Sunday, October 26, 2014

Monday October 27 Housing and Economic stories


Exec For Apple Supplier Dumped $2 Million In Stock Before His Company Went Bankrupt - (www.businessinsider.com) GT Advanced Technologies COO Daniel Squiller sold nearly $2 million in company stock before the firm filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week, according to The Wall Street Journal's Diasuke Wakabayashi. GTAT supplies Apple's sapphire display, which is expected to be used on the Apple Watch. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that GTAT's CEO sold a large amount of stock before Apple announced it would not be using sapphire on the iPhone 6 (except on the camera).  Squiller unloaded roughly $1.2 million in shares last May and has sold $750,000 in shares since then. These sales came after signs of production trouble, with Apple delaying payments starting in February, according to the WSJ.

Texas college bans students from 'Ebola countries' - (www.cnbc.com) At least two students from Nigeria who applied to a Texas college were told they wouldn't be admitted because of Ebola. Kamorudeen Abidogun, a Texas man originally from Nigeria, said he received two letters from Navarro College, a two-year community college with a campus about 58 miles from Dallas. Abidogun has five relatives in Nigeria who were applying to the school and who were using his home in Richmond, Texas, as a U.S. mailing address, he told CNBC. The college rejected the applications, citing confirmed Ebola cases in the country as the reason for the admissions decision.

Venezuela Bonds Fall as Harvard Team Says Default Likely - (www.bloomberg.com) Venezuela’s bonds declined to a three-year low after oil fell and Harvard University economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff said the South American country will probably default on its foreign debt. The price on the country’s benchmark dollar bonds due 2027 tumbled 2.4 cents to 62.17 cents on the dollar at 1:45 p.m. in New York, the lowest level since October 2011. Yields climbed 0.63 percentage point to 16.37 percent. Borrowing costs are surging as oil prices fall and a shortage of dollars makes it harder for the government to meet its citizens’ basic needs.

Oil and Junk Don’t Mix as Worst Bonds Sink as Much as 19% - (www.bloomberg.com) If you’re wondering why junk bonds keep selling off, consider this:Oil prices are tanking and energy companies now account for a record proportion of the below investment-grade market. Debt of high-yield energy companies has tumbled 4.6 percent since August, leading the market down as the price of Brent crude futures plummeted to the lowest in about four years. Some securities have fared much worse, like the 19 percent plunge in oil and gas producer Samson Investment Co.’s bonds. “It’s been a pretty sharp move,” said Matt Eagan, a fund manager at Loomis Sayles & Co. in Boston. “This is the first time in a long time where a sector has seen a big setback.”

If The Oil Plunge Continues, "Now May Be A Time To Panic" For US Shale Companies - (www.zerohedge.com) Over the past 5 years, the shale industry, fabricated or real reserves notwithstanding, has been a significant boon to the US economy for four main reasons: it has been the target of billions in fixed investment and CapEx spending, it has resulted in tens of thousands of high-paying jobs, its output has been a major tailwind for the US trade deficit, and has generally been a significant contributor to GDP (not to mention various Buffett-controlled or otherwise railway corporations). And perhaps, most importantly, it has become a huge buffer to the price of global oil, as the cost curve of US shale is horizontal, with a massive 10,000 kbls/day available within pennies of $85/bl.





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