The following graph shows the year-over-year change in nominal and real retail sales since 1993.

To calculate the real change, the monthly PCE price index from the BEA was used (December PCE prices was estimated as the same as November).

Although the Census Bureau reported that nominal retail sales decreased 10.2% year-over-year (retail and food services decreased 9.8%), real retail sales declined by 11.3% (on a YoY basis). This is the largest YoY decline since the Census Bureau started keeping data.

There is the Census Bureau report:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for December, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $343.2 billion, a decrease of 2.7 percent (±0.5%) from the previous month and 9.8 percent (±0.7%) below December 2007. Total sales for the 12 months of 2008 were down 0.1 percent (±0.4%)* from 2007. Total sales for the October through December 2008 period were down 7.7 percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The October to November 2008 percent change was revised from -1.8 percent (±0.5%) to -2.1 percent (±0.3%).

Retail trade sales were down 2.7 percent (±0.5%) from November 2008 and were 10.8 percent (±0.7%) below last year. Gasoline stations sales were down 35.5 percent (±1.5%) from December 2007 and motor vehicle and parts dealers sales were down 22.4 percent (±2.3%) from last year.

Retail sales are a key portion of consumer spending and real retail sales have fallen off a cliff.

 

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

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Blessed are the geeks, for they shall inherit the Earth

Jan 8th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Barack Obama is making good his promise to welcome scientists into his administration

Illustration by David Simonds

[...]

Well, it is rising now. On December 15th Barack Obama, the incoming president, announced that he was nominating Steven Chu, a Nobel-prize-winning physicist, to be his energy secretary. At the moment, Dr Chu is head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he has built up a big solar-energy-research project. He is also a strong advocate of research into nuclear power and foresees a world in which fossil fuels are largely replaced by other sources of energy.

On December 20th the president-elect followed Dr Chu’s appointment by nominating Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist at Oregon State University, as head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This is the government agency responsible for studying the climate, and also for keeping an eye on marine life. Dr Lubchenco has been critical of the Bush administration’s lack of respect for climate science, and for its inaction on greenhouse-gas emissions. She is also concerned about marine pollution and the appearance in the ocean of oxygen-depleted dead zones caused by such pollution.

On the same day John Holdren, a physicist at the John F. Kennedy School of Government in Harvard, who is an expert in the fields of energy, the environment and nuclear proliferation, was appointed as the new presidential science adviser, and he will enjoy higher authority in that position than his Republican predecessor did. In 2007, when Dr Holdren was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), he argued publicly for swift action on climate change.

Geneticists, too, get a look in. Two of them—Harold Varmus, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, and Eric Lander, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—will be co-chairmen of the president’s council of advisers on science and technology. All in all, as Alan Leshner, chief executive of the AAAS, puts it, “we’ve never had a president surrounded in close proximity with so many well-known, top scientific minds.” All of them, he predicts, will have access to the president and influence on policy, or else they would have refused the jobs. Dr Leshner says that Dr Varmus has “no interest in being a potted plant. He is a very competent and smart person with tremendous judgment who would not waste his time.”

[...]

And it is not only attitudes that are changing. As these appointments suggest, shifts in policy on global warming, energy and the protection of the oceans are also on the way. A straw in the wind here is the administration-to-be’s attitude to NASA, America’s space agency.

Mr Obama has said he will give NASA an extra $2 billion to close the gap between the space shuttle, which is due to be withdrawn from service in 2010, and its successor. That sounds like good news for the agency. But according to documents obtained by Space News, a specialist newspaper, his people are also asking NASA some ticklish questions.

They want to know how much money could be saved by cancelling parts of the shuttle’s successor. They have also asked for an estimate of the cost of carrying out all 15 missions that were recommended in a recent review of the agency’s Earth-science programme, which looks at things like the planet’s climate. At the moment, there is no money in the kitty for these missions, nor is much progress expected before 2020. The unstated implication of these questions is that someone is considering moving these missions up NASA’s priority list.

It is also clear that lifting restrictions on embryonic-stem-cell research will be high on the agenda of the new administration. Democrats are already debating whether to overturn those restrictions through executive order or by legislation when they assume control of the government.

The stem-cell question was one that particularly disturbed Dr Carmona when he was surgeon general. In his evidence to Congress, he reported that he was not allowed to speak, or issue reports, on stem cells. Nor on emergency contraception, sex education, mental health, the health of prisoners or global health. The thousands of scientists who, in 2006, signed a petition calling for the restoration of scientific integrity to federal policymaking will also feel vindicated. “See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil” may sometimes be a good prescription for day to day life, but it is no basis for policymaking. Mr Bush did not seem to realise that. So far, Mr Obama looks as though he does.

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12887207

==========================================================================================

To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

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Hedge fund winners and losers in 2008

Posted by Paul Murphy on Jan 12 16:15. 1 comment.

From a memorable year - numbers courtesy of HSBC Private Bank.

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/01/12/51035/hedge-fund-winners-and-losers-in-2008/

Zmagovalec Mulvaney pa ima kar volatilno donosnost, čeprav je prvič od ustanovitve res pušil šele lani... :)

Strategija? Trend-following.

What worldview does the system execute?

The system is motivated by a very broad interpretation of the universe. The underlying belief is that economic systems adjust to changes in fundamentals gradually and over long periods of time, and that the consequent trends are evident everywhere in human history and commerce. Political, economic and social regime changes trigger price adjustments in markets that don’t happen instantaneously. For example, the growth and decline of the Roman Empire took place, not in a day, but over hundreds of years.

A major problem, of course, is that markets don’t move from one state to another in a straight line: there are periods of countertrend shock and volatility. We spend most of our time trying to find ways to deal with those unsettling but inevitable events. That being said, it is really not difficult to put together a simple trend-following system that can generate positive returns over a realistic holding period – and there are many, many commercial systems that have been generating strong, albeit volatile, returns for a long time. So there are definitely firm grounds for believing in Santa Claus.

Unfortunately, despite all the evidence, many find it hard to accept the inherent return in trend-following. Directional trading is a much harder sell than a hedge fund style such as market neutral equity, where investors take the view that the trader is basically preying on short-term price imbalances created by institutional order flow. Pure trend-followers pay offers and hit bids, and that puts some people off because of a deep-seated reluctance to cross spreads. So I find myself pursuing the strategy because of its superior absolute profitability and because it is intellectually challenging, rather than because it is the most convenient product commercially.

http://www.mulvaneycapital.com/htm/mainfrm.htm

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

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Merrill’s Rosenberg Inspired by Farrell in Foreseeing Crash

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By Carlos Torres

Dec. 30 (Bloomberg) -- David Rosenberg drew on inspiration from market-rules theorist Robert Farrell and asset-bubble historian Charles Kindleberger to predict the economy’s demise this year.

Rosenberg, the chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch & Co. in New York, by January had already called the recession that this month was officially declared to have started in December 2007. He also said the Federal Reserve would lower its main interest rate to 1 percent by year-end, one-third of the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News; by October, policy makers brought the rate to that level.

Rosenberg, 48, refused to trust his computer models, sensing that the end of the credit and housing-market booms would cause a deeper rout than most analysts thought. Now, he predicts the carnage will cause a 2.5 percent contraction in gross domestic product in 2009, and sees historians calling the current era “GDII,” a reference to the Great Depression.

“You have to have your models, but you have to question the results,” Rosenberg said. “You have to ask yourself: Where could the model be wrong this time? Bubbles go further than you think, but they do not correct by going sideways,” he said, quoting the fourth of “10 Market Rules to Remember,” by former Merrill analyst Farrell.

Farrell’s Rules

Farrell developed his “10 Market Rules” during a 25-year stint as chief strategist at Merrill until 1992. He won Institutional Investor magazine’s award for overall stock market direction in 16 of 17 years, according to a Dec. 19, 1992, New York Times article.

Rules one through four, which include the belief that markets always return to long-run averages and excesses in one direction are invariably followed by excesses in the opposite direction, are applicable to this decade’s housing cycle, Rosenberg said.

[...]

Rosenberg was also among the few predicting a rally in U.S. Treasuries, which have posted their best year since 1995. The average forecast in a Bloomberg survey of 61 analysts at the start of the year was for benchmark 10-year yields to rise to 4.32 percent for the end of December. Rosenberg’s call was 3.70 percent; the lowest projection was 3.5 percent.

Zlato dobro za vse valute... Mogoče bi mi razmislil o kakih minerjih?

For his part, Rosenberg sees gold as “an important hedge against policy missteps” in the global recession of 2009. “The chart looks good against a vast majority of currencies,” he wrote in a Dec. 22 research note.

========================================================================================== To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe. Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom. This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential and/or privileged information and is intended solely for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient (or have received this e-mail in error) please notify the sender immediately and destroy this e-mail. Any unauthorized copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this e-mail is strictly forbidden. This e-mail may not necessarily reflect the official viewpoint of the company. E-mail message is scanned by Anti-Virus Software.

Short View: No reason for optimism

By John Authers

Published: January 5 2009 18:47 | Last updated: January 5 2009 18:47

In credit, the Moody’s index of yields on BAA-rated investment grade corporate bonds went from 7 per cent before Lehman to more than 9.5 per cent. It has now dropped below 8 per cent.

Both were symptoms of the rush by investors to pay down debts and get out of relatively risky positions. Both suggest that the virtual zero interest rates from the Federal Reserve are bringing relative normality closer. Further, the Japanese yen, which strengthens when investors are anxious, has fallen significantly in the last weeks.

But the cause for optimism is limited. Financial markets may almost have stabilised after the Lehman shock. But we do not yet know the full economic effects of that market crisis.

The year’s first new data, the US ISM survey of purchasing managers, gives no reason for optimism. It showed the lowest level of new orders ever, in a survey that started in 1948, while deflation in prices was the worst since 1949.

 

And while the Fed has cut the price of credit for companies and consumers, distrust in the markets is as high as ever. Investment-grade bond yields have fallen 1.5 percentage points from their highs; but their extra yield compared with long-dated government bonds, a measure of the extra risk seen by investors, has fallen only slightly, from 5.68 per cent to about 5.4 per cent. Before Lehman, it was below 3 per cent. Even if the Lehman crisis is almost over, the market is braced for a new crisis, of rising defaults.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

 

========================================================================================== To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe. Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom. This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential and/or privileged information and is intended solely for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient (or have received this e-mail in error) please notify the sender immediately and destroy this e-mail. Any unauthorized copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this e-mail is strictly forbidden. This e-mail may not necessarily reflect the official viewpoint of the company. E-mail message is scanned by Anti-Virus Software.

Credit Crisis Indicators: Improvement

by CalculatedRisk on 1/05/2009 04:50:00 PM

• The yield on 3 month treasuries has increased to 0.08%. I suppose this is an improvement (better than zero).
  
• The three month LIBOR has decreased to 1.42%. The three-month LIBOR rate peaked (for this cycle) at 4.81875% on Oct. 10. (improved)

  The London interbank offered rate, or Libor, for three-month dollar loans may hold near the lowest level in 4 1/2 years as central banks inject money into economies and financial companies to combat the credit squeeze.
  
  The rate was at 1.42 percent...

  Imagine all those adjusted rate mortgage loans tied to treasuries or even the 3 month LIBOR? The rates are looking pretty good!
  
• The TED spread is at 1.34, sharply lower. (improved)
  
  The TED spread was stuck above 2.0 for some time, but has been steadily moving lower over the last few weeks. The peak was 4.63 on Oct 10th. I'd like to see the spread move back down to 1.0 or lower. A normal spread is around 0.5.
  
  
• The A2P2 spread has plunged to 1.92%. This peaked at 5.86 after Thanksgiving. (better).
  
  This is the spread between high and low quality 30 day nonfinancial commercial paper. Right now quality 30 day nonfinancial paper is yielding close to zero. This may be holiday related, but this is significant decline.
  
• The two year swap spread from Bloomberg: 77.75. (Improved). This spread peaked at near 165 in early October, so there has been significant progress, and the swap is finally well below100.
  
  It appears the Fed is finally getting some rates down ... the A2P2 spread decline is worth watching.

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

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iz enega leto starega paperja...

 

Economic Lessons from Past Financial Crises

• Jan 2 Reinhart / Rogoff research conclusions for EM and developed countries since earlier work shows similar trajectories (via naked capitalism):

1. Real housing price declines average over 35% over a six year period. Note in other crises, residential real estate was not necessarily a focus of the bubble. Even excluding Japan (which has suffered a 17 year housing price decline) the average is over 5 years;
2. Equity prices fall 55% over three and a half years;
3. GDP fall an average of 9%;
4. Unemployment increases 7% over previous norms;
5. Government debt "explodes", increasing an average of 86%, but the cause is typically not a banking industry recapitalization, but maintaining services in the face of collapsing tax revenues and countercyclical measure ex financial system measures. 

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

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Russia's Central Bank Devalues Ruble for Third Time in Week

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By Denis Maternovsky

Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Russia devalued the ruble for the third time in a week, sending the currency to its lowest level against the dollar since January 2006, as oil near $39 a barrel dimmed the outlook for economic growth.

The ruble fell as much as 0.9 percent against a basket of dollars and euros, and traded at 33.7 at 11:09 a.m. in Moscow, after the central bank allowed it to fall another 1 percent. The currency weakened 0.7 percent against the dollar to 28.6011, and 0.8 percent against the euro to 39.9407.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=apoh6MhkiiF4&refer=home

========================================================================================== To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe. Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom. This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential and/or privileged information and is intended solely for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient (or have received this e-mail in error) please notify the sender immediately and destroy this e-mail. Any unauthorized copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this e-mail is strictly forbidden. This e-mail may not necessarily reflect the official viewpoint of the company. E-mail message is scanned by Anti-Virus Software.