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Thursday, February 23

23rd Feb - Slowing down

After buy the rumor, time to sell the news? Around 1.35?
Morning briefs and some nice articles to kick off the Thursday. Seems a lot of things are slowing down - European yields are not decreasing (ahead of LTRO, after the Greek bailout), stocks are not much higher, BoP-differences are smaller, € is not rallying. Are the "good news" already in prices?

Troolista tulijat: tervetuloa ja toivottavasti tykkäätte!

For a lot more, see last night's Greece, LTRO, Assets-post that grew larger than budget deficits. For more Greek bailout stuff, see Eurogroup Special II and Eurogroup Special.

Joke of the Day:  "If they could export the Nordic primary school system to China it would help to slow them down" Kari The Street


News roundup – Between The Hedges
Emerging London Headlines – beyondbrics / FT
Press digests by Reuters: FT, WSJ, NYT
Morning Briefing – BNY Mellon
  -potential impact on the currency markets of rising tensions in the Gulf.
Market Preview – Saxo

Debt crisis: live – The Telegraph
Europe Crisis Tracker – WSJ
Tracking Europe’s Debt Crisis – NYT

EURO CRISIS: GREECE
One Last Greek CDS Post Before It All Goes PoofDealbreaker
Greece bailout roughly speaking optimizes who gets what to encourage the long-only, bank-style investors to come back for more – and to discourage the speculative hedge funds from doing so. That really should, in expectation, drive up the cost of financing other shaky European governments. That just may be a price they’re willing to pay.

Contagion during the Greek sovereign debt crisisvoxeu.org
Since 2010, Eurozone countries have engaged in unprecedented rescue operations to avoid contagion from a potential Greek sovereign default. This column argues that news about Greek public finances does not affect Eurozone bank stock prices, while news about a Greek bailout does. This suggests that markets consider news about a Greek bailout to be a signal of Eurozone countries’ willingness to use public funds to combat the financial crisis.

GDP bonds are a really bad idea, part 3Felix Salmon / Reuters
Greece gives its bondholders GDP warrants.

'Til Debt Did Europe PartZH
Morgan Stanley:
Greece leaving the euro would not be a local event. It would change the nature of money everywhere across the euro area by making the euro reversible. It would turn most of money supply (commercial money) back into national money. It would hinder the ability (and possibly willingness) of the Eurosystem to act as a lender of last resort for the entire euro area banking system.

OTHER
Big Market Worries: Profit MarginsA Dash of Insight
The argument about mean reversion in profits is several years old.  Profits keep rising and margins have held up pretty well, mostly because companies have been slow to bring back employees. The P/E multiple declines, partly because the world is full of skeptics about future profits.

Corporate Outlooks Hint At More Pain AheadMarketBeat / WSJ
U.S. companies are dialing back their quarterly profit forecasts at the highest rate since early 2009

Is bad timing the reason for hedge funds' underperformance?Sober Look
…the underperformance continued even after correlations across and within asset classes came down this year… may therefore be simply a case of really bad timing.

Regulators Plan Safeguards to Prevent Another MF GlobalDealBook / NYT
CFTC plans to allow futures trading without leaving your cash at the broker

OFF-TOPIC
Would You Support an Iran War If …  – Washington’s blog

Tyra Banks Talks About Attending Harvard Business SchoolBusinessweek