The year of the Tiger begins!
Chinese New Year is a serious business with tens of millions of migrant workers in China, as well as many from overseas, traveling home to have reunion dinners with their families. In additon to fireworks, celebrants like to wear new clothes from head to toe (preferably red as it drives away evil spirits) and they exchange red envelopes and red packets called “Ang Pow”. These Ang Pows are usually are passed out during the Chinese New Year’s celebrations, almost always containing money (from a couple of dollars to several hundred). Per custom, the amount of money in the red packets should be of even numbers. The number 8 is considered lucky (for its homophone for “wealth”). In addition to red envelopes, which are usually given from elders to the younger, small gifts (usually of food or sweets) are also exchanged between friends or relatives. Gifts are usually brought when visiting friends or relatives at their homes. Common gifts include fruits (typically oranges, and never pears), cakes, biscuits, chocolates, candies, or some other small gift.
The Year of the Tiger is considered lucky and this year is the year of the Metal Tiger, which explains all the commodity hoarding and the tigier is also considered auspicious for risk-taking and bravery. Traditionally, all debts are paid by New Year’s and there is much emphasis on looking forward and letting go of the past. The Chinese markets will be closed all week but we can expect a lot of forward-looking behavior when they come back so I’m liking FXI March $40 calls for $1 as long as our markets hold positive as we could get a nice pop next week as China plays catch-up.
BCS will be popping the financials this morning with some great LOOKING earnings but much of it came on the sale of their Global Investors unit to Black Rock for a $9.9Bn gain so nothing at all to get excited about. Impairments were up 49% but slowed in the second half and guidance indicates the worst is over. Also goosing the market this morning is SPG offering $10Bn for GGWPQ, the bankrupt version of what was GGP. This works out to about $9 for shareholders who hung on – we had taken a flier on them in the spring under $1 but got the heck out at $5 as THAT seemed high but I guess not and I”m now very glad our IYR shorts got stopped out last week because IYR…