Daily Top Ten – October 18, 2016

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1. Three Month Libor at Highest Since 2009.

Heading Higher
While most benchmarks have remained low this year, Libor has climbed because of new money-market rules

Source: Bloomberg

Libor has risen to the highest level since 2009, even though the Fed’s benchmark has stayed constant. Given this discrepancy, it would be logical for companies to rely less on markets that are pegged to Libor and instead issue debt in fixed-rate markets that are more influenced by the fed funds rate.

THREE-MONTH LIBOR0.881%

But that’s not happening. In fact, companies have only accelerated their issuance of floating-rate debt. For example, new U.S. leveraged-loan sales have steadily ticked up in recent months.

https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-10-14/surging-junk-loan-sales-take-the-edge-off-libor-gloom

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Daily Top Ten – October 17, 2016

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1. Weekend Bullets.

  • *National Institute of Retirement Security-Poll of 40m working age households, some 45% of the total have accumulated exactly zero savings in retirement accounts.
  • *Moody’s Investor Services-State Pension Plans short $1.25 Trillion at the end of their fiscal 2015.  That’s It!
  • *Strip energy out of the last 6 quarters S&P profit margins leaves them basically unchanged.
  • *The Market has been positive during earnings season only 4x out of 10 when Alcoa drops 10% or more.
  • *Short Interest in AMZN up 89% this year.  E-commerce accounts for 8% of all retail sales in the U.S.—AMZN controls 60% of those sales.
  • *Thailand had 7 prime ministers in 10 years.
  • *Natural Gas Producers have fewer active drilling rigs heading into winter than in any other in the 29 year history of the Baker Hughes Rig Count.
  • *More money manager mergers to come…Janus/Henderson expects to cut costs by $110m annually in first 3 years.
  • *Salesforce sells for 218x pretax earnings and 7x sales.
  • *Buybacks in the second quarter were down 21% from first quarter and 3% y over y
  • *Volatility in August—S&P standard deviation during that month fell below 98% of all observances since 1950

http://www.barrons.com/home-page

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