They may not be buying many GM cars, but foreigners are buying something American: Treasury bills. They boosted holdings of the short-term securities by $147.4 billion in October, according to the U.S. Treasury, as global stock values plummeted. Foreign demand for longer-term Treasurys also perked up, but the appetite for U.S. stocks and corporate bonds cratered. IHS Global Insight economist Brian Bethune says the trend is still going strong, and Treasurys remain the safe haven of choice for foreign investors.
Swing time.
Not long ago, a one-day, 1 percent swing in stocks was considered a big move. But in the “new normal,” where the price of a barrel of oil can plunge more than $100 in five months and a pound of lobster costs less than a pound of bologna, perhaps the yardstick should move up to 5 percent. Since Sept. 29, the Standard & Poor’s 500 has swung by 5 percent — up or down — 18 times in 57 trading days. Such swings occurred only 17 times in the 53 years before Sept. 29, according to Standard & Poor’s.
We’re not that well.
Even hospitals are seeing less demand in this recession. While people get sick no matter what happens to the nation’s gross domestic product, the weak economy means fewer people have jobs — and health insurance — to pay for medical care. The nation lost more than a half million jobs in November alone, and millions of Americans have become uninsured this year, making them more likely to delay elective procedures. A survey of 108 hospitals in 29 states by Citi Investment Research analyst Gary Taylor found inpatient admissions during November fell more than 5 percent from the prior year. That’s pressuring stocks of hospital operators, which “are not as cheap as they look,” he says.
Different drummer.
Maybe investors need to liven up their musical taste. After studying 5,000 songs from 1958 to 2007, Philip Maymin, an assistant professor in the finance and risk engineering department at Polytechnic Institute of New York University, found that the steadier the rhythm of the top 100 songs in a given year, the more volatile the performance of the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, and vice versa. In economic terms: he found a negative correlation between the stock market’s swings and the “beat variance” of popular songs. Steady rhythm doesn’t necessarily mean sweet, mellow music. Songs from rocker Billy Idol to crooner Al Green count among the “low beat-variance” samples studied by Maymin. On the other end of the spectrum, singers as diverse as Barbra Streisand and Alice Cooper had high beat-variance songs.
Stan Choe, Ji Qi, The Associated Press
