weekend notes

See you again with full wknd notes on Sept 2nd. Week-in-Review: Mon: Curiosity on Mars, S&P + 0.3%;  Tue: RBA unch’d (exp), Hungary IP, Italy IP and German Factory orders (-) surprise, Canada PMI and UK IP (+) surprise, S&P 0.5%;  Wed: German IP, India IP, China IP and Japan machine orders disappoint, Aussie jobs stronger (14k vs 10k exp), Greece outlook neg (S&P), NZ’s Key

See you Sept 2nd with full wknd notes. Week-in-Review: Mon: Japan IP 6m low, Sweden GDP solid, Spain CPI 7m high (2Q GDP -0.4%), EU cons conf 35m low, Brazil infl pops, S&P -0.1%; Tue: S.Korea IP soft, Japan PMI 15m low, Taiwan 2Q GDP negative, Italy unemp 10.8%, Germ unemp stable,  EU unemp 11.2%, US savings rate bounces, US C/S home-price fall slowing, Chicago PMI 53.7, cons conf solid, S&am

Hope all goes well. Mara despises cowardly villains. So within hours of the massacre, she whisked me off, to The Dark Night Rises. Brilliant flick. Fusing the obscene, the real, into something surreal. Which perfectly captures our time. Just look at our tabloids, we now got our very own Joker, orange hair, a wild-eyed grimace. Politics/economics are equally surreal. So where’s Batman? Don’t be foo

Hope all goes well. Dallas was hot. Conference was cool. Yeah, UBS puts on a good show. You know, figured I’d find a steer or two in Texas. You see, those boys been making serious frackin’ money. And if there’s one breed unafraid to take risk, leverage up gains, put it all on the line, well, it’s the Texan wildcat. But alas, their pastures are barren. Parched. And my take is it’ll take one helluva

Hope all goes well. And that your Summer ain’t too relaxing. Mine certainly isn’t. You see, I’ve long since ceded control to two women. Who own me. Ida packed my week with curious adults, who flew in, from all over the world. Mara packed my weekend with curious kids, 8 in all, sleeping over, who insist no game is possible unless I’m playing. And of course, mkts remain relentless. So I

Hope all goes well. Osama bin Charlie infiltrated our bed. Pre-dawn raid. Crept between us, dragging his blanket. Growling, “I’m gonna be a tiger when I grow up, a big fat tiger.” Which is cool with me, though Mara prefers the doctor route. So I asked our cub how we’ll know when he’s finally grown up, we can hardly wait. “When I can swim,” whispered the 3y

Hope all goes well. Summertime in Santa Barbara. Not a cloud in the sky. Creeks run dry. And we’re not alone. Midwestern farmers are baking. Crops withering. And even on Wall Street they’re doing the rain dance, an awkward white-guy shuffle. Praying for liquidity. You see, there’s very little now. And in all this heat, illusions arise, mirages, whipping markets around wildly. Ove

Hope all goes well. Gonna keep things short. Why? Well, nothing’s really changed. Yeah, stocks initially squeezed higher in the hope Benjamin would print more Benjamin’s. But Bernanke conserved his few remaining bullets, twisted $267bln, then rashly repeated Baby Bush’s infamous one-liner – Bring ’em on! You see, Ben taunted the gods, said he needs to see things get worse before he clear-cut

Hope all goes well. Happy Fathers day. Spending mine enroute; DMZ to NYC. 700 Korean’s listened intently. As we explained how to solve Europe, build portfolios, regulate, manage risk, make money. You see, Korea’s opened their mkt to HF’s. And want to reverse-engineer ours. At the press conference, I almost told the humbling truth: Put our insights into context, HF managers are right no more than 6