Whole Dollar Jinx
December 29, 2009 at 3:32 pm | Posted in wall street | Leave a commentOK, I admit it.
I fell for the penny wise / pound foolish curse of picking a round number to buy in. This morning ANH continued to slide down in a minitrend that got going when it went ex-dividend last week.
I sat there and confidently entered my order to buy some more stock at $6.99. I even relented, and decided I could live with a price (including commissions) above $7, and raised my bid by a penny.
Of course, the low tick for the day was $7.01.
Santa Rally Stock?
December 29, 2009 at 2:49 pm | Posted in wall street | Leave a commentEarly readers may recall my strategy of getting paid to buy highly volatile stocks by selling covered calls. In particular, I cited the testing-stage small pharma companies as a group that throws off very high “synthetic dividends” due to their option volatility.
Today I added another one to the stable, even though I’m not finished researching it. I just felt lucky as we struggle to maintain day 7 of the Santa Claus rally (Dow Industrials only).
The reason (and I know this is silly) is the symbol – SNTA. What could be more appropriate for the season?
Pattern Recognition
December 28, 2009 at 4:57 pm | Posted in wall street | Leave a commentI can’t be sure if it’s an artifact of what I sometimes call the “mosaic mind” or truly unusual, but today I noticed something I don’t think I’ve seen in all my years of watching the yield curve.
It also seems to show again the heavy gravitational attraction of “round numbers.” After the jump, I’ll post a picture of the Bloomberg screen most long-time bond pros watch to see “the market.”
Sometimes there are genuine economic forces at work that push markets toward round numbers. Most easily seen are the prices of stocks, commodities or even indices on option expiration day. If there is enough open interest in those options, the final bit of trading tends to push the price of the underlying to the point where huge numbers of options (both puts and calls) expire worthless.
Launching the QE2
December 28, 2009 at 1:02 pm | Posted in wall street | 3 CommentsNo, it’s not another luxury liner. There are enough of those floating all-you-can-eat buffets already.
I’m talking about the successor to Quantitative Enhancement.
This is big for amREITs, and warrants an alert.
The higher the premium at which they own their portfolios, the more risk to principal the amREITs are about to feel.
Practice Looking Surprised
December 27, 2009 at 11:07 pm | Posted in wall street | 2 CommentsAs I pointed out in my post on the Citicorp secondary stock offering, driving the price below half of the Q3 book value may put all those poor abused bankers that have to take stock instead of cash into the multi-generational kind of money in the future.
The clue sitting right in front of you is that the most senior crew at Goldman is taking 100% of their bonus in stock, even though the stock never had its final plunge, and even though it is already doubled from the bottom.
Of course, the individuals won’t pay any current tax on that part of their annual compensation, and the company will be able to deduct those “phantom” compensation expenses before doing anything rash like paying dividends or taxes.
Oh, the beauty of it all.
Phoenix or Zombie?
December 27, 2009 at 4:38 pm | Posted in wall street | 3 CommentsAn announcement by a former high-flier of the mREIT business almost slipped by on Christmas Eve.
Although I’ve mentioned a couple of mREITs that aren’t exclusively Agency MBS holders, and a couple of others that were formed to invest in the “private label” (non-Agency) MBS arena, those (CIM and IVR) came after the fall, and weren’t in the business of buying or creating new MBS.
The older company that filed notice with the SEC on December 24th of its upcoming listing on the AMEX was Impac Mortgage (new symbol IMPM), with tentative first trading date December 29th.
The Not-So-Big ‘C’
December 26, 2009 at 6:35 pm | Posted in wall street | 3 CommentsNo, it’s not Cancer.
Nor, as the date might imply, Christmas.
Not even Chrysler, as it was for so many decades on Wall Street. The not-so-big C is Citicorp, which was reduced to raising equity capital last week at a price so low that even the Federal government acting on behalf of taxpayers said “no thanks”, and held onto their stock.
Voluntary Cost-Shifting
December 26, 2009 at 5:02 pm | Posted in wall street | 10 CommentsAs I listened to the debate about health insurance over the past eight months, I became a (more) interested party.
After 35 years as the insurance companies’ dream (virtually no money ever paid out on my behalf), I find myself facing huge expense for limited coverage, and a hard end to that coverage in 2011 unless I join another large group like my last employer.
Hiatus Ends
December 23, 2009 at 2:03 am | Posted in wall street | 2 CommentsWhen a blizzard is threatening, those of us in the snowy parts of the country don’t run out and buy every loaf of bread and jug of milk in the supermarket. We do try to put all our stuff in places where the snowplows can’t hurt them, and hand shoveling is held to a minimum.
I’m always amused at what the people who don’t usually deal with “big dump” snowstorms don’t know. The most important thing, for example, is to know where the snow is going to go (and stay for weeks or months if need be). You need one spot near the road, and another one or two near the house where nothing else sits, and there is good access for a plow or snowblower from several directions.
The hard part is resisting planting something in those snow dumping spots that you care about. Trust me, whatever it is, it will die, except for pachysandra, daffodils or tiger lilies.
Annaly Answers Analyst
December 17, 2009 at 9:08 pm | Posted in wall street | Leave a commentThe Merrill analyst that published a $15.75 price target on NLY earlier this week may have an even worse day tomorrow after the market reacts to the fourth quarter dividend ($0.75) announced tonight. That’s up from the $0.69 they declared in September and paid in October.
In after hours trading the stock went as high as $19.05 per share.
If it manages to trade to the 15% yield level on that dividend, there is room to run up to $20 per share.
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Having your say
Conscience of a cons… on JPM Proves My Point Taymere on JPM Proves My Point hhill51 on JPM Proves My Point Conscience of a cons… on JPM Proves My Point George on ARNA Gets Positive FDA Panel…
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