Before the Open

Good morning. Happy Tuesday. The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly down. Japan, which was closed yesterday, lost almost 5%. Hong Kong lost over 2%; China and Malaysia fell over 1%. Taiwan gained 1.8% and Seoul managed a 1% gain. Europe is currently down across the board. France, Germany, Norway, Italy, Spain and Stockholm are down more […]

Before the Open

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend. The Asian/Pacific markets, which didn’t have a chance to react to last Friday’s jobs report, closed mostly down today, but losses weren’t terrible. India lost 3.2%; Seoul and China lost more than 2%; Australia and Singapore lost more than 1%. Europe is currently trading mostly […]

Before the Open

Good morning. Happy Friday. Employment numbers are out. Here they are… Unemployment rate jumped to 7.2% – the highest since 1993. Nonfarm payrolls declined 524K. Average hourly earnings was +0.3% m/m vs. +0.2% and 3.7% y/y vs. 3.6%. Average weekly hours was 33.3 vs. 33.5 consensus. And October nonfarm payrolls was revised lower from -320K […]

Before the Open

Good morning. Happy Wednesday. The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed with a bearish bias. Australia, Japan, Seoul and Taiwan rallied more than 1% while India dropped 7.3%, Hong Kong 3.4% and Singapore 1.7%. China fell 0.7%. Europe is currently most down. Austria and Stockholm are up more than 1% while Spain, Amsterdam and London are down […]

The End of the Financial World as We Know it

by Michael Lewis and David Einhorn (This report was first posted at nytimes.com and is continued at How to Repair a Broken Financial World.) AMERICANS enter the New Year in a strange new role: financial lunatics. We’ve been viewed by the wider world with mistrust and suspicion on other matters, but on the subject of […]