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;) tornerò! (minaccia e non promessa)! :)

NEW YORK - La debolezza del dollaro non smette di soffiare sui prezzi del petrolio e delle materie prime. Mentre l'euro si avvicina inesorabilmente a quota 1,60 contro il biglietto verde, il barile di greggio Wti (il riferimento per il mercato americano) ha toccato un nuovo record a 115,45 dollari. Mercoledì, dopo i dati sul calo delle riserve strategiche negli Usa, il barile aveva superato per la prima volta la soglia dei 115 dollari. EURO IN CORSA - Come detto, continua a volare l'euro, a un passo dal nuovo massimo di tutti i tempi contro dollaro, a quota 1,60. Il nuovo impulso ai corsi valutari è stato forito dal netto calo nel numero dei nuovi cantieri Usa che cementa la prospettiva di nuovi tagli dei tassi da parte di Federal Reserve, mentre la Bce ha confermato di non avere intenzione di abbassare il livello del costo del denaro.

e infatti il dollaro get weaker and weaker. possibile estensione a 1.7? mi sa di si...

Continua a salire il prezzo del petrolio, già in tensione lunedì sera. Il contratto consegna maggio sul light sweet crude ha aggiornato il suo massimo storico arrivando a 114,08 dollari al barile. Nuovo top anche per il Brent del Mare del Nord salito fino a 111,85 dollari al barile.

Messaggio N°100 15-04-2008 - 14:51 BUTTARE VIA IL TELEVISORE(la TV telecomanda gli elettori) Gia' oltre 40 anni fa,i nostri insegnanti ci dicevano di stare poco davanti al televisore....... non a caso l'ultimo tentativo di colpo di stato,in Italia,accadde con l'occupazione degli Studi RAI ...mi chiedo,se i teledipendenti riescono ancora ad avere uno spazio proprio di pensiero o se riproducono slogans che si diffondono come virus_nn occorre impiantare microchips nel cervello per controllarne il comportamento,bastano le Televisioni e buoni incantatori di serpenti.A questo punto,solo una domanda:non sarebbe meglio spegnere i nostri televisori....leggere....pensare.....costruirsi idee proprie e proprie filosofie di vita, lontane dai tormentoni mediatici lavacervello? CIAO freud8dgl

PARIGI - La corsa della fiaccola olimpica diventa sempre più a ostacoli tra le crescenti proteste anticinesi. La fiaccola, simbolo dei Giochi, è stata addirittura spenta a Parigi e portata per alcune centinaia di metri su un bus prima di riprende il percorso con i tedofori, ma dopo è stata di nuovo bloccata. Inoltre la bandiera nera di Reporter senza frontiere con i cerchi olimpici raffigurati come manette è stata issata al primo piano della Tour Eiffel, sul lato nord. La decisione di spegnere la fiamma è stata presa dalle autorità parigine e dagli organizzatori del Comitato olimpico francese, che avevano predisposto il percorso dei tedofori. C'erano timori consistenti di ritrovarsi con incidenti simili a quelli accaduti a Londra, visto che una grande folla con bandiere tibetane e cartelli pro Tibet si era radunata sul percorso, in particolare vicino alla partenza del primo tedoforo, l'ex campione del mondo dei 400 ostacoli Stephane Diagana. Come previsto la fiaccola olimpica era partita intorno alle 12,35 dalla Torre Eiffel ma ha interrotto la sua corsa dopo poche centinaia di metri. La polizia, che inquadrava con un eccezionale dispositivo di sicurezza i tedofori, ha deciso di spegnerla e di interrompere la staffetta a causa del numero di dimostranti che ne ostacolavano il passaggio.

Credit suisse Two weeks ago, we sent a short note highlighting that the tactical signals gave a buy signal (sentiment was at it most depressed level for 20 years, risk appetite close to capitulation levels, percentage of stocks trading above their 10-week MA sub 20%, strong insider buying, and an improvement in economic surprises-which we have put into attachment), though the tactical signals were not as strong as on Jan 21st. Since 1973 bear market rallies have averaged 15% over 51 days (in the last bear market, we had three rallies of 20%). The market is up 9% now from its low, so arguably we have another 5% or so to go. Before the end of the bear market rally, we would normally see equity sentiment and risk appetite getting a little higher (the equity sentiment indicator and risk appetite rise on average by 0.5 std; so far they have risen by 0.2std and 0.3std respectively). We have included two additional technical charts of interest: (a) Analysis by our Private Bank chartist suggests that when gold is down 3% in a day and S&P is up 3% in a day, the market is up 19% over the next 260 days (based on the four occasions this has happened since the 1970s); (b) Similarly, on the four previous occasions when the S&P has risen 3% or more on 3 occasions in a month, that normally marks the end of the bear market (though one month returns are not so good!). Not all the news, however, is so good on the tactical signals: net short positions have been reduced sharply; earnings momentum and earnings dispersion are terrible; market breadth is poor, corporates have turned into net sellers and a liquidity premium is returning to the market (the improvement in credit spreads has been very marginal compared to CDS and critically the financing spreads such as LIBOR/OIS or mortgage repos have hardly narrowed). We think we can over-engineer some of these chart signals. Our view is, as we wrote on March 17th, the market is in a bottoming process, but it is not a V-shaped recovery. We expect the market to go moderately higher near-term and then to get close to its old low. Importantly, we believe the bottoming process will complete itself (probably in Q3) only when: (A) The ECB and MPC start to clearly target growth not inflation. The process through which this happens is probably via the Euro/US$ rising to 1.70. We believe that a new bull market requires more than just the Fed to target growth (the ECB and MPC are targeting inflation and the BoJ does not have a governor). (B) Direct Administration support for the banks along the lines of the Resolution Trust Corp. (C) Clear signs that both banks and consumers are de-leveraging. Current net asset growth on the US banks balance sheet is at a record high and despite very tight lending criteria loan growth is still very strong (slide 20). Both Greenspan and Rachael Lomax, the deputy Governor of the Bank of England, have called this financial crisis the worst since the Second World War (or in Rachael Lomax words- ' the worst peacetime liquidity crisis'). So surely banks and consumers have to de-leverage. (D) We have to rule out a US$120 oil price. If oil rise another 15%, we become deeply bearish. We think oil will fall back to $80 to $90pb, but oil remains a risk! As for fair value, bond yield to earnings ratios are closet to 50 year lows on IBES numbers but given where lead indicators and credit spreads are, the required equity risk premium is 4.8% (which is 1.4% above its average). On our earnings numbers (as opposed to IBES which is forecasting 16% EPS growth in 2008 and 12.8% p.a. from 2009-2013!), the actual equity risk premium is 4.5% and if we normalise the RoE, then the equity risk premium falls to 4.3%. Only if ISM recovers to 55 and credit spreads fall by another 20% would the required risk premium fall to warranted levels, we believe. On March 11th, we upgraded corporate bonds to overweight but since then the European itraxx index has fallen to 650bp to 520bp and at this level the imputed default rate has fallen to 27% over a 5 year period (versus previous recession peaks of 36%). So it is hard to see much more of a rally in CDS spreads. Bottom line: As we wrote on March 16th, this is the 'beginning of the end', the current market rally should last a bit longer but we would then expect equities to come close to testing their lows (we had a double bottom in Oct 2002 and March 2003) and probably in Q3 form a more sustainable base. Fair value is 1,350 S&P 500 and we think below 500, the European itraxx starts to no longer offer value. Do keep a careful eye on financing spreads and the liquidity premium (slide 19) which have so far failed to narrow in any meaningful way.

Possiamo immaginare che il peggio sia alle spalle - ha detto Nathalie Pelras, gestore della Richelieu Finance a Parigi - L'aumento di capitale della Ubs è sicuro e quindi elimina paure finanziarie». L'ottimismo dei mercati, tuttavia, non può cancellare le incertezze sulla crisi. Le società finanziarie hanno globalmente sofferto perdite crescenti, finora pari a 208 miliardi di dollari, a causa dell'esposizione ai mutui subprime e ai titoli a questi collegati. Il settore finanziario americano potrebbe da solo eliminare 200mila posti di lavoro nel prossimo anno e mezzo, stando alla società di consulenza Celent. E le Borse mondiali hanno sacrificato 2.800 miliardi di dollari di capitalizzazione dall'inizio dell'anno sull'altare di crisi e di imminenti recessioni, soprattutto negli Stati Uniti. Ieri i più recenti dati economici sono stati superiori alle attese ma difficilmente possono essere considerati davvero rassicuranti: il settore manifatturiero ha subito una contrazione in marzo, con l'indice Ism a quota 48,6, e la spesa in costruzioni è scesa in febbraio dello 0,3%, la quinta flessione mensile consecutiva. Lo stesso grande piano per prevenire future debacle finanziarie messo a punto dal Segretario al Tesoro Henry Paulson sta suscitando crescenti polemiche che mettono in dubbio il suo destino. Gruppi che vanno da banche locali ad autorità statali, da politici a istituzioni finanziarie lo hanno denunciato come inadeguato o troppo complesso per funzionare. Una reazione che potrebbe rinviare a lungo qualunque discussione in Congresso su leggi di riforma necessarie a metterlo in pratica. Paulson ha proposto una drastica riorganizzazione delle autorità di controllo del sistema finanziario statunitense, che affidi maggiori responsabilità alla Federal Reserve. Alcune delle critiche più dure sono giunte dai candidati alle elezioni presidenziali, soprattutto quelli dell'opposizione democratica. Hillary Clinton ha definito il piano di Paulson tardivo, chiedendo nuovi poteri per la Fed entro 90 giorni. Barack Obama ha accusato il Tesoro di non dare alla Fed sufficiente autorità per intervenire in modo preventivo.

Hitting Bottom? Several Banks and Brokerages Are Ready to Pop Up for Air AT LAST, WE MAY BE THERE. AFTER MONTHS OF TURMOIL capped by a run on a leading Wall Street house, banks and brokerage firms may finally have hit bottom. You can thank the multipronged regulatory response to the near-collapse of Bear Stearns. Those measures may well prevent the deeply depressed stocks of many financial outfits from sinking further. The shares may even start to recover, with encouraging implications for the entire market. Yes, after being down on financial stocks for more than a year, we find ourselves unable to resist some real springtime optimism. Last week, the Federal Reserve slashed short-term interest rates, increasing the difference between short and long-term rates, which typically boosts lenders' earnings. The Fed also opened its lending window to investment banks, giving them a new, stable, liquid source of funding. And regulators' decision to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to boost their investments in U.S. mortgages by $200 billion gave the mortgage market a big shot in the arm. The market has yet to appreciate just how powerful those forces could be. Stocks of the industry's strongest players could climb by 10% to 20% over the next year as panic recedes, earnings improve and price-to-earnings multiples expand. But make no mistake: Headlines will remain negative. Witness CIT Group report thursday that it had lost access to short-term financing and Credit Suisse Group warning of a first-quarter loss. Likewise, Standard & Poor's on Friday placed the debt ratings of Goldman Sachs Group and Lehman Brothers on "negative outlook" because of earnings weakness. We fully expect economic growth will continue to decline, resulting in further loan losses. We wouldn't be surprised to see some of the weaker banks either go bust or turn to the industry's stronger players for a bailout. > But at this point, most of those risks are reflected in financial stock prices. And it won't be long before investors start looking at > the second half of the year, when the worst of the write-downs should be over and earnings comparisons become much easier. "From here, I think things are getting better, and the government and the Fed will do what they need to do when they need to do it," says > Ernie Patrikis, a partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman and former first vice president of the Federal Reserve of New York. THE SLIGHTEST INKLING OF PROGRESS could improve the dour sentiment surrounding bank and brokerage stocks, many of which have fallen by more than 50% over the past year. That was clear last week when Lehman, Morgan Stanley ) and Goldman Sachs reported quarterly earnings. While each reported huge declines in profits, their stocks rallied strongly because the earnings had beat analysts' estimates. Lehman shares had the most dramatic swings. When investors feared for the firm's survival on Monday, shares fell 19%. But thanks to the Fed's moves and the earnings beat, shares ended the week up 24%. Other signs of rising confidence: The price of gold fell 8.3% from Tuesday's high to Thursday's close of $919.60 per ounce, and the dollar enjoyed its first weekly advance in a month. One of the biggest reasons the fortunes of banks and brokers will improve is the steep yield curve. As its name implies, the curve plots the yield of all of Treasury debt, ranging from maturities of three months to 30 years. When the difference between the yield on the 10-year Treasury note and the two-year Treasury note is large, the yield curve is considered steep. At Thursday's close, the difference stood at 1.78 percentage points, double the 0.88-percentage-point long-term average. Last year, the difference was negative; the two-year note had a higher yield than the 10-year Treasury note. A steep yield curve "is telling us that we're further along in a recession and suggests the situation will be better six to 12 months from now," says John Lonski, chief economist at Moody's Investors Service. A steep yield curve also allows financial institutions to borrow short-term money at low rates and lend it out for longer terms at higher rates.In other words, banks can mint money. The Fed healed the last large banking disaster, in 1990, by engineering a steep yield curve. It's looking like a repeat today. A steep yield curve is one of the reasons why Jason Trennert, a managing partner at Strategas Research Partners, prefers some of the large commercial banks over the brokerage houses. His picks: JPMorgan Chase and U.S. Bancorp. As multiples-to-book-values expand, the shares could climb 25% this year, he figures. Earnings growth will also improve if the worst of the financials' asset write-downs are behind us. So far, first-quarter write-downs have been manageable. Morgan Stanley's fell to $2.3 billion from $9.4 billion in the fourth quarter. Goldman's write-offs bulked up to $2 billion from $500 million in the fourth quarter and $1.5 billion in the third. Lehman posted a $1.8 billion write-down, an increase from the fourth quarter's $1.2 billion. "I think we've seen the peak in write-offs from the investment banks," says William Tanona, a Goldman Sachs analyst. He upgraded Lehman and Morgan Stanley stock to Buy from Neutral after Monday's selloff and added them to the firm's Americas Buy list. He has a six-month target of 58 on Lehman, for upside of 21%, and 50 on Morgan, close to where the stock closed Thursday after rallying 37% from Monday's low. Granted, that doesn't mean the asset woes are over. It just means they will get smaller. Even Citigroup expected $12 billion write-down in the first quarter compares favorably to its $18 billion fourth quarter write-down. If the worst of the write-downs are in fact behind us, earnings comparisons stand to get much easier going forward, even assuming little resuscitation in the capital markets. Financial stocks in the S&P 500 are expected to earn $30 billion this quarter; that's down almost 50% from a year earlier, notes Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at Standard & Poor's. But by the third quarter, earnings are expected to rise by 34% -- and in the > fourth, the industry should produce almost $50 billion of earnings, up from a loss of $23 billion. ANALYSTS BEING ANALYSTS, it's entirely possible they're too optimistic. But even if they trim expectations, the trend should still be one of improvement. And, based on preliminary results, it looks like the financials will manage to earn money throughout a cycle that included one of the worst financial crises the industry has ever endured. "If banks and brokerages can make money through this cycle, they should always trade above book value," argues Thomas Lee, chief U.S.equity strategist at JPMorgan. As of Friday, only Bear Stearns and Citigroup traded below book. But most book values are below their mean value over the past five or even 10 years. Bank and brokerage earnings could also benefit if some of the write-downs on securities get reversed. Many of the securities that brokers own don't trade in the current, locked market environment. To price these securities, firms use industry indexes. The problem: Short-selling strategies used by some investors may be pushing the indexes below the true value of the securities they represent, says Richard Bove, an analyst with Punk, Ziegel. "In my view, the brokerage firms have marked their books too low." IF HISTORY IS ANY GUIDE, a big scary event like the demise of Bear Stearns is often a signal of a bottom for the broad market. There have been four failures of a major financial institutions over the past 25 years. And stocks have been higher six and 12 months later in each case, points out JPMorgan's Lee. The lowest returns came after the failure of Drexel Burnham Lambert in February 1990. Six months later, the S&P 500 was up 3%, and a year later it was up 12%, according to Lee's data. The market put in its best performance after the collapse of Long Term Capital Management in September 1998, when it soared 25% over both the six-month and the one-year periods. Not everyone is convinced that the bottom has arrived. Three-month Treasury bills yielded just 0.51 percentage point by the end of last week. That's the lowest rate in 50 years, and it's lower than their counterparts in Japan, points out James Bianco, president of Bianco Research. "It's a real sign of stress in the market," he warns. "Equity guys are completely clueless as to how bad it is in the credit markets. They're as bad as they've been since the Great Depression." Banks and brokers, who have written off almost $200 billion in assets, will need to raise hundreds of billions in new equity so that they can make loans available. But however bad the conditions for financials may be, they strike us as unlikely to get worse. And thanks to the Fed's aggressive moves, the sector's earnings -- and stock prices -- could be appreciably higher this time next year.

VOLA L'EURO- 14marzo Altro fronte di criticità è l'euro, che proseguiva la sua corsa letteralmente senza freni sulle piazze asiatiche: nuovo record storico a quota 1,5904 sul dollaro, per poi assestarsi leggermente ma sempre su livelli nettamente superiori a quelli abbandonati venerdì a quota 1,5814 (1,5611 il livello toccato venerdì). PETROLIO - Sulla scia del crollo del biglietto verde continuava a salire il prezzo del petrolio: il greggio toccava così il nuovo record storico di 111,80 dollari in rialzo di 1,59 dollari. ORO - Bene anche l'oro che è stato trattato lunedì mattina in Asia ai nuovi massimi storici: 1.030,80 dollari/oncia. Per poi salire al nuovo record a quota 1.033,90 dollari l'oncia nell'after hours di New York. La corsa del metallo giallo ha trascinato anche l'argento, che negli scambi in Asia ha toccato il nuovo top degli ultimi 28 anni (a 21,20 dollari l'oncia). A spingere i due metalli preziosi l'azione difensiva degli investitori alla luce dei crack finanziari annunciati negli Usa e delle massicce perdite accusate sull'azionario.