So will a href=”http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/eb8fc516-f2ea-11dd-abe6-0000779fd2ac.html”Airbus/a concede a deal with Ryanair? The sum of 300-400 short-haul jets is no splash in the ocean so I suspect Airbus will (eventually) give Ryanair what it wants as it really has no other choice.br /br /Certainly this is smart business from Ryanair to dangle a nice carrot in front of a starved donkey. Of course there is the usual denialbr / br /blockquoteMichael O’Leary, Ryanair chief executive and key senior colleagues have visited Airbus headquarters in Toulouse to outline their plans, but the European group, the commercial aircraft division of EADS, has told the airline that it is not interested at the prices Ryanair is seeking.br /br /John Leahy, Airbus’s chief commercial officer, said: “We are not in discussions with Ryanair about aircraft. That is on the record. We don’t have plans to enter a sales campaign with Ryanair, which would be very expensive and …

Michael O'Leary has made a bargain basement offer for Aer Lingus. With oil prices down at 2007 lows the coming months should be 'better' for the industry - even if this only translates to 'less worse' than other industries during the recession.br /br /From the a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/1201/breaking16.html?via=mr"Irish Times/abr /br /blockquoteRyanair has launched a second bid to purchase Aer Lingus in an offer that values the carrier at €748 million, or approximately half the value of its first bid.br /br /The €1.40 a share cash bid represents a premium of around 28 per cent over the average closing price of Aer Lingus shares for the 30 days to November 28th, 2008.br /br /Ryanair already owns almost 30 per cent of Aer Lingus shares and said in a statement it is proposing a “merger of the two airlines into one strong Irish airline group under common ownership”.br /br /At 1.12pm Aer Lingus ...

With the collapse of oil prices the Transportation sector should be in position to benefit; the question is whether the Airline industry has the capability to do so? The sector has been surprisingly robust since bottoming in July; the Dow Jones US Airlines Index has made repeated challenges on its 200-day MA but still hasn't found the momentum to break through. But at least it is challenging its 200-day MA, something none of the leading indices have been able to get anywhere close too as they struggle around their meager 20-day MAs.br /br /span class="fullpost"Some commentators viewed the OPEC cut in crude output as a reason to a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/101740-time-to-short-airlines-as-opec-cuts-crude-output"short/a on the assumption of rising oil prices; although the Republic Airways Holdings (strongRJET/strong) used as the example failed to reverse from resistance as anticipated on the news.br /br /a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWGUfU1tOjI/SRq8LiGLX5I/AAAAAAAAAkI/F0qvQGQweiY/s1600-h/RJETNov11.png"img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 179px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWGUfU1tOjI/SRq8LiGLX5I/AAAAAAAAAkI/F0qvQGQweiY/s320/RJETNov11.png" border="0" ...

My house in London is close to the cemetery where Karl Marx is buried, and how he must be chuckling in his grave at what is now clearly the greatest crisis for the Anglo-Saxon model of financial capitalism in a generation. His famous dictum ‘A capitalist will sell you the rope to hang him with’ certainly applies to the reckless mispricing of risk in financial markets in recent years driven by the excesses of securitisation, a classic case of individually rational profit maximising behaviour creating destructive systemic stress. This was exacerbated by the perception that bankers could rely on the ‘Greenspan Put’, that central banks would always support the banking system on the downside but never constrain it on the upside. When the dust settles, US politicians and regulators need to focus on the ethics and social impact of radical financial innovation as much as …

Last weekend, we noted that the next phase of this bear market will likely be driven not by U.S. financial companies or by energy prices per se, but rather by the effects of the American slowdown being felt by the rest of the world.  A front page story in the WSJ on Friday noted the falling Eurozone GDP as additional evidence of a global slowdown.

Looking forward, we expect continued bullishness in equities next week as the lack of major news and the seasonal drop in volume draws in more hopeful investors.  But we won’t be surprised if those same buyers are punished for their optimism as the bearish tendencies of September and October kick in.  Members can check out our proprietary market sentiment indicator in our weekend portfolio update.

Performance Comparison

Here’s how the major market indexes, the S&P

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