Stocks got clobbered again:
U.S. stocks sank and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index dropped to the lowest level since April 2003 on concern a worsening global economic slump will damp profits.
…
The S&P 500 lost 58.27 points, or 6.1 percent, to 896.78. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 514.45, or 5.7 percent, to 8,519.21 as all 30 of its companies dropped. The Nasdaq Composite Index lost 80.93, or 4.8 percent, 1,615.75. About 24 stocks fell for each that rose on the New York Stock Exchange.
…
The S&P 500 has moved more than 1 percent on 13 of the 16 trading days this month, making it the most volatile by that measure since September 1932, according to S&P analyst Howard Silverblatt.
… Canada was not immune:
Canadian stocks fell, pushing the main index toward its worst monthly drop in 21 years, as energy shares including Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. slumped along with oil prices on signs that fuel consumption is dropping.
…
The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index fell 5.7 percent to 9,236.88 in Toronto. Canada’s broadest stock benchmark, which derives more than three-quarters of its value from commodity and financial shares, has lost 21 percent in October, the most since after the “Black Monday” crash in the same month in 1987.
…
The S&P/TSX has dropped 39 percent from its June 18 record as debt markets froze after more than $660 billion in credit losses at global institutions.
Barney Frank wants Financial Services bonuses frozen:
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said there should be a freeze on Wall Street bonuses until companies find a way to keep the year-end payouts from encouraging excessive risk-taking.
“There should be a moratorium on bonuses,” Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, told reporters yesterday in Washington. “They have a negative incentive effect because they are the ones that say if you take a risk and it pays off you get a big bonus,” and if it causes losses “you don’t lose anything.”
He’s right as far as this particular time ’round goes, but most of the time, if it causes losses you’re looking for work. It’s another variation of ‘Lose a million, you’ve got a problem. Lose a billion, THEY’VE got a problem.” Which, ultimately, comes down to risk management which, from all appearances, has for the past few years been largely a regulatory box-ticking exercise, as opposed to a job that somebody actually wanted done. The pro-Street Dealbreaker leads the charge:
I mean, yeah, it was really only higher ups who perpetrated the monumental fuck ups we’re currently paying for, including but not limited to the barbershop quartet of, say, Dick Fuld, Stan O’Neal, Chuck Prince, and Jimmy Cayne (with back up dancers Angelo Mozilo, Alan Greenspan et al.), but surely something will come of cutting the annual take-home of low-level plebes who were minding their own business placing Seamless Web orders while their boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss was investing in that can’t miss asset class, subprime.
I was once offered a job running a small piece of a large company – they wanted to pay me bonus based on how well the other 99.9% of the company did, rather than how well my little feifdom did. There were other problems, and the conversation didn’t last long.
There will be no market reporting AGAIN, due to the same technical difficulties that caused yesterday‘s report to be cut short. However, I have now determined, isolated and neutralized the problem; it only remains to determing that I am doing so in the best manner.
I’ll explain in another post, because it’s kind of funny, but basically there’s a little loop used in the process of curve approximation that calculates a yield; in the case of YLD.PR.B, quoted at 1.60 with a stated annual dividend of $1.05 (currently suspended) until maturity 2012-2-1 at $15 [dubious], the little loop ran ’round 5,709,833 times [in the run where the problem was unequivocally isolated] before the WebService timed out and blew up the whole programme.
So, all is well, basically, but I’M TIRED.
More later.
Update, 2008-10-24: The subindices have been updated:
Note that these indices are experimental; the absolute and relative daily values are expected to change in the final version. In this version, index values are based at 1,000.0 on 2006-6-30. The Fixed-Reset index was added effective 2008-9-5 at that day’s closing value of 1,119.4 for the Fixed-Floater index. |
Index |
Mean Current Yield (at bid) |
Mean YTW |
Mean Average Trading Value |
Mean Mod Dur (YTW) |
Issues |
Day’s Perf. |
Index Value |
Ratchet |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
0 |
N/A |
N/A |
Fixed-Floater |
5.39% |
5.63% |
69,256 |
14.76 |
6 |
+0.0043% |
959.3 |
Floater |
6.00% |
6.06% |
45,073 |
13.8 |
2 |
+3.9025% |
571.7 |
Op. Retract |
5.33% |
6.19% |
125,891 |
4.06 |
14 |
-0.1940% |
992.4 |
Split-Share |
6.23% |
10.31% |
57,836 |
4.00 |
12 |
-1.9658% |
940.0 |
Interest Bearing |
7.54% |
13.03% |
56,283 |
3.48 |
3 |
-0.5706% |
928.7 |
Perpetual-Premium |
6.76% |
6.84% |
48,995 |
12.71 |
1 |
-0.6022% |
917.9 |
Perpetual-Discount |
6.67% |
6.75% |
174,038 |
12.89 |
70 |
+0.1023% |
810.2 |
Fixed-Reset |
5.18% |
5.01% |
877,400 |
15.37 |
10 |
+0.6953% |
1,107.7 |
ANOTHER DBRS Mass Review of Splits
Friday, October 24th, 2008The credit crunch keeps rolling … portfolio values keep dropping … and last spring’s review is no longer operable.
DBRS has announced it:
Coverage
PrefBlog
Post
Index
10/23
10/24
10/23
10/17
10/24
10/24
10/15
10/23
10/23
10/22
10/23
10/23
1.5-:110/22 1.3+:1
see update
10/16
10/23
Never Resolved
10/23
10/23
10/23
10/15
10/16
10/26
Update, 2008-10-26: There is an error in the calculation of the asset coverage for FIG.PR.A. As of the June 30 financials, the company had 9,964,308 preferreds outstanding and 7,061,762 capital units. Thus, net assets of $4.56 for the capital units equates to asset coverage of ((10 * 9,964,308) + (7,061,762 * 4.56))/9,964,308 = 1.32 … call it 1.3+:1.
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