Posts tagged C
May 11, 2009
· Filed under business, economy, investing, money, politics, stock market · Tagged ABK, Ambac Q1, C, Citigroup, MBI, MBIA, PMI
Friday was a $1500 day for me, which was a first. I made [back] the same amount of money in a day as I do after taxes in two weeks of work. I’m looking forward to being able to exclude [back] from my vocabulary.
The market has been rallying and against everyone’s suggestions, I continued to average down over the winter. Now it’s spring, or it is according to my landlord who shut the heat off for the year even though it gets into the forties over night (fucking bastard), and the world is again becoming green. I’m now down “only” 18%, and most of my stocks weathered the cold. Still, I’m looking forward to the day when I’m deep in the green with all of my survivors.
Ambac (ABK) released its Q1 results today and at one point rallied from its open of $1.58 to $2.09. It posted a loss, but “not as bad” (heh) as expected. PMI Group (PMI) was up over 50% at one point this morning before it fell to more conservative gains. PMI closed the day up 27%, which was a 50 cent gain.
After market close, MBIA (MBI) posted its first profit in five quarters, and as of 6PM, its share price is up $1.61 (23%) to $8.57. Back last summer when I first began buying stock in the bond insurers, good news for one would pull them all up. Hopefully that will hold true tomorrow.
Overall, the market sold off today after Friday’s rally. The Dow fell 155 to close at $8418, which is still the highest it’s been since January. I haven’t been following oil because the “pain at the pump” has subsided. It’s been so long since I’ve seriously written this blog because of work and work and disgust at being so wrong with stock picks and winter and work and school and just plain laziness. Winter itself takes the wind out of my sails, so add that to being six months ahead of a financial rally… well, let’s just say I felt like a total asshole. But maybe things are getting good again.
Here’s a list to consider…
Stock 52-week low Current shareprice
- ABK $0.35 $1.75
- MBI $2.17 $6.96
- PMI $0.26 $2.36
- RDN $0.70 $3.43
- RF $2.35 $5.92
- C $0.97 !! $3.96
If I was an “if only” kind of person, I’d be kicking myself for not seeing into the future that in March 2009 my stocks would be selling at fractions of where I bought them. But scrolling out their Google Finance charts to a year, two years, three years, shows that, even with current rallies, their share prices are still considerably low.
October 26, 2008
· Filed under business, economy, investing, money, politics, stock market · Tagged accounting, C, centerline, CHC, Citigroup, CN8, gasoline, Iran, mark-to-market, Money Matters Today, new home sales, Nikkei, oil, SCA, SEC, Syncora
The Nikkei 225 hit a 26-year low today- last night for us. Gasoline prices in the US fell the fastest in the past two weeks that they have ever fallen, and now the national average for a gallon of unleaded gasoline is just about where it was a year ago.
The SEC is still deciding whether it will suspend the mark-to-market rules, letting banks value their bad assets at whatever they want. Critics say that this will further warp perspective, but people in favor of getting rid of the rule say it will help banks’ balance sheets. This coming Wednesday, the SEC is set to hold a discussion on the implications of mark-to-market accounting and its possible recent effect on the market.
New home sales data came out today and was better than expected. Although 33% lower than they were a year ago, sales of new homes increased 2.7% from August to September. So there is some sign of movement.
The Dow crept up today until 2PM when someone yelled, “sike!” and everything came crashing down to close 203 points below open to $8,175. Just 175 more points until we’re in the seven thousands and half of where we were just about exactly a year ago. Crude took a big dip in early morning trading, but then rallied a little after the new home sale data to close down just 93 cents to $63.22 per barrel.
My stocks are all in the can. Citigroup (C) is trading under $12 a share, and two- Syncora (SCA) and Centerline Holdings (CHC) are under $1. If only they stay on the New York Stock Exchange, I’ll be happy.
A couple interesting things were said on Money Matters Today tonight: Iran needs its oil, which it’s only real export, to be sold at $95 a barrel in order to fund its social programs. I’m no expert on Iranian social programs, but oil trading in the $60 range has got to be hitting Iran hard if they need it trading 60% higher.
Another interesting thing said on the show tonight was that for every penny drop in the price of a gallon of gasoline, Americans add over $1 billion to their pockets annually.
October 14, 2008
· Filed under business, economy, investing, money, politics, stock market · Tagged BAC, Bank of America, Bank of New York, BK, C, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, GS, JP Morgan Chase, JPM, MER, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, MS, National City, ncc, Radian Group, RDN, State Street Corp, STT, Wells Fargo, WFC
Bank of America (BAC), Merrill Lynch (MER), Morgan Stanley (MS), JP Morgan Chase (JPM), Bank of New York (BK), State Street Corp (STT), Wells Fargo (WFC), Goldman Sachs (GS), and Citigroup (C) will be the first nine banks to be capitalized by the US government, and will be followed by the funding of “thousands” of smaller banks once these top nine start lending.
Today was another good day for the financial sector, despite the Dow dropping 76 points of yesterday’s profits and most sectors slipping back into the red. MER pulled back into the green for me today, bringing the tally to 4 greens and 12 reds. So things are slowly coming back. National City (NCC) and Regions Financial (RF) respectfully made 34% and 28% gains today, so I’m guessing they’ll be the next to return from the dark side.
The Dow closed at $9,311, showing that investors gave back just a fraction of the almost $1 trillion made [back] yesterday on Wall Street. Crude oil closed down 2.56 dollars at 78.63.
October 5, 2008
· Filed under business, economy, investing, money, politics, stock market · Tagged C, Citibank, Citigroup, Wachovia, WB, Wells Fargo, WFC
I don’t know when these bankers have gotten a chance to sleep in the last month; news hits 24 hours seven days a week:
“Judge tells Wachovia to negotiate only with Citi”
“Citi: Judge blocks Wachovia-Wells deal”
“Citi gets court order blocking Wells-Wachovia deal”
The list goes on. Arguably, most of these headlines are prefaced with “Citi says”, so unless Citigroup (C) is making all this up, more sh!t’s to hit the fan tomorrow!
October 4, 2008
· Filed under business, economy, investing, money, politics, stock market · Tagged $700 billion, C, Citigroup, dow closed at, F, FDIC, Ford, General Motors, GM, Henry Paulson, House approves bill, Huntington Bancshares, mark-to-market, National City, oil closed at, regional, SEC, Wachovia, WB, Wells Fargo, WFC
“Henry Paulson buries U.S. Toxic Debt.” So much has happened in four days.
The SEC also gave new flexibility to the accounting departments at banks with bad housing assets, allowing them to use their own judgment when assessing value. Up until now, banks had to assess the value of these properties against similar properties on the market- called the “mark-to-market accounting rule”. Now, banks can assess value based on what they feel a property may fetch when times are good again. This new rule, or lack of a rule, caused the stock values of regional banks like National City (NCC) and Huntington Bancshares (HBAN), who have a ton of bad properties on their books, to make consistent gains this past week.
President Bush signed the $25 billion loan to the US automakers this week to transform their old factories into green-auto producing ones. This did little to the stock prices of Ford (F) and General Motors (GM). “When the country gets a cold, Detroit gets the flu,” they say.
The Senate devised their own bailout plan that included a bunch of tax breaks to keep the republicans happy, and passed it to the House. This bailout plan differs from the one originated in the House of Representatives by a few key points:
Temporarily raising the FDIC insurance cap to $250,000 from $100,000
Allowing the FDIC to borrow from the Treasury to cover any losses that might occur as a result of the higher insurance limit
Extending tax breaks to individuals and businesses using renewable energy, and giving a deduction for the purchase of solar panels
Offering relief for another year from the Alternative Minimum Tax
Added to the bill this time around were tax $150 billion exemptions for wooden arrow and rum manufacturing.
What?
The House stamp approved the bill yesterday, and immediately afterwards, the bottom fell out of the Dow- again. News that 159,000 jobs were lost in September, the unemployment rate has held at 6.1%, and an overall skepticism of the potential effectiveness of the bailout plan all caused people to sell into the fire.
President Bush signed the $700 billion bailout bill into law today.
Because the bill was passed, the short-selling ban, which was originally set to expire on October 2, but then was extended until October 17, will now expire on October 8- the third day of the bailout bill’s enactment.
What seemed like a done deal between Citigroup (C) and Wachovia (WB), was undermined my Wells Fargo (WFC), who swooped in stole the show with a $15.1 billion bid. Citigroup is going to contest, but this didn’t stop Citi from losing 18% yesterday. Wachovia, on the other hand, gained over 50%.
Oil has been creeping around in the background, closing at $93.88 on Friday afternoon. At one point, the Dow was up over 280 points yesterday, but then freefell to close down 157 to $10,325.
September 29, 2008
· Filed under business, economy, investing, money, politics, stock market · Tagged ABK, ambac, C, Citigroup buys Wachovia, dow closed, downgrade, economy, Etrade, Mary Caraccioli, Moody's, Nancy Pelosi, NYSE, opening bell, reverse stock split, September 29, stock market, Sydney Morning Herald, Thornburg Mortgage, TMA, Wachovia, WB
Holy Moly, who saw that one coming?! The House of Representatives voted down the bailout 228 to 205, and it’s being blamed on a “too-partisan” speech made by the Democratic speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Whether her speech was partisan or not, someone’s head had to roll.
Hindsight is 20/20, and looking back to last night, there was a clear signal the bill wasn’t going to pass: after an initial positive response, the Asian markets began to slide into red. Real money movers always know things ahead of time, and the Asian markets’ slip was a sure signal that our bill was not going to pass. I should have seen it, and maybe subconsciously I did, but it seemed too unbelievable that the bailout would not pass given its enormity and all the long days and weekends Congress had put into it. But as we’ve seen with IndyMac, Fannie and Freddie, and Washington Mutual, nothing is too big to fail.
Lawmakers are headed back to the drawing board to draft up a new version of the plan, but won’t meet again until Wednesday because tomorrow is Rosh Hashanah.
I’m more of an observer now than an active player. I’m in too deep to do anything except wait, so all I can really focus on is the day to day with the stocks I own and the stocks that those stocks are absorbing. Citigroup (C) bought Wachovia (WB) today for $2.2 billion, or $1 per share.
Two funny computer errors happened today: Thornburg Mortgage (TMA) put through a 10:1 reverse stock split this morning, but not before they multiplied the share price by 10. So during today’s premarket, it looked like I had 3K extra in my account! But the quirk was soon fixed and so was the overinflated share price. By close, TMA was down to $1.15, which would have been 11.5 cents on Friday before the reverse split. To buy back the preferred shares, Thornburg needs to raise more capital. You’re welcome, TMA.
Another blip came to Wachovia’s share price today. At one point, it listed on Google finance at $500! Message boarders were going nuts, and that error put the financial sector up 7% and made it look like the only sector in the green. But that error was also soon fixed, and everyone who owns WB fell back into reality.
One last computer oddity happened at the New York Stock Exchange today: because of a glitch, the morning bell never rang. Mary Caraccioli said she’s never seen that happen.
People are still sweating a Moody’s downgrade to Ambac (ABK). I really hope not. Of all problems that could happen, that one tops my concern. Just about a month ago, I was up over 100% on ABK and now I’m in the red. If a Moody’s downgrade comes, it’ll destroy Ambac, especially after today.
The Dow, which opened down over 100 points in seeming anticipation, dropped 777 points today- the greatest one-day decline in its history and even greater than the drop after September 11, 2001- to close the say at $10,365. However to see the glass 1/10 full, this was the 17th worst daily drop percentage-wise, so not quite the worst. Crude oil fell $10.52 to close at $96.36.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported tonight that “online broking portal Etrade ground to a virtual halt this morning [Tuesday September 30] as it struggled to cope with massive trading volumes.” Is this a hint of more blood to come? Damn sure it is!
September 27, 2008
· Filed under business, economy, investing, money, politics, stock market · Tagged $25 billion, bailout, bankruptcy, C, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Citi, Citigroup, F, FDIC, Ford, General Motors, GM, green, green cars, JP Morgan, Michael Sincere, QMNM, Quest Minerals, Understanding Options, US automakers, Wachovia, WaMu, Washington Mutual, WM
I’d like to send a shout out to Michael Sincere, author of Understanding Options, who actually read my blog and commented on it. Maybe someday, if I ever land an agent and if that agent ever lands a deal, Michael Sincere will write the foreword to this book. I have time. This experiment is going to be a long time in the making.
Slowly, news is leaking out about the failure of Washington Mutual. A Bloomberg article that hit today finally used the word “bankruptcy”, however the failure still isn’t a top story. Is it just me? Am I the only one who thinks that the biggest bank failure in the short history of our country is at least warranted one full day of sensationalism?
“WaMu had its banking unit seized Sept. 25 by government regulators after customers withdrew $16.7 billion over 10 days. JPMorgan Chase & Co. became the biggest U.S. bank by deposits when it bought WaMu’s branches with a $1.9 billion payment to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
The Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition, filed Sept. 26 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, wasn’t immediately available due to Web site maintenance. The Web site was expected to be operating again on Sept. 27 at noon, Eastern time.
JPMorgan, Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., Banco Santander SA and Toronto-Dominion Bank had all expressed interest in buying all or parts of WaMu ahead of the JPMorgan purchase.
WaMu was expected to lose as much as $19 billion on bad mortgages during the next 2 1/2 years. Standard & Poor’s cut the bank’s credit rating twice in nine days, to eight levels below investment grade, as chances decreased that any deal wouldn’t be a buyout of the whole company, leaving creditors of the holding company to face substantial losses.”
Maybe it was the web site maintenance that slowed the news down. Baffling.
Citigroup (C) may acquire Wachovia (WB), but it’s now being reported that Citi may first wait for Wachovia to fail, exactly following JP Morgan’s lead on WaMu. I have no stake in Wachovia, thankfully, and maybe in this case, since I do own a few Citi shares, I’m all for this slimy tactic. Buying low and selling high oils the entire market- from multibillion dollar mergers to a college kid buying a few thousand shares of QMNM hoping for a miracle. This is how growth happens. But when that strategy is applied to the heart of the market- the financials- it has to be expected that “buying low” will take on an entirely new appearance. If one bank can wait two days for another bank to fail before buying it, the merger will cost fractions less.
The $25 billion government loan that Ford and Chrysler applied for this summer to transform their outdated factories into green car producers will come a little early. The bill, which states that the automakers would not have to make payments on the loan for five years, passed the Senate today and is now off to President Bush for final approval.
September 9, 2008
· Filed under economy, investing, money, politics, stock market · Tagged ABK, ArthurDental, BAC, C, dow, Fannie Mae, FMH, freddie mac, investing, LEH, Lehman Brothers, MA, oil, OPEC, PMI, RDN, reuters, September 9 2008, STI, TGIC, TMA, trading, Visa, Washington Mutual, WM
My God, what have I done? All across the country, investors in all sectors and companies must be asking themselves the same thing. I know my friends are. After yesterday’s huge [emotional] rally in all sectors but one (energy), today seemed completely irrational. Everything fell. This was more than profit-taking. All of yesterday’s gains, 280 points, were shaved off the Dow as the index slipped all day to close down to $11,230, as investors in the financials asked themselves one extra question: “will any financial survive?”
Lehman Brothers (LEH), Washington Mutual (WM), Radian Group (RDN), PMI Group (PMI), Ambac Financial (ABK), First Marblehead (FMH), MBIA, Inc. (MBI), MGIC Investment (MTG), Triad Guarantee (TGIC), and Thornburg Mortgage (TMA) are just some of the financial institutions that had double-digit percentage losses today, and those are just the ones with losses greater than 10%. Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC), JP Morgan (JPM), SunTrust (STI), American Express (AXP), and even Visa (V) and MasterCard (MA) lost today. Lehman Brothers (LEH) is reporting their third quarter earnings tomorrow- a week early- after their Korea Development Bank deal fell through and its stock price lost 45% of its value today. LEH stock did bump up 7% in afterhours trading, so maybe there’s good news on the horizon. But no doubt, this bad news cast even more doubt into the financial sector today and helped push share values down. Today was very, very painful. Luckily I was so busy at work, with teaching, duties, and meetings, that I had no time to sit down and digest what was happening.
But my friends did. One of my stock friends, who has made a small fortune day-trading these financials, sent me an article that eased my mind a bit. It definitely crossed my mind a few times in the last couple days that my experiment may not work out after all, but the article he sent gave me some hope. It was titled “S&P Picks and Pans: Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual, TW Telecom, JC Penney, Avery Denison”, and was an article in BusinessWeek online. After all the upgrades and downgrades and rating cuts by people with questionable credentials and too much power, it was nice to read an article from a reputable source deeming one of my stocks, WM, a “hold”. If Washington Mutual is a hold and its going through some actual concrete, documented troubles, then my thinking (and hope) is that yesterday and today’s major sell-offs were out of pure fear. But I still hope the sell-off doesn’t continue!
A Reuters article from yesterday titled “Ambac’s planned muni insurer may be hit by changes” shed some light on what the common sentiment towards the mortgage and bond insurers might be. “In another even more fundamental change, agencies are mulling a shift in how they rate muni debt, using the same scale used for corporate debt. That would result in widespread rating upgrades for municipal bonds, which have a much smaller risk of default than corporate bonds. Higher ratings would in turn reduce the need for insurance.” If there’s less risk of default, then there’s less need for insurance.
One last article I’ll quote, this one from MarketWatch.com titled “Community building ire MarketWatch readers kindle own outrage over Fannie, Freddie takeover” quoted ArthurDental, who is a member of the MarketWatch Community. “”Everyone gets upset about financial aid to the poor,” ArthurDental wrote, “but where’s the outrage when taxpayers foot the bill because some ‘investments’ went sour? So stockholders would be largely wiped out; why then aren’t bondholders made to pay for their mistakes, too?”
It’s telling that this article didn’t hit yesterday when the market soared, but ArthurDental is right. When SSBX failed, I lost my investment. But when Freddie and Fannie exposed themselves to trillions of dollars in bad mortgages and therefore didn’t have the capital to pay the bonds it issued to China, the two lending giants got a slap on the wrist and trillions of our taxpayer dollars. Hey, I made a mistake investing in a company run by a McCain, where’s my money? It ain’t coming and I have to deal. And that’s the way it should be.
That Hurricane Ike took a turn south, and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) will likely maintain its oil production even though demand is down, caused the price of crude oil to fall to a 5-month low. Crude oil lost $3.08 to close the day at $103.26 a barrel. I lost $1700 today, or in my brother’s terminology, “seventeen hundo”. Ouch.
So what is going to happen now that the rules of the game have completely changed? I don’t dare speculate. But whatever it is that eventually happens seems as if it won’t make itself known for a while. For now, I’ll keep the faith. I took a gamble and put in a limit order for 25 more shares of WM today, and you can imagine my surprise when I signed on later, saw the stock price was at $3.30, and that my order executed at $3.60. When I put the order in, I assumed it was so low that it would expire unexecuted.
And more than anything, tomorrow’s a new day when anything can happen.
