The Best of Bloomberg 2010 - 2009
The best friend
of any Front-office professional is definitely his/her Bloomberg Professional Terminal with its 80's GUI (this being said, the GUI has improved dramatically lately).
Miss a Bloomberg Terminal? No worry, we make for you here a repository of the most read news of the year, month by month.
What is the first information a professional trader look at in the morning? It's the "Quote of the Day" Terminal. The quotes of the year can be found here also.
The most read News in 2010
January
February
January
Wall Street Firms Cut Pay, ‘Buckling’ to Washington (Update1)
By Michael J. Moore
Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s investment bank slashed their compensation in the fourth quarter, responding to political pressure that will probably persist as details of bonuses for their top executives emerge in coming weeks.
The three Wall Street firms set aside $39.9 billion for pay in 2009, below the 2007 record of $44.7 billion. The total fell short of the $46.1 billion five analysts expected this month and is almost $10 billion less than what some analysts estimated in October.
“There’s no question that Wall Street got the message from Washington,” said Michael W. Robinson, a senior vice president of Levick Strategic Communications and former head of public affairs at the Securities and Exchange Commission. “But positioning the big banks with big bonuses as the bad guys has played well for politicians, and they are likely going to keep coming back to it. To some extent, banks are just going to have to be prepared for that.”
President Barack Obama called bank bonuses “obscene” for the second time in a week on Jan. 21. The next day, Democratic Representative Andre Carson called the industry’s practices “reckless” during a House Financial Services Committee hearing on compensation. Banks are disclosing stock awards handed out to top executives in the next few weeks.
The Full Article
Obama to Propose New Rules on Banks’ Size, Trading (Update3)
By Nicholas Johnston and Julianna Goldman
Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama today will propose limiting the size and trading activities of financial institutions as a way to reduce risk-taking, an administration official said.
Obama is scheduled to announce the plan at 11:40 a.m. at the White House after meeting with former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who has been an advocate of taking such steps. The proposals will be part of an overhaul of regulations and will specifically address firms’ proprietary trading, the official said yesterday on the condition of anonymity.
Obama is renewing his focus on economic issues, tapping into voter anger about the struggling economy, taxpayer bailouts and growing bank profits at a time of 10 percent unemployment, as well as a federal deficit that rose to $1.4 trillion last year. Those economic concerns will figure in the campaigns for November elections that will determine whether Obama’s Democratic Party can sustain majorities in the House and Senate.
The proposals could affect trading at some of the nation’s largest banks, including New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co., said Frederic Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Oregon. Banks conduct proprietary trading for their own benefit, not for that of their clients.
The Full Article
Obama Calls for Limiting Size, Risk-Taking of Financial Firms
By Nicholas Johnston and Julianna Goldman
Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama, tapping into voter anger over bank bailouts, called for limits on the size and trading activities of financial institutions in order to reduce risk-taking and prevent another financial crisis.
The proposals, to be added to an overhaul of regulations being considered by Congress, would prohibit banks from running proprietary trading operations solely for their own profit and sponsoring hedge funds and private equity funds. He also proposes expanding a 10 percent market-share cap on deposits to include other liabilities such as non-deposit funding to restrict growth and consolidation.
“While the financial system is far stronger today than it was one year ago, it’s still operating under the same rules that led to its near collapse,” Obama said yesterday at the White House after meeting with former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who has been an advocate of taking such steps. “Never again will the American taxpayer be held hostage by a bank that is too big to fail.”
The proposals could affect trading at some of the nation’s largest banks, including New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co., according to Frederic Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Oregon.
The Full Article
Wall Street Seeing Goldman in Rare Reversal With Morgan Stanley
By Christine Harper
Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc., whose record earnings in the first nine months of last year fueled public outrage, will probably hit a profit plateau in 2010, just as Morgan Stanley rebounds from its worst year ever.
The diverging outlooks for earnings growth have started showing in the stock prices, with Morgan Stanley gaining 2.6 percent this year and Goldman Sachs dropping 2.2 percent. Analysts at Credit Suisse Group AG, UBS AG and Macquarie Group Ltd. began recommending investors buy Morgan Stanley this month.
“It makes sense that Morgan’s rebounding, they’re coming from a lower level,” said Ralph Cole, a senior vice president in research at Ferguson Wellman Inc. in Portland, Oregon, which manages about $2.5 billion and owns both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley stock. Goldman Sachs “is trying to continue to move forward off a very large base, and that makes it very difficult for them.”
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the two biggest U.S. securities firms before becoming bank holding companies in 2008, continue their traditional rivalry, especially in merger advice and derivatives. When the two New York-based companies report fourth-quarter earnings later this week, Goldman Sachs is still expected by analysts to outshine Morgan Stanley.
Goldman Sachs, headed by Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein, 55, will probably report $3.2 billion of fourth- quarter net income, or $5.24 per share, according to the average estimate of 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Morgan Stanley is expected to earn $647 million, or 43 cents a share, according to the average of 10 analysts’ estimates.
The Full Article
Obama Says Bank Fee Aimed at Recovering Rescue Money (Update2)
By Julianna Goldman
Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said the levy he wants to impose on as many as 50 large financial firms is aimed at getting back “every single dime” that taxpayers put in to bailing out those companies.
“My determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at some of the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people,” Obama said at the White House. “We want our money back, and we’re going to get it.”
The fee would apply to financial companies with assets of more than $50 billion. It would be based on bank liabilities and imposed starting June 30 on companies such as Citigroup Inc., American International Group Inc. and Bank of America Corp.
The administration estimates the levy will raise $90 billion over 10 years and $117 billion over 12 years. An administration official who briefed reporters said the budget office estimates the 10-year figure will be enough to recoup all the losses in the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
With congressional elections coming in November, Obama is tapping into public anger over the taxpayer bailouts of the financial and auto industries, Wall Street bonuses and the federal deficit, which rose to $1.4 trillion last year. Reports about bank profits and bonuses come as the nation’s unemployment rate is at 10 percent and many Americans are struggling to recover from the worst recession since the 1930s.
The Full Article
February
Stocks, Commodities Plunge, Dollar Gains on Debt, Jobs Concerns
By Rita Nazareth and Gavin Serkin
Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Stocks plunged around the globe, with the MSCI World Index dropping the most in nine months, and commodities tumbled on concern an unexpected increase in U.S. jobless claims and growing sovereign debt will derail the economic recovery. The euro slid to the lowest level since May.
The MSCI World Index of 23 developed markets sank 2.9 percent and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell 3.1 percent at 4:30 p.m. in New York, the biggest declines since April 20. Benchmark equity indexes for Portugal and Spain plummeted the most in 15 months. Oil lost 5 percent, the biggest drop in six months, and gold tumbled the most since 2008 as a stronger dollar curbed demand for commodities. The euro lost 1.1 percent to $1.3738 and sank to an almost one-year low versus the yen.
U.S. equities extended the global slide as initial applications for unemployment insurance unexpectedly increased to 480,000 last week and companies from MasterCard Inc. to Monster Worldwide Inc. reported earnings that trailed analyst estimates. European shares added to earlier declines triggered when a disappointing Spanish bond auction fanned concern some nations will struggle to finance their budget deficits.
“Look at those initial claims,” said Diane Garnick, a New York-based investment strategist at Invesco Ltd., which manages $400 billion. “Unemployed people don’t spend money. That means the growth we’ve seen is not sustainable until people get jobs. Also, there are lots of uncertainties on a global basis. That’s certainly negative news for the market. I wouldn’t be surprised if we started to see dramatic increases in volatility again.”
The Full Article
NYC May Get as Much as 10 Inches of Snow Tomorrow (Update3)
By Brian K. Sullivan
Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Snow will probably begin falling in New York City by 3 a.m. tomorrow, and there may be as much as 10 inches (25 centimeters) on the ground before the storm ends a day later, according to the National Weather Service.
Between 5 and 10 inches of snow are predicted for New York, following two days of sleet and rain, with as much as 14 inches to the north and west of the city, said Matt Scalora, a weather service meteorologist in Upton, New York. More snow also is forecast for the Washington area, where seasonal records have been shattered.
“The Northeast is being impacted by one storm now, and the monster storm is going to impact the region tomorrow into Friday,” said Eric Wilhelm of private forecaster AccuWeather.com. “A really complex situation is developing in the Northeast.”
The storm is the latest in an El Nino-driven weather pattern that has pushed moist air across the southern U.S., where it has mixed with colder air coming down from the Arctic, said Matt Rogers, president of private forecaster Commodity Weather Group in Bethesda, Maryland.
The result has been record-breaking seasonal snows from Washington to Philadelphia. El Nino is a warming of the Pacific Ocean that occurs every two to five years and lasts about 12 months.
The Full Article
Goldman Sachs, Greece Didn’t Disclose Swap Contract (Update1)
By Elisa Martinuzzi
Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. managed $15 billion of bond sales for Greece after arranging a currency swap that allowed the government to hide the extent of its deficit.
No mention was made of the swap in sales documents for the securities in at least six of the 10 sales the bank arranged for Greece since the transaction, according to a review of the prospectuses by Bloomberg. The New York-based firm helped Greece raise $1 billion of off-balance-sheet funding in 2002 through the swap, which European Union regulators said they knew nothing about until recent days.
Failing to disclose the swap may have allowed Goldman, a co-lead manager on many of the sales, other underwriters and Greece to get a better price for the securities, said Bill Blain, co-head of fixed income at Matrix Corporate Capital LLP, a London-based broker and fund manager.
“The price of bonds should reflect the reality of Greece’s finances,” Blain said. “If a bank was selling them to investors on the basis of publicly available information, and they were aware that information was incorrect, then investors have been fooled.”
Michael DuVally, a spokesman at Goldman Sachs in New York, declined to comment.
The Full Article
Fed Raises Discount Rate by Quarter-Point to 0.75% (Update4)
By Craig Torres
Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve Board raised the discount rate charged to banks for direct loans by a quarter point to 0.75 percent and said the move will encourage financial institutions to rely more on money markets rather than the central bank for short-term liquidity needs.
“These changes are intended as a further normalization of the Federal Reserve’s lending facilities,” the central bank said today in a statement. “The modifications are not expected to lead to tighter financial conditions for households and businesses and do not signal any change in the outlook for the economy or for monetary policy.”
The dollar jumped as the Fed took another step in a gradual retreat from its unprecedented actions to halt the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression. The Fed has provided hundreds of billions of dollars in backstop credit to banks, bond dealers, commercial paper borrowers and troubled financial institutions such as American International Group Inc.
“This is an unwinding of another unusual and exigent circumstance,” said David Zervos, visiting adviser to the Fed Board in 2009 who is now a managing director at Jeffries & Co. in New York. “They tried to go out of their way to tell people this doesn’t change their policy outlook at all.”
The dollar rose to $1.3487 per euro by 12:24 p.m. Tokyo time on Feb. 19 from $1.3607 in late New York trading on Feb. 17. It touched $1.3444, the strongest level since May.
The Full Article
Euro Worst to Come as Greece Hammerlocks ECB on Rates (Update3)
By Liz Capo McCormick and Oliver Biggadike
Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Derivative traders are signaling that the euro’s slump to a nine-month low will continue even if European Union leaders bail out Greece.
Short-term rates for borrowing in euros in the forwards market are the cheapest relative to loans in dollars since September. The 50 percent collapse in that spread this month signals investors are betting the European Central Bank will keep its target interest rate at a record low, sacrificing euro strength to prevent deficit cutting by debt-laden economies in the region from stymieing growth.
“Investors have already started to think about the next likely phase of the present crisis, and it appears that all they are finding are new reasons to sell the euro,” said David Woo, global head of foreign-exchange strategy at Barclays Plc in London. “Aggressive fiscal tightening by Greece, Spain and Portugal are likely to plunge their economies back into recession. All else being equal, this calls for a looser monetary policy.”
The shift underscores a turnabout in the two most-traded currencies. In the last three quarters of 2009, the euro outperformed the dollar relative to 15 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg, with Deutsche Bank AG’s euro index gaining 1 percent and the IntercontinentalExchange Inc.’s Dollar Index down 9 percent.
Since Nov. 25, the dollar is up 8.3 percent and has outdone all but four major currencies as the euro lost ground against them. The euro traded at $1.3613 as of 7:11 a.m. in New York, unchanged from Feb. 19. The currency is down 5 percent against the U.S. currency this year.
The Full Article
The Quotes of the Day
“Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.” --Billy Wilder
“Tears may be dried up, but the heart - never.” --Marguerite de Valois
“Feel the fear and do it anyway.”--Susan Jeffers
“The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent.” --J. H. Holmes
Every man is the builder of a temple called his body. --Henry David Thoreau
“I dwell in possibility...” Emily Dickinson
“You’ve got to take the bitter with the sour.” --Samuel Goldwyn
“People who are always making allowances for themselves soon go bankrupt.” --Mary Pettibone Poole
“Don’t try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.” -- Philip K. Dick
“I feel very strongly that change is good because it stirs up the system.” --Ann Richards
“Mix a little foolishness with your prudence: It’s good to be silly at the right moment.” --Horace
“Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.” --Jules de Gaultier
“Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.” --Pancho Villa
“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.” --James Thurber
“What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.” Samuel Johnson
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is t all comprehensible.” -Albert Einstein
“Fear does not have any special power unless you empower it by submitting to it.” -- Les Brown
“Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” -- Mark Twain
“It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” -- J.K. Rowling
“Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.” -- Bertrand Russell
“Hares can gambol over the body of a dead lion.” -- Publilius Syrus
“Adversity does teach who your real friends are.” -- Lois McMaster Bujold
“The pleasure of love is in loving.” -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
“Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.” -- Epictetus
“Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it’s cowardice.” -- George Jackson
“In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary” -- Aaron Rose
“Nobody got anywhere in the world by simply being content.” -- Louis L’Amour
“A strong positive mental attitude will create more miracles than any wonder drug.” -- Patricia Neal
“Do not speak of your happiness to one less fortunate than yourself.” -- Plutarch
“A full cup must be carried steadily.” -- English Proverb
“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; In practice, there is.” -- Chuck Reid
“All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” -- George Orwell
“Ignorant men don’t know what good they hold in their hands until they’ve flung it away.” -- Sophocles
“Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.” -- Charles M. Schulz
“As a matter of principle, I never attend the first annual anything.” -- George Carlin
“Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.” -- Aesop
“Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.” -- Michel de Montaigne
