Der USA Bären-Thread

Der Artikel von Robert Rethfeld hat mich auf den Trichter gebracht. Der Einbruch des Goldpreises 1980 und der fulminante Anstieg des USD zwischen 1980 und 1985 korrelierten mit einem starken Anstieg der Realzinsen (Zinssätze der US-Treasuries minus Inflationsrate). In diesem Zusammenhang kommt m.E. insbesondere dem Chart des 1yr-Treasury yield ($UST1Y) hohe Aussagekraft zu. Die beiden letzten Rezessionen korrelierten stringent mit einem starkem Verfall dieses Zinssatzes. Der "Realzinssatz" ist aktuell eindeutig negativ (minus 1). Für den Dollar dürfte diese Entwicklung kaum positiv sein.  

 

danke für die link (ich hänge die graphik hier an) um nochmals klar zu sagen, dass - anders als die meisten Goldbullen behaupten - weder hohe Zinsen noch hohe Inflation (ausser bei Hyperinflation) gold per se eine gute investition ist - sondern der dass der REALZINS - noch genauer die "ZUKÜNFTIGE ERWARTUNG DER REALZINSEN" wichtig sind.

Das Zinsniveau spielt dabei SCHON eine rolle - es ist aber MEINER MEINUNG nach BESSER einen Realzins von NULL (bei 4 % Zinsen und 4 %Inflation) zu haben  als einen Realzinssatz von NULL bei 20 % Zinsen und 20% Inflation. Warum?

Weil ja der Goldpreis auch erst diese 4 oder 20% machen muss - damit er die Inflation ausgleicht.

(natürlich spielt auch Angebot & Nachfrage seitens der Schmuckindustrie eine nicht unebdeutenden Rolle. Dieses Verhältnis bleibt übrigens knapp - zumindest für 2008)  

"Der Einbruch des Goldpreises 1980 und der fulminante Anstieg des USD zwischen 1980 und 1985 korrelierten mit einem starken Anstieg der Realzinsen (Zinssätze der US-Treasuries minus Inflationsrate)."

langsam kapieren es die leute hier...(meine ich nicht überheblich - habe dazu auch länger gebraucht)  

stimme auch überein, was seine Prognose betrifft (diese Entwicklung) sollte zunächst mal bis mindest Q2/2008 anhalten.  

Zuerst möchte ich ebenfalls allen Thread-Teilnehmern/innen auf diesem Wege ein gesundes und erfolgreiches Neues Jahr wünschen.

Anbei verlinkt ein Interview der NZZ mit Martin Feldstein, der das 1920 gegründete National Bureau of Economic Research präsidiert, also eine eben nicht ganz ungewichtige Stimme.

„Der Dollar muss weiter sinken“

Die US-Wirtschaft fällt nächstes Jahr mit 50-prozentiger Wahrscheinlichkeit in eine Rezession, sagt Martin Feldstein, Harvard-Professor und Präsident des wichtigsten Instituts für Wirtschaftsforschung in den USA.

„Meine Definition einer schwachen Währung ist ein Wechselkurs, der zu einem Handelsbilanzüberschuss führt. Darum muss der Dollar weiter fallen, damit die US-Wirtschaft konkurrenzfähiger wird. Sonst werden wir weiterhin hohe Handelsbilanzdefizite haben. Führt das zu mehr Inflation? Für sich alleine genommen ja. Aber die Erfahrung zeigt, dass ein schwacher Dollar nicht unbedingt zu mehr Inflation führen muss. In den 1980er Jahren, als der Dollar in drei Jahren um etwa 40% schwächer wurde, gab es keinen bedeutenden Anstieg der Inflation.“

http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/wissenschaft/...er_sinken_1.642023.html  

als der Dollar in drei Jahren um etwa 40% schwächer wurde, gab es keinen bedeutenden Anstieg der Inflation.“

@ stöffen:  Der Ölpreis hatte sich über die 10 Jahre zischen 1980 und 1990 mehr als halbiert - dies hatte einen stark deflationären charakter.

Und selbst zwischen 1990 und 1999 ging der Verfall beim Ölpreis weiter (gleichzeitig würden Spitzen bei Produktivitätssteigerungen erreicht - IT, www). Die Situation heute ist völlig anders. Im Moment spricht nichts dafür, dass der inflationären Effekt des schwachen USD durch langfristig den deflationären effekt zukünftig fallende Ölpreise ausgeglichen werden kann.
 

Die geschichtliche Seite ist für mich in diesem Interview erstmal von zweitrangiger Bedeutung. Wichtiger und interessanter ist es mir hier zuvorderst, die führende Stimme eines sehr einflußreichen US-Think-Tanks zu vernehmen, der eine weitere Dollar-Abwertung für zwingend notwendig hält und dies dementsprechend prognostiziert, denn man beachte die eindeutige Wortwahl, der Dollar MUSS FALLEN.
Ein Dollar-Index von 70 wirft da für mich schon klar seine Schatten voraus. Der evtl. kleine Rebound des Dollar zu Anfang 2008 dürfte vernachlässigbar sein.  

http://www.ariva.de/...der_Euro_stark_bleibt_Schwaeche_kaufen_t313283

hat als Fed-Chef (1979 bis 1987) das einzig Richtige getan, um die US-Wirtschaft aus dem üblen Teufelskreis der 1960er und 1970er mit Rezessionen im Abstand von etwa fünf Jahren herauszuführen. Unter seiner Führung hat die Fed eine völlig unkonventionelle volkswirtschaftliche Großtat vollbracht: den Leitzins zunächst unter Inkaufnahme einer weiteren Rezession (1981-82) zügig und massiv zu erhöhen und damit wieder Vertrauen in den Dollar zu schaffen (USD Index 1980 bei 85, 1985 bei über 160!). Fast alle Analysten hielten diese Maßnahme damals für total verrückt, doch sie bereitete fraglos den Boden für eine der längsten Prosperitätsphasen in der US-Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Volckers Nachfolger haben daraus nichts gelernt.

@stöffen

Das nächste mittelfristige Tief des USD Index sehe ich nicht bei etwa 70, sondern bei unter 60.      

http://www.financialsense.com/Market/wrapup.htm

Buffett kauft das Versicherungsgeschaeft fuer municipal bonds von MBIA und Ambac. Das sollte die Alarmglocken klingeln lassen! Offenbar stehen MBIA und die anderen Bondversicherer kurz vor einem Downgrade durch die Ratingagenturen. Ein solches Downgrade wird automatisch alle von diesen Firmen versicherte Bonds und Kreditderivate ihrerseits ihr AAA-Rating verlieren lassen. Vermutlich ist jemand aus der Regierung oder der Fed an Buffett herangetreten und hat diesen Deal eingefaedelt, damit wenigstens die oeffentlichen muni bonds nicht untergehen. Im Gegenschluss bedeutet die hektische Durchführung dieser Transaktion aber, dass tatsaechlich ein solches Downgrade bevorsteht. Das naechste Fass, diesmal ein richtig grosses, koennte also sehr bald explodieren.  

financial sense market wrapup vom 31.12.07 (der Link ist anscheinend ein generischer fuer alle Tage)  

Diesen Report empfehle ich euerer besonderen Aufmerksamkeit:

http://www.nacm.org/resource/press_release/CMI_current.shtml  

Soweit ich den bisherigen Meldungen entnommen habe, will Buffet nicht das bisherige Geschäft der Monoline-Bondsversicherer "kaufen", sondern diesen lediglich Konkurrenz machen. Ob die Gebietskörperschaften, die in den vergangenen Monaten zunehmend auf versicherte Bonds verzichteten, weil ihnen die Versicherungsprämien zu hoch wurden, bei dieser neuen Versicherung einsteigen werden, dürfte wesentlich von deren Prämien abhängen.    

Wenn das Kreditrisiko auf vielen Schultern verteilt wird, ist dies grundsätzlich auch aus volkswirtschaflticher Sicht zu begrüßen. Aber natürlich verschwinden die Risiken nicht, wie die jüngsten Entwicklungen an den Kapitalmärkten verdeutlich haben. Die Verbriefung von Forderungen und Krediten wird logischerweise nicht aufhören, denn viele Unternehmen erhalten auf diese Weise indirekten Zugang zu Finanzmärkten und können gegebnenfalls geringere Finanzierungskosten realisien. Allerdings wird diese Differenz nicht mehr so groß sein wie bisher, da höhere Risikoprämien anfallen, sodass sich der größere bisherige Abstand zu Bankkrediten wieder auf ein vernünftiges Maß reduziert. Aber solange hier eine Differenz existiert, und die wird es wohl geben, werden Verbriefungen existieren und ihre Bedeutung wird weiter wachsen - denn sie sind ja noch relativ neu und erst als Spitze eines Eisbergs vorhanden. Dass man auch mit ihnen erst umgehen lernen muss, ist auch Fakt.

Mein Kommentar: Hat Libuda das mit "als Spitze eines Eisbergs" nicht herzig formuliert?  

Tscha,
die Sonne geht für uns an den unterschiedlichsten Zeitpunkten auf ;-))

http://www.ariva.de/...e_des_Eisbergs_t283343?pnr=3853282#jump3853282  

An jeder Ecke der US-Websites wimmelt es momentam von Survival-Theories!
Sorry, aber...., wer tritt den Kollegen mal in den Arsch und sagt ihnen unverblümt, dass sie mehr komsumieren als sie produzieren!

Winning attitude
Ten resolutions that will help you survive the coming bear market

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- In a rare Fortune interview several years ago Warren Buffett warned that America was "selling the farm" to live "high on the hog." Forget the hog: that dream's gone, and the farm may not be far behind.

The next few years will rival the 2000-2002 bear-recession. Here's why. And how you can avoid sinking with it.
"Selling the farm" was a perfect metaphor for the coming downturn. During the recent bull, Wall Street became totally addicted to easy credit, junk mortgages and snake-oil derivatives. The Fed and Treasury loved it, too, denying the massive bubble buildup, adding fuel to Wall Street's greed. Deja vu the 90's "irrational exuberance."

Now the crisis is metastasizing: Hundred of billions of dollars in write-offs reducing shareholder equity, hundreds of millions of dollars in severance pay to CEO losers. Worse yet, Wall Street's insiders rubbed salt in their shareholders wounds by passing out $38 billion of the shareholders' profits in bonuses, averaging more than $600,000.
Now the biggest of all insults: Our capitalist system is so dysfunctional that lately the market has taken to cheering as Wall Street's incompetent bankers hide their mistakes by selling huge chunks of America's equity to China, Singapore, Abu Dhabi and other sovereign funds -- with more sell-offs coming.

Not long ago these same foreign buyers were happy to reinvest their accumulated trading reserves in safe, cheap U.S. Treasurys. No more. The dollar's credibility stinks. And yet, America's leaders continue running up huge trade deficits to feed our insatiable addiction to oil, cheap toys and outsourced jobs. No wonder foreigners don't want our IOUs, they want equity ... just as Buffett warned us:

"We were taught in Economics 101 that countries could not for long sustain large, ever-growing trade deficits. Our country has been behaving like an extraordinarily rich family that possesses an immense farm. In order to consume 4% more than they produce -- that's the trade deficit -- we have, day by day, been both selling pieces of the farm and increasing the mortgage on what we still own."

Unfortunately, our leaders just don't get it: America's high-on-the-hog, deficits-don't-matter lifestyle is unsustainable. Wall Street knew this would happen, but was in total denial, self-absorbed in its greed-is-good world milking the subprime-credit bubble.

This follows an all too familiar historic pattern that fits all bubbles. Burton Malkiel summarized it in his classic "A Random Walk Down Wall Street:" "Greed run amok has been an essential feature of every speculative boom in history. In their frenzy for money, market participants throw over firm foundations of value for the dubious but thrilling assumption that they too can make a killing by building castles in the air. Such thinking can, and has, enveloped entire nations."

Swooping in from across the seas

Foreigners see our problems, even if our "nation" cannot: "The adjustment in the U.S. housing market has just begun," Kazuo Mizuno, chief economist of Mitsubishi UFJ Securities tells Bloomberg. "It will probably bottom out in three or four years. Meantime, this will keep buffeting consumption, employment and the dollar. ... Now is the beginning of the end to dollar standard system." They get it: America's excesses put the entire "farm" on the auction block.

Similar warnings come from Europe: Peter Spencer, chief economist of ITEM Club ("Independent Treasury Economic Model"), a leading British economic forecaster, says, "the central banks are rapidly losing control ... they are allowing the money markets to dictate policy." A scary scenario: Another major policy error by the central banks and "this could make 1929 look like a walk in the park."

2008 is troubling not just because the total incompetence of Wall Street and Washington is likely to carry forward. More worrisome is their callous, near hostile opinion of average Americans. Something Trader Daily said a week ago summarizes their opinion: "Never underestimate the power of the superpsycho, hyper-spending American consumer. Where there is no cash, they will sell their soul. Or just charge it."

If you want to rise above this low opinion they have of you, here are our Top 10 New Year's resolutions to prepare you to win in the coming 2008-2010 bear-recession:

1. Go contrarian: Wall Street is biased, trust no one
The vast majority of business, economic and stock-market forecasters are not looking out for your interests. They're biased, favoring their employers on Wall Street, Corporate America and Washington. The past few years they made huge bucks hyping the credit/subprime bubble. Witness their bonuses. In 2008 their rosy forecasts will continue. They can't help misleading you, it's in their DNA: "Greed is good."

2. Do-it-yourself: You'll make fewer mistakes
Remember Buddha's advice: "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." You are the only "expert" you can trust: All brokers and money managers, newspapers, magazines, online and newsletter pundits, all television anchors, and every other special-interest guru is "selling" you something. Don't buy "it."

3. Millionaires build wealth by working, not investing
Forget about getting rich in the market. Millionaires get rich doing what they love, says Thomas Stanley. Then they hang onto the money in conservative portfolios. No chasing the latest hot funds. Just keep it simple: Remember, a safe and successful "Lazy Portfolio" is just a simple well-diversified portfolio of maybe a dozen funds, that's all. Read the latest on "lazy" investing.

4. Do what you love (or your boss will decide for you)
The majority of Americans are working at jobs they hate. The one thing you must do to be happy in this life, says guru Marcus Buckingham, is find out what you hate to do and stop doing it. Now. Then start doing what you love, and the money will follow.

5. Plan to retire early: Much earlier than you expect
Yes, the rules of the retirement game have changed. Nobody "retires" in the traditional sense. Nothing's safe. Not pensions, jobs, Social Security. You better plan on retiring earlier than expected; you may be retired prematurely, against your will. Increase your savings. Start that back-up second-career now -- you may need it sooner than you think.

6. Downsize your lifestyle: Start by saving 15% of income
Here are two key formulas to remember: One, if you're not saving at least 10% then you are spending too much. Two: Nothing saved equals nothing invested equals nothing compounding equals nothing in your retirement nest egg.

7. Buy no-load index funds: No brokers, no active managers
You don't need a broker nor funds run by active managers with high expense ratios. Protect your nest egg by investing in low-cost, no-load index funds. Research proves low expenses are the only reliable predictor of future performance.

8. Invest long-term: Market-timing is high-risk gambling
Nobody can time the market. Remember, about 75% of all managers fail to beat their benchmarks. They want you to play the market because they get rich from your trading fees and commissions. If you have an itch to gamble, go to Las Vegas or buy a lottery ticket -- the odds are higher and so is the entertainment value.

9. Rebalance: Focus on picking allocations first, not funds
Once you determine exactly what asset allocations fit your particular needs, stick to them. Remember, the mix of specific indexes is crucial, not the specific funds. Rebalance when necessary to bring your portfolio in line, ignoring brokers' relentless buy/sell pressure.

10. Live with gratitude: Life is a gift (so is your nest egg!)
Every day is an opportunity to be thankful for all you have. Share it with your loved ones, friends and those less fortunate around you in this wonderfully abundant world.
Happy New Year, folks! Go totally contrarian in the months ahead. Remember Buffett's investing rule No. 1: "Never lose money."

Trust no one. Play it conservative, because 2008-2010 will repeat of the harsh lessons of the 2000-2002 bear-recession.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/...32E%2D9312%2D315D2F92FC12%7D  

02.01.08 13:19  *BANK OF AMERICA SENKT ZIEL FÜR IBM AUF 118 (125) USD - NEUTRAL  
02.01.08 12:59 *BANK OF AMERICA SENKT AMD AUF SELL (NEUTRAL)
02.01.08 12:58 *BANK OF AMERICA SENKT NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR AUF SELL (NEUTRAL)
02.01.08 12:56 *BANK OF AMERICA SENKT TEXAS INSTRUMENTS AUF NEUTRAL (BUY)
02.01.08 12:55 *BANK OF AMERICA SENKT INTEL AUF NEUTRAL - ZIEL 26 (32) USD  

Letztes Jahr lag "Bär" Doug Kass mit seinen "Überraschungen für 2007" in einigen Fällen goldrichtig: So sagte er etwa den Zusammenbruch der PE-Aktivitäten infolge des Credit Crunchs wegen der Housing-Krise korrekt voraus (siehe unten im Text).

2008 "sieht" Kass Pleiten einiger Banken, darunter Countrywide Financials, und die "Große Verbraucher-Depression" als Ergänzung zur "Großen Immobilien-Depression. Am schlimmsten schneidet die Modebranche ab.

Die Fed soll bei jeder Sitzung die Zinsen um 0,25 % senken und der Dollar in 2008 weitere 10 % verlieren; Öl steigt auf 135 und Gold auf 1000 Dollar.

Die US-Wahlen im Herbst gehen erstaunlich knapp aus - ähnlich wie 2000.

---

[Hervorhebungen von mir - A.L.]
Investing
Kass: 20 Surprises for 2008
By Doug Kass
Street.com Contributor
1/2/2008 6:11 AM EST

...
In late December in each of the past five years, I have taken a page from former Morgan Stanley strategist Byron Wien -- and now the chief investment strategist at Pequot Capital Management -- and prepared a list of possible surprises for the coming year.

These are not intended to be predictions but rather events that have a reasonable chance of occurring despite the general perception that the odds are very long. I call these "possible improbable" events.

The real purpose of this endeavor is to consider positioning a portion of my portfolio in accordance with outlier events -- with the potential for large payoffs. After all, Wall Street research is still very conventional and based on "groupthink," despite the reforms over the past several years.

Mainstream and consensus expectations are just that, and in most cases they are deeply embedded into today's stock prices. If I succeed in at least making you think about outlier events, then the exercise has been worthwhile.

Almost half of last year's predicted surprises actually transpired, up from one-third in 2006 and from 20% in 2005. Nearly one-half of the prognostications proved prescient in 2004 and about one-third in the first year of surprises in 2003.

But it wasn't the quantity of the correctly predicted surprises that made 2007's list a remarkable success, it was the quality, as I hit on nearly every major variant theme: the severity of the housing depression, the turmoil and writedowns in the credit markets, the curtailing of private-equity deals and the reawakening of equity market volatility.

Consider just a couple of these quotes from our Surprise List for 2007 :

   * "A fractured mortgage market leads to a standstill in deal-making as the capital markets (and underwriting activity) seize up."

   * In early 2007, "evidence of cracks in subprime credits are ignored, with housing-related equities soaring to new 52-week highs by March 1. However, a dumping of homes on the market in the spring serves to result in a quantum increase in the months of unsold housing inventory and a dramatic drop in the average home price. ... Sales of existing and new homes take another sharp leg lower as we enter what I've dubbed the Great Housing Depression of 2007. Importantly, the financial intermediaries that source mortgage financing/origination begin to feel the financial brunt of the Great Mortgage Bubble of 2000-06 after years of creative but nonsensical lending behavior."

---

Überraschungsliste für 2008

It will be hard to do it again and beat last year's surprises, but without further ado, here is my Surprise List for 2008.

1. The Housing Depression of 2007 morphs into the Retail Spending Depression of 2008. Stubbornly high inflation coupled with a deceleration in the rate of job growth, which turns into job losses by midyear, and an absence of innovation (a creativity void in consumer electronic products and apparel), leads to an unprecedented and abrupt drop in personal consumption expenditures.

The Retail HOLDRs (RTH) exchange-traded fund declines to $80 from $94. Despite their apparent "value" today, retail stocks, especially women's apparel, are among the worst-performing stocks in the first half of 2008.

2. Under pressure from slowing consumer spending, disappointing capital spending and higher commodities, corporate profits drop 10% in 2008. Importantly, the pattern of economic activity grows increasingly inconsistent and lumpy, providing a difficult backdrop for corporate managers and investment managers to navigate.

3. The S&P 500 Index falls by 5%-10% in 2008, and 2007's laggards and leaders continue to be the same laggards and leaders in the coming year.

4. With a continuation of the credit and liquidity crises and an increased recognition that financial retrenchment will take years (not months), volatility pushes even higher. Daily moves of 1%-2% become more commonplace, serving to further alienate the individual investor.

5. The Federal Reserve embarks upon a series of moves to ease monetary policy in 2008. Nearly every meeting is accompanied by a 25-basis-point decrease in the federal funds rate even despite continued inflationary pressures.

Nevertheless the economy fails to revive as the Fed pushes on a string.

6. Growth in the Western European economies deteriorates throughout the year, and the markets in England and France drop at twice the rate of the U.S. market.

7. The Chinese juggernaut continues apace and, despite continued protestations of a market bubble, the Chinese market doubles again in 2008. [halt ich für fraglich - A.L.]

8. The Japanese market puts on a surprising resurgence as the world's investors respond to compressed valuations (vis-à-vis peer regions), reasonable multiples (absolutely and against Japanese bond yields), accelerated M&A activity, share buybacks and relative strong corporate profit growth.

9. The administration's proposal to revive the housing market falls on its face (as the housing bust accelerates), and President Bush enlists a well-placed Democrat and former cabinet member to become the U.S. housing czar, who has the primary charge to propose and administer a massive Marshall Plan for housing.

Several high-profile housing-related bankruptcies occur in 2008, including Countrywide Financial (CFC) , Beazer Homes (BZH) , Hovnanian (HOV) , Standard Pacific (SPF) , WCI Communities (WCI) and Radian Group (RDN).

10. Financial stocks fail to recover. No financial company is immune to the eroding market conditions, the spike in market volatility, the uneven direction in commodities and currency prices. Even the leader of the pack, Goldman Sachs (GS) , makes several bad bets in the derivative, currency and commodity markets, and its shares begin to underperform its peers as profit forecasts move lower.

Citigroup (C) halves its dividend, and the shares briefly trade in the mid-$20s. Asset sales and writedowns leave the bank crippled, and in late 2008 (after another capital infusion by Abu Dhabi), Citi is merged with Bank of America (BAC) . Its new name is its old name: CitiBank!

Bear Stearns (BSC) is acquired by HSBC (HBC) in a take-under (well below today's price) -- as investor Joe Lewis loses nearly $350 million on his near-10% position in the brokerage firm.

Mutual fund outflows and uncertainty regarding the integrity of money market funds result in the asset-management stocks being among the worst-performing sectors in 2008. With private-equity deals at a standstill, Blackstone (BX) shares trade down close to $10 a share. Late in the year, CEO Stephen Schwarzman and his management group take the company private.

11. With the economy weakening and corporate profits tumbling, investors pay up -- real up -- for growth. The three horsemen -- Research In Motion (RIMM) , Apple Computer (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) -- move into bubble status, and short interest triples as the naysayers increase their bets. Their shares double in 2008 even as most equities decline.

Technology disappoints as it becomes clear by the beginning of the second quarter that "double ordering" inflated recent revenue gains as the weakening consumers' appetite for electronics founders. Rapidly growing biotech names are embraced as their P/Es grow high into the sky and they become the New Big Thing, and market leaders. Housing-centric equities continue to deflate and mop up the rear.

12. Although private-equity M&A activity remains moribund, 2008 is highlighted by numerous mergers of equals as a weak U.S. economy necessitates the need for a strategy that produces synergies and cuts costs. Yahoo! (YHOO) and eBay (EBAY) merge. So do Amazon (AMZN) and Overstock.com (OSTK) .

13. A weakening economy will also hasten a number of divestitures. General Electric (GE) will sell NBC Universal to Time Warner (TWX) , which will not sell or spin off AOL.

14. Reversing its recent strength, the U.S. dollar's value falls by over 10% in 2008 (and gold rises to over $1,000 an ounce). Despite the weak domestic economy, foreign reserve diversification efforts and the demand for higher interest rates cause the yield on the 10-year U.S. note to move higher throughout the year.

15. The price of crude oil, insensitive to a weakening world economy, eclipses $135 per barrel after an "exogenous" event of terrorism, supply disruptions or political upheaval. The $100 level becomes the new $70! Surprisingly, energy stocks react in a muted fashion to the rip in price as, by midyear, the Democratic Party's populist view of a windfall tax on energy companies gains increased acceptance.

16. The Internet becomes the tactical nuke of the digital age. The Web is invaded on many levels as governments, consumers and investors freak out. First, an act of cyberterrorism occurs that compromises the security of a major government (similar to the attacks this year emanating from the Chinese military aimed at the German Chancellery) or uses DoS against media and e-commerce sites.

Second, a major data center will fail and will be far worse than the 1988 Cornell student incident that infected about 5% of the Unix boxes on the early Internet.

Third, cybercrime explodes exponentially in 2008. Financial markets will be exposed to hackers using elaborate fraud schemes (like liquidating and sweeping online brokerage accounts and shorting stocks, then employing a denial of service attack against the company). Fourth, Storm Trojan reappears.

17. The hedge fund community (especially of a quant kind) is disintermediated in 2008. Outflows accelerate, abetting an already conspicuous trend of rising volatility in a market that behaves more like a commodity than ever.

18. There are several major Enron-like accounting scandals in 2008, causing investor confidence to plummet. These will come in some large financial and industrial (rollup) companies in Europe and the U.S.

19. Democrats Clinton/Kerrey and Republicans McCain/Crist represent their parties in the presidential/vice presidential contest in November. Ron Paul becomes the Libertarian candidate. In a remarkably close election (reminiscent of the Bush/Gore battle of 2000), the Democrats grab the White House.

20. The politics of trade become more fractious (even in the Republican Party) as angst about globalization escalates in the U.S., reflecting inequalities and a cyclical contraction in our domestic economy. Doha dies. And the new Big Things (and the source of liquidity for the capital markets) -- Sovereign Wealth Funds -- become targets of American politicians (and suppress U.S. equities further).  

Schade dass die sich nicht selber auf "sell" setzen können. Wäre wohl der beste Short von allen...  

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Advanced Micro Devices  (AMD:
was downgraded to sell from neutral at Banc of America Securities, which said it is still premature to bottom-fish the stock despite a 62% drop in 2007. "Irrespective of whether AMD will be able to deliver on its promise to ramp the much-delayed Barcelona platform in volumes by the first or second quarters of 2008, we believe Barcelona will do very little to stem the share losses AMD will likely witness in servers and desktops vs. Intel's more competitive line-up. Furthermore, we believe that AMD's cost structure will be further pressured by higher depreciation and higher material costs associated with the ramp of quad core parts in 2008," the broker said. End of Story
sorry kann AMD hier nicht finden  

die "cybercrime", "technology" und "zu spezifischen Bank-Pleite" - Spekulationen. ;-)  

dass man BofA nicht shorten könnte...
z.B. DB34V1
mfg nf

Blackstone, the world's biggest private equity group, has been forced to walk away from a $1.8bn (£906m) deal after it was unable to secure financing.n the latest sign of contagion from the credit crunch, Blackstone could not raise debt to fund the acquisition of PHH Corp, a New Jersey-based mortgage and vehicle leasing business.
PHH - which it was buying in a joint venture with General Electric - has now demanded a $50m break fee from the private equity group as a result of the collapse.

JPMorgan Chase and Lehman Brothers told Blackstone in September that they might not be able to provide all the financing they had earlier promised, as a result of the credit crunch....
A record $438bn (£220bn) of leveraged buyout deals were completed last year before the markets turned. Most of that debt is still sitting on banks' balance sheets. Some banks are now selling leveraged debt at knock-down prices to free up their balance sheets. JP Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have all offered to sell high-yield bonds and loans for as little as 90 cents in the dollar.

Tranches of debt from major UK deals, including the AA and Saga deal, as well as KKR's acquisition of Boots, are thought to be among the global backlog of loans piling up on bank balance sheets.....A number of deals have fallen through since the credit crunch began to bite. Delta Two, the Qatar-backed investment fund, was forced to walk away from its proposed takeover of J Sainsbury, the supermarket chain, after its funding costs soared. British Airways and Texas Pacific Group, the private equity giant, gave up on a proposed takeover of Spanish airline Iberia in November. Cerberus, the US private equity and hedge fund group, withdrew its $8bn offer for Affiliated Computer Services in October. http://www.telegraph.co.uk  

kann man an Tagen wie diesen wenigstens gut platziert ein glückliches Jahr 2008 wünschen!

... und Funnies aus längst vergangenen Zeiten rauskramen ...

Danke für die viele Arbeit, deren Ergebnis sich hier finden lässt! Mögen sich all Eure Wünsche für 2008 erfüllen – es sei denn, sie stehen meinen entgegen.

Cheers,
w.