There’s a hot new investment product being flogged in Somalia – piracy futures:
Piracy syndicates are selling shares in planned attacks, fueled by a surge of ransom payments that help attract investors, the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations said.
Piracy syndicates in villages, mainly in largely ungoverned Somalia, solicit investors who buy shares in the attack missions and gain a corresponding share of ransoms paid by the shipping industry, Admiral Gary Roughead said.
The world deserves this, because we’re all wimps now. As I said on August 3:
Julius Caesar knew what to do about pirates; so did Thomas Jefferson.
Maybe the shipping companies should just pay the next ransom in Apple products:
[Alasdair] Allan and former Apple software engineer Pete Warden said they stumbled upon the file where all the location data was being stored by accident while toying with the iPhone to see what other data could be pulled from the device. They were surprised to find a file with about 29,000 logs of their whereabouts — about a year’s worth.
They determined that Apple’s iOS 4 operating system for the iPhone and iPad 3G is logging latitude-longitude coordinates along with the time stamp of when a spot was visited. The data is transferred to the hard drive of a computer when the 3G iPhone or iPad is synched.
And, given that I’m basically ignoring fixed income in today’s report, let’s wrap up with some political F-35 news:
It may cost as much as $1 trillion to operate the military’s fleet of Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) F-35 aircraft for several decades, according to a preliminary Pentagon estimate sent to Congress.
The figure is 9.3 percent more than the $915 billion estimate by the Defense Department in its 2009 Selected Acquisition Report to Congress.
The long-term cost estimate, which includes inflation, was submitted to Congress on April 15 in a report obtained by Bloomberg News. It assumes 8,000 hours of flying time for each of the 2,443 aircraft over a 30-year period. The Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps have their own variations of the aircraft, with the last in the fleet to be produced in 2035.
We’re supposed to be buying 65 of them, so our cost should only be about $26.6-billion based on the US estimates, assuming we don’t experience higher unit costs for a smaller-scale programme.
In news related to the Canadian preferred share market that is supposed to be the subject of this blog, it was a pretty quiet day, with PerpetualDiscounts down 5bp, FixedResets gaining 5bp and DeemedRetractibles basically flat. Volatility continued to be low; volume was average, albeit with some big blocks changing hands.
| HIMIPref™ Preferred Indices These values reflect the December 2008 revision of the HIMIPref™ Indices Values are provisional and are finalized monthly |
|||||||
| Index | Mean Current Yield (at bid) |
Median YTW |
Median Average Trading Value |
Median Mod Dur (YTW) |
Issues | Day’s Perf. | Index Value |
| Ratchet | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0.0000 % | 2,414.1 |
| FixedFloater | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0.0000 % | 3,630.8 |
| Floater | 2.50 % | 2.26 % | 36,118 | 21.64 | 4 | 0.0000 % | 2,606.6 |
| OpRet | 4.92 % | 3.59 % | 59,180 | 2.07 | 8 | 0.0096 % | 2,412.0 |
| SplitShare | 5.19 % | -1.56 % | 88,687 | 0.64 | 6 | -0.1087 % | 2,498.1 |
| Interest-Bearing | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0.0096 % | 2,205.5 |
| Perpetual-Premium | 5.80 % | 5.60 % | 118,633 | 6.14 | 8 | 0.1393 % | 2,049.8 |
| Perpetual-Discount | 5.58 % | 5.57 % | 135,765 | 14.38 | 16 | -0.0452 % | 2,120.6 |
| FixedReset | 5.17 % | 3.46 % | 203,740 | 2.92 | 57 | 0.0515 % | 2,293.5 |
| Deemed-Retractible | 5.29 % | 5.27 % | 299,876 | 8.13 | 53 | -0.0023 % | 2,073.5 |
| Performance Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Change | Notes |
| FTS.PR.F | Perpetual-Discount | -1.83 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2041-04-21 Maturity Price : 22.88 Evaluated at bid price : 23.07 Bid-YTW : 5.38 % |
| IAG.PR.A | Deemed-Retractible | -1.18 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2022-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 21.71 Bid-YTW : 6.37 % |
| PWF.PR.O | Perpetual-Premium | 1.00 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2018-11-30 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.25 Bid-YTW : 5.65 % |
| BAM.PR.T | FixedReset | 1.10 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2041-04-21 Maturity Price : 23.04 Evaluated at bid price : 24.80 Bid-YTW : 4.71 % |
| Volume Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Shares Traded |
Notes |
| RY.PR.B | Deemed-Retractible | 361,029 | RBC crossed 354,400 at 24.23. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2022-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 24.04 Bid-YTW : 5.15 % |
| RY.PR.X | FixedReset | 121,560 | RBC crossed blocks of 23,200 at 27.10 and 55,000 at 27.15; then bought 10,800 from TD at 27.15 again. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2014-09-23 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 27.10 Bid-YTW : 3.52 % |
| CM.PR.J | Deemed-Retractible | 107,161 | Nesbitt crossed 100,000 at 23.50. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2022-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 23.50 Bid-YTW : 5.25 % |
| CM.PR.I | Deemed-Retractible | 104,770 | Nesbitt crossed 100,000 at 23.90. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2022-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 23.90 Bid-YTW : 5.26 % |
| BNS.PR.K | Deemed-Retractible | 67,359 | Nesbitt crossed 50,000 at 24.25. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2022-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 24.25 Bid-YTW : 5.19 % |
| BMO.PR.Q | FixedReset | 36,650 | Anonymous sold 10,000 to Scotia at 25.00 and the same amount at the same price to Desjardins. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2022-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 24.95 Bid-YTW : 3.89 % |
| There were 33 other index-included issues trading in excess of 10,000 shares. | |||
| Wide Spread Highlights | ||
| Issue | Index | Quote Data and Yield Notes |
| BNA.PR.E | SplitShare | Quote: 24.36 – 24.89 Spot Rate : 0.5300 Average : 0.3761 YTW SCENARIO |
| RY.PR.P | FixedReset | Quote: 26.81 – 27.16 Spot Rate : 0.3500 Average : 0.2354 YTW SCENARIO |
| RY.PR.B | Deemed-Retractible | Quote: 24.04 – 24.30 Spot Rate : 0.2600 Average : 0.1685 YTW SCENARIO |
| RY.PR.L | FixedReset | Quote: 26.42 – 26.79 Spot Rate : 0.3700 Average : 0.2858 YTW SCENARIO |
| CIU.PR.A | Perpetual-Discount | Quote: 22.50 – 22.94 Spot Rate : 0.4400 Average : 0.3603 YTW SCENARIO |
| FTS.PR.F | Perpetual-Discount | Quote: 23.07 – 23.50 Spot Rate : 0.4300 Average : 0.3526 YTW SCENARIO |