another site
Ben Bernanke will momentarily speak at the American Economic Association symposium in Philadelphia. His speech is titled “Looking Back, Looking Forward” and can be found at the end of this post. Watch what may be his last speech live.
Full Bernanke speech below:
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Qxr1ALM8bUY/story01.htm Tyler Durden
Submitted by Ramsey Su via Acting-Man blog,
Real estate bubble, sub-prime mortgages, securitized products and their derivatives were largely responsible for the ultimate collapse, leading us to the economic conditions of today. Policy makers and investors alike were, and still are, basing their actions on a false set of commonly accepted myths.
The first example is provided by the many different House Price Indexes. Borrowing a table from my cyber-friend Calculated Risk, here are the most recent changes in the indexes put together by various different sources:
House price increases according to a variety of sources
Depending on who one prefers to believe, house prices have appreciated between 5.2% to 13.2% year over year. Case-Shiller is probably the most commonly referenced index today. Their fancy model with a nice interactive chart can be found on the S&P/Case Shiller website. Those who want to engage in a bit of intellectual exercise can read the 48 page explanation of the Case Shiller methodology. A much better read however, is this simple one page overview by FNC that debunks all the house price indexes, including their own. I would like to add that no index takes into account the prevailing interest rate and lending practices, and no-one has figured out a method to make appropriate adjustments. For example, how does one compare a house that sold for $100,000 in 2005 utilizing sub-prime financing, vs. the same house that sold for $70,000 cash in 2013, with a few foreclosures and flips in between? Was $100,000 a meaningful indication of value? Did it really depreciate by 30% in 8 years? Here is the well-known Case-Shiller chart:
Case Shiller house price indexes – click to enlarge.
Everyone is somewhat familiar with the chart. About the only conclusion I can draw is that easy monetary policy and irresponsible lending practices may lead to a bubble, and bubbles do always burst. It has no predictive value nor does it really tell one much about the past. Gurus may compare today's prices to the sub-prime peak or some imaginary "norm", as if that could offer guidance to policy and investment decisions.
Looking at the Case-Shiller 20 cities composite index simply makes no sense.
The 20 cities disaggregated
These twenty cities all have different demographics that change independently from one another over time. What would be the purpose of contemplating these peaks and troughs, especially when combined in an index?
It is baffling that the FOMC supposedly looks at data such as the various House Price Indexes and somehow decides on that basis that buying agency MBS is a good policy. They even figured out that $600 billion was the right amount for QE1 in 2008, and an additional $600 billion was appropriate for QE2 in 2010. Of course with QE3, the Fed determined that $40 billion per month was good for 2013, but $35 billion is better for 2014.
The wisdom of the Fed escapes me at the moment. Maybe it has other, unrelated objectives in mind.
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/aJecP0kClJs/story01.htm Tyler Durden
Since 2007, the world’s Central Banks have collectively put more than $10 trillion into the financial system since 2008. To put that number into perspective, it’s equal to roughly 15% of global GDP.
This kind of money printing is literally unheard of in modern history. And it has set the stage for a roaring wave of inflation to hit the financial system. Indeed, the first signs are already showing up… not in the “official” Government data (which is bogus) but in how those who run businesses around the globe are acting.
Most people believe that when inflation hits, prices have to go higher. This is true, but higher prices can be manifested in multiple ways. Firms usually do not simply raise prices in nominal terms as price elasticity can kill revenues because it would hurt sales.
Instead, companies resort to a number of strategies to maintain profit margins without hurting their sales. One of them is to simply leave part of a package EMPTY, thereby selling LESS product for the SAME price (a hidden price hike).
Food manufacturers, like the politicians currently debating health reform, may have a solution to the obesity crisis: Feed Americans a lot of hot air. But this heated air is not just a figure of speech for packaged goods companies including Ralcorp Holdings' (RAH) Post Foods and PepsiCo (PEP) subsidiaries Frito-Lay and Quaker.
In many packaged products, as much as 50% of the contents is just empty space, an investigation by Consumer Reports reveals. And we consumers are buying that nothingness every day.
Another tactic corporation use is to simply sell smaller packages for the SAME price (another means of selling less for MORE= a price hike).
U.S. Companies Shrink Packages as Food Prices Rise
Large food companies have recently announced that they will raise the prices they charge grocery retailers for commodities-based products. For example, a chocolate bar will cost more soon: Hershey last week announced a 10% increase for most of its confectionery goods.
Of course, straightforward price hikes could cause consumers to buy less of those products or to choose less costly store brands. So in many cases, food companies are trying a different tactic: Keeping the price of an item the same while decreasing the amount of food in the package. The company recoups the costs of the rise in commodities and hopes consumers don't notice that they're getting less of the product for the same price.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/04/04/u-s-companies-shrink-packages-as-food-prices-rise/
However, perhaps the most scandalous policy employed by companies looking to engage in stealth price hikes is to swap out higher quality ingredients for lower quality/ lower cost alternatives. One bigname coffee maker was caught doing this just a few years ago.
Reuters is reporting that many of America's major brands have been quietly tweaking their coffee blends. While most coffee companies consider their blends trade secrets, and are loath to disclose exactly what goes into them, both circumstantial and direct evidence suggests they're now substituting lower-grade Robusta beans for some of their pricier Arabica, and degrading the quality of our coffee…
At least one coffee roaster has admitted it. In November, Massimo Zanetti USA, which roasts for both Chock full o'Nuts and Hills Bros., publicly confirmed upping its Robusta usage by 25% this year.
Why the switcheroo? Prepare to not be shocked. The answer is: price.
Last year, a shortage of Arabica caused prices of the premium bean to spike as high as $3 a pound — $2 more than what a pound of Robusta would cost. This compares to a five-year historical trend of Arabica costing closer to 70 cents more than Robusta. In recent weeks, the trend has reversed, with Arabica prices falling to just a 62-cent premium over Robusta.
In simple terms, inflation is already around us, though it’s not yet showing up in LITERAL price hikes. Instead, we’re all paying MORE for LESS. And it’s only a matter of time before the situation really gets out of control.
For a FREE Special Report on an uniquely profitable inflation hedge, swing by….
http://phoenixcapitalmarketing.com/goldmountain.html
Best Regards
Graham Summers
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/WBAYr5MqXLU/story01.htm Phoenix Capital Research
Since 2007, the world’s Central Banks have collectively put more than $10 trillion into the financial system since 2008. To put that number into perspective, it’s equal to roughly 15% of global GDP.
This kind of money printing is literally unheard of in modern history. And it has set the stage for a roaring wave of inflation to hit the financial system. Indeed, the first signs are already showing up… not in the “official” Government data (which is bogus) but in how those who run businesses around the globe are acting.
Most people believe that when inflation hits, prices have to go higher. This is true, but higher prices can be manifested in multiple ways. Firms usually do not simply raise prices in nominal terms as price elasticity can kill revenues because it would hurt sales.
Instead, companies resort to a number of strategies to maintain profit margins without hurting their sales. One of them is to simply leave part of a package EMPTY, thereby selling LESS product for the SAME price (a hidden price hike).
Food manufacturers, like the politicians currently debating health reform, may have a solution to the obesity crisis: Feed Americans a lot of hot air. But this heated air is not just a figure of speech for packaged goods companies including Ralcorp Holdings' (RAH) Post Foods and PepsiCo (PEP) subsidiaries Frito-Lay and Quaker.
In many packaged products, as much as 50% of the contents is just empty space, an investigation by Consumer Reports reveals. And we consumers are buying that nothingness every day.
Another tactic corporation use is to simply sell smaller packages for the SAME price (another means of selling less for MORE= a price hike).
U.S. Companies Shrink Packages as Food Prices Rise
Large food companies have recently announced that they will raise the prices they charge grocery retailers for commodities-based products. For example, a chocolate bar will cost more soon: Hershey last week announced a 10% increase for most of its confectionery goods.
Of course, straightforward price hikes could cause consumers to buy less of those products or to choose less costly store brands. So in many cases, food companies are trying a different tactic: Keeping the price of an item the same while decreasing the amount of food in the package. The company recoups the costs of the rise in commodities and hopes consumers don't notice that they're getting less of the product for the same price.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/04/04/u-s-companies-shrink-packages-as-food-prices-rise/
However, perhaps the most scandalous policy employed by companies looking to engage in stealth price hikes is to swap out higher quality ingredients for lower quality/ lower cost alternatives. One bigname coffee maker was caught doing this just a few years ago.
Reuters is reporting that many of America's major brands have been quietly tweaking their coffee blends. While most coffee companies consider their blends trade secrets, and are loath to disclose exactly what goes into them, both circumstantial and direct evidence suggests they're now substituting lower-grade Robusta beans for some of their pricier Arabica, and degrading the quality of our coffee…
At least one coffee roaster has admitted it. In November, Massimo Zanetti USA, which roasts for both Chock full o'Nuts and Hills Bros., publicly confirmed upping its Robusta usage by 25% this year.
Why the switcheroo? Prepare to not be shocked. The answer is: price.
Last year, a shortage of Arabica caused prices of the premium bean to spike as high as $3 a pound — $2 more than what a pound of Robusta would cost. This compares to a five-year historical trend of Arabica costing closer to 70 cents more than Robusta. In recent weeks, the trend has reversed, with Arabica prices falling to just a 62-cent premium over Robusta.
In simple terms, inflation is already around us, though it’s not yet showing up in LITERAL price hikes. Instead, we’re all paying MORE for LESS. And it’s only a matter of time before the situation really gets out of control.
For a FREE Special Report on an uniquely profitable inflation hedge, swing by….
http://phoenixcapitalmarketing.com/goldmountain.html
Best Regards
Graham Summers
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/WBAYr5MqXLU/story01.htm Phoenix Capital Research
The real life magic-mushroom, banana dictatorship envisioned by George Orwell just went full retard.
From VT Senator Bernie Sanders:
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today asked the National Security Agency director whether the agency has monitored the phone calls, emails and Internet traffic of members of Congress and other elected officials.
“Has the NSA spied, or is the NSA currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials?” Sanders asked in a letter to Gen. Keith Alexander, the NSA director. “Spying” would include gathering metadata on calls made from official or personal phones, content from websites visited or emails sent, or collecting any other data from a third party not made available to the general public in the regular course of business?”
Sanders said he was “deeply concerned” by revelations that American intelligence agencies harvested records of phone calls, emails and web activity by millions of innocent Americans without any reason to even suspect involvement in illegal activities. He also cited reports that the United States eavesdropped on the leaders of Germany, Mexico, Brazil and other allies.
Sanders emphasized that the United States “must be vigilant and aggressive in protecting the American people from the very real danger of terrorist attacks,” but he cited U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon’s recent ruling that indiscriminate dragnets by the NSA were probably unconstitutional and “almost Orwellian.”
Sanders has introduced legislation to put strict limits on sweeping powers used by the National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation to secretly track telephone calls by millions of innocent Americans who are not suspected of any wrongdoing.
The measure would put limits on records that may be searched. Authorities would be required to establish a reasonable suspicion, based on specific information, in order to secure court approval to monitor business records related to a specific terrorism suspect. Sanders’ bill also would put an end to open-ended court orders that have resulted in wholesale data mining by the NSA and FBI. Instead, the government would be required to provide reasonable suspicion to justify searches for each record or document that it wants to examine.
Uhm… yes?
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/QAlgSutwIw8/story01.htm Tyler Durden
On December 31 we demonstrated the biggest operation in the history of the Fed’s temporary open market operations: a $198 billion reverse repo under its brand new fixed-rate scheme, which, at least according to the Fed, was supposed to be a mechanism designed to prepare the market for the “normalization” of the Fed’s balance sheet and allow seamless liquidity extraction. What the Fed did not announce was that it was also the biggest collateral window-dressing scheme ever conceived (that there was $200 billion in free liquidity sloshing around was a distant second highlight).
What we said then was that “We will leave it up to readers to decide what is more surreal: that the Fed is allowing banks to “window dress” to the tune of several times more than total Treasury holdings owned by the Primary Dealers as disclosed by the Fed, or that there is an unprecedented $200 billion in free liquidity floating out there.”
Well, if what happened in the last days of 2013 was indeed merely reverse repo-assisted window dressing, then we would expect the that first days of 2014 should see a comparable collapse in the magnitude of the Fed’s reverse repo operations. Sure enough, as the chart below shows, this is precisely what has happened following today’s far more modest $56.7 billion reverse repo operation conducted among 50 bidding counterparties and the Fed, of course.
In short: collateral window dressing on; collateral window dressing off, all with the blessing of the banks’ overarching regulator, the Federal Reserve. What is most disturbing is that both the world’s largest financial firms, and by implication the Fed, just admitted there is a massive collateral shortage currently if banks are forced to pad their books to the tune of nearly $200 billion in “high quality collateral” just to pass year-end auditor muster.
And a tangent: in the past two days, the Fed has first withdrawn and subsequently re-injected a record $140 billion in liquidity, or nearly two months’ worth of post-taper POMO. One may be tempted to wonder just where it is that these hundreds of billions in fungible electronic monetary equivalents have ended up…
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/ZYqKy5qfuRk/story01.htm Tyler Durden
Sales of gold coins are booming even as the precious metal’s price is falling (and it’s not just central banks). Despite gold futures 28% drop in 2013 (its worst since 1981), the WSJ reports that demand for gold coins shot up 63% ti 241.6 metric tons in the first three quarters of 2013.
Because these investors intend to hold onto their gold for years or decades, many see the recent drop as an opportunity to buy more at a cheaper price, notes on strategist, “they’re not under any pressure to get a yield or a return in a year.”
Still, the importance of gold coins has been eclipsed in recent years by the rapid growth of exchange-traded funds, some analysts say, “hedge funds tend to overpower the impact of physical gold purchases… relatively little money gets them an awful lot of market power.” Unlike hedge funds, who may leave when prices fall, it is clear that coin buyers are in for the long haul.
Sales of gold coins are booming even as the metal’s price is falling, a testament to gold’s continued appeal for small investors and collectors despite its first bear market in more than a decade.
The heightened appetite for physical gold is a rare bright spot in a market that saw hedge funds and other large investors head for the exits last year. Gold futures prices tumbled 28% in 2013, their worst performance since 1981.
But at mints and coin shops around the world, gold continued flying off the shelves.
…
Sales of Gold Maple Leaf coins by the Royal Canadian Mint surged 82.5% to 876,000 ounces in the first three quarters of 2013 from the same period of 2012. The Perth Mint, Australia’s national coin and bar producer, saw sales rise 41% to 754,635 ounces last year, while the U.S. Mint sold 14% more American Eagle gold coins than it did in 2012, along with a record amount of silver coins.
…
Because these investors intend to hold onto their gold for years or decades, many see the recent drop as an opportunity to buy more at a cheaper price, he added. “They’re not under any pressure to get a yield or a return in a year,” Mr. Melek said.
…
Some think the continued strength of physical gold buying will prevent prices from falling much further, as it becomes clear that a core group of investors is sticking with the market,
…
“It’s obvious to me that at some point our dollar will see a downturn in its value,” said Mr. McClintock, who runs a contract post office. “Gold is just a good comfort, it’s a commodity that anybody in the world knows and you don’t need to be an expert to understand.”
…
Still, the importance of gold coins has been eclipsed in recent years by the rapid growth of exchange-traded funds, some analysts say.
…
“Folks like hedge funds tend to overpower the impact of physical gold purchases,” Mr. Melek said. “Relatively little money gets them an awful lot of market power.”
Unlike hedge funds, who may leave when prices fall, many coin buyers are in for the long haul.
…
“Most people who buy physical gold aren’t doing it for the same reason you’d purchase a stock,” said Mike Getlin, vice president with Merit Financial, a bullion and coin dealership in Santa Monica, Calif. “They tend to have a much longer investment horizon. They tend to hold onto them forever and pride of ownership is a huge factor in that.”
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/NJDwZGv4zU0/story01.htm Tyler Durden
Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter
Nothing could have been a more pungent metaphor for the current investment climate than the headline, “Macau gambling revenue hits record $45 bn in 2013.”
Revenues jumped 18.6%, after rising “just” 13.5% in 2012 – which had caused a lot of handwringing, since they’d soared 42% in 2011. Post-financial-crisis Macau – like its bigger sister, high finance – fizzes with optimism. Last year, it extracted $45 billion from the pockets of people who gambled there; this year, it’s going to set another record.
Or maybe there was an even more pungent metaphor: Stephen Cohen’s pad in Manhattan. He personifies the smart money; his hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors, pleaded guilty to insider trading and agreed to pay a fine of $1.2 billion and wind itself out of existence. So he is trying to sell his 9,000-square-foot duplex on the 51st and 52nd floors of Bloomberg Tower. The metaphor isn’t that he dropped his asking price by $17 million, from $115 million down to a measly $98 million, but what he’d paid for the two units in 2005, namely $25.9 million, plus whatever it took to combine and remodel them. That he thinks he can get nearly four times the amount he’d paid for it less than nine years ago – that’s the metaphor for our crazy investment climate.
Hedge funds raked in the moolah in 2013, with assets under management rising by $228.8 billion to an all-time record of $2.01 trillion – not counting the hedge funds that our TBTF banks have become. But returns paled compared to the miracles the Fed performed with the stock market. Hedge funds specializing in distressed debt outperformed all other strategies with a 16.8% gain, ahead of long/short equities hedge funds, up 14.3%, and event-driven hedge funds, up 11.3%. Compared to 29% for the S&P 500.
But hey, what matters is that the all-important metric of assets under management gets pushed to new highs. Hedge funds get paid 2% on it, come hell or high water, so about $40 billion in 2013. And they get paid another 20% on any gains, so roughly $55 billion in 2013, for a total fee intake of $95 billion or so. Hopes are riding high for a killer 2014.
Corporate deal-making also bloomed in the US in 2013: mergers rose 11% to over $1 trillion, the highest since the financial crisis. Reshuffling the corporate deck is good for everyone: CEOs, investment banks, hedge funds with insider knowledge, and workers who are going to get laid off as the post-merger synergies are being implemented….
“This era of low interest rates has encouraged companies to consolidate and clean up some structural inefficiencies,” is how Michael Carr, head of Goldman’s Americas M&A, explained the workers-getting-laid-off phenomenon. Goldman pocketed $1.5 billion in fees for its M&A advisory work.
The accelerating pace of the mergers during the last two quarters is goosing extrapolations of what an insanely good year 2014 is going to be – helped along by a “stronger economy,” some sort of “stability at the Fed,” and an inexplicable absence “of near-term economic bumps,” according to Scott Barshay, head of the Corporate Department at Wall Street law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore. In reality, to get a bumper crop of mergers, you must have a gravity-defying stock market and a continued flood of freshly printed money made available to large corporations at near-zero cost.
Companies are motivated. Stock valuations have moved into the stratosphere. Financial engineering, such as share buybacks, has been covering up, more or less elegantly, the ugly reality of stalling growth in revenues and earnings. But there will be a moment of truth.
“The pressure is building for companies to justify their trading multiples,” warned Chris Ventresca, co-head of Global M&A at JPMorgan, which pocketed $1.3 billion in fees for its M&A advisory work. “It will be hard to deliver that organically, so you have to look for inorganic growth.”
You can practically hear the fizzing optimism for IPOs. In 2013, there were 229 IPOs, raising $61.3 billion, the highest amount since 2007, and up 58% from 2012 [read my take on this and other extraordinary accomplishments in 2013….. Financial Engineering Wildest Since The 2007 Bubble]. Now even Chinese IPOs are coming back. Everything that isn’t nailed down will get shoved out the door, viable or not, at dizzying valuations. And somebody is going to end up holding the bag.
“The longer this window stays open, the more the quality of the deals falls, the more you get the piggyback deals,” explained Tony Ursillo, a tech analyst at Loomis Sayles & Co., which has $193.5 billion under management. “I feel like we’ve cleaned out a number of the first-tier companies, from a quality standpoint.”
The casino mentality that has set in, and the billions it extracts from the real economy, is dependent on the most addictive drugs of all: a flood of nearly free money. It sets off a chain reaction, including ecstatic stock markets, where IPOs without earnings can soar and where even the most convoluted mergers that will haunt stockholders for years to come seem to make divine sense – and our favorite Wall Street engineers are out making hay while they still can.
Central banks rule! They’ve accomplished the impossible: separating stock markets from the economies they’re based on. But in 2014, the US and China are trying to unwind these crazy policies – without taking down the entire global economy. Read… So This Isn’t Exactly A Rosy Outlook For 2014, Or Something
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/F9DGX0yDdlY/story01.htm testosteronepit
While the non-luxury auto-manufacturers suffered from a case of cannel-stuffed constipation in December, Luxury brands appeared to do very well thank you Mr. Bernanke:
As the company notes, it “exceeded 40,000 sales for the first time in the history of Porsche in the US,” as the 911 sold 10,442 units and Cayenne 18,507 units.
Porsche PR Statement:
Porsche Reports Record Sales in 2013; 21 percent increase over 2012
Best-ever U.S. sales fueled by 911, Cayenne models
Porsche Cars North America, Inc. (PCNA), the exclusive U.S. importer of Porsche sports cars including the Macan and Cayenne SUVs and the Panamera sports sedan, today announced it has once again set an all-time U.S. sales record, with 42,323 cars sold in 2013 (plus 21 percent over 2012). The previous record year for Porsche in the U.S. was 2012 when 35,043 cars were sold. In December 2013, Porsche dealers sold 3,246 cars, an increase of 10 percent over last December.
“Exceeding 40,000 sales for the first time in the history of Porsche in the U.S. makes us very proud,” said Detlev von Platen, President and CEO, Porsche Cars North America, Inc. “This success was possible only through the combination of a strong product offering, a highly professional sales organization and a team of dedicated dealers,” he added. “Since introducing 22 new models and variants into the U.S. market in 2013, we are entering the New Year with our youngest product line ever – thus, we are confident that we can continue writing the success story of Porsche in the U.S. over the next 12 months.”
The flagship 911 completed a strong anniversary year in 2013, with 10,442 units sold and the introduction of six new model variants including the limited-edition “50^th Anniversary” model. In December, the top-of-the-line 911 models (GT3, Turbo, Turbo Cabriolet) arrived at U.S. dealers, with those models accounting for four percent of December 911 sales.
Sales of the mid-engine Boxster and Cayman models were equally strong, with a combined total of 7,953 units, representing a 137 percent increase year-over-year. The newly-launched Cayman and Cayman S models were popular as well, with 3,383 units sold.
The Cayenne line carried equal weight in the automaker’s 2013 sales success, with 18,507 sold in all of 2013 (plus 16 percent over last year). With sales of 5,386, the Cayenne Diesel had a 29 percent share of overall Cayenne sales. With the arrival of the Macan compact SUV, its fifth model line, in the spring of 2014 Porsche will be entering into the fastest-growing vehicle market with the sportiest cross-over in that segment.
…
Last year, Porsche recorded a roughly even split of sales between its four-door and two-door sports cars (57 percent/43 percent).
Certified Pre-Owned Sales finished 2013 at 10,130 units, up 7 percent over 2012 (9,506).
++++++++
Thank You Ben…
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/ywFCrhqxUyk/story01.htm Tyler Durden
While the non-luxury auto-manufacturers suffered from a case of cannel-stuffed constipation in December, Luxury brands appeared to do very well thank you Mr. Bernanke:
As the company notes, it “exceeded 40,000 sales for the first time in the history of Porsche in the US,” as the 911 sold 10,442 units and Cayenne 18,507 units.
Porsche PR Statement:
Porsche Reports Record Sales in 2013; 21 percent increase over 2012
Best-ever U.S. sales fueled by 911, Cayenne models
Porsche Cars North America, Inc. (PCNA), the exclusive U.S. importer of Porsche sports cars including the Macan and Cayenne SUVs and the Panamera sports sedan, today announced it has once again set an all-time U.S. sales record, with 42,323 cars sold in 2013 (plus 21 percent over 2012). The previous record year for Porsche in the U.S. was 2012 when 35,043 cars were sold. In December 2013, Porsche dealers sold 3,246 cars, an increase of 10 percent over last December.
“Exceeding 40,000 sales for the first time in the history of Porsche in the U.S. makes us very proud,” said Detlev von Platen, President and CEO, Porsche Cars North America, Inc. “This success was possible only through the combination of a strong product offering, a highly professional sales organization and a team of dedicated dealers,” he added. “Since introducing 22 new models and variants into the U.S. market in 2013, we are entering the New Year with our youngest product line ever – thus, we are confident that we can continue writing the success story of Porsche in the U.S. over the next 12 months.”
The flagship 911 completed a strong anniversary year in 2013, with 10,442 units sold and the introduction of six new model variants including the limited-edition “50^th Anniversary” model. In December, the top-of-the-line 911 models (GT3, Turbo, Turbo Cabriolet) arrived at U.S. dealers, with those models accounting for four percent of December 911 sales.
Sales of the mid-engine Boxster and Cayman models were equally strong, with a combined total of 7,953 units, representing a 137 percent increase year-over-year. The newly-launched Cayman and Cayman S models were popular as well, with 3,383 units sold.
The Cayenne line carried equal weight in the automaker’s 2013 sales success, with 18,507 sold in all of 2013 (plus 16 percent over last year). With sales of 5,386, the Cayenne Diesel had a 29 percent share of overall Cayenne sales. With the arrival of the Macan compact SUV, its fifth model line, in the spring of 2014 Porsche will be entering into the fastest-growing vehicle market with the sportiest cross-over in that segment.
…
Last year, Porsche recorded a roughly even split of sales between its four-door and two-door sports cars (57 percent/43 percent).
Certified Pre-Owned Sales finished 2013 at 10,130 units, up 7 percent over 2012 (9,506).
++++++++
Thank You Ben…
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/ywFCrhqxUyk/story01.htm Tyler Durden