sell its copy of the Magna Carta for as much as $30 million in New York in mid-December. The document was bought by Perot in 1984 for $1.5 million.”
So this piece of paper appreciated about 14% a year, right? Is that better than the US long bond over the same priod?
September 26th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
CM,
RE: XHB back on 8-3-07
I hope you didn’t give them your $500. There’s a lot more pain on the downside, IMO.
C. Maoxian said:
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:28 am
Todd: Well, yes, it’s clearly a “countertrend” play but long-term investors don’t think like short-term traders. We’ll see what happens, I may risk $500 on it for fun.
September 27th, 2007 at 12:05 am
Just eyeballing the chart, it looks like the bond was yielding around 14% at the lows in ‘84. So yes, it seems he would have been better off just buying the bond, even if he held it to maturity. We can assume he would have sold it sometime in the last few years for a huge profit. But I guess it’s fun to whip out the ol’ Magna at parties and such; pretend you’re using it as a dinner napkin or placemat.
September 27th, 2007 at 8:01 am
Hey, a 75 Nova is still worth $5000 in Kingston, Jamaica and thats with 700,000 mi. Maybe they should play Jimi at Toyota plants! I am sure a percentage of Chinese workers are discovering methaphetadamines at this point.
September 27th, 2007 at 10:14 am
@Todd: Fortunately I didn’t buy the XHB. Recall that the hammer didn’t form on the weekly so I don’t think anybody trid that trade; I bought a bunch of regional banks instead.
@Ollie: I’ll try to find the exact return for the long bond over that time.
@Hudson: I bet a 75 Corona (Toyota) with 700,000 miles on it goes for more than the Nova in Kingston, Jamaica. Those early 70s Japanese cars were rock solid — people said they were junk, but they weren’t.
Any Chinese worker caught with methamphetamines can look forward to a quick trip to the execution ground. (But the workers have discovered coffee.)