All attention will be on JPMorgan Chase's Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon as he takes the stage Tuesday morning during the bank's annual shareholder meeting in Tampa, Florida.
» Read MoreLast week, noted provocateur John Carney boldly suggested that hedge funds short gold into the recent rally.
Bold?
Yes. But if shorting into a global rally of uncertain proportions is more than your stomach lining can handle … here are 3 other ideas to play the rally.
It's not exactly new material. The Merriam-Webster dictionary says the first known use of it was in 1982.
Like the bull market, we haven't seen a big push for faux leather or "pleather" in a long time. But, it's making a comeback. What polyester was to John Travolta in 1977, pleather may be to us in 2010.
Wall Street Strategies Research Analyst Brian Sozzi says retailers are betting heavily right now on the plastic leather for jackets and boots. The trend started last holiday season.
The kind of people who like to attribute movements of stock indexes to causal events were busy attributing Friday’s rally to the remarks of David Tepper on Squawk Box.
“Call it the Tepper rally,” Mark DeCambre of the New York Post wrote .
Tepper’s bullishness was based on his prediction that we’re facing two possible economic outcomes—either the economy recovers on its own or the Fed will step in to inject more money through quantitative easing.
If the economy recovers on its own, stocks will rise, bonds won’t do as well, and gold won’t do as well, Tepper told CNBC. If the economy double-dips, the Fed will renew its quantitative easing.
“If the very nature of these ‘creation units’ is beyond the comprehension of most investors, the actual mechanics of ETFs involve an even far more complex matrix of transactions.”
“By doing the only thing he can do in these ‘unusually uncertain’ times which is to assure investors that the Fed will step in and ‘provide additional accommodation’ if the outlook should deteriorate, Mr. Bernanke has convinced investors he’s holding a royal flush. And because investors are choosing to believe his bluff and that another round of quantitative easing will be launched to stimulate a slow economy if needed, investors are doing Mr. Bernanke’s bidding for him.”
— Abigail Doolittle, founder, Peak Theories Research
Last Friday’s CNBC appearance by hedge fund manager David Tepper garnered much interest among the capital market pros, particularly since it seemed to generate a wave of buying interest that pushed stocks up sharply in the day’s trading. \(See my piece, “Who Let the Bulls Back In? ” \)
Fixed income desks are going to be subject to severe layoffs, according to a highly placed Wall Street insider with information about the plans of his firm and the plans of rivals.
"It's going to be a blood bath. Volume is down for everything except Treasuries and Munis. These guys aren't making money and soon they'll be out of their jobs," he said.
He is sitting in Grand Central's Oyster bar. It's an annual ritual for him: welcoming in September with a frenzy of shell fish and wine.
Typically he invites along a few friends and treats them to a discourse on the state of Wall Street.
The circuit breakers from the May flash crash did not hold today for Progress Energy .
Reports are circulating that at least 160 executions occurred in the five dollar range for a stock that had been trading in the low forties. Initial reports indicate that those trades occurred away from the New York Stock Exchange.
Investigation doubtless to follow…
Jessica Pressler's amazing New York magazine feature on Appaloosa Management founder David Tepper reveals, between the lines, the secret formula of the hedge fund trader's success: buying assets without leverage.
In the traditional discussion about bonuses on Wall Street, bankers are described as driven primarily by greed and problems with banks are assumed to be linked to the way bankers are paid.
But if greed is such an overwhelming part of a banker's motivation, how do we account for the actions of Citigroup's $30 million energy banker? Stephen Trauber had a stunningly successful year at UBS last year, bringing in $200 million in fees, according to the Wall Street Journal. But Citi was able to poach him because UBS wouldn't allow him more control over what his team was paid.
Calling for home prices to fall further probably won't win Vernon Smith a lot of friends. But that isn't stopping him.
"I am just amazed how consistent housing is at the forefront of recoveries, which is also assisted by durable good expenditures," said Vernon Smith, winner of the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (with Daniel Kahneman) and professor of economics at Chapman University's Argyros School of Business and Economics and School of Law in Orange, California.
"I consider housing the most durable good of all. Going back to the Great Depression, you can see house expenditures started to go down in 1926 and they were down substantially by the time the stock market crashed in 1929 and I think that tells you why the banks were in trouble.
The banks were in trouble because of a balance sheet problem. Really bad recessions are essentially balance sheet crunches. The value of bank mortgage portfolio assets is all of a sudden down substantially and you not only have households under water but you also have banks under water."
Senior Editor covering Wall Street, hedge funds, financial regulation and other business news.
Senior writer for CNBC.com, covering the gamut of issues affecting the stock market and the economy.
A shareholder proposal to sever the roles of chairman and CEO at JPMorgan appears to have been defeated.
William Gerber, TD Ameritrade CFO; Tom Naratil, UBS CFO; and Timothy Sloan, Wells Fargo CFO, share their perspective on job creation and the economic recovery.
