Skew... view?

[Falk]

Newsreporting is troubling me. I also have access to European news reporting everyday. One thing that I have noticed is that the type of content is very different regarding who is involved.

If a US solider has comitted a crime his picture and name is shown. His actions sort of unjustifies (is THAT a word?) the war, the foreign policy and the nation in general. (Now, I am against war, but I do believe that one should always follow through.) How come the reporting of individual events like that overwhelms everyting? Why was the capturing of a 19 year old female soldier suddenly more important than the rest of the war? How come the beating of Iraq prisoners was more in focus than car bombs on civilians? It would have been much more intresing to find out what drives people to suicide bomb their fellow countrymen.

Sureley this is a smart trick if you want to form an opinion, but what is the point? What reason is there for TV or newspapers to have opinions like that? Aren't news reporters always bragging of their objectiveness? I have a hard time trusting any kind of information that emerges right now.

If I want to find truely neutral reporting, where do I look?

/Falk

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Dat's right - if Obama don't do sumpin' `bout the economy we all gonna get skewed...

The skew view - the latest signal of stock-market doom?
Thu Oct 15, 2015 | Wall Street is forever on the lookout for ever more exotic indicators of impending doom for the stock market, and the latest measure to catch eyeballs is the CBOE Skew index .SKEWX which recently flashed panic signals like never before.

The options-based index tracks the implied volatility of deep out-of-the-money options - that is, options that are not profitable yet - on the S&P 500 to measure the market's expectations for large declines in the index. The SKEW index hit an all-time high of 148.92 on Monday, a reading that suggests a higher likelihood of a large decline in the market. So is it time to panic? Probably not. "This is one of the cases where just looking at the chart of some index can actually give you the entirely wrong conclusion," said Jared Woodard, equity derivatives strategist at BGC Partners.

A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shortly after the opening of the markets in New York​

People may have been paying increased attention to this index given that the last time it spiked, in September 2014, its peak reading preceded a 7 percent drop in the S&P index before the market bottomed. The index has been running hot of late: There have been 15 readings above 140 in the index's history since 1990, and 12 of those have been in the last two years. The index's changed behavior, coming at a time when investors are on the lookout for signals that could herald the end of the bull market, has grabbed a fair share of interest. Analysts peg the greater frequency of spikes in the index to the increased cost of hedging, as regulatory changes have driven a number of big banks to cut back on market-making activities and newer dealers demand higher premiums to sell insurance.

As of yet, the index is not one that many traders swear by. Of the 12 readings above 140 in the past two years, on average, four weeks later the S&P 500 was down just 0.64 percent. A number of much more widely followed indicators of investor anxiety, including traditional measures of skew that look at the difference in demand for put options versus call options, paint a picture of elevated levels of caution but are far from all-time highs. "If there was any kind of real move that justified this (reading) you should be able to see it in other measures," Woodard said. The CBOE Volatility Index .VIX, the market’s favored barometer of volatility, is trading below its long-term average of 20, and has been largely trending down after a spike in late-August. On Thursday it was down 4 percent to 17.23.

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Gasoline weighs on U.S. consumer prices, but inflation set to rise
Thu Oct 15, 2015 - U.S. consumer prices recorded their biggest drop in eight months in September as the cost of gasoline fell, but a steady pick-up in the prices of other goods and services suggested inflation was poised to rise.

There was good news on the labor market, with other data on Thursday showing new applications for unemployment aid fell back to a 42-year low last week. The very low level of layoffs and gradually firming underlying inflation could keep the door open to an interest rate increase from the Federal Reserve this year. "Today's reports strengthen our view that the U.S. economy remains on the right track and should help to bolster the Fed's confidence that it is getting ever closer to meeting both of its mandates. We expect the first rate hike in December," said Harm Bandholz, chief economist at UniCredit Research in New York.

A pedestrian stands near a sign displaying the cost of gasoline at a filling station in San Francisco, California​

The Labor Department said its Consumer Price Index fell 0.2 percent last month after slipping 0.1 percent in August. In the 12 months through September, the CPI was unchanged for the first time in four months. It rose 0.2 percent in August. Stripping out food and energy costs, prices rose last month. The so-called core CPI gained 0.2 percent after ticking up 0.1 percent in August. In the 12 months through September, the core CPI increased 1.9 percent, the largest gain since July 2014, after advancing 1.8 percent in August.

The Fed tracks the personal consumption expenditures price index, excluding food and energy, which is lower than the core CPI. Low inflation, which has persistently run below the U.S. central bank's 2 percent target, is a major hurdle to an interest rate hike this year. Stocks on Wall Street rose on the data, snapping a two-day losing streak. Prices for U.S. government debt fell, while the dollar rose against a basket of currencies.

DIVIDED FED