Stuff I'm Reading this Morning...

Props to Big Player Carlos Slim, who's overtaken Bill Gates as the world's richest man.  (Forbes)

Here are the stocks that only go up.  Great screen.  (SlopeOfHope)

3 Stocks that short-sellers are ganging up on.  (SmartMoney)

Chinese inflation measure hits a 16 month high - but by all means, keep stimulating.  (Bloomberg)

Heidi Montag's umm, well-endowed PSA for credit card rights or something...who cares, just watch.  (LOLFed)

10 years after the tech bust, Amazon ($AMZN) has come the farthest.  (MarketBeat)

Why Apple ($AAPL) should just buy Adobe ($ADBE) already.  (TheAppleBlog)

A great breakdown of Jim Chanos's 4 arguments for the China bear case.  (WallStCheatSheet)

A look at oil demand trends in Brazil, India and California yields an interesting observation.  (Gregor.US)

Barry calls BS on the "epidemic of laziness".  (TBP)

It's so obvious now: Diet soda caused the crash.  Awesome.  (TheFly)

The Financial MSM/ Blogoshpere is all aflutter with this question:  Who Will Barclays Bank Buy?

There are clues, from the Wall Street Journal:

Barclays is hunting for a retail bank at a good price that would give it more deposits and build on the presence of Barclays Capital in the U.S., these people said. The bank, in response to potential changes in banking regulation, has designated an internal team to assess possible targets, these people said. Barclays is focused only on reconnaissance right now, and no deal is imminent, they said.

According to the FDIC, Barclays is really weak when it comes to US deposits - with less than $5 billion compared to Bank of America ($BAC) with $920 billion or Wells Fargo ($WFC) at $766 billion.  Deposits can't really be built up at this point, only acquired. 

I was doing to some homework myself on this question and I was amazed at how few banks are left that could really move the needle for Barclays.  I came up with a few names, as have others (Comerica, SunTrust, units of other large banks etc) but the environment is hardly what you would call "target-rich".

Where have all the super-regionals gone?  Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the nuclear holocaust of 2008.  Almost.

Here's some reading on the topic of Barclays quarry...

Sources:

SunTrust? Comerica? Fifth Third? What U.S. Bank Should Barclays Buy? (Deal Journal)

Barclays on the Hunt for a US Retail Bank (WSJ)

Riddle me this: what US retail bank is Barclays eyeing? (FT Alphaville)

from Bad Day by R.E.M.

I was mildly chided for my Springtime for Setup City piece yesterday by one of my fellow bloggers for not including any nuance and for being too "directional".

I'll elaborate a bit here both for his edification and to reinforce my own feelings on this tape.

I don't make directional calls here on TRB or give any advice - I do that for a living for one and secondly, I don't feel that my contributions would be meaningful in that department amidst the cacophany of other voices.  My Setups post yesterday was the enunciation of what we are all seeing heading into spring. 

My caveat was that as great of an environment as this may be for stock trading, black clouds could appear out of nowhere, and so we must all be wary.

I would say that this is a pretty common take on what's happening right now and as balanced an opinion as you'll find.  Regular readers know that I can't be pigeonholed as either a bull or a bear, an optimist or a pessimist.  I am both and neither, much to the chagrin of those who want a more orthodox narrative.

But after plenty of Bad Days - bad days which I have laboriously documented in gritty detail here on TRB - I think I'll focus on the poetry of this market for now rather than the ugly underbelly.  At least for a little while.

I know employment still sucks.  I know the retailers are reporting "better than expected" against the worst comps in history.  I know the banks are only lending to each other.  I know that unsold home inventories are heavier than that Precious actress at the Oscars.  I know all of the refinancings and bond buying is being driven by a desperate reach for yield.  I know, I know, I know.

But we all know and have known for a while so I am changing the discourse here.

You want the ugly stuff, you know where to find it.

BlackRock's Bob Doll says the recovery is for real - get on board.  (PragCap)

Buyout firms having trouble spending half a trillion dollars.  Let me help out with that.  (Bloomberg)

The SEC's top economist quits over the new short-selling rules.  (Dealbreaker)

New Yorkers are the toughest people to scam according to a recent FTC report.  I don't know about that.  (DailyNews)

Mebane's Forbes article about following the smart money yielded a huge winner in Facet Biotech ($FACT).  (WorldBeta)

Some recession slang, in case this sh*t drags on much longer.  (Ritholtz)

Google ($GOOG) as the new Microsoft ($MSFT).  (InvestingCaffeine)

The Prime Minister of Greece pens an op-ed.  (NYT)

Adrienne on web ads and her decision to quit her day job and focus on blogging full-time.  Knock 'em dead!  (JrDeputyAcct)

A few thoughts late in the day...

* The VIX goes green!  A miracle!  I can't remember the last time I saw it peak its head into green territory.  I'll be reading the options guys for their take, like Bill Luby and Adam Warner.

* Things may have gotten overdone to the upside intraday.  The $CSCO "news" was the ultimate non-event and then the fireworks started when $AIG, $FNM, $FRE and the rest of the government-assisted training bra gang took the wheel.  A blow-off was almost preordained once that nonsense got started.

* Howard once said that when the market is trending, you can't think.  I completely agree and the late day sell-off gives me a chance to concentrate on what's working, what isn't and what I'm missing. 

* I've gotten really good at tuning out the whole regulatory reform debate.  I'm amazed at how hard it is for people to get how little it matters right now.  Nothing will happen on banking reform until late summer - until tough talk is needed as window dressing for the elections. 

I was going to work late tonight, but on second thought, its too nice nice out here in NY. 

Cheers, thanks for reading today.

I plucked a bud off the cherry blossom tree in front of my house yesterday.  Although the outside of it was gnarled and winter-brown, inside was the the soft, moist green of a honeydew melon.  So much potential inside of that little brown bud - a setup for the imminent pink and white explosion that engulfs my tree every spring.

Talking to traders everyday, I continue to hear the term "Setup". 

This is a noun that denotes a technical formation, usually the harbinger of a profitable trade.  In a market with hundreds of stocks exhibiting bullish setups, it is hard not to think of the hundreds - thousands - of buds that will shortly burst with the colorful pageantry of renewal.

And technical analysts do not have exclusivity on the concept of setups.  Many fundamental and quantitative setups are being crowed by the practitioners of the those sciences art forms.  "How about the fact that $800 billion in cash still resides on the balance sheets of US corporations just waiting to be put to work?" asks one.  "Or what about the fact that the dollar value of U.S. company takeovers is up 46% to $144 billion this year?" asks another.  And what of the record number of biotech drugs in the pipeline and the new development of passive money managers embracing activism to improve stock returns?" inquires the chorus.

This can be taken away from us in a moment - in the time it takes for a black, threatening thundercloud to appear on the horizon - but for now, it is ours. 

Technical Setups, Fundamental Setups, Quantitative Setups - all are apparent in this tape.  But more importantly, there is a Qualitative Setup, one that may trump all the rest:  The people I work with and trade with and invest with here in New York and across the country are smiling again.  Smiling on the way to work and smiling on the way home. 

Ear to ear.

Setup City is in full bloom.

"To whom it may concern: It is springtime.  It is late afternoon." - Kurt Vonnegut

Bruce Berkowitz (Fairholme Funds) on why he's buying Citigroup ($C).  (Fortune)

New York is the most important city for superheroes.  (NYT)

Lindsay Lohan is suing E*Trade for $100 million over the "milkaholic" baby commercial.  (Gawker)

Must-read: Rick Bookstaber comes out swinging against the "off-the-wall gold bubble".  (RickBookstaber)

Happy anniversary to a major market bottom - and a major market top.  (TBP)

Sex.com domain up for auction on March 18th.  (NYP)

Here are ten rules for enjoying the stock market.  (HowardLindzon)

Get your checkbooks out, Mark Madoff is back in business!  (Dealbreaker)

Greece needs to swallow its pride and call in the IMF Ghostbusters already.  (Bloomberg)

Complacency and 2 other risks for the market right now.  (PragCap)

Godzilla started blogging - in Haiku form.  A must read.  (Godzilla.Tumblr)

Here's my short list of who should've been in attendance, and then I'll send you over to Reuters for the lowdown on the actual meeting...

Bloggers / Treasury wishlist:

Chris Whalen (The Big Picture)

Adrienne Gonzales (Jr Deputy Accountant)

Tom Brakke (Research Puzzle)

Bill Singer (BrokeAndBroker)

Mark Thoma (Economist's View)

Gregor Macdonald (Gregor.US)

Paul Vigna (DJ MarketTalk)

Michael Pento (Greenfaucet)

Anyway, these are the (non-anonymous) bloggers that I'd love to have seen get the chance to ask the right questions for us.  Oh well, maybe next week they'll invite in USA Today and Readers Digest.  Whatever.

Read Also:

Bloggers @ Treasury (Felix Salmon)

Driscoll is calling this event the Data Singularity. 

From The Dataspora Blog:

In a nutshell, the Data Singularity is this: humans are being spliced out of the data-driven processes around us, and frequently we aren’t even at the terminal node of action. International cargo shipments, high-frequency stock trades, and genetic diagnoses are all made without us.

Absent humans, these data and decision loops have far less friction; they become constrained only by the costs of bandwidth, computation, and storage– all of which are dropping exponentially.

The result is an explosion of data thrown off from these machine-mediated pipelines, along with data about those flows (and data about that data, and so on). The machines all around us — our smart phones, smart cars, and fee-happy bank accounts — are talking, and increasingly we’re being left out of the conversation.

Anyone attuned to the behavior of the stock market of late is well aware that we are often watching a grown-up version of BattleBots.  I read somewhere that automated, algorithmic trading had doubled as a percentage of all US trading activity in the last decade and I'm hardly surprised.

His discussion will give you chills about what this means for us, but you will also begin to divine opportunity if you can get your mind right on the possibilities.  A fantastic read.

Source:

The Data Singularity is Here (Dataspora Blog)