Lucky No. 7

All eyes today will be on Bernanke although how much we will get remains to be seen. His WSJ piece has given a pretty clear outline of tools available, and that it will, in all probability, be a long time before they actually have to wheel them out. It wouldn’t surprise me if the lion’s share of the detail has already been released. It looks fairly benign and if we get anything tangible extra, maybe it will be from the Q&A.

The earnings beats continue and even those that don’t beat, well strip out a few exceptionals and hey presto, they’re actually better and they go up. NB better than expected doesn’t equal good but that’s another matter.

The Solars are having a very strong day today. No matter the recent Q-Cells warning, China is throwing some cash at solar projects. According to a Reuters article, they’re going to finance 50% of the cost of projects which connect to the grid and 70% of independent projects in remote and powerless regions. Interesting to note for all the talk about Chinese information being leaked and manipulated, (and I’ve certainly been sceptical in the past), this little nugget seemed to stay well under wraps as the biggest local solar player, Shenzhen TopraySolar traded down 4.8%. Just as an fyi, it is trading on 65x 2010 ests at the moment (130x 09 actual acc to bberg).

Volumes are healthy at around 90% of the 20 day average and the market feels strong, although interestingly, other risk assets are not rallying with equities and bonds have only been modestly sold. Nevertheless, who would bet against a 7th straight day of gains for the Eurostoxx? Only Bernanke can stop us now surely and given the recent market performance and the tri -mandate of the fed; price stability, full employment and making the equity market go up (the latter is the most important), I can’t imagine him saying anything that will jeopardise that.