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August 30, 2007


Most Read Stories (30-Aug-2007 9:25:02)

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 30-Aug-2007 at 9:25:02 (Beijing time):

  1. Worst Is Yet to Come for U.S. Housing Market: Chart of the Day

    2. I don’t think this story is available on the web; maybe I’ll replicate the chart later if I have time. Update: The Chart of the Day column (NI CHART [GO]) is exclusive to the Bloomberg, I believe — don’t worry, it’s often lame. Here’s today’s chart.

  2. U.S. Stocks Rally; Technology Paces Rebound on Seagate Outlook
  3. Fed Underestimated Debt Impact, Focused on Inflation

    4. “… financing remains costly or constrained for riskier securities and loans. Interest rates on jumbo mortgages, or those greater than $417,000, have soared to 106 basis points more than the cost of smaller mortgages, from 39 basis points at the start of the month.”

  4. Cheyne May Liquidate Commercial Paper Unit on Losses

    5. “More than 20 companies, including San Francisco-based Luminent Mortgage Capital Inc. and Thornburg Mortgage Co. in Santa Fe, New Mexico, have been unable to roll over asset-backed commercial paper. Thornburg said earlier this month that it sold $20.5 billion of securities at about 95 cents on the dollar to pay down commercial paper it couldn’t refinance.”

    Borrowing short to lend long is a good trick until you lose the ability to borrow short.

  5. U.S. MBA’s Mortgage Applications Index Dropped 4%

    6. “The average rate on a one-year adjustable mortgage surged to 6.51 percent, the highest since January 2001, from 5.84 percent the prior week. The rate also surpassed the cost of a 30-year fixed loan for the first time … The average rate on a 30-year fixed loan fell to 6.41 percent last week, from 6.49 percent. At that rate, monthly borrowing costs for each $100,000 of a loan would have been about $626, little changed from a year ago. … Banks ‘are being very cautious in the volume of prime adjustables they are putting on their balance sheets….’”

    Great caution only appears after years of throwing caution to the wind, of course.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 10:09 am (utc+8) and is filed under Trading and Investing.

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