The SEC continues its struggle against free markets:
The Securities and Exchange Commission may ask stock markets to impose fees on trading firms that submit a high number of quotations in relation to executed transactions, an executive at the regulator said.
The SEC is considering whether to urge exchanges to impose a fee for exceeding a certain order-to-execution ratio or for sending messages, which include quotes, updates, cancellations and executions, said David Shillman, associate director at the regulator’s division of trading and markets. That’s because they impose a cost on brokerages, said Shillman, who spoke in an interview at a Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association conference in New York.
There is, of course, no indication that a free market solution, like charging every order $0.0001, was ever considered. This would deny the SEC the opportunity to define Good Firms and Bad Firms.
There will be a new version of Quantitative Wheezing:
Federal Reserve policy makers will replace much of the short-term debt in their portfolio with longer-term Treasuries in an effort to further reduce borrowing costs and keep the economy from relapsing into a recession.
The central bank will buy $400 billion of bonds with maturities of six to 30 years through June while selling an equal amount of debt maturing in three years or less, the Federal Open Market Committee said today in Washington after a two-day meeting. The action “should put downward pressure on longer-term interest rates and help make broader financial conditions more accommodative,” the FOMC said.
…
The amount of debt to be sold represents about three- fourths of Fed holdings of between three months and three years. The central bank will release a schedule of purchases and sales of bonds for October on Sept. 30.The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell 1.6 percent to 1,183.22 at 2:37 p.m. in New York. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note slid seven basis points to 1.87 percent after declining to a record low of 1.85 percent.
The IMF’s September 2011 GFSR – Chapter 1 has many cheerful things to say about banks and insurers:
For the first time since the October 2008 Global Financial Stability Report, risks to global fi nancial stability have increased (Figures 1.2 and 1.3), signaling a partial reversal in progress made over the past three years. The pace of the
economic recovery has slowed, stalling progress in balance sheet repair in many advanced economies. Sovereign stress in the euro area has spilled over to banking systems, pushing up credit and market risks. Low interest rates could lead to excesses as the “search for yield” exacerbates the turn in the credit cycle, especially in emerging markets. Recent market turmoil suggests that investors are losing patience with the lack of momentum on financial repair and reform (Box 1.1). Policymakers need to accelerate actions to address longstanding financial weaknesses to ensure stability.
Another golden straw in the wind:
The surging price of gold is fueling inflation from India to Indonesia and forcing statisticians to decide whether jewelry made of the metal still belongs in consumer-price indexes.
In South Korea, gold rings will be dropped from the inflation basket for the first time since 1975 as part of a scheduled reweighting in December, Bang Tae Kyoung, deputy director of the statistics agency, said in an phone interview from Daejeon. “People are now buying gold mostly for investment purposes, and so it should be classified as an asset, rather than spending,” Bang said.
It was a lethargic day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts winning 6bp, FixedResets basically flat and DeemedRetractibles up 4bp. Volatility was minimal. Volume was below average.
PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.33%, equivalent to 6.93% interest at the standard equivalency factor of 1.3x. Long Corporates now yield about 4.8%, so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread is now about 215bp, a widening from the 200bp reported on September 7.
| 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 | -0.5129 % | 2,081.5 |
| FixedFloater | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | -0.5129 % | 3,130.5 |
| Floater | 3.12 % | 3.38 % | 55,072 | 18.80 | 3 | -0.5129 % | 2,247.4 |
| OpRet | 4.82 % | 2.35 % | 60,621 | 1.63 | 8 | -0.2217 % | 2,458.6 |
| SplitShare | 5.37 % | 1.22 % | 51,263 | 0.43 | 4 | 0.0531 % | 2,497.6 |
| Interest-Bearing | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | -0.2217 % | 2,248.2 |
| Perpetual-Premium | 5.61 % | 3.96 % | 116,390 | 0.59 | 16 | 0.1859 % | 2,122.8 |
| Perpetual-Discount | 5.27 % | 5.33 % | 113,357 | 14.87 | 14 | 0.0646 % | 2,260.6 |
| FixedReset | 5.13 % | 3.13 % | 212,335 | 2.60 | 60 | -0.0026 % | 2,330.6 |
| Deemed-Retractible | 5.03 % | 4.57 % | 232,903 | 5.91 | 46 | 0.0435 % | 2,204.8 |
| Performance Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Change | Notes |
| BAM.PR.J | OpRet | -1.52 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Soft Maturity Maturity Date : 2018-03-30 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 26.49 Bid-YTW : 4.35 % |
| Volume Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Shares Traded |
Notes |
| CU.PR.C | FixedReset | 471,280 | New issue settled today. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2041-09-21 Maturity Price : 23.19 Evaluated at bid price : 25.21 Bid-YTW : 3.73 % |
| TD.PR.M | OpRet | 226,400 | Called for redemption. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2011-10-21 Maturity Price : 25.50 Evaluated at bid price : 25.75 Bid-YTW : 0.65 % |
| BMO.PR.P | FixedReset | 105,505 | Scotia crossed 95,000 at 26.85. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2015-02-25 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 26.86 Bid-YTW : 3.23 % |
| CM.PR.M | FixedReset | 72,440 | TD crossed 71,800 at 27.65. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2014-07-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 27.58 Bid-YTW : 3.06 % |
| CM.PR.I | Deemed-Retractible | 68,368 | Desjardins crossed 46,300 at 25.45. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2016-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.37 Bid-YTW : 4.51 % |
| BNS.PR.R | FixedReset | 67,615 | RBC crossed blocks of 25,000 shares, 30,000 and 11,000, all at 26.25. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2014-01-26 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 26.20 Bid-YTW : 3.21 % |
| There were 27 other index-included issues trading in excess of 10,000 shares. | |||
| Wide Spread Highlights | ||
| Issue | Index | Quote Data and Yield Notes |
| TCA.PR.Y | Perpetual-Premium | Quote: 52.60 – 53.27 Spot Rate : 0.6700 Average : 0.4821 YTW SCENARIO |
| FTS.PR.G | FixedReset | Quote: 25.90 – 26.48 Spot Rate : 0.5800 Average : 0.3954 YTW SCENARIO |
| RY.PR.X | FixedReset | Quote: 27.01 – 27.39 Spot Rate : 0.3800 Average : 0.2791 YTW SCENARIO |
| CM.PR.I | Deemed-Retractible | Quote: 25.37 – 25.63 Spot Rate : 0.2600 Average : 0.1835 YTW SCENARIO |
| GWO.PR.H | Deemed-Retractible | Quote: 23.61 – 23.90 Spot Rate : 0.2900 Average : 0.2179 YTW SCENARIO |
| BMO.PR.H | Deemed-Retractible | Quote: 25.86 – 26.05 Spot Rate : 0.1900 Average : 0.1218 YTW SCENARIO |
[…] 4.8%, so the pre-tax interest equivalent spread is now about 215bp, basically unchanged from the September 21 […]