Empiric Student Property Share Discussion Threads

[briarberry] 21/3/2011 19:50

The National Association of Realtors reported this morning that existing U.S. home sales fell 9.6% last month and prices dropped to the lowest level in nine years.
...

New U.S. housing construction fell 22.5% in February to 479,000 units, just above the record low set in April 2009. Building permits fell 8.2% to a record low.

[briarberry] 11/3/2011 20:24

High gasoline prices - Consumer Sentiment...

The weakness is centered in the leading component, the expectations index which fell more than 13 points to 58.3.

[briarberry] 08/3/2011 20:21

Old news, half of BAC loans have gone bad...


Bank of America Corp. (BAC), the biggest U.S. lender by assets, is segregating almost half its 13.9 million mortgages into a "bad" bank comprised of its riskiest and worst-performing "legacy" loans, said Terry Laughlin, who is running the new unit.

[briarberry] 05/3/2011 23:38

Mortgage Modification Overhaul Sought by States

About two million households are in foreclosure, and 2.2 million more are severely delinquent.

[briarberry] 04/3/2011 17:02

Factory Orders

Price effects for non-durables are giving a big boost to dollar totals for shipments which rose 1.8 percent

[briarberry] 04/3/2011 13:55

U.S. Feb. nonfarm payrolls up 192K (includes 112K theoretical jobs)
Total Nonfarm Birth/Death Adjustment +112K

[briarberry] 03/3/2011 16:46

European Union : GDP +2% year over year

However, the Greek economy again contracted (1.4 percent) and there was also a fall in Portuguese GDP (0.3 percent). This will do nothing to calm ongoing sovereign debt worries.
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European Union : PPI +6.1% year over year

European Union : Retail Sales +0.7% year over year

[briarberry] 28/2/2011 23:39

JPM may or may not have to get the skelecton out of their closet...


JPMorgan Chase & Co., the second- largest U.S. bank by assets, may face enforcement actions, fines and other costs stemming from state and federal probes of its mortgage-servicing procedures.

It's "reasonably possible" that legal proceedings may cause as much as $4.5 billion in additional losses for which the firm hasn't already set aside funds, the New York-based company said today in a regulatory filing. Such losses may be as low as zero, it said.

Separately, it's possible the firm may incur as much as $2 billion in losses beyond accruals to cover demands it repurchase mortgages, such as loans sold to government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the bank said. Such losses may also be as low as zero, it said. The estimate is based on a further decline in home prices.

[briarberry] 25/2/2011 22:52

Moscow's Central Bank increased the refinancing rate to 8% from its historic low of 7.75%

Prices in Russia rose 8.8% over the last year and 2.4% in January alone.

The country's food prices sky-rocketed after last summer's severe drought which destroyed most of the harvest, and food import prices shot up as well.

[briarberry] 23/2/2011 12:54

What going on in Korea ???


Korean Bank Run Spreading: Eighth Bank Closes Following "Massive Withdrawals"

The quietest bank run that has so far completely evaded mainstream attention, that of Korea, is spreading, and an eighth bank has now shuttered after "Domin Bank, a savings bank with a capital adequacy ratio below 5 percent, voluntarily decided yesterday to suspend its operations temporarily because of massive withdrawals."



comment by zaphod

For this bank run thing. These are small very local credit union type organizations going down. The Korean banking system is different from these saving banks and they are fine (at least for now)....

by squexx

As for the bank runs, yes so far it is only the small ones in Pusan and now Daejun. But it's hard to say where it will end. Consider that land prices in Korea are out of sight, just like China, Korean's are generally over their heads in plastic debt, etc... Korea is even potentially more precarious than China, since they are dependant on the USA and China for most of their trade.

[briarberry] 22/2/2011 14:08

U.S. Dec. Case-Shiller home price index down 1.0%
Case-Shiller composite-20 index down 2.4% in past year

[briarberry] 21/2/2011 10:12

European Union : PMI Manufacturing Index Flash

Both input costs and factory gate prices rose at record rates

[briarberry] 18/2/2011 12:43

India, Sale of Luxury Apartments Down...

An estimated 40% of luxury apartments coming up in India's financial center are unsold, say analysts and brokers. These apartments cost anywhere from $1 million to $12 million, and range from 5,000 square feet to 13,000 square feet in size. Sales have slowed down in the last two to three months, thanks mainly to the steep prices. In December, the number of apartments registered in Mumbai – an indicator of sales – fell 50% from the same month the previous year, according to research from investment firm Prabhudas Liladhar Pvt. Ltd.

[briarberry] 18/2/2011 10:51

China hikes banks reserve requirements 0.5%

[briarberry] 18/2/2011 08:28

Germany PPI +1.2% Month over Month

[briarberry] 16/2/2011 19:13

Lower earnings...

Volcker rule - some big Wall Street banks are all closing their proprietary trading desks due to the Volcker rule, JPM, GS MS Citi...

Volcker rule, a provision of the Dodd-Frank financial law that prohibits banks from betting capital for their own accounts. The intent was to avert losses that might cause the collapse of firms and the financial system.

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Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the U.S. bank that relies on fixed-income trading for the largest portion of its revenue, will shut its Global Macro Proprietary Trading desk, a person with knowledge of the decision said.

The eight-person desk, which trades currencies and stocks as well as products tied to interest rates and other fixed- income markets, will close in the days ahead, said the person, who declined to be named because the decision wasn't public.

...
Goldman Sachs last year shut down an equity proprietary- trading group, Goldman Sachs Principal Strategies, to comply with the Volcker rule. Pierre Henri Flamand, the former head of Goldman Sachs's Principal Strategies group, retired last year to start his own hedge fund.

The bank said on Jan. 19 that earnings dropped 52 percent in the fourth quarter, its third straight quarterly decline.

[briarberry] 16/2/2011 15:49

How Inflation Could Be 66% Higher Than the Fed Reports

Alternative measures for inflation show a far more alarming picture of price increases than the official data suggest. One of the more intriguing approaches is The Billion Prices Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which collects daily price changes on about 5 million items sold by approximately 300 online retailers in more than 70 countries.

For U.S. price data, MIT tracks 550,000 products from 53 retailers. By this measure, annual inflation is currently running at a rate of 2.5% -- or 66% greater than the official CPI figure. See the chart above.

[briarberry] 16/2/2011 14:37

Jan. housing starts down 2.6% year-on-year
December was down 8.2 percent year-on-year due to frost and snow

Jan. building permits down 10.4% to 562,000 (might mean something?)

January producer prices rise 0.8%; core up 0.5% month over month
Nearly forty percent of the January advance can be traced to the index for pharmaceutical preparations, which moved up 1.4 percent. Higher prices for plastic products also contributed to the rise in the finished core index

[briarberry] 16/2/2011 14:05

China might start to slow a little too ??? (Although M2 is still growing 17%)


The PBOC has already raised the interest rate three times since October. The reserve requirement ratio on banks has risen seven times since 2010 (six times last year and once in January) to lock up liquidity.

So banks tend to lend strongly at the beginning of the year on fears of further tightening.

Confronting a shortage of credit, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is the first in the industry to stop interest rate discounts to first-home buyers.

"Limited credit quota" is often quoted by credit officers to home buyers because of tight control over lending from the authorities.

[briarberry] 16/2/2011 14:04

Investors bought a record portion of homes for sale, I guess it's those with faith in the Fed who are buying...


Southern Califonia: Weak Home Sales, Record Low New Home Sales

January new-home sales were the lowest for any month in DataQuick's records back to 1988. Builders have struggled to compete with prices on resale homes, especially distressed properties.

Absentee buyers – mostly investors and some second-home purchasers – bought a record 24.8 percent of the homes sold in January, paying a median $198,500.