Apr

16

The Podcast for Thursday

Pete @ 5:20 PM | | 2 Comments 

DOWNLOAD (Right click, “Save Link/Target As…”) today’s podcast at your leisure.

Charts of the Day: $TYX, GOOG, NCC, SOLF, CBS, PBR

The following charts were mentioned in today’s podcast. As usual, we applied our analytics to the daily chart along with the widely-watched 50- and 200-day moving averages. The pink/cyan dots provide potential entry/exit signals while the price bars are colored red/yellow/green to identify relative performance.

  • Oil and Brazil: What lies beneath

    • But last year, Petrobras, Brazil’s partly state-owned oil firm, announced the world’s biggest oil discovery since 2000: the Tupi field, which it hopes will produce between 5 billion and 8 billion barrels. Now the head of Brazil’s National Petroleum Agency (ANP) says another nearby discovery might hold as much as 33 billion barrels, which would make it the third-largest field ever found.

  • Wilbur Ross Seeks $4 Billion to Purchase U.S. Banks
    Ross, 70, will talk with Gulf investors in Abu Dhabi next week about 100 to 200 so-called thrift banks, he said in a phone interview from New York today. He said some of the lenders are good investments, even after a mortgage-market slump led to $245 billion of asset writedowns and credit losses at the world’s biggest banks. Regional depositary banks have “more narrowly defined” problems and “a more stable base of deposits” than cross-border lenders such as Citigroup Inc. and UBS AG, Ross said. He plans to package U.S. thrift bank acquisitions “as a finished product” to sovereign wealth funds, he said.
  • As Banks Reel, Advantage Investors
    National City Corp., buckling under the weight of bad loans, has spent weeks trying to sell itself or secure a capital infusion. The Cleveland bank is hustling to wrap up the process by early next week. One possibility: It collects as much as $5 billion in new money, according to a person familiar with the matter. National City’s predicament is being followed closely by regulators and investment bankers, in part because it could have implications for other financial institutions that are scrambling to shore up their balance sheets.

  • Don’t Stop with Katie Couric
    So what do the network biggies do about the evening news? Well, they’ve started to make changes. All three shows replay their nightly news on their Web sites; Gibson does an early-afternoon, Web-only version; and ABC (DIS) and NBC (GE) have wireless shows on cell phones near you. That’s a great start. But Gibson, who just turned 65, is going to retire one of these days. And Couric, well, she seems to be a short-timer. That gives the networks a chance to make even more dramatic changes in the not-too-distant future.

Articles mentioned in today’s podcast

  • Protecting Your Portfolio (Video)
    Stocks ended slightly higher today, despite evidence inflation is starting to gain speed. Robert Balentine, of Wilmington Trust Investment Mgmt., and Ron Insana, of Insana Capital Partners, discuss how you can protect your portfolio.
  • Food Price Squeeze (Video)
    From milk to meat, the price of just about everything we eat is on the rise, with CNBC’s Jane Wells; Pat O’Shannassy, National Australia Bank; Ron Insana, Insana Capital Partners; and CNBC’s Michelle Caruso-Cabrera.
  • They’re Coming to America
    For the first time since 2001, the U.S. is the most favored regional bet among global fund managers, according to a survey by Merrill Lynch released today. Thirty-five percent of those polled said they would “overweight” the U.S. market on a twelve-month basis–in other words, that they would allocate more to stocks there than a benchmark index suggests. Next in order of preference: emerging markets, Japan, the euro zone, and the United Kingdom.
  • No minced words about ‘recession’
    While Achuthan does not think that recessions are completely avoidable, he said he believes this recession could have been held off. “Yes, with rising inflation in things like the housing market, the bubble needs to pop - but the problem is, how to pop it gently?” Achuthan said. “The earliest the recession would end would be the end of this year, but first we’re going to see job loss, more foreclosures, and the credit situation is not going to be helped.”
  • Recession looms, but US companies loaded with cash
    The US economy has what Alan Greenspan calls one ”major advantage” as it falls into a recession: Businesses are in far better financial shape than they were entering the past two contractions. Corporations outside of financial services - from Cisco Systems to Coca-Cola - have collectively socked away more than half a trillion dollars in cash. They have also reduced short-term debt and cut inventories to record-low levels in relation to sales, leaving them better prepared than in the past to weather a contraction. ”We still have what, at the moment at least, appears to be a reasonably good real economy, as distinct from finance,” the former Federal Reserve chairman said at an April 8 conference sponsored by Deutsche Bank and co-hosted by Bloomberg.
  • U.S. Economy: Retail Sales Rise on Gain in Gasoline
    “You’ll still see a sluggish if not contracting economy,” Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute in New York, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. The Fed will cut rates “more than you think. Right now, it’s about fighting the recession.”
  • One on One with Lakshman Achuthan
    [Editor: A very good read.] Article is in the middle of the transcript, following What Led to the Grizzly Demise of Bear Stearns.
  • Achuthan Says Recession Could Have Been Averted [DOWNLOAD PODCAST]
    Lakshman Achuthan, managing director at the Economic Cycle Research Institute, talks with Bloomberg’s Tom Keene from New York about whether the U.S. economy is in recession, Federal Reserve monetary policy and the effectiveness of the government’s economic stimulus plan.
  • US economic gauges fell last week - ECRI
    April 4 (Reuters) - A gauge of future U.S. economic growth and its annualized growth rate were lower in the latest week, evidence that the downturn in the U.S. economy shows no sign of abating, a research group said on Friday. The index’s annualized growth rate slid to minus 10.7 percent from minus 10.0 percent. This reading hit the same low in mid-February, and is at its lowest since October 2001. “With the WLI continuing its slide and WLI growth back at its cycle low, an end to the recession is nowhere in sight” said Achuthan.

Media Digest

  • PIMCO’s Gross: Food, Energy Are Key to Inflation
    Measuring inflation without including food and energy costs no longer makes sense, PIMCO Chief Investment Officer Bill Gross told CNBC.
  • Issing Says ECB Will Fight ‘Intolerable’ Inflation Rate
    Former European Central Bank chief economist Otmar Issing talked about monetary policy in the 15-nation euro region, inflation and the outlook for an easing of the credit crisis. Issing, the ECB’s chief economist from 1998 to 2006.
  • US Plans for Hedge Funds
    US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson called the on the hedge fund industry to implement new business guidelines Tuesday. Stuart Feffer, co-chief executive of LaCrosse Global Fund Services, has analysis.
  • CSX Earnings & Outlook
    The railroad company powers past the Street’s expectations, with Michael Ward, CSX chairman/CEO and CNBC’s Joe Kernen
  • What lies beneath
    Just how much oil is there off the coast of Brazil? Until recently, Brazil’s oil reserves were thought to be relatively modest: about 12 billion barrels at the beginning of 2007, according to BP, or about 1% of the world’s total. But last year, Petrobras, Brazil’s partly state-owned oil firm, announced the world’s biggest oil discovery since 2000: the Tupi field, which it hopes will produce between 5 billion and 8 billion barrels. Now the head of Brazil’s National Petroleum Agency (ANP) says another nearby discovery might hold as much as 33 billion barrels, which would make it the third-largest field ever found. That alone would be enough to raise Brazil to eighth position in the global oil rankings—and there is talk of further big discoveries. But the peculiar way in which the information came to light is casting doubt on its significance.

Questions and Comments

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  1. Mike (via email) on April 17th, 2008 10:30 AM

    Real quick comment on the nature of ‘fun’. You eluded to your environment and upbringing giving you proper perspective on the nature of fun. I would also throw in the intellectual curiosity required to obtain any perspective at all.

    I see two camps on having fun in life and unfortunately they separate into another red state/blue state scenario. The one camp advocates simplicity above all else and that true fun is obtained through living the simplest life possible. Sure this has merits, but I can’t get past the recent story of the religious compound (in a red state!) and yet another tale of misogyny run amok. Sure looks like fun to me!

    The other camp advocates fun through perspective and enough education to appreciate the joy from all the other muck. So you know what camp I’m in but that is definitely not the camp from which I started. Is personal growth fun? I sure hope so!

    Mike

    P.S. From a trader perspective, I would propose a formula of sorts that one’s level of personal enjoyment is inversely proportional to the size of their ego. A much more crass and detailed definition can be found in that Michael Lewis book Liar’s Poker.

  2. Richard on April 17th, 2008 11:59 PM

    Thanks for tugging my coat sleeve about CBC’s podcast with Sebastian Horsley. It made me feel almost Normal.

    Also, see this.