Our puppies are all in a perky mood this morning. Help came from GDP figures, which (in our view), were surprisingly good. The economy grew by an annualized 0.6%, the official word is out, there is no recession, yet. Wow! As a famous Dutch footballer likes to put it, all advantages have disadvantages, however.
This might make the Fed in a more sober mood, and less likely to lower interest rates. We would understand, after all, most grown up central banks worry mainly about inflation, the Fed seems blissfully unaware so far…
Surely these GDP figures help cyclical companies like our dry-bulk shipper DRYS, which had a bit of a bad day yesterday after an analyst downgraded a competitor Excel. This sounds bad, until you realize that that competitor had a 50% run in a mere two weeks or so on take-over news.
Funny enough, it’s not Excel that’s been taken over (as the price reaction would suggest), but it’s them that are taking over stuff.
Trina Solar (TSL) is perking up as well on good news from industry heavyweight First Solar (FSLR), but since the latter uses a different technology the relevance is not too big. And it has still not passed that pesky 200 day moving average, so you know what we think about it.
Our Chinese supply chain management (SCM) software maker eFuture (EFUT) had good news from a recently opened B2B website, enabling retailers and suppliers to find one another easier and share applications on-line. It has only just opened, and had it’s first big customer already, a big Chinese department store (Wangfujing, if you must know) is using the platform to tie with 20.000 suppliers.
The share price looked like it was going to run away with things completely, but things have calmed down a little, for now.
And then there is InterOil. It’s showing signs of life. It had a good day yesterday, and today it’s running up further. Normally, since we’re very close to the conclusion of the drilling of Elk4, one is inclined to say that something might be up (other than the share price), but volume is light, so, we don’t think it’s the real deal yet.
But, also here a silver lining, It makes hedging against any mishaps with the Merrill Lynch loan or the drilling a bit cheaper. That Dutch footballer was on to something.