Category: Market Action

SNP Split Corp has announced:

The Capital Shares and Preferred Shares will be redeemed by the Company on June 3, 2011 (the “Redemption Date”) in accordance with the redemption provisions of the shares. Pursuant to these provisions, the Preferred Shares will be redeemed at a price per shares equal to the lesser of $10.25 and the Net Asset Value per Unit. The Capital Shares will be redeemed at a price equal to the amount (for every two capital shares) by which the Net Asset Value per unit exceeds $10.25.

A further press release will be issued by the Company in connection with the redemption prices on June 2, 2011. Payment of the amounts due to holders of Capital Shares and Preferred Shares will be made by the Company on June 3, 2011.

SNP Split Corp. is a mutual fund corporation created to hold a portfolio of common shares (the “Portfolio Shares”) of the companies that make up the S&P 100 Index. The Company generates quarterly fixed cumulative preferential distributions for the Class B Preferred Shareholders and provides the Capital Shareholders with a leveraged investment, the value of which is linked to changes in the market price of the Portfolio Shares.

The NAV is 18.42 as of May 12, so redemption at par sounds like a good bet.

SNP.PR.V was last mentioned on PrefBlog last May, when there was a partial redemption call. SNP.PR.V is not tracked by HIMIPref™.

Update, 2011-6-6: Redeemed:

The Board of Directors of SNP Split Corp. (the “Company”) has today announced that the redemption prices for all outstanding Capital Shares and Preferred Shares to be paid on June 3, 2011 are as follows:

Redemption Price per Preferred Share: US$10.25

Redemption Price per Capital Share: US$3.9418

Glad to see that some people take piracy seriously:

About 20 percent of ships in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden will use armed guards within the next 18 months, up from 12 percent, Peter Cook, spokesman for the Security Association for the Maritime Industry, said after a presentation yesterday in London.
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There have been 145 attacks and 22 ships hijacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean so far this year, according to the International Maritime Organization, the shipping division of the United Nations. Somali pirates added at least $2.4 billion to transportation costs in 2010 as ships were diverted to avoid attacks off east Africa, said One Earth, a non-profit group.

The IMO, which had advised shipowners to avoid using armed guards, will probably approve vetting procedures for security operators this week, paving the way for their increased use, Cook said. The organization will discuss guidelines for hiring private armed guards this week, it said by e-mail on May 9.

Used to be that governments understood that their main business was promoting trade. Not any more.

There are some worries about the Toronto condo market:

Worries about the sustainability of the housing market could be stoked by a report from Urbanation Inc., which monitors the Toronto condominium market. The group says more than 50% of condominiums purchased in the last year were by buyers who do not intend to occupy their units and plan to rent in many instances.

Condominium rents in Toronto in the first quarter of 2011 were $2.11 per square foot compared to $2.09 a year earlier, a 0.8% increase. Condominiums being registered now and ready to be occupied are priced for sale at $450 per square foot range while newer units are going for $550 per square foot.

“What happens when these newer units hit the market?” said Ben Myers, executive vice-president of Urbanation. “At $550 per square foot a 750 square feet [condominium] is $413,000. You put 25% down and you have a mortgage of $310,000. Take a five-year variable rate mortgage at 3% with 25-year amortization and you get $1,475 a month mortgage. Your condo fee is $345, property tax is another $345 and you are up to $2,200 in carrying costs. That’s a huge [operating] loss [given the average rental rate would bring in just under $1,600/month]. People are buying these for capital appreciation.”

Ir was another good day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts up 16bp, FixedResets winning 5bp and DeemedRetractibles gaining 7bp. Volatility was muted. Volume was relatively low.

The Committee to Protect Canadians from Competition has come up with a new bid for the TMX:

A group of nine Canadian banks and pension funds have offered to buy the TMX Group Inc., attempting to break up a planned merger between TMX and London Stock Exchange Plc with a richer offer that values the owner of the Toronto Stock Exchange at $3.6-billion.

The bid for all of TMX, which includes all but two of Canada’s six biggest banks, is worth $48 a share, sources said. That’s a 15-per-cent premium to TMX’s market price, sources said.
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The bid from the banks and pension funds will be made by a new company called Maple Group Acquisition Corp. In addition to cash, the banks and funds would merge their stakes in the country’s stock clearing system, CDS Inc., and a rival trading system, Alpha Group, with TMX as part of Maple.

Investors in TMX would get cash as well as new shares in Maple. The result would have the banks owning 25 per cent of the company, the pension funds 35 per cent and existing TMX shareholders the remaining 40 per cent, said a source familiar with the situation.

Lucky or Smart? A lot of guys achieve a measure of success and decide they’re not just smart, they’re invincible. And now another career’s been blown up:

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund and a potential candidate for the French presidency, was charged with attempted rape and a criminal sex act on a New York hotel maid, police said.

The attack allegedly occurred yesterday against a 32- year-old female at a Sofitel hotel in midtown Manhattan, according to an e-mailed statement by the New York Police Department.
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The alleged victim is a maid at the hotel, New York Police Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said. The assault occurred about 1 p.m. yesterday when the woman entered the $3,000-a-night suite — Room 2806 — Strauss-Kahn had checked into on May 13, Browne said in a telephone interview. Strauss-Kahn is alleged to have emerged from a bathroom naked and made two attempts to forcibly have sex with the maid, Browne said.

She managed to escape from the room and notified colleagues who called the police, Browne said. When officers arrived, Strauss-Kahn wasn’t there and his mobile phone had been left behind, he said.

Strauss-Kahn was in the first-class section of an Air France flight when it was minutes from departing.

Very hard to prove an unconsummated rape attempt. I’m more interested in what you get for three grand a night in a New York hotel. He’s being held without bail, which is a poke in the eye of France, not to mention him personally:

“He has almost no incentive to stay in this country,” Assistant District Attorney Artie McConnell told Jackson at the hearing in a packed courtroom in lower Manhattan. “He has an extensive network of contacts throughout the world.” France “does not extradite its nationals,” he said.

The judge agreed to hold Strauss-Kahn without bail, agreeing he is a flight risk.

The theatre has started already, with some people shouting it could be a set-up and others claiming that it’s old news.

The yuan took another baby-step towards becoming a global currency:

RBC Capital Markets, the corporate and investment banking arm of Royal Bank of Canada (RY on TSX and NYSE), has announced the launch of its deliverable offshore Chinese Yuan (CNH) platform.

Commenting on the launch Ed Monaghan, Global Head of FX, RBC Capital Markets, said: “The ascent of China to the second largest economy in the world means its currency has grown in importance and is even more relevant to our global client base. We see significant future prospects in the CNH market and will be developing this business over the coming months.”

The new platform, which will originate from RBC’s operations in Hong Kong, will enable RBC Capital Markets to execute interbank trades in CNH with its clients and counterparties, offering FX Spot, Forwards and Swaps. This new offering builds on RBC’s existing CNY Non-Deliverable Funds product.

Hat tip to Assiduous Reader BG for bringing this to my attention!

This is interesting:

Higher education fails to provide students “good value” for the money they and their families spend, more than half of U.S. adults said in a survey.

The debate over higher education’s value “has been triggered not just by rising costs but also by hard economic times,” according to a report released yesterday by the Washington-based Pew Research Center. The organization, an independent research group funded by Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts, surveyed 2,142 adults, aged 18 and older, from March 15 through March 29.

There’s a new name in the bond markets:

Google Inc. (GOOG) made its first foray into the bond market with a $3 billion sale to pay back short-term borrowings at relative yields comparable to companies with the highest credit grade.
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Google, with total cash and marketable securities of $35 billion at yearend, according a regulatory filing, is tapping the corporate bond market as investment-grade borrowing costs tumble to about the lowest since November. Chief Executive Officer Larry Page, who replaced Eric Schmidt last month, is ramping up spending to expand in mobile and video advertising even as U.S. and European authorities mount investigations into the company’s business practices.

The world’s biggest Internet-search company split the sale evenly between three-, five- and 10-year notes, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The 1.25 percent, three-year notes yield 33 basis points more than similar-maturity Treasuries, the 2.125 percent, five-year debt pays a 43 basis-point spread, and the 3.625 percent, 10-year securities offer 58 basis points above benchmarks, Bloomberg data show.

The Bank of Canada has released a working paper by Jason Allen and Teodora Paligorova titled Bank Loans for Private and Public Firms in a Credit Crunch:

Banks reliance on short-term funding has increased over time. While an effective source of financing in good times, the 2007 financial crisis has exposed the vulnerability of banks and ultimately firms to such a liability structure. The authors show that banks that relied most on wholesale funding were the ones to contract its lending the most during the crisis. Their results suggest that banks propagate liquidity shocks by reducing credit only to a certain type of borrower. Importantly, in the financial crisis banks passed the liquidity shock only to public firms. Furthermore, long-term relationships between firms and banks played an important role during the crisis. Public firms with weak banking relationships pre-crisis experienced a greater credit crunch than other public borrowers.

It was a mixed day on the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts gaining 6bp, FixedResets down 3bp and DeemedRetractibles up 9bp. Volatility picked up a little, but not to any special extent. Volume was desultory.

Well, let’s think about bankruptcy … banks are no longer allowed to go bust … countries are no longer allowed to go bust … now, it would appear, power companies can no longer go bust:

Japan’s government will provide financial aid for Tokyo Electric Power Co. to protect the utility from bankruptcy as it pays compensation to those affected by the worst nuclear disaster in 25 years.

Japan’s government will create a body to handle claims made against Tepco, as the company is called, and will issue bonds to fund them, according to a statement released today after a meeting of Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s cabinet.
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“Our requirement is that the company continues to operate as a listed company and continue to provide a stable supply of power,” Trade Minister Banri Kaieda told reporters after the statement was released. He said Tepco bondholders rights will be maintained.

Power companies that operate nuclear stations will be required to pay into the compensation organization being set up by the government, according to the statement.

Tepco will be monitored by the government as a condition for aid to ensure full compensation will be paid to those affected by the disaster, Kaieda said earlier this week.

“Eventually, the matter could become one of how to share the burden between Tepco and the government, but it will be something to be decided in the distant future,” [Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio] Edano said.

Still, it hasn’t done the Samurai market any harm:

HSBC’s unit HSBC Bank Plc sold 108.2 billion yen of five- year, 0.91 percent bonds priced to yield 31 basis points more than the yen swap rate, and 35.2 billion yen of floating-rate notes that pay 46 basis points over the three-month London interbank offered rate, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The bank had planned to sell at least 50 billion yen of notes, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.
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Lehman defaulted on 195 billion yen of Samurai bonds when it filed for bankruptcy in September 2008, a collapse that froze global credit markets and curbed investor demand for all but the safest government debt. Today’s sale is the biggest without a sovereign guarantee since Citigroup Inc. sold 186.5 billion yen of three-year, 2.66 percent Samurai bonds to individual investors in June 2008, Bloomberg data show.

US inflation ticked up a bit:

The cost of living in the U.S. rose in April, led by increases in food and fuel costs that are starting to filter down to other goods and services.

The consumer-price index increased 0.4 percent, matching the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and following a 0.5 percent advance in March, figures from the Labor Department showed today in Washington. Excluding volatile food and energy, the so-called core gauge rose 0.2 percent, also as projected.
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Oh, the joys of doing business in kleptocracies run by thugs:

Yahoo! Inc. fell for a third day as signs of tension with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. raised speculation it may benefit less from part ownership of China’s largest e-commerce provider.

Concerns surfaced after a May 10 Yahoo filing that said Alibaba Group spun off the lucrative Alipay online-payments business, and then deepened the next two days amid conflicting statements from Yahoo and Alibaba over Alibaba Group’s disclosure of the transfer.
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Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, California, fell as much as 7.1 percent to $15.96 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. It has lost 10 percent since May 10, when it said the entire equity of Alipay had been transferred to a company controlled by Alibaba Chief Executive Officer Jack Ma.
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Alibaba was paid about 300 million yuan ($46 million) for Alipay by a company controlled by Ma, Caing.com reported today, citing public company registry data. Alibaba’s Spelich declined to comment on the report.

Alipay has a value of $5 billion, Brett Harriss, an analyst at Gabelli & Co., wrote in a report yesterday.

The Bank of Canada has released a discussion paper by David Bolder, Simon Deeley titled The Canadian Debt-Strategy Model: An Overview of the Principal Elements:

As part of managing a debt portfolio, debt managers face the challenging task of choosing a strategy that minimizes the cost of debt, subject to limitations on risk. The Bank of Canada provides debt-management analysis and advice to the Government of Canada to assist in this task, with the Canadian debt-strategy model being developed to help in this regard. The authors outline the main elements of the model, which include: cost and risk measures, inflation-linked debt, optimization techniques, the framework used to model the government’s funding requirement, the sensitivity of results to the choice of joint stochastic macroeconomic term-structure model, the effects of shocks to macroeconomic and term-structure variables and changes to their long-term values, and the relationship between issuance yield and issuance amount. Emphasis is placed on the degree to which changes to the formulation of model elements impact key results. The model is an important part of the decision-making process for the determination of the government’s debt strategy. However, it remains one of many tools that are available to debt managers and is to be used in conjunction with the judgment of an experienced debt manager.

I mentioned Jonathan Weill’s excellent column Greeks Blaming Speculators Sure Sign of Panic yesterday and now there’s reason to mention it again, now that Irshad Manji has written a column in the Globe titled The paranoid can’t handle the truth:

Routine, reactionary denial is a dead end. When conspiracy-peddling persists, what can ever be true? Indeed, the very idea of truth loses meaning. Which is why I can’t ascribe the popular label “truthers” to those who claim that 9/11 was itself an inside job.

It’s easy to dismiss the hyperventilating as simple nuttiness. But the nutters have an outsized impact on shared values, a crucial aspect of the glue that holds societies together. The decibel level of conspiracy merchants, amplified by the explosion of media platforms through which to express themselves, infects our very capacity for common purpose – and our human need for hope.

Is there a solution? I’d argue that students should be taught to think not just critically, but also “generatively,” so they can rationally reassemble the pieces of what they’ve just ripped apart. Thinking critically enables us to question the information we’re being fed, and that’s a good thing. But what then? Unless we can reason our way to factual accuracy, critical thinking easily degenerates into emotionalism – conflating emotion with evidence. Not a good thing.
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Americans, for starters, should ask at what point Ronald Reagan’s adage of “trust but verify” encounters its corollary – “verified, now trust.”

Without insisting on each of these halves, citizens in any society can’t achieve a consensus that’s whole enough to move on to new challenges. Blowhards will keep poking holes in old news, falling through those holes and toward a pit where believing in nothing becomes the hallmark of truth. Sounds to me like a lie.

This is an interesting counterpoint to Jonathan Weill’s observatins:

For instance, the first paragraph of the article said euro- area finance ministers and European Commission officials had scheduled a secret meeting for that night in Luxembourg. That same day, a spokesman for Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who is chairman of the euro area’s council of finance ministers, told reporters for several news outlets that there was no meeting and that this part of the Spiegel story was wrong. Actually such a meeting did occur on May 6. The spokesman, Guy Schuller, later conceded he had lied.

Asked to explain why, Schuller told the Wall Street Journal that “I was told to say there was no meeting,” and that “we had certain necessities to consider.” The euro was falling on the Spiegel report and “there was a very good reason to deny that the meeting was taking place,” he said, namely “self- preservation.” Besides, he said, when Juncker says something to the markets, “nobody seems to believe it.”

And let’s not even get into Spend-Every-Penny’s blase dismissal of the Junior Republicans’ campaign pledge on the deficit.

Ms. Manji makes good points, but she ignores the other side of the equation. A world in which lying has become acceptable is a fertile ground for conspiracy-theory wingnuts.

A relatively quiet day on the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts up 10bp, FixedResets gaining 3bp and DeemedRetractibles basically flat. There were two entries in the Performance Highlights tables, both MFC issues which went ex-Dividend today. Volume was low, although there were some pockets of size.

Foreclosures are down in the States, but it’s not really good news:

Foreclosure filings in the U.S. fell 34 percent last month from a year earlier as lenders already swamped with seized homes delayed action on thousands of additional delinquent mortgages, RealtyTrac Inc. said.

A total of 219,258 properties received default, auction or repossession notices in April, the fewest in 40 months, the Irvine, California-based data seller said today in a statement. It was the seventh straight month that filings dropped from a year earlier. They were down 9 percent from March. One in 593 U.S. households got a notice.

“Banks already sitting on thousands of properties they can’t sell as quickly and profitably as they’d like aren’t going to be anxious to accelerate foreclosures on tens of thousands more,” Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac’s senior vice president, said in an e-mail.

But commercial real-estate is doing well enough:

Investors are turning to secondary markets as credit availability improves and surging demand for properties in New York, Washington and San Francisco boosts prices and reduces returns in those areas. Cities such as Dallas and Houston are attracting real estate buyers because of the prospects for job and population growth, according to Robert Bach, chief economist for Grubb & Ellis Co., a Santa Ana, California-based broker.

Jonathan Weil made a good observation yesterday:

Whenever you see an issuer of securities — be it a sovereign nation or a Wall Street bank — blame speculators, journalists or rumor- mongerers for its troubles, you know the bosses there are panicking.

One could even add “bloggers” to that list, nowadays!

It was a mixed day in the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts off 6bp, FixedResets up 3bp and DeemedRetractibles gaining 12bp; but all three entries in the Performance Highlights table were positive. Volume was very light and spreads on some of the less liquid issues reached ridiculous levels.

Nothing happened today.

It was another good solid day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts up 4bp, FixedResets gaining 13bp and DeemedRetractibles ahead 11bp.

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.55%, equivalent to 7.22% interest at the standard equivalency factor of 1.3x. Volatility was muted and volume was average. Long Corporates now yield 5.4%, so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread is now 180bp, a little wider than the April 27 figure of 175bp.

Global markets are getting more efficient:

Computer-based trading in India’s $1.5 trillion stock market may double to half of all orders within three years as demand for speedier execution surges, according to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Automated programs carry out about 25 percent of Indian orders currently, Sayee Srinivasan, head of product strategy at Asia’s oldest bourse, said in an interview yesterday. About 60 percent of U.S. stock trades daily come from firms that rely on fast-paced executions, according to Tabb Group LLC.
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Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) and Nomura Holdings Inc. (8604) say a mix of tight buy and sell spreads, a large volume of smaller orders and no midday break make India ideally suited for growth in algorithmic trading.

The BSE and National Stock Exchange of India Ltd., the nation’s biggest, started high-speed trading in 2009, about a year before the Tokyo Stock Exchange Group Inc. introduced its Arrowhead platform that cut processing to 5 milliseconds from 2 to 3 seconds. Australia’s ASX Ltd. in December moved to a platform that reduced the average time to 250 microseconds from 3 milliseconds.
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India “is a big priority for us,” Murat Atamer, head of electronic trading product at Credit Suisse in Hong Kong, said in a phone interview. High-frequency trading accounts for as much as 60 percent of trades done by some of firm’s clients in the South Asian nation, greater than the proportion in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore, he said.

The TMX Annual Report talks a lot about its “low latency”, but doesn’t provide any numbers … which reminds me of the time, years ago, when I was buying a new computer. Due to the state of the art at the time, the speed of the L2 onboard cache was an important determinant of total speed – so I asked the friendly salesman what it was. After nagging him for a couple of days, I finally got an exasperated answer: “Look, it’s fast OK? It’s fast.”. I changed suppliers shortly afterwards.

All I can find for the TSX is a 6-millisecond response time for the Quantum system in 2008, but I don’t even know whether that measurement is comparable to the latencies discussed above. Still, if they were tops you know we’d never hear the end of it. A recent TMX release trumpets “40,000 order messages per second”, which imples 25-microseconds per message if they’re sequential, but again I don’t know if that’s a comparable number – I suspect not, since the feeds are partitioned.

Gwyn Morgan shows a prediliction for easy answers in his column Wanted: clear thinking on educating the work force:

In a recent column, I criticized Canadian universities for turning away up to half of applicants for in-demand programs such as engineering, information technology and health care, while continuing to allocate much of their money to programs with poor job prospects.
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The person went on to say that arts and classics students “understand that their mind is theirs to educate for their fulfilment, not to train for some random future employer.” Another respondent noted that liberal arts courses “educate the mind to think.” Both apparently believe that possession of an arts degree is a vital prerequisite to one’s ability to actually think.

Naturally, there is no discussion on the actual hiring process. In my experience, corporate hiring is abysmal, with grossly incompetent Human Resource people trying to find precise matches of presumed skills to presumed needs. The best example is Commerce degrees – does anybody know anybody with a B.Comm. who can actually do anything? Who did anything in University other than regurgitate superficial explanations of high-level economics? Yet these people are in demand – hiring them is a low-risk proposition for an HR specialist.

Aside from those with actual skill-sets (such as engineering, hard sciences, nursing, etc.), the only people worth hiring for entry-level jobs are those who adored their University studies and as a result worked their buns off. Doesn’t matter if the particular subject was Ancient Greek Pottery or Economics. Once you know how to work, how to think, how to meet a deadline … the rest is just details.

Mind you, for analytical work I have a strong preference for science grads – hard science, mind you – on the grounds that by both prediliction and training, they are likely to believe that for any question, there’s exactly one correct answer.

Royal Bank’s American unit was downgraded:

Standard & Poor’s has downgraded its ratings on RBC Bank (USA) to BBB from A- as a result of changes to Royal Bank of Canada’s long-term strategic plan for its U.S. commercial banking subsidiary amid reports the operation is up for sale.
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The rating agency said this is primarily a result of the highliy competitive U.S. banking landscape and RBC Bank’s small regional presence.

S&P also revised its view of RBC Bank to “non-strategically important” from “strategically important,” which shaved three notches off its rating. However, it applied one notch of support to reflect the bank’s shared branding, infrastructure, management, liquidity and capital support from its parent.

The Portuguese Emperor is contemplating action against the boy who shouted ‘No clothes!’:

Portuguese authorities have opened a criminal inquiry into three international credit rating agencies following a complaint, the Attorney General’s office said Monday.

The inquiry is based on a complaint filed last month by four Portuguese academics, an official with the Attorney General’s office said on condition of anonymity, in keeping with departmental regulations.

The four economists claimed the agencies — Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch — caused severe financial losses for Portugal and demanded to know whether they profited from the ratings.

They also complained that the agencies dominated the ratings market and want to know whether competition rules were broken.

The inquiry will determine whether there is evidence for charges to be brought.

It was another strong day across the board for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts up 31bp, FixedResets gaining 11bp and DeemedRetractibles winning 23bp. Not much volatility. Good volume, with some very impressive spikes.

One thing that may be helping the US economy is squatters’ rent:

Millions of Americans have more money to spend since they fell delinquent on their mortgages amid the worst housing collapse since the Great Depression. They are staying in their homes for free about a year and a half on average, buying time to restructure their finances and providing an unexpected support for consumer spending, which makes up about 70 percent of the economy.

So-called “squatter’s rent,” or the increase to income from withheld mortgage payments, will be an estimated $50 billion this year, according to Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York. The extra cash could represent a boost to spending that’s equal to about half the estimated savings generated by cuts to payroll withholding in December’s bipartisan tax plan.

Even after all the carnage, the situation is still deteriorating:

More than 28 percent of U.S. homeowners owed more than their properties were worth in the first quarter as values fell the most since 2008, Zillow Inc. said today.

Homeowners with negative equity increased from 22 percent a year earlier as home prices slumped 8.2 percent over the past 12 months, the Seattle-based company said. About 27 percent of homes were “underwater” in the fourth quarter, according to Zillow, which runs a website with property-value estimates and real-estate listings.

Home prices fell 3 percent in the first quarter and will drop as much as 9 percent this year as foreclosures spread and unemployment remains high, Zillow Chief Economist Stan Humphries said. Prices won’t find a floor until 2012, he said.

Thinking of protesting your credit card bill? Don’t:

Three Citibank debt collectors allegedly killed Irzen Octa, 50, secretary general of the National Unity Party (PPB), on Tuesday after he protested an increased credit card bill, the police said on Thursday.

“The motive of the murder is due to debt [issues], a credit card bill that didn’t fit [the formerly-given figure],” South Jakarta Police chief detective Adj. Sr. Comr. Budi Irawan said on Thursday.

Budi said the victim objected to his Citibank credit card bill, which had grown to Rp 100 million (US$11,500) from the Rp 48 million of which Irzen had been expecting.

Irzen only learned of the “unfitting” bill as he was about to pay it at the Citibank office branch at Jamsostek Tower in South Jakarta on Tuesday, the police said.

“We’ve found evidence at the crime scene in form of blood traces on the curtains and on the walls of the room on the fifth floor,” he added.

Budi said Citibank debt collectors A., H. and D., now named suspects, attacked Irzen because they were angered by his protest.

Forensic results show broken blood vessels in the victim’s brain.

SEC Chairman Mary L. Schapiro used an opportunity to vilify High Frequency Trading in a speech to the Investment Company Institute:

In thinking through our next steps, we need to consider several important questions:

• First, what is “excessive short-term volatility?” Put another way, what level of volatility is appropriate in continuous trading, and at what point should circuit breakers or limit up/limit down take effect?
• Second, how does excessive volatility affect – and how is it affected by – different market participants, including traders, investors, individual securities and mutual funds?
• And finally, should high-frequency traders, who often derive significant benefit from their role as de facto market makers, also have the obligations of market makers as well as other responsibilities with respect to the impact of their technology and trading strategies on the markets?

There are a number of similarities between 1962 and 2010. For example, neither of these severe price moves could be readily explained by a particular news event. On both days, some market data systems were overwhelmed by the heavy volume.

And, in both instances, the sudden declines struck at investor confidence, leading them to question the stability and integrity of the equity markets.

But the differences between those two events are even more striking.

First, the magnitude of the declines, both at the broad market index level and for worst-hit individual securities, was much more severe in 2010 than 1962. In ‘62, the Dow declined to intraday lows of 6.3 percent compared to 9.9 percent on May 6. And one of the worst-hit individual securities in 1962 dropped 9.3 percent in a 12-minute period. In 2010, many securities lost 100 percent of their value in a matter of seconds.

Perhaps the biggest difference – and one that may help explain the difference in the magnitudes of the declines – is the volume and trading behavior of the professional traders who were expected to be the primary liquidity providers.

In ’62, the specialists who were then the primary liquidity providers, represented approximately 17 percent of market volume and were net buyers in aggregate during the decline. In 2010, the high frequency traders who are today’s liquidity providers represented well more than 50 percent of market volume and were net aggressive sellers during the broad index price decline.

High frequency traders turned what was a very down day for many investors into a very profitable one for themselves by taking liquidity rather than providing it. I think their activity that day should cause us to thoroughly examine their current role.
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Also, if the plan is approved, these pauses could provide a period in which market participants have an opportunity to assess the market and decide whether and at what prices they wish to buy or sell. The result should be trading driven less by momentum-seeking algorithms and more by rational trading based on fundamentals.
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We need to continue examining the effects of high speed trading on the markets and on buy-side and fundamental investors. The role of these traders, whose prominence in the markets seems only to increase, should be subject to further scrutiny. The possibility of imposing obligations during times of potential turmoil must remain on the table. And we need to pay attention to other potential flaws that could bring about equally disruptive events.

I’m sure that anybody offered the chance to get the deal that market-makers got in 1962 would jump at the chance. Fixed Commissions! One-eighth ticks! Preferential access to the order book!

She continues to ignore the impact of Stop-Loss orders – and it is Stop-Loss orders, I remain convinced, that turned a hiccup into a rout. There’s an example of a “momentum-seeking algorithm” if ever there was one!

It is also interesting that she refers to profits of HFT – I haven’t seen the question of HFT profitability addressed before. I’m sure that there are some players who made good money – but where are the figures?

The other statement of interest is the notion of imposing obligations on HFT to make markets. Generally, market makers have obligations for which they are paid in privileges. I find it very difficult to believe that the SEC intends to grant privileges to HFT, so the SEC will have to recast some otherwise normal elements of market activity as privileges. This is a very slippery slope; and there is still nothing being done about the Stop-Loss Orders.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has released the May 2011 Edition of Fed Letter:

The May 2011 issue of Fed Letter contains the following articles: Ag finance conditions strengthen, databook finds; Community Affairs newsletter now available; District manufacturing moderates in April; Latest Economic Review research available; and Regulatory Developments.

Remember Basis Yield Alpha Fund? It was one of the first hedge funds to go under during the credit crunch, despite the managers’ assurances that they were pretty smart cookies. But the whining continues:

The day after the United States Senate released what has been described as a “scathing report” on the activities of Goldman Sachs leading up to and during the financial crisis, Australian-based Basis Yield Alpha Fund (which has waged a legal battle with the investment bank over its Timberwolf CDO), released a comment saying “Yesterday’s Senate Report confirms that in fact Goldman made a concerted effort to mislead and defraud investors, including Basis.”

The Basis Fund suit was filed in June 2010 after the fund saw an $80m investment into Timberwolf disintegrated in a matter of weeks (the suit alleges the fund lost $50m in losses and margin calls). The fund is arguing that Goldman used aggressive sales tactics and assurances that the secondary CDO market was stable, knowing that these statements were false. In August 2010, Goldman submitted a motion asking that the case be thrown out entirely due to jurisdiction because The Basis Fund executives are based in Australia. That motion was denied and the case is still working itself through the US Federal Court System.

In Thursday’s statement the Basis Fund legal team says that having asked Goldman executives questions regarding the Timberwolf security “they were met with carefully constructed lies and non-disclosures.” Eric Lewis, lead counsel for the fund says “Goldman created Timberwolf to fail, so Goldman could bet against it, and Goldman then sold the security to Basis as stable and well priced, when its own internal analysis showed that Timberwolf’s value was sinking like a stone. It is time for Goldman to be held accountable.”

I last mocked the fund and its crybaby principals on 2010-5-18. In essence, these superstars of analytical prowess bought the issue with clients’ money because Goldman said it was good. They should lose their licenses, if they still have them.

David Papell, Professor of Economics at the University of Houston, writes an interesting guest-post on Econbrowser, titled The Taylor Rule and QE2:

What are the implications of our research for current policy? With Taylor’s original rule, the prescribed federal funds rate for 2009 – 2010 is zero or slightly negative. With a variant of the Taylor rule that doubles the size of the output gap coefficient, it is about negative four percent. This is important because, with the constraint of a zero lower bound on the federal funds rate, large negative prescribed interest rates provide a rationale for the Fed’s quantitative easing in 2009 (QE1) and 2010-2011 (QE2). Our paper does not say whether or not QE1 and QE2 were good policies, a topic that is beyond the scope of our research. It does say that, if you are going to use negative prescribed interest rates to justify quantitative easing, you need to use a rule that can be justified by historical experience. Taylor’s original rule, which can be justified by historical experience, does not produce negative prescribed interest rates for 2009-2011. Variants of Taylor rules with larger output gap coefficients, which do produce negative interest rates, cannot be justified by historical experience. The Taylor rule does not provide a rationale for quantitative easing.

Strange things are happening with the TMX-LSE deal:

Traders who profit from mergers and acquisitions are betting for the first time a higher offer will trump the London Stock Exchange Group Plc (LSE)’s deal for Toronto- based TMX Group Inc. (X), leaving both bidders as losers.

A group of Canadian banks is in talks with the nation’s pension funds on alternatives to LSE’s $3.1 billion bid to keep the Toronto Stock Exchange under local ownership, the head of the pension plan in Alberta said last week. The discussions caused TMX’s share price to rise above LSE’s all-stock offer on May 6 for the first time since it was announced in February, as arbitragers bet a competing bid will emerge once LSE gains regulatory approval, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

S&P has downgraded Greece:

• Under our sovereign ratings criteria, a commercial debt rescheduling typically constitutes a default.
• In our view, there is increased risk that Greece will take steps to restructure the terms of its commercial debt, including its previously-issued government bonds.
• Accordingly, we are lowering both the long- and short-term ratings on Greece to ‘B’ and ‘C’, respectively.
• We are leaving both ratings on CreditWatch

Greek bonds reacted:

The premium investors demand to hold Greek 10-year securities instead of benchmark German bunds rose 27 basis points to 1,261 basis points. The cost of insuring Greek debt for five years rose 30 basis points to a record 1,371 basis points, according to CMA prices for credit-default swaps. The Portuguese 10-year yield increased 12 basis points to 9.67 percent, while the equivalent-maturity Spanish yield advanced 8 basis points to 5.32 percent.

European leaders had an unscheduled meeting over the weekend, with Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker saying Greece “does need a further adjustment program.” Another credit-rating cut would make Greece the lowest-rated country in Europe as today’s reduction, the fourth by S&P since April 2010, left it even with Belarus.

And it was a good day of across the board strength in the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts up 16bp, FixedResets gaining 14bp and DeemedRetractibles winning 19bp. Not a lot of volatility, with only three entries in the Performance Highlights table. Volume was average.

Remember the good old days of 2008-09? When every Friday night we could make a batch of popcorn and watch the parade of bankrupts? This weekend might have some interesting European news:

European finance officials are meeting in Luxembourg for an unscheduled session that may address proposals for restructuring Greek debt, said two European officials familiar with the situation.

A German official said the discussions would include a German paper on options for confronting Greece’s growing debt load, which has spurred speculation by investors that a restructuring was likely.

Earlier, Spiegel magazine reported that ministers are convening an emergency meeting after Greece threatened to withdraw from the euro region. Greece rejected the report, according to a finance ministry statement. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief spokesman “categorically” denied that any discussions on a Greek exit were under way. He declined to comment when asked whether officials were meeting tonight.

Looks like the Bloc Quebecois can envy Scotland:

First Minister Alex Salmond’s pro- independence party won an unprecedented majority in elections to the Scottish Parliament, handing him a second term and a mandate to push for greater autonomy for Scotland.

British Prime Minister David Cameron vowed to defend the U.K. from potential breakup even as he congratulated Salmond on an “emphatic win” in yesterday’s vote. Salmond’s Scottish National Party crossed the 65-seat threshold for the first overall majority since the 129-member parliament in Edinburgh was established in 1999.

It was a strong day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts roaring ahead by 29bp, FixedResets gaining 5bp and DeemedRetractibles picking up 10bp. There were only three entries in the Performance Highlights table – one from each of the main classes, oddly enough – but all were positive. Volume was low.

Surprise! Increased regulation lead to migration to non-regulated channels:

For Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Morgan Stanley, two of Wall Street’s biggest commodities-trading firms, the year’s largest initial public offering represents a nightmare come true: the rise of unregulated rivals.

Glencore International AG’s IPO probably will catapult the Baar, Switzerland-based commodities firm from relative obscurity onto London’s FTSE 100 list of most valuable stocks this month. Chief Executive Officer Ivan Glasenberg, 54, a former coal trader, owns a 16 percent stake in Glencore worth $9.6 billion if the sale assigns the firm a mid-range value of $61 billion.
…
Glencore, like rivals such as Hong Kong-based Noble Group Ltd. (NOBL) and Amsterdam-based Trafigura Beheer BV, can take bigger trading risks in the commodities markets, helping to make them more profitable and more appealing as employers for top traders.

“Prop trading remains as a potent incentive to join Glencore, Noble, Trafigura and any of the major trading firms not restricted by banking rules,” said George H. Stein, managing director of Commodity Talent LLC, a recruitment firm in New York.

Glencore’s average 2010 value-at-risk, a measure of how much the firm’s traders could lose in a single day, jumped to $43 million from $27 million in 2009, according to the firm’s annual report. Goldman Sachs’s commodity price value-at-risk dropped to $33 million in 2010 from $36 million in 2009, company data show.

I don’t think that’s the end of the story, however. I suspect that the regulators will find a way to go after Glencore if there’s the slightest possibility of villainizing them. The end-game, I suspect, is a system with a multitude of small shops, each having $0.5-1.0-billion under management. This won’t do anything for financial stability because, by and large, all these guys will be making the same bets; but it will make everybody feel better that Something Was Done, and that’s what counts, isn’t it?

On cue, Bernanke delivered a warning:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the government must avoid imposing burdensome rules on financial companies as it carries out the biggest regulatory overhaul in seven decades.

“No one’s interests are served by the imposition of ineffective or burdensome rules that lead to excessive increases in costs or unnecessary restrictions in the supply of credit,” Bernanke said today in a speech in Chicago. “Regulators must aim to avoid stifling reasonable risk-taking and innovation in financial markets, as these factors play an important role in fostering broader productivity gains, economic growth, and job creation.”

But the immediate issues du jour are not directly related to Glencore et al:

U.S. banks have mounted a campaign against one Fed regulation under Dodd-Frank to cap “swipe” fees on debit cards. Bernanke said in March that the Fed would miss an April deadline for the rule, telling lawmakers the issues raised in more than 11,000 comment letters are “complex and difficult.”

Last week, the Treasury Department proposed exempting foreign-exchange swaps and forwards from most of the derivatives rules required under the Dodd-Frank Act, saying the market already meets many of the law’s objectives.

A coalition of 20 firms, including Deutsche Bank AG, Bank of New York Mellon Corp. and UBS AG, asked Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to grant an exemption in a November letter.

The TMX / LSE deal is getting more interesting:

:Banks opposed to the planned combination of TMX Group Inc. (X-T39.53-0.01-0.03%) and London Stock Exchange Group PLC are looking for ways to thwart the deal, and are seeking the backing of Canada’s biggest pension funds.

Talks among large Canadian financial institutions searching for an alternative to the merger of the Toronto and London stock market operators have been going on for weeks. Options under consideration include a potential counterbid for TMX, which is valued at almost $3-billion.

Call me paranoid, but I’m convinced there’s more to this than meets the eye. It may have something to do with power … with the present situation, the banks can quite reasonably expect the TMX to kowtow to them on demand, since all employees, from the CEO on down, have to worry about their future career prospects. This will not be the case if the TMX is part of a pugnacious international group. But who knows?

And anyway, commodities aren’t fashionable this week:

Commodities plunged the most since 2008, stocks worldwide posted the biggest three-day drop since March and the dollar rallied after American jobless claims unexpectedly rose and the European Central Bank signaled it will wait until after June to raise interest rates.

The Standard & Poor’s GSCI index of 24 commodities sank 7.3 percent at 3:19 p.m. in New York and has lost 11 percent this week. Silver tumbled 11 percent, extending its decline since April 29 to 28 percent. Oil sank 9.7 percent, falling below $100 a barrel for the first time since March 17. The MSCI All-Country World Index of shares in 45 nations fell 1.4 percent. The dollar gained 2.2 percent against the euro, making commodities quoted in the greenback more expensive for holders of other currencies.

Desjardins is raining all over the Maple parade:

There’s chatter in the bond world that the maple market is coming back, driven by increased issuance over the past four weeks.

However, at this point, the perceived strength is all hype. The numbers prove otherwise.

In 2011 maple issuers — which are foreign entities that raise debt issued in Canadian dollars — have financed $2.2-billion here in Canada. That’s just a fraction of the $17-billion raised in 2007 when the maple market was hot.

“Not only does this clearly put things into perspective, but also shows how far we are from a true ‘renaissance’ of the maple bond market,” Jean-François Godin of Desjardins Securities notes.

It was a restful day in the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts losing 5bp, FixedResets down 3bp and DeemedRetractibles gaining 4bp. Volatility remained low, and volume was light.