Il consumatore spiato? Aggiornamento al 19 marzo 2010.

Fate attenzione quando andate a fare la spesa al supermercato: vi potrebbero stare spiando...ecco quanto racconta il New York Times di oggi:




The curvy mannequin piqued the interest of a couple of lanky teenage boys. Little did they know that as they groped its tight maroon shirt in the clothing store that day, video cameras were rolling.
At a mall, a father emerged from a store dragging his unruly young son by the scruff of the neck, as if he were the family cat. The man had no idea his parenting skills were being immortalized.
At an office supply store, a mother decided to get an item from a high shelf by balancing her small child on her shoulders, unaware that she, too, was being recorded.
These scenes may seem like random shopping bloopers, but they are meaningful to stores that are striving to engineer a better experience for the consumer, and ultimately, higher sales for themselves. Such clips, retailers say, can help them find solutions to problems in their stores — by installing seating and activity areas to mollify children, for instance, or by lowering shelves so merchandise is within easy reach. 


Qui trovate alcune riprese che immortalano i consumatori in momenti più o meno imbarazzanti...




Il Financial Times si interroga sul significato dei nuovi minimi dell'indice di volatilità VIX: 


Mr Curnutt says that the benefit of the fall in the Vix is that investors can buy insurance against a decline in shares much more cheaply, a strategy which many investors continue to pursue. Indeed, there has been some pick-up in hedging activities, as some investors see a sharp fall of the Vix as a potential sign of turbulence ahead, a type of contrarian indicator.
The analysis by Birinyi Associates found that this had, on occasion, proved to be the right strategy. “It [the Vix] might, however, be useful in that it appears that high volatility might actually be a contrarian indicator,” the study said.
Whether low volatility has the same contrarian value is less clear-cut. The coming months will offer more valuable market history to analyse.



Sempre il Financial Times attribuisce al ritorno della risk-aversion il ritracciamento di ieri della borsa...


...mentre qui potere leggere (e qui potete vedere un breve video)  dell'avventura di un signore  che di avversione per il rischio proprio non ne ha... 


Per i comuni mortali... l'unico investimento privo di rischio è tradizionalmente costituito dai buoni del Tesoro USA...ma anche questa possibilità potrebbe ormai appartenere al passato...:

Moody’s said the United States and other major Western nations, particularly Britain, have moved “substantially” closer to losing their gilt-edged ratings. The ratings are “stable,” but “their ‘distance-to-downgrade’ has in all cases substantially diminished,” the credit ratings agency said. (...) 


“Growth alone will not resolve an increasingly complicated debt equation,” Moody’s said. “Preserving debt affordability” — the ratio of interest payments to government revenue — “at levels consistent with Aaa ratings will invariably require fiscal adjustments of a magnitude that, in some cases, will test social cohesion.” The United States, Britain, France and Germany have always been rated triple-A by Moody’s, with the United States first rated in 1949.

...proprio mentre sta per abbattersi sul mercato una montagna di debito corporate in scadenza: 

When the Mayans envisioned the world coming to an end in 2012 — at least in the Hollywood telling — they didn’t count junk bonds among the perils that would lead to worldwide disaster.

Maybe they should have, because 2012 also is the beginning of a three-year period in which more than $700 billion in risky, high-yield corporate debt begins to come due, an extraordinary surge that some analysts fear could overload the debt markets.
With huge bills about to hit corporations and the federal government around the same time, the worry is that some companies will have trouble getting new loans, spurring defaults and a wave of bankruptcies.
The United States government alone will need to borrow nearly $2 trillion in 2012, to bridge the projected budget deficit for that year and to refinance existing debt.(...) 


The result is a potential financial doomsday, or what bond analysts call a maturity wall. From $21 billion due this year, junk bonds are set to mature at a rate of $155 billion in 2012, $212 billion in 2013 and $338 billion in 2014.
The credit markets have gradually returned to normal since the financial crisis, particularly in recent months, making more loans available to companies and signaling confidence in the pace of economic recovery. But the issue is whether they can absorb the coming surge in demand for credit.



Ecco l'aggiornamento al 19 marzo 2010

	Asset	valuta	tendenza	pendenza	tendenza	pendenza	valore
			medio	medio	breve	breve
			periodo	periodo	periodo	periodo
1.	S&P500	USD	POS	NEU	POS	POS	1159,9
2.	Ftse EPRA/NAREIT Global	USD	POS	NEU	POS	POS	1822,36
3.	Euro Government Bond 30yr	EUR	POS	POS	POS	POS	182,99
4.	EuroStoxx	EUR	POS	POS	POS	NEU	273,50
5.	CRB	USD	POS	NEG	NEG	NEG	272,63
6.	Eur/USD	N/A	NEG	NEU	NEG	POS	1,3562