Stimmung wieder bullischer geworden. Immer mehr erwarten, dass es wieder nach Norden drehen wird:

Verhältnis Optimisten zu Pessimisten
		Bullish		Bearish		Neutral
Total		42 %		35 %		23 %
ggü. letzter Erhebung		+ 5 %		- 6 %		+ 1 %

        

 

DAX-Stimmungskurve

Cognitrend vom 16.1

 

kann noch weiter fallen:  

Osteuropa

Zunehmende Risiken für Anleger in Zentral- und Osteuropa

18. Januar 2008 Im Zuge der immer weiter um sich greifenden Kreditkrise sind in den vergangenen Wochen auch die zuvor sehr gute gelaufenen Börsen in Zentral- und Osteuropa aus der Erfolgsspur geraten. Einzelne Märkte oder Marktsegmente mussten seit Jahresbeginn Kursverluste von bis zu 21 Prozent hinnehmen, allen voran die Werte des polnischen mWIG40-Index.

Diese Entwicklung dürfte kaum verwundern. Denn die Kreditkrise brachte und bringt die internationalen Anleger dazu, ihre Risikoneigung und -wahrnehmung neu zu justieren. Das dürfte unter Umständen dazu führen, dass künftig auch jene Märkte kritischer betrachtet werden, die in den vergangenen Jahren im Rahmen der allgemeinen Hausse und der allumfassenden EU-Beitrittseuphorie einen gewaltigen Aufschwung erlebt hatten.

Credit Default Swaps osteuropäischer Staaten deutlich gestiegen

Analysen von Lombard Street Research und der deutschen Bank legen offen, dass goldenen Zeiten in diesen Regionen vorerst vorbei sein könnten. Immerhin sind die Credit Default Swaps der Staaten von Estland über Litauen, Lettland, Bulgarien, Rumänien und Russland bis hin zur Türkei in den vergangenen Monaten deutlich gestiegen. Das führt zur Vermutung, dass die Risiken einer Investition in diesen Regionen deutlich höher sein könnten, als das in den vergangenen Jahren allgemein angenommen wurde.

Längst sind die Zeiten vorbei, in welchen die Staaten mit einer Kombination zwischen einer tiefen Inflation, hohem Wachstum und stark steigenden Vermögenspreisen glänzen konnten. So sind vor allem in den baltischen Staaten die makroökonomischen Relationen zwischen Wachstum, Preisentwicklung, externen Ungleichgewichten, einer starken Verschuldung der privaten Haushalte und der weitgehend an den Euro gekoppelten Währungen völlig aus dem Ruder gelaufen.

Das durchschnittliche Leistungsbilanzdefizit der Zentraleuropäischen Staaten, einschließlich der drei baltischen „Tiger“, lag im vergangenen Jahr bei etwa neun Prozent des Bruttoinlandsproduktes. In Staaten wie Bulgarien und Lettland erreicht die Kennzahl sogar den Wert von 20 Prozent. Das sind jedoch nicht die einzigen Probleme. Sondern in Ländern wie Polen und Ungarn hat nicht nur die Verschuldung innerhalb kurzer Zeit dramatisch zugenommen, sondern ihre Struktur ist auch noch sehr problematisch. Denn ein Großteil der Finanzmittel kommt aus dem Ausland.

Starke Auslandsverschuldung der privaten Haushalte in Polen und Ungarn

Rund 60 Prozent der polnischen Hypotheken und rund 45 Prozent der ungarischen Hypotheken seien in ausländischen Währungen refinanziert, heißt es in der Studie von Lombard Street Research, die sich zumindest im Ergebnis weitgehend mit einer gleich gelagerten Analyse der Deutschen Bank deckt. Das sind die bekannten „Carry Trades“ des „kleinen Mannes“, der sich in den vergangenen Jahren vor allem im Schweizer Franken verschuldete. Auf diese Weise setzen sich die Schuldner einem hohen Wechselkursrisiko aus, das dann einträte, wenn der Franken deutlich aufwerten sollte.

Ungarn scheint insgesamt besonders gefährdet zu sein. Das Land steht einem Doppeldefizit im Budget und im Außenhandel gegenüber, das Wachstum ist schwach, die Preise steigen und die gegenwärtige Mixtur aus Geld- und Fiskalpolitik dürfte angesichts des fallenden internationalen Risikoappetits kaum jemanden überzeugen können. Manche Staaten wie Ungarn, sowie die tschechische und slowakische Republik, sind extrem abhängig von der Exportwirtschaft. Bei ihnen würde sich aufgrund ihrer geringen Größe eine Flaute in der Weltwirtschaft deutlicher bemerkbar machen, als beispielsweise in Brasilien.

Russland dagegen steht finanziell und makroökonomisch hervorragend da. Allerdings würde sich auch dessen Spielraum einschränken, sollte der Ölpreis in den kommenden Monaten oder Jahren deutlicher korrigieren.

Insgesamt dürfte man die Wertpapiermärkte der am deutlichsten exponierten Staaten der Region und vor allem auch die ausländischen Banken, die sich dort engagiert haben, mit der notwendigen Skepsis betrachten müssen. Das gilt vor allem für die baltischen Staaten, Bulgarien und nicht zuletzt auch Ungarn und Rumänien.

Die in dem Beitrag geäußerte Einschätzung gibt die Meinung des Autors und nicht die der F.A.Z.-Redaktion wieder.

---

Ein sehr wichtiges Gebiet für unsere Exporte im Maschinenbau - wichtiger als die USA

 

 

......Given the steep decline in shares of both companies - Merrill stock has lost 48 percent of its value over the past year, and Citi 54 percent - you might think that investors would be inclined to give the new CEOs a bit of a grace period.

But it hasn't worked out that way. Both companies' stock declines reflect continuing unease about the firms' reeling balance sheets and the toxic legacy of five years' worth of CDO underwriting. The ongoing seizure across broad segments of the CDO and asset-backed security secondary trading markets has collapsed prices to the point where investment banks and hedge funds are practically refusing to bid for these securities.

During Tuesday's conference call with analysts, Citi's Pandit and chief financial officer Gary Crittenden declined to offer or even confirm ballpark valuations for the bank's CDO holdings. They declined to acknowledge publicly that their $14.3 billion writedown - on a balance sheet with $29 billion in CDO exposure of all stripes remaining - might not be the last.
The only insight into the valuation question came from Oppenheimer analyst Meredith Whitney. Whitney, who has been saying for months that Citi will need to raise billions of dollars of new capital to offset massive writedowns, ventured that the valuations of certain Citigroup CDO slices known as mezzanines were around 43 cents on the dollar. As it turns out, her hunch is widely shared, at least by Citi's rivals, who told Fortune that their own CDO inventories for this sort of paper are also around 40 cents on the dollar. (Merrill, meanwhile, is valuing the mezzanine parts of its CDO portfolio at 20 cents on the dollar.)

But Pandit and Crittenden refused to answer Whitney directly, missing an opportunity to illuminate the market on Citi's valuation methodology and almost certainly contributing to this week's $3-plus drop in the stock's price.

Merrill's Thain, on the other hand, was more candid on his conference call, pointing out that he assumes that the value of a large chunk of the company's $11.5 billion writedown for CDOs and sub-prime securities won't come back. "I don't think we're going to get much back on these things," Thain said. "I don't think it's just like an illiquid market where liquidity comes back and you get back these losses.".....Thain implicitly sided with longtime housing market skeptics and bearish hedge fund managers, such as Hayman Capital's Kyle Bass, who have argued that the credit crisis represents a fundamental value collapse of a wide swath of the capital markets.

To Tavakoli, Citi's remaining CDO portfolio "has some problem paper to be sure, but based on the prospectuses I read, has a good chance to continue making [principal and interest] payments [on the debt] for awhile."

"Merrill's portfolio, on the other hand, does not," she said. She argued that Thain had little choice but to write down his firm's CDO portfolio into the 20-cents-on-the-dollar range. "Some of the deals are absolutely sleazy," she said. "Their 2007 vintage [CDO] paper is really problematic."  http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/17/news/companies/...g.fortune/index.htm  

Bush to outline stimulus plan.WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush will outline a new attempt to boost economic growth and avert a feared recession in a speech Friday after a day of talks between the White House and congressional leaders.

The president held talks with Democratic and Republicans on Capitol Hill on Thursday as Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, warned lawmakers to waste no time enacting a fiscal stimulus package to help beleaguered consumers. Both parties' leaders in the House of Representatives emerged from a 90-minute meeting later in the day with no details, but a commitment to get something done quickly.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush concluded during his recent trip to the Middle East that a stimulus package is needed, and said Friday's remarks will lay out "the principles for what an effective growth package would look like, and what would be ineffective."The president held a 30-minute conference call with congressional leaders Thursday, "and he told them he thought it was important that he talk to the American people about his coming to the conclusion that a growth package is important for the economy so we can keep economic growth going,"

http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/18/news/economy/bush_stimulus/index.htm
President Bush told congressional leaders privately on Thursday he favors personal income tax rebates and tax breaks for businesses to help avert a recession, officials said.
They described the developments on condition of anonymity until a formal announcement was made, and no further details were immediately available about the size of the rebates or components of the emerging package.......
Bush plans to talk about his criteria for the program at the White House Friday morning and later that day in a speech at a manufacturing plant in Frederick, Md.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/17/news/economy/...ostversion=2008011717  

http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2008/01/a_textbook_anal.html
Menzie laid out very nicely on Monday the traditional concerns many economists have about trying to use new fiscal legislation to combat an economic downturn. In brief, once you take into account how much time it will take to get new proposals signed into law, and the time it will require after that before the legislation actually has its effect on the economy, you are looking at a delay of at least a year and perhaps considerably longer. If, as some fear, we are already in a recession, and if this recession lasts about 9 months (which is the average duration of the last 4 U.S. recessions), that means the recession would be over by the time the new fiscal stimulus starts to have its initial effect.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/not-so-fast/
One assumption in Ben Bernanke’s testimony today was that if a recession happens, it will be over soon, so stimulus has to come fast or not at all. It’s by no means clear that this is right. To be fair, I think it’s right to caution Congress not to do anything now that won’t come in quickly. But both recent history and the nature of our current problem suggest that we may be in for more than a few bad months.
It’s true that the 2001 recession was officially very short. But the economy felt weak for much longer than that. It kept falling through the summer of 2003. And the Fed certainly thought the economy was weak, and needed more help; it kept cutting rates long after the recession was officially over, and didn’t start raising them until 2004.So the last slump de facto lasted about 2 1/2 years. And I don’t see why the same couldn’t happen this time.

Whatever the nature of the stimulus package Congress may approve and the President sign, I cannot imagine that there would fail to be a strong constituency seeking to ensure that it is anything but a temporary change. Thus when I read Bernanke's warnings--(a fiscal stimulus package should be implemented quickly)thought to myself, of course Bernanke's exactly right, and of course this is exactly what Congress and the President are inherently incapable of doing.http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/01/...gainst-fiscal-stimulus.html

und sollte diese Meinung allgemein geteilt werden,sehen wir heute noch blutrote Zahlen  

Die FAZ heißt die „Retter in der Not“ willkommen: arabische und asiatische Staatsfonds, die in den vergangenen Monaten über 50 Mrd Dollar in internationale Großbanken wie Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup und UBS gepumpt hätten. In der US-Politik sorgten die Ausländer zwar für politische Unruhe. „Doch gerade die rasche Hilfe der Staatsfonds für die Banken, für die die Fonds noch nicht einmal Mitspracherechte verlangen, beweist deren Nützlichkeit – und dass es unsinnig ist, Schranken gegen sie zu errichten.“ Im Gegensatz zur FAZ warnt der Economist vor den Folgen der ausländischen Kapitalspritzen. „Die Motive der souveränen Geldmenschen könnten böse sein: den Wettbewerb ersticken, nationale Champions schützen (...). Trotz ihrer Marktmacht zeigen diese Manager keinerlei Verantwortlichkeit gegenüber Regulatoren, Aktionären oder Wählern. Diese Umstände laufen fast zwangsläufig darauf hinaus, Schurken-Händler zu züchten.“

faz.net, economist.com

ganz schlicht mal die tueren dicht machen..

Credit crisis: £2bn fund bars withdrawals
18 January 2008, 8:01am

Panic among small investors has prompted one of Britain's biggest property funds to halt cash withdrawals as the global credit crunch continues to bite.

Other property funds have made similar moves to restrict access to their assets in order to prevent a Northern Rock-style run on their resources.
Scottish Equitable, a £2bn commercial property fund, said 129,000 small investors will be unable to remove their money for up to a year because cash reserves are now running low.

The fund, which is invested in shopping centres across the country and London office blocks, says its 'buffer fund' cash reserve is down to 4% of total assets, compared to the usual 10-15%.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/...n_article_id=429497&in_page_id=3&ct=5

Der US-Versicherer ACA kann sein als CDF (Credit default swap) verkauften "Versicherungen" für Bond-Portfolios im Wert von 60 Mrd. Dollar nicht mehr bedienen. Dies hegt Ängste vor dem "Crash aller Crashs", dem Platzen der monströsen CDF-Blase. Würden sich all diese Versicherungen als "heiße Luft" entpuppen, weil die Stillhalter nicht zahlungsfähig sind [eine Befürchtung, die ich bereits letztes Jahr wiederholt geäußert habe], würden urplötzlich ungeahnte Risiken in den Bond-Portfolios auftauchen. Die klassische Reaktion darauf sind Panikverkäufe dieser Bonds. Das durch die CDFs "versicherte" Underlying ist monströs: Mit 45 BILLIONEN [US-Engl.: trillions] Dollar entspricht es der Summe aller Bankeinlagen auf der Welt.

Bereits jetzt beginnen Käufer dieser CDFs (Banken, Broker usw.) zusätzliche Milliarden auf faule Bond-Portfolios (CDOs) als Verlust abzuschreiben. An dieser Stelle herzliche Grüße an den Vorstand der Hypo Real Estate.

Warren Buffett hat CDFs mal als "Massenvernichtungswaffen der Finanzmärkte" bezeichnet.

Die Aktie von ACA fiel von 15 auf 0,50 Dollar und wurde an der NYSE vom Handel ausgesetzt (Delisting). Der Versicherer ist das typische Beispiel eines Kredit-Kaisers, der in der Krise ohne Kleider dasteht.

---

Wall Street Journal
Default Fears Unnerve Markets
Partners in Credit Deals Face Big Write-Downs As Bond Insurer Teeters
By SUSAN PULLIAM and SERENA NG
January 18, 2008

The turmoil on Wall Street is beginning to rock a foundation of the financial system: the ability of institutions to make good on their many trades with one another.

Today, a struggling bond insurer, ACA Financial Guaranty Corp., will ask its trading partners for more time as it scrambles to unwind more than $60 billion of insurance contracts it sold to financial firms but can't fully pay off, according to people familiar with the matter. The contracts were intended to protect Wall Street firms from losses on mortgage securities and other debt they own.

The problem is that the insurer itself is teetering -- with repercussions across the financial world. Some of its trading partners, called counterparties, already are writing off billions of dollars because of its inability to pay.

Yesterday Merrill Lynch & Co. wrote down $3.1 billion on debt securities it had tried to hedge through ACA insurance contracts, as part of a larger Merrill write-down. Earlier this week, Citigroup Inc. set aside reserves of $935 million to cover the likelihood that trading partners won't make good on trades in this market. Such risk helped pummel the stock market yesterday as well.

At the center of these concerns is a vast, barely regulated market in which banks, hedge funds and others trade insurance against debt defaults. This isn't like life insurance or homeowners' insurance, which states regulate closely. It consists of financial contracts called credit-default swaps, in which one party, for a price, assumes the risk that a bond or loan will go bad. This market is vast: about $45 trillion, a number comparable to all of the deposits in banks around the world.

Not everyone who buys one of these contracts has bonds to insure; because the value of an insurance contract rises or falls with perceptions of risk, some players buy them just to speculate. In much the way gamblers make side bets on football games, a financial institution, hedge fund or other player can make unlimited bets on whether corporate loans or mortgage-backed securities will either strengthen or go sour.

If they default, everyone is supposed to settle up with each other, the way gamblers settle up with their bookies after a game. Even if there isn't a default, if the market value of the debt changes, parties in a swap may be required to make large payments to each other.

This being Wall Street, the investors often use heavy borrowing to magnify their wagers.

Relying on Strangers

With many bond values falling and defaults rising, especially in the mortgage arena, some institutions involved in these trades are weakened. This has investors and regulators worried that, through such swaps, some market players could spread their own problems to the wider financial system.

"You are essentially counting on the reliability of strangers" to pay up on their contracts, notes Warren Buffett, the Omaha billionaire. In some cases, he says, market players can't determine whether their trading partners have the ability to pay in times of severe market stress.

The issue is raising broader concern among regulators and investors over what Wall Street calls "counterparty risk," the danger that one party in a trade can't pay its losses. A recent survey by Greenwich Associates found that 26% of investors were worried about counterparty risk, nearly double those who said so in a poll last March.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, testifying before Congress yesterday, noted that "market participants still express considerable uncertainty about the appropriate valuation of complex financial assets and about the extent of additional losses that may be disclosed in the future." He said bad financial news has the potential to limit the amount of credit available to households and businesses.

Banking regulators have focused on counterparty risk amid the boom in credit derivatives, instruments whose value depends on the value of some other asset. But they've concentrated mainly on banks that service the instruments and on hedge funds that actively trade them -- jawboning to try to ensure that trades are properly documented. Few envisioned a little-known bond insurer like ACA causing so much instability.

This market poses challenges for would-be regulators. It isn't clear, for instance, how securities laws on fraud and insider trading would apply to credit-default swaps, because it's not clear in what way they are even securities; they are private contracts.

This isn't the first time the financial world has shuddered at counterparty risk. In the spring of 2005, the downgrading of General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. bonds to "junk" status led to losses for hedge funds that had bought exposure to these bonds through credit-default swaps.

....

One hedge-fund manager who has entered into credit-default swaps with 10 brokerage firms says he also has bought such contracts from other market players on the brokerage firms themselves -- guarding against the possibility they might not be able to pay.

The market for swaps has grown fivefold just since 2004. It has no publicly posted prices; the contracts are sold privately among dealers. The market began 12 years ago with insurance against defaults on corporate bonds, expanding in 2005 to mortgage securities.

ACA's Story

The troubles at ACA show how one spark can set off a brushfire. Launched 11 years ago by H. Russell Fraser, a former chief executive of Fitch Ratings and bond insurer Ambac Assurance, ACA originally set out to provide traditional insurance on municipal bonds.

ACA had just a single-A financial-strength rating -- not the top triple-A rating of larger players Ambac and MBIA Inc. -- and it insured municipal bonds whose own ratings were even lower. ACA promised to cover these bonds' interest and principal payments on the off chance that city power authorities, schools and other issuers couldn't make those payments.

It was a steady business but had limited growth. In 2000, ACA moved into the more lucrative arena known as "structured finance." Initially, it began pooling highly rated securities into bundles called collateralized debt obligations, and managed them for a fee. ACA later began writing insurance on securities backed by corporate and mortgage debt, by selling credit-default swaps.

Investment banks paid ACA annual fees for bearing the risk in their debt securities. This shielded them from the impact of market-price fluctuations, so the banks didn't have to reflect such fluctuations in their earnings reports.

As long as ACA kept its single-A rating, the banks didn't require ACA to post collateral even if the securities it insured slipped in value. It's different if a hedge fund, which doesn't have a credit rating, is selling the insurance. In that case, each time the security insured falls in value, the hedge fund may be asked to put up more collateral.

Who Owes What

Sometimes it isn't clear who owes what. A tiny hedge fund sold a swap to a unit of Wachovia Corp. this spring and faced repeated demands for more collateral as the subprime market slid. The fund, CDO Plus Master Fund Ltd., says in a suit in New York federal court that it insured a $10 million security, but Wachovia eventually demanded more than $10 million of collateral -- even as the security's value dwindled. Wachovia called the suit "without merit."

Last fall, with the market for low-end subprime mortgages collapsing, investors worried about firms with exposure to them. Analysts zeroed in on ACA and other bond insurers that had assumed the risk on many such securities.

ACA appeared to be in the most precarious position, because its capital of $425 million seemed minuscule compared with the $69 billion of credit protection it had provided on corporate and mortgage debt. ACA had added about $20 billion of that exposure between April and September.

The firm was upbeat. ACA Financial Guaranty "has never been in better financial condition," said Ted Gilpin, chief financial officer of parent company ACA Capital Holdings Inc., in a Nov. 8 conference call with investors. He cited a 67% year-over-year jump in the unit's third-quarter net profit.

Still, the parent firm reported an overall net loss of $1 billion because of charges from a drop in market value of the mortgage securities to which it was exposed. CEO Alan Roseman brushed off investor worries about the health of financial guarantors, saying clients "have been overfed with fiction from others," according to a transcript of the call.

The next day, Standard & Poor's said it was reviewing ACA's single-A rating for a possible downgrade because the weak earnings report could make it hard for ACA to win new business. ACA executives realized that if their credit rating was cut, the firm might have to post at least $1.7 billion in collateral to its 29 counterparties -- cash it didn't have. They began talking to these parties about how to address the issue. ACA Capital's shares [Aktien], which had traded at $15 in June, sank to 50 cents in mid-December and were delisted by the New York Stock Exchange.

On Dec. 19, S&P slashed ACA's credit to the deep "junk" rating of triple-C -- a rude shock not only to ACA but to its bank counterparties. ACA executives were furious with S&P, whose action effectively is putting the company out of business, according to people familiar with the matter. For the banks, the downgrade made the billions of dollars in insurance contracts ACA had provided all but worthless.

Waiving Collateral Demand

That evening, ACA said it had reached a "forbearance agreement" with counterparties, who temporarily waived their right to demand that it post collateral to its swap contracts. The agreement is set to expire today, but ACA is likely to announce an extension to give it more time to work out arrangements with each party, say people familiar with the matter.

ACA is attempting to unwind its swap agreements in an orderly manner, these people add. One possibility: a rescue plan giving the counterparties stakes in a restructured bond-insurance company. An alternative plan or capital infusion is also being considered, the people add. It's a tenuous position: ACA needs the cooperation of all counterparties to avoid collapse.

A few of its trading partners -- not just Merrill but also Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and French securities firm Calyon Securities -- recently reported write-downs on the ground that ACA wasn't likely to be able to continue protecting them from losses on mortgage securities. CIBC's write-down is $2 billion and Calyon's is about $1.7 billion. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. also have small exposures to ACA.

Merrill CEO John Thain says counterparty risk at his firm is limited to ACA. But ACA isn't the only insurer with a problem. Last month, Structured Credit Co., a small Dublin insurer, completed a plan that will pay its dozen trading partners just 5% of what they are owed. Its problems leave various financial firms with losses totaling about $250 million.

Investors, banks and regulators are also concerned about bigger bond insurers. Moody's said this week it may cut the top ratings on MBIA and Ambac.

Bill Gross, chief investment officer at Allianz SE's Pacific Investment Management Co, or Pimco, recently told investors that if defaults in investment-grade and junk corporate bonds this year approach historical norms of 1.25% (versus a mere 0.5% in 2007), sellers of default insurance on such bonds could face losses of $250 billion on the contracts. That, he said, would equal the losses some expect in the subprime-mortgage arena.

With no central trade processing of credit-default swaps, defining trading-partner risks can be a Herculean task. Mr. Buffett learned the difficulty of unraveling such complex instruments in 2002 when he directed General Re Corp., a reinsurer that had been acquired by his Berkshire Hathaway Inc., to pull back from the business of these swaps and other derivatives. It took General Re four years to whittle the business from 23,218 contracts to 197 by the end of 2006.

Doing so involved tracking down hundreds of counterparties to General Re's trades, many of which Mr. Buffett and his colleagues had never heard of, he says, including a bank in Finland and a small loan company in Japan, to name just two. One contract, Mr. Buffett says, was designed to run for 100 years. "We lost over $400 million on contracts that were supposedly" safe and properly priced, "and we did it in a leisurely way in a benign market," Mr. Buffett says. "If we had to unwind it in one month, who knows what would have happened?"  

Warren Buffett hat CDFs mal als "Massenvernichtungswaffen der Finanzmärkte" bezeichnet

Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) -- MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc., the two biggest bond insurers, have a more than 70 percent chance of going bankrupt, credit-default swaps show.

Prices for contracts that pay investors if Armonk, New York- based MBIA can't meet its debt obligations imply a 71 percent chance the company will default in the next five years, according to a JPMorgan Chase & Co. valuation model. For New York-based Ambac, credit-default swaps show the odds are 73 percent.

The companies fell the most ever in New York Stock Exchange trading yesterday, and prices of the contracts rose to a record high after Moody's Investors Service threatened to cut the AAA credit ratings of their insurance units. Ambac plunged $6.73, or 52 percent, to $6.24, and MBIA dropped $4.18 to $9.22....The bond insurers place their AAA stamp on $2.4 trillion of debt sold by thousands of municipalities across the country, as well as subprime-mortgage securities. Losing those rankings may cost borrowers and investors as much as $200 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.....
Under the new assumptions, losses for bond insurers may be $13.6 billion, 20 percent higher on average than those projected a month ago, S&P said yesterday. Ambac's projected losses are now $2.25 billion, 22 percent more than in December. MBIA's are $3.5 billion, an increase of 11 percent, S&P said......

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/...d=20601103&refer=us&sid=aJhQdBxLg_ko  

Comstock Partners, Inc.

The Bear Market is Only Beginning

January 17, 2008

Today’s plunge in the market decisively broke the nine-month consolidation top and makes it clear that we are in a bear market.  Furthermore, today’s frantic activity in Washington on the part of Congress, the Administration and the Fed is a definite acknowledgment that we are either entering or are already in a recession.  The nine-month topping process in the market was a typical period where a bullish consensus had evolved into one where investors were split on the outlook for the market and the economy.  Now the doubt has been resolved to the downside, and the market, only now, is beginning to price in a recession of yet unknown depth and duration.  It is far too early to look for a bottom in the face of what is to come—lower earnings estimates, more big write-offs and disappointing economic numbers.  As the table below indicates, the last eight recessions over 53 years were associated with an average decline in the S&P 500 of 30%.  At the close today the index was down 15% from its October peak.

 

MARKET PEAK   P/E   TROUGH  P/E  S&P 500 DECLINE  ECONOMY PEAK  TROUGH

          8/56            16.2      10/57    12.3            21.6%                      8/57                       4/58

          1/60            17.2      10/60    14.8            14.1                         4/60                       2/61

         12/68           19.9        5/70    19.9            37.3                        12/69                     11/70

          1/73            15.9       10/74    7.3             49.9                        11/73                       3/75

          2/80              8.9        3/80     8.9             21.6                         1/80                        7/80

        11/80            10.5        8/82     7.0             28.5                         7/81                       11/82

          7/90            17.8       10/90   14.1            20.4                         7/90                        3/91

          3/00            37.3       10/02   15.5            50.5                         3/01                       11/01

        10/07?          23.1         ?         ?                 ?                              ?                             ?

AVG.                    18.0                    11.1           30.5%

 

Those looking for an imminent bottom claim that the bad news is discounted and that stocks are cheap.  Others concede that there may be more to go on the downside, but are buying for the 3-to-5 year outlook.  We doubt that all of the bad news is discounted now since there is a lot that we still don’t know about the overall financial and credit situation and we are still getting negative surprises on a regular basis.  Earnings estimates for 2008 are only now beginning to be marked down—there is a lot more to go.  Furthermore in seven of the past eight instances shown in the table above the decline in the S&P 500 has been significantly higher than it is to date.  As for stocks being cheap, the P/E on trendline 2007 earnings was 23 at the October top, far higher than in any instance except for the dot-com boom of the last cycle.  The P/E is still 19.5 today, higher than it was at six of the last eight peaks. 

Although buying now for the next 3-to-5 years may pay off, it’s still a gamble.  At the close today the S&P was at about the same level as it was on April 30, 1999—that’s almost nine years with no gain other than a small dividend yield.  In our view the market is headed far lower, although there will probably be deceptive rallies along the way.  At some point there will be a final capitulation on the part of investors.  Until then, this remains a dangerous market.

NOTE:  The P/Es in the above table are based on trendline (smoothed) earnings.  This avoids the distortion of unusually good and bad years and gives a truer indication of market valuations than provided by the raw numbers.  

 

 

Heute erscheint es mir sinnvoll, erstmal das Bärenfell in Sicherheit zu bringen und in Deckung zu gehen. Ich vermute mal stark, dass die Bullen heute massive Luftunterstützung durch patriotisch heldenhafte Helikoptereinsätze bekommen könnten, mindestens aber wird es irgendeine konzentierte Aktion geben, die mit dem freien Spiel von Angebot und Nachfrage nur am Rande zu tun hat. Wenn jetzt kein dutlicher Rebound inklusive short-squeeze kommt, muss Onkel Ben damit rechnen, dass die Situation ausser Kontrolle gerät. Im DJI werden mindestens 300 bis 400 Punkte benötigt, um den Abwärtstrend in einen vernünftigen Kanal zu lenken (von dem Versuch, diesen Trend kurzfristig umzukehren zu wollen, hat er m.E. inzwischen Abstand genommen). Ich für meinen Teil bin jedenfalls heute raus und werde erst nach einer Zwischenerholung wieder einsteigen.

Good Trades

Bronco  

der US-Wirtschaft liefert der Chart der Fa. TEREX. Schaut euch mal, was die produzieren:

http://www.terex.com/main.php?obj=category&action=BROWSE&nav=prod  

... habe heute morgen komplett verschlafen.
Mann.
Bin nun @ work und fürchte den Ausstieg "verpennt" zu haben...  

Der VIX mißt die Angst der Investoren an der NYSE. Es ist noch etwas Luft nach oben...  

Frankfurt (Reuters) - Spekulationen auf eine bevorstehende Gewinnwarnung haben am Freitag die Aktien der Allianz Händlern zufolge um mehr als drei Prozent gedrückt.

"Es kursieren hier Gerüchte, dass eine Gewinnwarnung der Allianz bevorsteht", sagte ein Händler. Allianz lehnte eine Stellungnahme ab.

In ganz Europa standen Versicherer ganz oben auf den Verkaufslisten der Anleger. "Die Idee ist, dass auch die Versicherer selber in Subprime investiert sind", sagte ein weiterer Börsianer.

ich erinnere an den Artikel von Reuters,wo gesagt wurde ,die Dresdner Bank habe 28 Milliarden SIV´s und CDO zu verwalten
http://www.ariva.de/...ers_sagt_Sanio_t283343?pnr=3901561#jump3901561  

...denn sie haben Unmengen an Geld angelegt. Wer glaubt, dass die vollkommen um den Subprime-Markt in den USA "herum" angelegt haben glaubt auch an den Osterhasen.

Insofern sind Versicherer ein glasklarer Verkauf zur Zeit.  

Ich bin doch blöd!

Die MM sind long in ALV.
Ein Schelm wer böses denkt.  

Gerade habe ich eine Mail meines dort tätigen Bekannten erhalten, dem ich vor kurzem mal die "Seitwärtsmarkt-Theorie" gepostet hatte. Sein Kommentar dazu:

"... Die FED und die Regierung werden nach unserer festen Überzeugung die aus dem Ruder laufenden gewaltigen ökonomischen Verwerfungen weder stoppen noch bereinigen können, da ihre Möglichkeiten vor dem Hintergrund unsolider Staatsfinanzen sehr begrenzt sind. Wir rechnen noch in diesem Jahr mit Entwicklungen wie Anfang der 1930er, die bis 2010 andauern könnten. ..."

Seitwärtsmarkt ade!

 

 

Sehr schöner Satz. Den sollte man sich in 4000er Schriftgröße ausdrucken und übers Bett hängen...  

Natürlich ... Meeril Lünch weiß natürlich alles genau und besser als alle Anderen.
Deswegen haben die jetzt auch so eine gute Bilanz hingelegt .....

Ich rechne damit, daß es heute den Bären ordentlich der Pelz jucken wird..  

mit ner eigenen tradingseite, der war im bereich versicherungen unterwegs.....von dem hören wir nix mehr....seit die märkte fallen..... swingtrading  nannten sie das....  

Stellenabbau bei Schweizer Großbank

UBS auf Schrumpfkurs

Als Reaktion auf ihre milliardenschweren Verluste baut die Schweizer Großbank ihre Investmentbank um: Die Hälfte der Stellen im Eigenhandel und Immobiliengeschäft werden gestrichen.

Einem Bericht der Financial Times zufolge, werde außerdem das angeschlagene Hypothekengeschäft ausgegliedert. Das berichtete die britische Wirtschaftszeitung am Freitag unter Berufung auf ein internes Rundschreiben von Bankchef Marcel Rohner.

Zudem habe die Bank vor, sich aus dem Eigenhandel mit festverzinslichen Wertpapieren in den USA zurückzuziehen. Mit den Einschnitten wolle das Finanzinstitut das Verlustrisiko durch die Investmentbank senken.

Die Tochter war maßgeblich für die hohen Verluste der UBS im Vorjahr verantwortlich, die eine Kapitalspritze im Volumen über 13 Milliarden Schweizer Franken nötig gemacht hatten.

UBS erwartet dem Bericht zufolge, dass der Kapitaleinsatz für das Immobilien- und Verbriefungsgeschäft um zwei Drittel sinkt, während die Stellenzahl um die Hälfte schrumpfen soll.

Kürzlich hatte die Bank gewarnt, dass 2008 ebenso schwierig für die Branche werde wie das Vorjahr.

 

(Reuters/dpa/ckn) www.sueddeutsche.de/finanzen/artikel/580/153190/