shaw capital management: Juli 2011

Montag, 18. Juli 2011

shaw capital management financial news:Bin Laden not dead

Can you imagine the body of a globally wanted terrorist (Osama bin Laden, that is) being dumped into the sea soon after he’s done in by special forces? Me neither.

With no proof of his body and photos of the operation being held back from the public, it’s pretty natural that people would doubt the attack in Abbottabad really happened.

Though we must understand that it is done to avoid prompting retribution from fellow Muslims, skeptics like me would quickly find a ground to jump into. Yet another fodder for conspiracy buffs who are still stuck in the world of Illuminati and 76-year old Elvis, but who knows, maybe this time they’ve hit the right mark in arguing that Bin Laden is not yet dead. After all, the whole mission is all hushed up and the ‘body’ is quickly disposed of. Add to that the unbelievable time it took to execute the whole plan.

And now that they won’t even show photos of the terrorist’s body, it will only fuel more rumors.

According to reports, the elite group named SEAL Team 6 (whose existence is denied by the secret service agency itself) did Osama Bin Laden on May 1. Seal team 6, a special force reserved for high priority targets is as highly ‘classified’ as their missions.

I could imagine the anticipation the military team must have had on the way to Bin Laden’s compound. All those ten years of spying and toiling, they have come to this culmination where they’re going to bring down the most wanted terrorist in the world once and for all.

The team is ‘prepared’ alright; they have rehearsed the operation in a similar compound multiple times, in multiple ways. They know exactly what to do had the circumstances changed as they have contingency plans. On top of that, they have to move fast because they are on a foreign soil and the local forces might not welcome them warmly once alerted.

They might go down as the greatest unsung heroes of our time — if that operation did kill bin Laden, that is.

Shaw Capital Management Financial News:UPDATE 1-Hyundai, Alabama state to make investment announcement

* Hyundai and Alabama to make investment announcement Monday

* Hyundai’s fuel-efficient cars in high demand

* Hyundai has talked with at least 3 states on plant plans

(Adds comment from Hyundai in Korea saying announcement is about engine production)

By Bernie Woodall and Hyunjoo Jin

DETROIT/SEOUL, May 16 (Reuters) – South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co and the state of Alabama will announce on Monday an investment at Hyundai’s Alabama plant near Montgomery, the company said on Sunday.

A company source in Seoul told Reuters that the automaker will announce changes to its engine production in Alabama, while a Hyundai spokesperson said the automaker will not announce more production capacity.

Hyundai’s U.S. sales are booming, with the Korean firm the fastest growing major automaker in the U.S. market.

The Alabama plant makes two of the hottest selling cars in the U.S. market, the midsize sedan Sonata and the small sedan Elantra. Its assembly lines operate as much as 20 hours per day during weekdays and on some Saturdays to meet high demand.

While more vehicle production is not to be announced on Monday, a second Hyundai U.S. assembly plant could still follow at some point .

Sources told Reuters that Hyundai in recent months has spoken at least informally with at least three U.S. states including Alabama about plans for a second plant in the southeast of the United States.

Officials in South Carolina and Mississippi expressed interest in luring the Korean automaker to place new production in those states, the sources added.

Hyundai Motor’s chief financial officer, Lee Won-hee, said last month that the company could consider building another U.S. production plant if the market continued to improve, but that no formal plans are in place. [ID:nL3E7FS0PN]

Hyundai’s U.S. sales rose 31 percent in the first four months of 2011, boosted by a model lineup laden with fuel-efficient small cars as consumers seek vehicles that can help overcome gasoline prices that have risen above $4 per gallon in much of the country.

Hyundai’s U.S. chief executive, John Krafcik, earlier this year said the automaker’s U.S. sales will be constrained by limits to its current production, but has not commented on any plans to expand the company’s U.S. production.

Sources told Reuters that Hyundai is considering at some point placing a second assembly plant on the same site as its existing factory south of Montgomery.

ROOM TO GROW

The company owns about 1,750 acres (708 hectares) at its Alabama site, and its current assembly plant takes up less than a third of that land.

One source told Reuters that any new plant would produce a subcompact car, the size of the Hyundai Accent which is now imported to the United States.

Hyundai opened its Alabama plant in 2005. It was followed by dozens of Korean auto parts suppliers that also have production plants in Alabama to serve the Hyundai factory.

Alabama is a “right to work” state, which helps companies there fend off efforts to unionize workers. The United Auto Workers, which represent production workers at the three major U.S. automakers, has not been successful in convincing Hyundai workers to unionize the Alabama plant, which has about 2,600 workers.

Mississippi and South Carolina are also right to work states.

U.S. April sales of Hyundai increased 40 percent from April 2010, to 61,754 units, for a 4.8 percent share of the U.S. market. Through April, Hyundai’s U.S. sales rose 31 percent to 204,374 units.

U.S. Sonata sales rose 46 percent to 73,616 in 2011 through April, while U.S. April sales of Elantra were up 129 percent and up 89 percent in 2011 through April.

Hyundai said the vehicles it sold in the United States in April averaged 36.2 miles per gallon, and that vehicles that can average 40 miles per gallon on the highway made up 34 percent of its April sales, up from 25 percent in April 2010. (Reporting by Bernie Woodall in Detroit and Hyunjoo Jin in Seoul; Editing by Richard Chang and Dhara Ranasinghe)

Shaw Capital Management Financial News: Wall St. Banks Expected to Post Weak 2nd-Quarter Results

Only a few short months ago, JPMorgan Chase traders were on such a roll that they did not have a single losing day in the first quarter.

But when the bank reports its second-quarter results this week, that hot streak will have come to an end. Analysts expect JPMorgan to count an almost 20 percent drop in its sales and trading revenues, reflecting a slowdown in investor activity and the dismal performance of its fixed-income and commodities groups.

Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are expected to report similar news. After helping prop up Wall Street during the financial crisis, core trading revenue is projected to drop, on average, by as much as 25 percent from the first quarter, according to Credit Suisse research.

That will put further pressure on the banks’ growth prospects, which are already strained by stagnant loan growth and more stringent regulation. It is also prompting nearly every major Wall Street firm to contemplate another round of layoffs amid growing concerns that at least part of the weak results are permanent.

“We are undoubtedly being impacted by lower levels of activity,” said William Tanona, a financial services analyst with UBS. “There is a lot of uncertainty out there.”

Together, the five Wall Street banks are still going to take in more than $20 billion from their core trading operations, largely from business done on behalf of clients. For example, the banks routinely help airlines hedge oil prices or bring together buyers and sellers of stock, bonds and other complex securities — often putting their own money on the line to facilitate a trade. But during the second quarter, the business was particularly hard hit.

Trading volumes fell sharply as investors became unnerved by the running debt crisis in Europe, the political standoff over the debt ceiling in the United States, and lingering concerns over the anemic growth of the broader economy. Even when investors did place their bets, they were far more hesitant to take big risks — something known on Wall Street as lacking conviction. That meant the banks missed out on the lucrative fees they can generate by selling more high-octane products, like complex options and derivatives.

Fixed-income traders, among the biggest moneymakers for Wall Street, faced a bruising market. In the commodities business, for example, oil, gold and other metals prices had been rising quickly during the early part of the year as investors anticipated high demand for materials to keep the global economy humming. But as cracks in the recovery kept surfacing, prices headed south — and traders raced to the sidelines. That left most Wall Street desks, which had stocked up on inventory to facilitate trades, holding losing positions.

At JPMorgan, for instance, energy traders were having a gangbuster year, earning several hundred million dollars for its burgeoning commodities unit. Yet when the market turned in early May, they gave back some of those gains, according to market participants. Morgan Stanley, meanwhile, suffered tens of millions in losses on its interest rate desk when a bet on lower inflation turned against the bank’s position.

Mortgage trading did not fare much better. After rallying from highly depressed values for much the last two years, mortgage-backed securities prices fell sharply during the second quarter. The reason? The government started dumping into the market its vast portfolio of mortgage bonds acquired from its rescue of the American International Group, and investors believed the outsize supply would cause values to plummet. (Only recently, when the Federal Reserve Bank of New York announced it was halting auctions of the A.I.G. mortgage bonds, did prices start to stabilize.)

Although the banks have slowed the spill of red ink from troubled mortgages and other bad loans, they are struggling to increase revenue in their more traditional banking businesses, too.

New financial regulations have chipped away at once-lucrative sources of income, like overdraft charges and credit card penalty fees. Starting this fall, banks are expecting to absorb a multibillion-dollar hit when they are forced to sharply lower the fees they charge each time consumers swipe their debit cards. Higher capital requirements, meanwhile, could further depress profits if some banks are forced to lighten their balance sheets or exit certain businesses altogether.

Shaw Capital Management Financial News: China adviser: 2011 consumer inflation to hit 4.8%

By China Bureau

SHANGHAI (MarketWatch) — China’s consumer price index is likely to increase 4.8% this year, the state-run China Securities Journal reported Monday, citing Li Daokui, an adviser to the People’s Bank of China.

China’s inflation rate may have peaked in June and will likely slow down in the second half of the year, the newspaper quoted Li as saying.

China’s CPI rose 6.4% in June from a year earlier, the biggest monthly rise since June of 2008.

Li expected China’s CPI will increase 2.7% in 2012, according to the report.

-Newspaper website: http://www.cs.com.cn

Shaw Capital Management Financial News: Euro, dollar strike new lows on Swiss franc

SYDNEY | Sun Jul 17, 2011 7:22pm EDT

(Reuters) – The euro and dollar both struck record lows against the Swiss franc in Asia on Monday while gold reached new highs as investors sought safety from debt problems plaguing the European Union and United States.

The euro gapped lower against the Swiss franc to change hands at a trough of 1.1365 according to dealers, down from 1.1501 late in New York on Friday.

Likewise the dollar traded as low as $0.8034 on EBS, against $0.8129 late on Friday, while gold popped as high as $1,598.41.

“We have limited hope that a comprehensive solution to the European and US problems will emerge in the next few days, or that there will be increased clarity in the global economic outlook,” said analysts at Barclays.

“Hence, we expect the very nervous, illiquid trading conditions of recent weeks to continue…we recommend limited risk exposures.”

All of which kept the euro pinned at $1.4124, against $1.4144 late on Friday. Immediate support was put at $1.4063 with resistance at $1.4199.

The single currency escaped relatively unscathed from the EU bank stress tests released on Friday, though dealers said the market had little confidence in the results.

Attention had shifted to the next emergency meeting of EU leaders scheduled for Thursday, amid signs they are edging nearer to a proposal to buy back Greek debt.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Sunday for private investors to make a major contribution to bailing out Greece. Officials proposed a range of schemes for the European Financial Stability Facility to finance a buy-back or a swap in which private owners of Greek government bonds would accept cuts in the face value of their holdings.

Meanwhile, in the United States there was little evidence of progress on raising the country’s borrowing ceiling ahead of a deadline of August 2.

Republican and Democratic senators sought on Sunday to craft a plan that could avert a government debt default should the talks remain stalemated.

Senior Democratic aides said the U.S. Senate will likely begin considering the compromise measure this week. They predicted the Democratic-led Senate would pass the legislation, but winning over the Republican-led House of Representatives would pose a bigger challenge.

Both Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s have warned they could downgrade the country should the debt limit not be raised.

One early mover in Asia was the New Zealand dollar, which climbed after domestic inflation data proved higher than expected, adding to speculation that interest rates might rise before year end.

The kiwi rose to $0.8470, from $0.8445 before the government reported consumer prices rose 1 percent in the second quarter. Last week, it hit a 30-year peak of $0.8507 as growth figures showed the economy faring better than expected.

Shaw Capital Management Financial News