Homebuilders have been on fire this week mainly, it seems, on the strength of a Monday upgrade by Citigroup Homebuilder Analyst Stephen Kim. Check out the moves in some of these builders (as of Fri 10/5, 1pm EST): KB Home…
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…
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…
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…
“The accelerated decline in the dollar has been well deserved.” – Axel Merk, Portfolio Manager, Merk Hard Currency Fund Stocks are pretty much dead today. But there is some interesting action going on in currency markets. The euro has rallied another…
The stock market is certainly acting well. This morning KB Homes (KBH) announced another ugly quarter. New home sales were down 21% from last August and the median price was 7.5% lower. The S&P is up 6 points to 1531…
Right around 12pm PST (3pm EST), at the start of the last hour of trading, today stocks started taking off. The Dow went from being up about 80 to all of a sudden being up about 130. I had no…