Category: zerohedge

Following NY Rep. Michael Grimm’s apology yesterday for threatening to break a reporter in half and throw him off a balcony, none other than former NY Rep. Anthony Weiner had some advice for the cantakerous congressman. Wring in the New York Daily News, Weiner began: “First, if you don’t want to talk about a scandal in which you’re embroiled, whatever that scandal may be, maybe it’s best that you don’t do interviews for a while…” but the snark and irony surges from there.

 

Weiner’s New York Daily News Op-Ed advice begins…

First, if you don’t want to talk about a scandal in which you’re embroiled, whatever that scandal may be, maybe it’s best that you don’t do interviews for a while.

 

For that matter, you may not want to attend community meetings, visit your office or go a sporting event. Fact is, an investigation that’s hanging over your head is the kind of thing people might be curious about. People ask you about embarrassing stuff even when you want to talk about other things. Especially when you want to talk about other things.

But gets a little snarky…

Better yet, if you don’t want to talk about your fund-raising scandal, maybe just maybe don’t have one to begin with. I only know what I read in the papers about all this. (OK, maybe I know a bit more.) But it does seem like a lot of people are being investigated and indicted in connection with Mikey Suits’campaign.

 

I’ll leave it to the authorities who are probing this in New York, Washington, Texas and Israel to work out what happened, but it seems like we may be headed for another of those Nixon/Christie “mistakes were made” moments.

And then, in the irony of the decade (given Weiner’s outrageous outbursts to his voters and reporters alike)…

If you ignore the first two rules, try answering the questions posed to you, calmly.

 

 

I know that “can you tell us about the status of the ethics investigation into you?” sounds like fighting words. But it can actually be an invitation to explain some of the messy doings that have swirled around you since nearly the moment you were elected.

Weiner concludes…

Bottom line, notwithstanding the fact that there are lousy reporters — and that we all pay too much attention to scandals and not enough to all the people in public life who get up every day to do the best they can to do good work — the basic deal of representative government is this: The people who get elected have to be held accountable by the people who pay their salaries.

 

Sometimes that means getting a certificate of appreciation from the local Kiwanis Club, and sometimes it means having a reporter ask a question you don’t like. If you are living right, there are many many more of the former than the latter. But being an elected official is a high honor. You roll with the punches.

 

…

 

I did a terrible job following these rules. I did embarrassing things and made them so much worse by being dishonest about them.

So, people that live in glass houses shouldn’t screw there?

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EM is fixed? Fed will un-Taper? Earnings will recover? Money on the sidelines? We’ve heard it all this morning as why stocks are recovering modestly… the real fun-durr-mental reason, of course, is in the chart below: behold the US&PJPY or, alternatively, USDSPY.

Still think it’s a market of stocks?

 

Or just a marginal-liquidity JPY-carry-fueled ponzi?

One good thing to come out of this centrally-planned abortion: instead of 8 monitors to follow “stuff” traders now just need one small screen to track the USDJPY – that shows everything you could possibly ever need.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1bCePMC Tyler Durden

EM is fixed? Fed will un-Taper? Earnings will recover? Money on the sidelines? We’ve heard it all this morning as why stocks are recovering modestly… the real fun-durr-mental reason, of course, is in the chart below: behold the US&PJPY or, alternatively, USDSPY.

Still think it’s a market of stocks?

 

Or just a marginal-liquidity JPY-carry-fueled ponzi?

One good thing to come out of this centrally-planned abortion: instead of 8 monitors to follow “stuff” traders now just need one small screen to track the USDJPY – that shows everything you could possibly ever need.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1bCePMC Tyler Durden

Hardly as memorable as yesterday’s historic launch of Floating Rate Notes, today’s 5 year auction in which the Treasury sold $35 billion in paper was a snoozer, and despite fears of a blow out following recent concerns about demand in the bucket following recent revulsion to 5 Years, priced at 1.572%, tailing the When Issued  1.57% modestly, however with a lower yield than last month’s 1.6. The Bid to Cover also posted a modest increase from December’s 2.42 up to 2.59, even if the general BTC trend continues to be one broadly lower. Within the internals the only notable item was the spike in Indirects, which took down 44.6% of the allocation, up from 24.8%, leaving 10.7% to the Directs and 44.7% to Dealers. Overall, nothing to write home about.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1nqMQYr Tyler Durden

Hardly as memorable as yesterday’s historic launch of Floating Rate Notes, today’s 5 year auction in which the Treasury sold $35 billion in paper was a snoozer, and despite fears of a blow out following recent concerns about demand in the bucket following recent revulsion to 5 Years, priced at 1.572%, tailing the When Issued  1.57% modestly, however with a lower yield than last month’s 1.6. The Bid to Cover also posted a modest increase from December’s 2.42 up to 2.59, even if the general BTC trend continues to be one broadly lower. Within the internals the only notable item was the spike in Indirects, which took down 44.6% of the allocation, up from 24.8%, leaving 10.7% to the Directs and 44.7% to Dealers. Overall, nothing to write home about.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1nqMQYr Tyler Durden

Now that Twitter is officially the second coming of Yahoo Finance message boards, the inundation with offers from clueless hacks who have nothing better to do than sell you $29.95 newsletters with guaranteed get rich quick schemes (one has to be so grateful for this boundless supply of noble humanitarians who would rather see you get rich than follow their own advice, and invest with their own capital), even more guaranteed than Obama’s MyRA ponzi scheme, has hit off the charts levels. However, there is some hope this is ending, and the regulators, as usual 3-5 years behind the curve – are finally be cracking down on these self-acclaimed financial Nostradami following an announcement today that the SEC “charged a New York-based money manager and his firm with making false claims through Twitter, newsletters, and other communications about the success of their investment advice and a mutual fund they manage.”

And while this description would fit roughly half the people who can’t wait to share their copious financial “advise” on the social network (for a modest fee) in this specific case, the SEC was targeting Mark A. Grimaldi and Navigator Money Management (NMM), whom it found that they “selectively touted the past performance of the Sector Rotation Fund (NAVFX) and specific securities recommendations they made to clients.  They cherry-picked highlights but ignored less favorable recommendations and other data that would have made the facts complete.”

The SEC’s order finds that Grimaldi also made misleading statements on Twitter.  He claimed responsibility for model portfolios in his newsletters that “doubled the S&P 500 the last 10 years.”  However, Grimaldi made the claim even though he had no involvement in the model portfolio performance for the first three years.

Once again: a description that covers pretty much everyone seeking to retain new clients on “we-only-win-here” Twitter.

Grimaldi agreed to pay a penalty of $100,000, and he and the firm agreed to be censured and comply with certain undertakings including the retention of an independent compliance consultant for three years.  Without admitting or denying the SEC’s findings, NMM and Grimaldi are required to cease and desist from future violations of these sections of the securities laws.

No more Twitter-touting for him. But the worst news for all newsletter peddlers: “SEC exam staff notified NMM that the newsletters could be considered advertisements under Rule 206(4)-1, which generally prohibits false or misleading advertisements by investment advisers.” This supposedly also includes his false and misleading tweets, which considering Twitter is a public venue, pretty much guarantee anyone who has been touting their performance is now SEC-fodder.

From the full SEC charge:

“The securities laws require investment advisers to be honest and fully forthcoming in their advertising to give investors the full picture,” said Sanjay Wadhwa, senior associate director for enforcement in the SEC’s New York Regional Office.  “Grimaldi and his firm are being held accountable for using social media and widely disseminated newsletters to cherry-pick information and make misleading claims about their success in an effort to attract more business.”

 

According to the SEC’s order, Grimaldi is majority owner, president, and chief compliance officer at NMM, which is based in Wappingers Falls, N.Y.  Grimaldi particularly used a newsletter called The Money Navigator to solicit clients for NMM and investors for the Sector Rotation Fund.  The Money Navigator had more than 60,000 subscribers.  In 2008, the SEC conducted an examination of NMM and a fund it managed.  SEC exam staff notified NMM that the newsletters could be considered advertisements under Rule 206(4)-1, which generally prohibits false or misleading advertisements by investment advisers.  SEC staff also noted that the newsletters could be considered advertisements under Rule 482, which governs advertisements for mutual funds and other investment companies and has specific requirements for ads containing performance data.

 

The SEC’s order details several misleading advertisements made by NMM and Grimaldi in newsletters following that SEC examination.  For example, they misleadingly claimed in a December 2011 newsletter that Sector Rotation Fund was “ranked number 1 out of 375 World Allocation funds tracked by Morningstar.”  However, a time period of Oct. 13, 2010 to Oct. 12, 2011 was cherry-picked to broadly acclaim that ranking, and Sector Rotation Fund had a poorer relative performance during other time periods.  From Jan. 1 to Nov. 30, 2011, the day before Grimaldi published the ad, at least 100 other mutual funds in that same Morningstar category outperformed Sector Rotation Fund.

And the full filing:

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1jO8ohE Tyler Durden

Late 2013 pending home sales may have been horrible, and were blamed on the weather (though as even Goldman notes “The broad-based declines by region suggest that colder-than-average weather was likely not the primary driver, given slightly warmer-than-average temperatures on the Pacific coast in December”) , but it appears the weather had zero adverse impact on that other, most pernicious home “selling” activity: flipping.

The topic of home flipping is not new here (“Flip That House” In These Bubbling Cities, Housing Bubble 2.0 Edition: “25 Markets Where Flipping Homes Is Most Profitable“, etc) – indeed that best-known flashback of the last housing bubble is easily one of the best indications just how fragile the current housing bubble truly is as investors gobble up real estate not with the intention of keeping it but merely to sell to the next greater fool, in the process setting marginal prices based purely on the availability of cheap money, money which has now been tapered by $20 billion in the past two months. However, to get the full picture on just how pervasive “house flipping” has become, we go to the source, RealtyTrac, which has just released its 2013 summary of this troubling trend.

In summary:

• 156,862 single family home flips — where a home is purchased and subsequently sold again within six months — in 2013, up 16 percent from 2012 and up 114 percent from 2011.
• Homes flipped in 2013 accounted for 4.6 percent of all U.S. single family home sales during the year, up from 4.2 percent in 2012 and up from 2.6 percent in 2011

Why are flippers flipping? Simple: they make a killing:

The average gross profit for a home flip — the difference between the flipped price and the price the flipper purchased the property for — was $58,081 for all U.S. homes flipped in 2013, up from an average gross profit of $45,759 in 2012. The average gross profit for homes flipped in the fourth quarter was $62,761, up from $52,746 in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Who is doing the flipping? Why the uber-rich of course, selling hot potatoes to each other, and betting the momentum continues:

• The biggest increases in flipping nationwide occurred on homes with a flipped price of $400,000 or more. Although flipping increased across all price ranges, flips on homes with a flipped sale price above $400,000 increased 36 percent from 2012, while flips on homes with a flipped sale price at or below $400,000 increased 17 percent from 2012.

However, now that the bubble has likely burst, flipping is dlowing down:

• Flips accounted for 3.8 percent of all sales in the fourth quarter, down slightly from 3.9 percent of all sales in the third quarter and down from 7.1 percent of all sales in the fourth quarter of 2012 — the highest percentage of sales represented by flips in a single quarter since RealtyTrac began tracking flipping data in the first quarter of 2011

And visually:

More from the full flipper report by RealtyTrac:

The average time to complete a flip nationwide was 84 days in 2013, down from 86 days in 2012 and down from 100 days in 2011.

“Strong home price appreciation in many markets boosted profits for flippers in 2013 despite a shrinking inventory of lower-priced foreclosure homes to purchase,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president of RealtyTrac. “For the year 21 percent of all properties flipped were purchased out of foreclosure, but that is down from 27 percent in 2012 and 32 percent in 2011. Meanwhile flipped homes were still purchased at an average discount of 13 percent below market value in 2013, the same average discount as 2012, indicating that investors are finding discounted buying opportunities outside of the public foreclosure process — particularly in those markets with the biggest increases in flipping for the year.”

Major metro areas with big increases in home flipping in 2013 compared to 2012 included Virginia Beach (up 141 percent), Jacksonville, Fla., (up 92 percent), Baltimore, Md. (up 88 percent), Atlanta (up 79 percent), Richmond, Va., (up 57 percent), Washington, D.C. (up 52 percent) and Detroit (up 51 percent).

Major markets with big decreases in home flipping in 2013 compared to 2012 included Philadelphia (down 43 percent), Phoenix (down 32 percent), Tampa (down 17 percent), Houston (down 17 percent), Denver (down 15 percent), Minneapolis (down 9 percent), and Sacramento (down 5 percent).

 

Broker perspectives

“Investors have not lost interest in purchasing and flipping homes. In fact, now that we are seeing home price appreciation they are more interested than ever,” said Sheldon Detrick, CEO of Prudential Detrick/Alliance Realty, covering the Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Okla., markets.  “The challenge for many would-be flippers in our markets is a shortage of available inventory to flip, as evidenced by the decrease in the number of homes flipped in both Tulsa and Oklahoma City in 2013 compared to 2012.”

“New Hampshire home prices did not depreciate as much as other sections of the country, so we never experienced a tremendous amount of distressed inventory, which makes it difficult for people to find inexpensive properties they can flip. So it follows that gross flipping profits have fallen in our market compared to a year ago,” said Steve McGuire, vice president of business development at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Verani Realty, covering the Manchester, N.H., market.  “When considering whether or not to flip a home it’s also important to note that house flipping is not for the faint of heart, because there are so many variables that could affect the sales transaction, price and profit.”

“The Denver housing market is still experiencing record-low inventory levels, which causes the best potential flip properties to be few and far between,” said Chad Ochsner, owner of RE/MAX Alliance covering the Denver and Boulder, Colo., markets.  “We have seen a resurgence of opportunities for fix-and-flips in the Boulder market due to a strong increase in home price appreciation, but the distressed home market has dropped by about half making it a challenge to find the right property.”

“February and March can be a great time to buy a fix and flip home to realize the spike in homes values that usually occurs during the spring and early summer buying season,” he added.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1bagvgn Tyler Durden

Late 2013 pending home sales may have been horrible, and were blamed on the weather (though as even Goldman notes “The broad-based declines by region suggest that colder-than-average weather was likely not the primary driver, given slightly warmer-than-average temperatures on the Pacific coast in December”) , but it appears the weather had zero adverse impact on that other, most pernicious home “selling” activity: flipping.

The topic of home flipping is not new here (“Flip That House” In These Bubbling Cities, Housing Bubble 2.0 Edition: “25 Markets Where Flipping Homes Is Most Profitable“, etc) – indeed that best-known flashback of the last housing bubble is easily one of the best indications just how fragile the current housing bubble truly is as investors gobble up real estate not with the intention of keeping it but merely to sell to the next greater fool, in the process setting marginal prices based purely on the availability of cheap money, money which has now been tapered by $20 billion in the past two months. However, to get the full picture on just how pervasive “house flipping” has become, we go to the source, RealtyTrac, which has just released its 2013 summary of this troubling trend.

In summary:

• 156,862 single family home flips — where a home is purchased and subsequently sold again within six months — in 2013, up 16 percent from 2012 and up 114 percent from 2011.
• Homes flipped in 2013 accounted for 4.6 percent of all U.S. single family home sales during the year, up from 4.2 percent in 2012 and up from 2.6 percent in 2011

Why are flippers flipping? Simple: they make a killing:

The average gross profit for a home flip — the difference between the flipped price and the price the flipper purchased the property for — was $58,081 for all U.S. homes flipped in 2013, up from an average gross profit of $45,759 in 2012. The average gross profit for homes flipped in the fourth quarter was $62,761, up from $52,746 in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Who is doing the flipping? Why the uber-rich of course, selling hot potatoes to each other, and betting the momentum continues:

• The biggest increases in flipping nationwide occurred on homes with a flipped price of $400,000 or more. Although flipping increased across all price ranges, flips on homes with a flipped sale price above $400,000 increased 36 percent from 2012, while flips on homes with a flipped sale price at or below $400,000 increased 17 percent from 2012.

However, now that the bubble has likely burst, flipping is dlowing down:

• Flips accounted for 3.8 percent of all sales in the fourth quarter, down slightly from 3.9 percent of all sales in the third quarter and down from 7.1 percent of all sales in the fourth quarter of 2012 — the highest percentage of sales represented by flips in a single quarter since RealtyTrac began tracking flipping data in the first quarter of 2011

And visually:

More from the full flipper report by RealtyTrac:

The average time to complete a flip nationwide was 84 days in 2013, down from 86 days in 2012 and down from 100 days in 2011.

“Strong home price appreciation in many markets boosted profits for flippers in 2013 despite a shrinking inventory of lower-priced foreclosure homes to purchase,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president of RealtyTrac. “For the year 21 percent of all properties flipped were purchased out of foreclosure, but that is down from 27 percent in 2012 and 32 percent in 2011. Meanwhile flipped homes were still purchased at an average discount of 13 percent below market value in 2013, the same average discount as 2012, indicating that investors are finding discounted buying opportunities outside of the public foreclosure process — particularly in those markets with the biggest increases in flipping for the year.”

Major metro areas with big increases in home flipping in 2013 compared to 2012 included Virginia Beach (up 141 percent), Jacksonville, Fla., (up 92 percent), Baltimore, Md. (up 88 percent), Atlanta (up 79 percent), Richmond, Va., (up 57 percent), Washington, D.C. (up 52 percent) and Detroit (up 51 percent).

Major markets with big decreases in home flipping in 2013 compared to 2012 included Philadelphia (down 43 percent), Phoenix (down 32 percent), Tampa (down 17 percent), Houston (down 17 percent), Denver (down 15 percent), Minneapolis (down 9 percent), and Sacramento (down 5 percent).

 

Broker perspectives

“Investors have not lost interest in purchasing and flipping homes. In fact, now that we are seeing home price appreciation they are more interested than ever,” said Sheldon Detrick, CEO of Prudential Detrick/Alliance Realty, covering the Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Okla., markets.  “The challenge for many would-be flippers in our markets is a shortage of available inventory to flip, as evidenced by the decrease in the number of homes flipped in both Tulsa and Oklahoma City in 2013 compared to 2012.”

“New Hampshire home prices did not depreciate as much as other sections of the country, so we never experienced a tremendous amount of distressed inventory, which makes it difficult for people to find inexpensive properties they can flip. So it follows that gross flipping profits have fallen in our market compared to a year ago,” said Steve McGuire, vice president of business development at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Verani Realty, covering the Manchester, N.H., market.  “When considering whether or not to flip a home it’s also important to note that house flipping is not for the faint of heart, because there are so many variables that could affect the sales transaction, price and profit.”

“The Denver housing market is still experiencing record-low inventory levels, which causes the best potential flip properties to be few and far between,” said Chad Ochsner, owner of RE/MAX Alliance covering the Denver and Boulder, Colo., markets.  “We have seen a resurgence of opportunities for fix-and-flips in the Boulder market due to a strong increase in home price appreciation, but the distressed home market has dropped by about half making it a challenge to find the right property.”

“February and March can be a great time to buy a fix and flip home to realize the spike in homes values that usually occurs during the spring and early summer buying season,” he added.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1bagvgn Tyler Durden

Pending Home Sales collapsed 8.7% month-over-month – the worst since May 2010 – missing by the most in over 3 years. This is a 6.1% drop YoY. Of course, analysts coul dnever have guessed that weather could have an impact (and ths reduce their expectations) but NAR’s Larry Yun notes “unusually disruptive weather” prevented buyers from looking. However, he goes on to add that “Home prices rising faster than income is also giving pause to some potential buyers.” This unusually honest line from the realtor mouthpiece is notable.

 

Oops…

 

But blaming this “miss” on weather means that analsyst forecasting this number have no idea.

Lawrence Yun , NAR chief economist, said several factors are working against buyers. “Unusually disruptive weather across large stretches of the country in December forced people indoors and prevented some buyers from looking at homes or making offers,” he said. “Home prices rising faster than income is also giving pause to some potential buyers, while at the same time a lack of inventory means insufficient choice. Although it could take several months for us to get a clearer read on market momentum, job growth and pent-up demand are positive factors.”

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Following yesterday’s continued slide to record lows against the Central Bank’s currency basket, the Russian Ruble is rallying this morning as Russian Central Bank chief Elvira Nebiullina jawboned the threat of renewed intervention to “smooth out” markets:

• *NABIULLINA SAYS FX MKT INTERVENTIONS NEEDED FOR FIN. STABILITY
• *NABIULLINA SAYS BANK ROSSII ‘SMOOTHING OUT’ SHARP RUBLE SWINGS

One can only hope that – despite the bank runs, a plan not to raise rates, and a canceled bond auction – Russia has more success that Turkey is “fixing” the problem of QEasy money flows. The Ruble “basket” has reverted back to pre-Turkey levels.

 

The USD remains bid

 

But against the Central Bank’s currency basket, the losses from Turkey have been reverted…

 

Canceled Bond auction…

The Finance Ministry shelved this week’s sale after “an analysis of current market conditions,” it said in a statement on its website.

 

The ministry’s “actions are understandable — we don’t need to borrow at any cost,”

And today’s jawboning:

Speaking to reporters outside Moscow, Russian central bank Chairman Elvira Nabiullina reiterates FX interventions won’t be fully abandoned.

Policy stance was previously declared and central bank is adhering to it: Nabiullina

Nabiullina: “We are planning to stick to the timetable that was announced to increase exchange rate flexibility in 2014”

Nabiullina: “We are smoothing out sharp fluctuations because we think that sharp fluctuations are harmful for everyone”

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