Monday, August 8, 2016

Tuesday August 9 2016 Housing and Economic stories

TOP STORIES:

This is a Warning Sign for Stocks – (www.wolfstreet.com) IPOs collapse to near-crisis levels even as stocks hover at record. It happens all the time now: On Monday, Salesforce, after trying to buy LinkedIn but getting outbid by Microsoft, bought the San Francisco startup Quip Inc., which has “about 40 people,” as the company says. Quip’s product is what it calls a “productivity platform for teams that allows them to be more connected, more collaborative and get more work done,” or what TechCrunch calls “a cloud-based word processing app.” Quip was founded in 2012 by Bret Taylor (co-creator of Google Maps, CTO of Facebook, “responsible for the like button,” and now on the board of Twitter) and Kevin Gibbs (“led engineering and product at Google and brought Google’s App Engine to market”). But as this corporate buying spree of startups continues, the IPO market has fizzled. There have been 54 IPOs through July this year, down 54% from 118 deals during the same period in 2015, according to Dealogic. These IPOs raised $11.5 billion, down 50%. It was the worst year-to-date since 2009.

Europe’s Tumbling Lenders Lose Almost Half Their Value in a Year - (www.bloomberg.com) Europe’s banking shares are back in the limelight for all the wrong reasons. On Tuesday, the second day of trading since stress tests showed almost all euro-area lenders would have sufficient capital to cope with a crisis, Germany’s Commerzbank AG and Deutsche Bank AG tumbled to fresh record lows, dragging a Stoxx Europe 600 Index gauge of their peers towards its biggest two-day loss in almost four weeks. “I don’t want to say it, but it’s Armageddon for the banks,” if the index drops any further, said Joe Tracy, head of continental European equities at Svenska Handelsbanken AB in Stockholm. Analysts forecast bank earnings will drop 18 percent this year, behind only energy and mining companies as the Stoxx 600’s biggest-contracting industry group. HSBC Holdings Plc, Societe Generale SA, ING Groep NV and UniCredit SpA are all scheduled to report results on Wednesday, followed by Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc on Friday.

"The Deals Are Collapsing" - Vancouver's Housing Bubble Has Burst - (www.zerohedge.com) As FP writes, on Thursday and Friday of last week, realtors and lawyers were desperate to get in under the tax hike deadline, and filed a record-setting 15,000 property transfer applications on the last two business days before B.C.’s punishing new 15-per-cent tax on foreign property buyers went into effect. As a result, more than 9,200 transactions were filed on Friday, breaking the 2007-2008 record of more than 8,400 in a single day, according to the B.C. Land Title and Survey Authority. It also reported over 5,800 transactions on Thursday, representing nearly as many deals registered at month’s end in April.  he demand was so heavy that it crashed the land titles office’s electronic filing service on both days, the authority said. That was last week. What about now that the tax is in place? As a new dawn breaks in Metro Vancouver’s real estate market, realty companies and real estate boards are reporting the first anecdotes of deals falling through as foreign buyers forfeited deposits on binding deals rather than pay the new tax. Worse, if only for the unprecedented local housing bubble, and certainly better for potential local homeowners who were locked out from the massively overpriced market, they report evidence of local buyers withdrawing offers in expectation that the market will soften.

China Shipbuilder Flags Bond Repayment Risks as Economy Slumps - (www.bloomberg.com) A Chinese shipbuilder said it may not be able to repay bonds due this week, highlighting rising default risks in the nation as the economy slumps. Wuhan Guoyu Logistics Industry Group Co. said there is uncertainty if it can repay the 400 million yuan ($60.2 million) of notes due Aug. 6 because of a capital shortage, according to a statement on Chinamoney’s website Monday. The company issued the one-year notes at a yield of 7 percent in 2015. Chinese companies are struggling with record debt payment in the second half as Premier Li Keqiang seeks to cut overcapacity even after the economy grew at the slowest pace in a quarter century. At least 17 bonds have defaulted this year, already exceeding the seven for all of 2015.

Bitcoin Sinks After Hackers Steal $65 Million From Exchange - (www.bloomberg.com) Bitcoin plunged, then erased losses Wednesday as one of the largest exchanges halted trading because hackers stole about $65 million of the digital currency. Bitcoin was little changed against the dollar as of 10:03 a.m. on Wednesday in New York, after sinking as much as 15 percent. Prices dropped 7.8 percent on Tuesday after declining 6.2 percent Monday. Hong Kong-based exchange Bitfinex said Tuesday it halted trading, withdrawals and deposits after discovering the security breach. The exchange said it was still investigating details and cooperating with law enforcement, but acknowledged some bitcoins were stolen from its users.




No comments: