This morning Merrill Lynch (MER) announced an estimated $5.5 billion in writedowns ($4.5 million related to mortgage backed securities and $1 billion to leveraged loan commitments) and forecast a loss for the quarter of up to 50 cents per share…
This morning The Bureau of Labor Statistics came out and said the economy added 110,000 jobs in September and revised the August number from -4,000 to 89,000. Given what a big reaction the market had to the bad jobs report…
An interesting chart from BeSpoke Investment Group shows more than 80% of the companies in the S&P Financials trading above their 50 day moving average. That’s a higher level than we’ve seen since before the emergence of problems with subprime…
“When the Fed said it would do all it takes to prevent a financial crisis, the market reaction was: ‘What’s to worry about? It’s all good’. That’s pretty much the way we feel.” – Linda Duessel (subscripton required), Market Strategist, Federated…
Henry Blodget, the infamous Merrill Lynch analyst who put ridiculous price targets on internet stocks during the tech bubble (the most notorious being his $400 target for Amazon.com in October 1998) and was ultimately barred from the securities industry, wrote in a…
On the strength of upgrades yesterday from Citigroup Homebulder Analyst Stephen King and then an “interesting” interpretation of today’s pending home sales number, homebuilders have staged a nice 7% bounce over the past 2 days (Chart). The bulls sure are…
There was an article in Barron’s this weekend that resonates with my view of what’s going on in housing and how it will play out in the coming years including its effects on the overall economy. The article, “Getting Ready…
Days like today really hurt my credibilty when I try to tell people that the stock market is intelligible. Two huge global banks, Citigroup (C) and UBS (UBS), gave us some insight into what to expect when they report 3rd…
Top Gun recorded an excellent 3rd quarter despite very little exposure to stocks – including none (excluding gold equities) for the ferocious, Fed inspired bounce from Thursday August 16 through the end of the quarter. Here’s how the 3rd quarter looked (Chart):…
Another solid week as far as blog traffic (graph). Readership continues to grow slowly but steadily.