Cutting mREIT exposure by 50% this morning. Don't fight the Fed. Still own some WMC, NLY, NCT (though NCT more a mortgage servicing play). Ocwen up 20% yesterday after buying Ross' servicing portfolio. Now they're talking about fighting NSM for Rescap's servicing assets. Red-hot sector. To the biggest go the spoils and Ocwen the winner for now (I want to put my head through a wall for not owing this when the handwriting was so clearly on the wall). Cutting Z another 50% today. Cost basis in this stock is 0. Trading is pretty easy in these circumstances.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-04/canada-s-harper-says-cnooc-s-nexen-bid-raises-issues.html Sold FB on pre for a scratch again
Wal-Mart breaking out to new highs. Everyone should listen to this investor meeting going on. Company opened 400 store in the last 6 years without even one new distribution center! I'll take the management at this company over a thousand Zuck's and Johnson's. It boggles my mind the amount of pixels and money wasted on investments in FB and JCP with a brilliant, innovative, shareholder-friendly, great American company right in front of everyone's nose. If they changed their name to Wal-Mart.com, would that make it more palatable? Just because of what the company does and the nature of its clientele (I personally won't step foot in the stores, but then again I wouldn't step foot in Tiffany either), nobody is interested. Contrast with Facebook. One for the business-school case studies.
PHK and PGP on buy watch. Barron tanked these stocks huge after saying they are too rich over NAV. Its all true but these types of plays bounce HUGE once selling settles down Check WHX and BPT charts
PHK and PGP rising. I'm in PGP, will scale out and it rises. Looking back in other situations, they will bounce the whole day and finish the day close to highs. NYSE closing print will be a good point to sell as there will be a likely buy imbalance
Will sell half of PGP into NYSE closing print. Expecting the specialist to screw the retail buyers big time. Will hold the other half for a possible follow through tomorrow
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2158850 Paper explaining the EU options, very clearly explained. I'd be interested in hearing other people's thoughts. I have tried to get in EWP and EWI shorts over the last month. Had a few small losses and gains. I'm currently short both, borrowing these shares is a bitch though, buyin threats are constant The reasoning if that I just don't think the ECB has the will to peg Spain and Italy's yields without a large risk off trade first(their bonds and stocks collapse, then they step in to save the day, I have to cover before they do it). I'm not saying they won't buy bonds, they probably will, a lot of them but the inevitable market test will come and I just don't think the ECB will go full SNB on Spanish yields so quickly, I think that it will take a while, like the EuroStoxx Vix going to 40 and people panicking. If I'm wrong and they go super money printing right away, I believe gold might go ballistic, which is going to help me. I'd also expect the euro to tank as this would be QE infinity cubed(times a thousand), I'd get hurt on the stock shorts but also quite a bit of that was priced in(probably not all of it though) I very much agree with the conclusions of this paper and liked this passage "As Sherlock Holmes might have said, exclude the impossible and whatever is left, however improbable, must be true. That logic leaves Option Four, a debt reprofiling designed to shift maturities out of the adjustment program period while inflicting the least possible NPV loss on the debtholders." Even though the author raises issues with this option, I believe its quite likely even though its not an optimal solution its a improvement, EU authorities seem quite committed to turning the region into Japan if needed to hold things together, this would enable them to do just that