Greece begins the buyback process
Guest post by Sober Look.
Greek government debt yields hit another post-restructuring low (14.9%), as the government offered a better than expected price for the bonds. These bonds are now quite popular in the European markets – it’s not every day that one gets a buyback from a sovereign. The minimum price offered in the buyback program is 30 cents on the euro (on the longest maturity, most discounted bonds).
This steep discount is necessary in order reduce the amount of debt outstanding. It looks as though the bonds will trade in the 32-34 range. Greece expects to spend about €10bn of borrowed money in order to reduce the outstanding debt level by roughly €20bn (30bn of face costing 10bn).
NYTimes: – While the buyback had been expected, the prices offered by the government were above what the market had forecast, with a minimum price of 30 euro cents and a maximum of 40 cents, for a discount of 60 percent to 70 percent.
Analysts said they expected that the average price would ultimately be 32 to 34 euro cents, a premium of about 4 cents above where the bonds traded at the end of last week.
US Corporate Earnings Concentration
Guest post via Marc to Market.
This Great Graphic was onBarry Ritholtz’s Big Picture blog. It originally was from Morgan Stanley’s Adam Parker. It notes that nearly 90% of this year’s earnings growth of the S&P 500 companies can be traced to 2% or 10 companies.Tired of the Yield Chase?
Guest post by Peter Tchir.
Chasing Yield Is Tiring Work – is the Market fit enough to keep going?
Well we got some chase for yield. High yield did well. EM did okay, as did Munis and Investment Grade. Closed end funds on the fixed income side did very well, benefitting from leverage and short memories, where once again investors want these at a premium (image of Homer Simpson repeatedly burning himself).
Treasuries actually had a good week in spite of the “risk on” mentality, but that was “confirmation” from Hilsenrath that the Fed is likely to continue to find ways to buy long dated treasuries once Operation Twist is officially over.
So it was a nice, and surprising combination for treasuries and risky bonds to do well, but this week was the first time in awhile that we saw some confusion in the broader market about corporate bond performance.
Jobless in Europe
If you want to read depressing news, read not more. The unemployment situation in Europe is continuing, and countries like Greece ans Spain are in deep trouble. From Europa.eu.
What are the recent labour market trends?
The economic and employment outlook is bleak and has worsened in recent months and is not expected to improve in 2013, although a more positive outlook for the labour markets is still expected in 2014. The EU is currently the only major region in the world where unemployment is still rising.
The general picture covers a very diverse situation across Member States. There is a growing divergence between unemployment situations. Some MS have weathered the economic crisis well and are recording very low unemployment rates, as low as 4.4% in Austria or 5.4% in the Netherlands and Germany. This is the result of the generally good economic situation in these countries but also because they are reaping the benefits of previous reforms initiated long before the economic crisis hit. In other Member States unemployment is high or rising. Usually these are the countries that were hit hardest by the sovereign and financial crisis, such as Greece or Spain where the unemployment rate is above 25%. But these are also countries with well-identified problems in their labour markets, such as segmentation, insufficiently effective active labour market policies or ineffective links between school and work. These shortcomings have amplified the effects of the crisis though they were not the cause.
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