Empiric Student Property Share Discussion Threads

[briarberry] 03/5/2007 10:26

SPX, everyones watching this intersection

[briarberry] 02/5/2007 16:23

US gov figures don't account for the real rate of inflation, that makes the stats look a lot better than they really are, GDP, retail, output figures, earnings too...


Data for non-durable goods, the new information in today's report, rose a very sharp 2.3 percent in March in a gain, the largest since January last year, reflecting price increases for petroleum and coal products.

still down y-o-y

[briarberry] 01/5/2007 20:26

US auto sales

GM sales fell 9.5 percent, and Ford dropped 13 percent from the year-earlier month. Nissan slipped 18 percent, and Toyota was down 4.3 percent, for its first monthly falloff in two years. DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler, led by Jeep, had a surprise 2 percent increase.




overall sales figure, including imports, is flat from last months figure
%age trucks up from last month, not much effect from petrol prices then ?

[briarberry] 26/4/2007 21:31

April 26 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp., the world's biggest software maker, said third-quarter earnings rose 65 percent on sales of its new Windows and Office programs. The revenue forecast for the coming year exceeded analysts' estimates.

[briarberry] 26/4/2007 15:48

BlackRock chief warns on leveraged loans
By Richard Beales and Chrystia Freeland in New York

Published: April 25 2007 22:07 | Last updated: April 25 2007 22:07

Lenders to highly indebted companies are making many of the same mistakes that undermined the US subprime mortgage market, suggesting that leveraged loans will become "tomorrow's problem", says the chief executive of BlackRock, the $1,000bn-plus fund management group.

The comments from Larry Fink highlight the rising debt levels, falling risk premiums and loosening standards in loans made to leveraged buy-out vehicles and other junk-rated groups.

"If I was the chairman of the Federal Reserve, I'd be paying more attention to that because, to me, this is going to be tomorrow's problem," Mr Fink said in an interview with the Financial Times. "Standards have deteriorated to levels that we never even dreamed that we would see

[ian56] 25/4/2007 21:59

Fed

Net add $34.5bn.
There were 3 operations today.
Looks like there were no maturities.
That's rather a lot.

Looks like $45bn matures May 3rd (less whatever they add).

Regards,
Ian

[briarberry] 25/4/2007 21:57

AAPL: Earnings up 88%. Sales up 20%.

but home builders made a loss

[briarberry] 25/4/2007 15:27

Fed pumping again, haven't the banks got any cash what happened to all those earnings ? looks like, $16 billion...




(edit)
*DJ Fed Cancels Overnight RPs
(END) Dow Jones Newswires


(edit2) some speculation that this could be the prelude to a rate cut ?



In actions that are unprecedented, at least since the days immediately following 9/11/01, the Fed added a net of $16.5 billion to the market, and scheduled another $18 billion to be injected on Monday

[briarberry] 25/4/2007 14:20

USA, CSI house price index

[ian56] 25/4/2007 11:36

Spanish property bubble bursting?



Regards,
Ian

[briarberry] 24/4/2007 22:44

IBM needs to borrow money to make it's stock rise :) :)


NEW YORK (AP) -- Fitch Ratings placed IBM on negative credit watch Tuesday after the computer maker announced plans to purchase an additional $15 billion of common stock.

Fitch notes that IBM said it could use debt to finance a large part of the planned repurchases. IBM has about $34 billion in debt, including a nearly $10 billion undrawn credit facility. Fitch also mentioned Big Blue's 33 percent hike in its yearly dividend to $2.2 billion.





SOX - I expect it's some sort of short squeeze, there's a lot of bad news...

Advanced Micro Devices said Monday it would raise $1.8 billion in convertible debt, bringing relief to a company in danger of running short of cash by year's end.

[ian56] 24/4/2007 20:58

Bail outs of sub prime loans



Regards,
Ian

[ian56] 24/4/2007 20:29

$SOX bulish above 492.
Looks like SOX rose on the back of a bullish 2nd qtr forecast from Texas Instruments.
We'll see what Microsoft Thursday.

Banks ($BKX) are now laggards, unsurprisingly given the recent housing data.
There are now state sponsored schemes to transfer to fixed rate mortgages from variable rate ARMs when the interest rate on the latter rises.
The States only loan up to 85% of the house value though.

Regards,
Ian

[briarberry] 24/4/2007 15:09

MARCH SALES OF EXISTING HOMES DOWN 8.4%, BIGGEST DROP IN 18 YEARS

(mortgage apps data suggested this weeks ago - but what will the big players do - paint it green or let it fall ?)

[briarberry] 24/4/2007 11:27

Oil giant BP today reported a 24% decline in Q1 earnings as production continued to fall.

The group's three months to March replacement cost net profit, before non-operating items, fell to $3.998bn from $5.28bn last time, broadly in line with the forecast range of $3.828bn-$4.277bn but below the consensus figure of $4.06bn.

BP booked a non-operating gain of $363m in the quarter, as against a charge of $17m previously.

After taking into account these items, replacement cost profit fell 17% to $4.36bn from 5.265 bln.

ADVFN competitor.com/action/news/showArticle?id=1917748

[briarberry] 23/4/2007 17:38

Permanent Open Market Operations

9, 10, 18, 20, 23 April



it's starting to look like a Weimar Run ?

[briarberry] 23/4/2007 14:37

US car sales, another sign of the times ?


Over the past year, auto sales declined 2.6 percent nationwide, including a 5.1 percent drop in California, sparked by tighter consumer credit, a cyclical industry downtrend, rising fuel costs and growing distaste for gas-guzzling vehicles.

In the past couple years, a lot of people were using home equity lines of credit to buy cars, but that's not happening much right now. And the price of gasoline is going up, which is also affecting sales.



sales have been strong since the 1991 recession

[briarberry] 23/4/2007 11:55

Uranium shortages (old news but a good summary here) (although Oz does has a lot of reserves that they are not mining, for ethical reasons)...


In 2006, worldwide production of uranium oxide, or yellowcake, fell 4.6 percent to 103 million pounds from 108 million the year before[...]The world's 435 existing nuclear reactors require 173 million pounds of the mineral a year, the industry's World Nuclear Association in London says.

That means only 60 percent of the uranium needed by reactors is extracted from the ground. The balance is culled from dismantled weapons in Russia and the utilities' own dwindling inventories, built up during 20 years of oversupply when nuclear power was out of favor.

No new production anywhere near the amount Cameco has under water at Cigar Lake will enter the market for years, mining forecasts show. That could limit the nuclear power industry's plans to develop 168 new nuclear plants worldwide by 2020. Another 198 million pounds of ore is needed to start up those plants"
" On Oct. 16, the week before the accident, uranium sold for $56 a pound. By Oct. 30, the week after the accident, the price had risen 7 percent to $60 a pound, according to Ux Consulting. In December, it was $72.
Uranium doesn't trade on a commodities exchange. Its prices are based on private contracts and occasional public auctions. "

[briarberry] 23/4/2007 10:28

Prudent Bear - credit bubble is still expanding

Doug Noland, The Credit Bubble is Alive & Well


good summary of the news

[briarberry] 22/4/2007 20:04

Nigerian Oil

Already, a quarter of Nigeria's oil output has been shut down, costing an estimated $12 billion in lost sales in over the last year. Some foreign operators have abandoned oil fields, or left the country altogether.

The United States imports more than one million barrels of crude oil from Nigeria every day.

[briarberry] 20/4/2007 23:35

US house prices, it's now a lot cheaper to build a new house than it is to buy an existing house on the market, all 3 major building costs are declining...


Lumber -

Land - home builder D.R. Horton Inc. - The company charged off an additional $67.3 million related to canceled land purchases and inventory write-downs.

Labour - home builder Lennar Corp. has sent letters to its subcontractors in Southern California, Nevada and other states, telling them to cut their prices by as much as 20% and resubmit invoices for work not yet paid for.