Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
|
Last |
Change |
Percent |
|
|
S&P Futures |
1395.1 |
-5.3 |
-0.38% |
|
Eurostoxx Index |
2289.35 |
-17.3 |
-0.76% |
|
Oil (WTI) |
105.05 |
-1.1 |
-1.04% |
|
LIBOR |
0.466 |
0.000 |
0.00% |
|
US Dollar Index (DXY) |
79.17 |
-.349 |
0.44% |
|
10 Year Govt Bond Yield |
1.92% |
-0.02% |
|
|
RPX Composite Real Estate Index |
173 |
-0.4 |
Apologies for the late report. I am working in the San Diego office this morning and have been having technology issues.
Markets are generally weaker this morning on the back of weak unemployment numbers in Germany and a disappointing ADP report. Factory Orders were down 1.5%, a post-crisis low, and are showing a definite downward trend. Bonds and mortgage backed securities were stronger.
The New York ISM report showed that business conditions remain strong in the New York City area, although they slowed slightly from the March pace. The April index came in at 61.2 vs 67 in March. An ISM number above 50 indicates expansion, while below indicates contraction.
Beazer Homes reported a disappointing first quarter loss. That said, Beazer did report a marked improvement from Q111. New orders were up 29%, closings were up 49%, backlog was up 39%, and average price was up 4%. They remain “hopeful, but cautious” about the prospects of a sustained market recovery. Beazer is concentrated in the South and Southeast.
The Treasury is considering issuing floating rate notes. Part of the rationale is that it would decrease borrowing costs today, plus it would help insulate the government from funding hiccups if it has to roll over a lot of debt at once. Still, it seems strange for the government to consider floaters with interest rates so low. It is akin to taking out an ARM to save a handful of basis points on your mortgage payment.
Filed under: Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
Sorry, this is off topic but I thought some of you might find it interesting.
I know we’ve been struggling here a little lately at ATiM, plenty of blame to go around IMO, but one good thing we did was move from Blogger to WordPress. Thank-you Kevin, Scott, Okie and Michi.
And of course the iPhone app doesn’t permit you to schedule posts, nor does it permit you to unpublish a post you’ve already published. Let me explain the latter. Let’s say you accidentally publish a post while using the iPhone app – something I did within the first minute of using the app. You have no option to unpublish the post, to save it again as a draft. Your only option is to delete the entire post and lose it forever. Why? Who knows. When I asked Blogger about this, I was told that the app wasn’t intended to have fancy features (my paraphrase). Unpublishing a post is fancy? Scheduling posts is fancy? Showing which posts are already scheduled is fancy? Listing the posts in chronological order – or at least in the same order they are on the computer – is fancy? Using a consistent method for time-stamping the posts if fancy?
We are in the process of figuring out how to move our blog over to WordPress, after 8 years with Blogger. I enjoyed working with a number of Blogger’s top people, and Google’s top people, in the past, including people I didn’t even realize were top people, like Biz Stone (I just figured he was some helpful guy at Google LOL). But the service has been slow to update, they never understood the need for group blogs a la DailyKos, and now this new interface quite literally kills the ability to mobile blog.
This new content management system, that isn’t even compatible with the iPhone and the iPad, and this iPhone app that looks like it was written by a child, are an embarrassment to Google. Someone should be fired for designing this garbage, for approving of the design, for making such inferior, not-ready-for-prime-time products live, and then for not even bothering to update them for over half a year.
I have been a big fan of Blogger over the years and have extolled their virtues. But this is obscene. You’d be fired if you did this at a lesser company. At a place like Google, this should never have even happened in the first place.
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The University of Texas would have finished 8th in gold medal count at the 2008 Olympics if it had fielded its own national team.
The athletes were not all from Texas-and-the-49-other-states, however.
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I have a couple of Blogger blogs which I still update infrequently. This is bad news.
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yello
Luckily for us Kevin jumped on WordPress at the first sign of trouble and here we are. I think technically the site works very well.
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