Bernanke Puts His Foot Down
As I turned on CNBC before the market open this morning and continued to read and watch what people were saying, I began to realize that there was a lot more expectation for a 50 basis point cut than I…
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Is 25 Enough?
“A quarter point cut in the fed funds rate may not be enough for the markets.” – Bob Pisani, CNBC’s floor reporter at the NYSE, in a blog post “Fed: 25 Points Might Not ‘Cut It’ With Markets” When the Fed issues its highly…
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WaMu Cuts Dividend, Sheds More Than 3,000 Jobs and To Issue $2.5 Bil Preferred Stock
Washington Mutual (WM) issued quite a press release after the close yesterday. Here is what they said they are going to do to shore up their capital base and their business: Cut their quaterly dividend from 56 cents to 15…
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End Of The Year Fun And Games – Tax Loss Selling and Window Dressing
Last Monday, on the first trading day of December, I put up a post on “Santa Claus Rallies”. Today, The Wall Street Journal has a story on the same thing on the front page of it’s Money & Investing section:…
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UBS Pulls A Citigroup – Takes $10 Billion Subprime Writedown, Receives $11.5 Billion Investment
The big news this morning is an announcemement by UBS that they will take a $10 billion writedown on their US subprime exposure and also that the Singapore Investment Authority ($9.75 bil) and an unnamed Middle East investor ($1.75 bil) have made investments…
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Merrill Downgrades Three Credit Card Companies To “Sell”
“We are taking a more cautious view on the consumer finance stocks as the serial negative economic news suggests that the risk of a consumer recession is all but certain, in our view.” – Merrill Lynch analysts, in a report…
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Stocks Down Slightly On In Line November Jobs Report
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said that non-farm payrolls grew by 94,000 in November, slightly above the 85,000 economists had forecasted but possibly a bit below what investors were really looking for given the strong ADP number on Wednesday. Going…
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Freeze The Rates!!!! And Cut Them!!! WooHoo!!!!
Stock investors seem to like Bush’s plan to freeze the teaser rates on adjustable rate mortgages for a few years to give homeowners a better chance to hang onto their houses (S&P Intraday Chart).
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Retailers Report Another Mediocre Quarter; Bush Set To Announce Mortgage Freeze Plan
Retailers reported November same stores sales this morning and the numbers again appear mediocre. Same store sales increased 4% but because of a calendar shift, this year’s November included the week after Thanksgiving whereas last week’s “November” did not (subscription required). …
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Can The Bulls Blast Through 1490?
“The Standard & Poors is now challenging 1490 once again, and if it can move significantly through that level it will have proved itself worthy of another run at its old highs.” – Michael Kahn, “The Bulls Have The Ball…