Empiric Student Property Share Discussion Threads

[briarberry] 15/8/2009 17:48

The SDR is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement its member countries' official reserves. Its value is based on a basket of four key international currencies, and SDRs can be exchanged for freely usable currencies. With a general SDR allocation taking effect on August 28 and a special allocation on September 9, 2009, the amount of SDRs will increase from SDR 21.4 billion to SDR 204.1 billion (currently equivalent to about $317 billion).



pretty good pdf about SDR

[briarberry] 15/8/2009 15:57

77 banks in 2009...

Community Bank of Nevada is the 77th bank to fail this year and the third in Nevada.

[briarberry] 12/8/2009 20:18

Fed - most people seem to think that the Fed will be printing again, sooner or later, to support the governments deficit spending...


Fed release

"As previously announced, to provide support to mortgage lending and housing markets and to improve overall conditions in private credit markets, the Federal Reserve will purchase a total of up to $1.25 trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities and up to $200 billion of agency debt by the end of the year. In addition, the Federal Reserve is in the process of buying $300 billion of Treasury securities. To promote a smooth transition in markets as these purchases of Treasury securities are completed, the Committee has decided to gradually slow the pace of these transactions and anticipates that the full amount will be purchased by the end of October. The Committee will continue to evaluate the timing and overall amounts of its purchases of securities in light of the evolving economic outlook and conditions in financial markets."

[briarberry] 12/8/2009 19:17

The Federal Reserve's policy-setting FOMC said it would slow its purchases of long-term Treasurys and let the program die a natural death by October, a decision that could send long-term yields higher.

[briarberry] 12/8/2009 14:05

CHINA decided that they will only buy TIPS bonds from USA ?



Wall Street Journal, AUGUST 6, 2009

U.S., in Nod to China, to Sell More TIPS
By ROB COPELAND and MAYA JACKSON RANDALL

The Treasury Department, responding to growing demand from China and other investors, will boost the sale of inflation-protected bonds that hold their value as consumer prices rise....

Treasury officials need to ensure demand from China, the largest holder of U.S. government debt. Last week's auctions of fixed-rate notes saw lukewarm demand from China and other investors. Chinese officials had indicated they want inflation-protected securities, especially as the U.S. economy starts to recover....

Of the $6.66 trillion of government bonds issued between Oct. 1, 2008 and June 30 of this year, just $44 billion were TIPS....

[briarberry] 12/8/2009 13:45

Shanghai Composite another big drop, this time 4%

[briarberry] 11/8/2009 23:57

Fed - I guess this could be important and it might be announced tomorrow ???


From Bloomberg last week:

The Federal Reserve is set to halt its purchases of up to $300 billion in U.S. Treasuries in mid- September as scheduled, and will probably announce the decision next week, two former central bank governors said.

[briarberry] 09/8/2009 16:07

World landgrabs - Veteran speculators such as George Soros, Jim Rogers and Lord Jacob Rothschild are snapping up farmland right now. - an area half the size of Europe's farmland targeted...


The Independent - Sunday, 9 August 2009

A new breed of colonialism is rampaging across the world, with rich nations buying up the natural resources of developing countries that can ill afford to sell. Some staggering deals have already been done, says Paul Vallely, but angry locals are now trying to stop the landgrabs

...
The government of President Ravalomanana (Madagascar) became the first in the world to be toppled because of what the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization recently described as "landgrabbing". The Daewoo deal is only one of more than 100 land deals which have, over the past 12 months, seen massive tracts of cultivable farmland across the globe bought up by wealthy countries and international corporations. The phenomenon is accelerating at an alarming rate, with an area half the size of Europe's farmland targeted in just the past six months.

...
So what is the cause of this sudden explosion of land acquisition across the globe? It has its roots in the food crisis of 2007/8, when prices of rice, wheat and other cereals skyrocketed across the world, triggering riots from Haiti to Senegal. The price spike also led food-growing countries to slap export tariffs on staple crops to minimise the amounts that left their countries. That tightened the supply still further, meaning food prices were driven up more by a situation of policy-created scarcity than by supply and demand.

This situation also made many rich countries that are reliant on massive food imports question one of the fundamentals of the global economy: the idea that every country should concentrate on its best products and then trade. Suddenly having unimaginable quantities of cash from oil was not enough to guarantee you all the food you needed. The oil sheikhs of the Gulf states found that food imports had doubled in cost over less than five years. In the future it might get even worse. You could no longer rely on regional and global markets, they concluded. The rush to grab land began.

And the benefits could only increase. The fundamental conditions that had led to the global food crisis were unchanged, and might easily worsen. The UN predicts that by 2050, the world population will have grown by 50 per cent. Growing the food to feed nine billion people will place enormous pressure on the Earth, eroding soils, denuding forests and draining rivers. Climate change will make all that worse. Oil prices will continue to rise, and with them the cost of fertiliser and tractor fuel. Demand for biofuels would further cut land available for food crops. The 2007/8 price crunch might just be a foretaste of something worse. The times of plenty are already over. Next, there might not be enough food to go round, even for those with lots of money.

We have not really noticed it here, because the UK, like the US, still instinctively seems to place unlimited faith in the ability of the market to provide. But other countries have begun to devise a long-term strategic response.

...
But the market is having its say, too: the cost of land is rising. Prices have jumped 16 per cent in Brazil, 31 per cent in Poland, and 15 per cent in the midwestern United States. Veteran speculators such as George Soros, Jim Rogers and Lord Jacob Rothschild are snapping up farmland right now. Rogers – who between 1970 and 1980 increased the value of his equities portfolio by 4,200 per cent, and who made another fortune predicting the commodities rally in 1999 – last month said: "I'm convinced that farmland is going to be one of the best investments of our time."

...
Biofuels are one of the most thirsty products on the planet; it takes up to 9,100 litres of water to grow the soya for one litre of biodiesel

[briarberry] 07/8/2009 21:09

deflation ?

U.S. credit card debt down record 10 months in row
U.S. June consumer credit down at 4.9% rate
U.S. June consumer credit down $10.29 bln

[briarberry] 07/8/2009 15:45

rates going up, was payrolls too much good news ???

[briarberry] 06/8/2009 22:57

Fannie Mae Q2 loss $2.67 vs $2.54

[briarberry] 06/8/2009 18:53

Aggregate July sales dropped 5%, according to International Council of Shopping Centers...

Gap Inc. said on Thursday that its same-stor sales for July fell 8%.
J. C. Penney Company Inc. said Thursday same-store sales fell 12.3%, expects Q2 loss
Kohl's Corp. said Thursday that its July sales at stores open at least one year rose 0.4%.
Saks same-store sales down 16.3% | Costco sales fall 7%
Big Lots sales down 2.4% | American Eagle July sales down 11%
Urban Outfitters sales down 6% | Limited down 7%
Abercrombie & Fitch sales plummet 28%
Nordstrom same-store sales down 6.9%

[briarberry] 05/8/2009 22:21

Cisco posts 46% drop in quarterly profit

[briarberry] 05/8/2009 22:19

farmland, rare price drop...


The U.S. Agriculture Department said in its annual report that the value of all land and buildings on U.S. farms averaged $2,100 an acre Jan. 1, down 3.2% from last year. The decline in farm real-estate values was the first since 1987, the agency said.

[briarberry] 05/8/2009 18:25

EuroZone's July PMI Services, 45.7
U.S. July ISM services 46.4, employment index, 41.5

[briarberry] 03/8/2009 23:54

Standard and Poors, earnings reports got worse last week...

23/07/2009 - 197 issues (52.75% mkt val) reported...
Actual operating reported (same companies) 29.6% lower than Q2,08; As Reported off 4.52%: Sales off 9.7%

31/07/2009 - 337 issues (75.14% mkt val) reported...
Actual weighted operating reported (same companies) 36.8% lower than Q2,08; As Reported off 23.7%: Sales off 15.6%

Operating: Income from product (goods and services), excludes corporate (M&A, financing, layoffs ), and unusual items
As Reported: Income from continuing operations, also known GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) and As Reported

[briarberry] 03/8/2009 22:35

United States, where the Institute for Supply Management index rose to 48.9% in July from 44.8% in June
The Chinese purchasing managers index rose to 53.3% from 53.2%.
The U.K. PMI rose to 50.8% from 47.4%.
The euro-zone PMI rose to 46.3% from 42.6%.
The PMIs also rose in Russia and were essentially unchanged in Brazil and India.

[briarberry] 03/8/2009 22:21

Car sales, about 2 million more cars sold than last month, Cash for Clunkers must have helped...

Daimler U.S. July sales drop 24.2% to 17,646 units
Volkswagen U.S. July sales up 0.7% to 20,590 units
Chrysler U.S. July sales fall 9% to 88,900 units
Honda U.S. July sales fall 17.3% to 114,690 units
GM U.S. July sales drop 19.4% to 189,443 units
Hyundai U.S. July sales rise 11.9% to 45,553 units
Toyota U.S. July sales fall 11.4% to 174,872 units
Porsche U.S. July sales down 51.6% to 1,544 units
Nissan N.A. July sales down 24.6% to 71,847 units

The final sales rate tally came to 11.24 million cars and trucks, according to Autodata. That marks the best month for the industry since September 2008.

[briarberry] 03/8/2009 16:58

German retail sales fell by 1.8% in June from a month earlier, despite many analysts expecting a slight rise. Sales in June were also down 1.6% from the same month last year.