Posts tagged Citigroup
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 6, 2008
· Filed under business, economy, investing, money, politics, stock market · Tagged Brazil, Citigroup, crude oil, dow closed, Wachovia
Uh, this may be bad. The only thing the bailout seems to have done was magnify the problem, and markets are crashing all around the globe. Brazil’s market shut down twice today because of its percentage drops- 10% the first time and 15% the second.
Citigroup and Wells Fargo declared a litigation truce until 12PM on October 8, however an appeals court overturned the block on the Wells-Wachovia deal.
The Dow closed below $10,000 for the first time since 2004, and some are crying that an entire decade of gains- since the Dow first hit $10,000 on March 19, 1999- have been wiped out. Back in 1999, and even in 2004, we weren’t tied so closely to the world’s markets, so some analysts are saying that there is more liquidity in the market this time around. They may be right. At one point today the Dow was down 800 points, but in the last hour made up over 400 points. For a market to swing that much that fast, there has got to be a lot of liquidity, and it may mean that this time around the market will come back quicker.
Although I could be wrong. Some people are calling $6K as the bottom. Some are even saying $3K and $1,800. $1,800? Well, these are message boarders’ predictions, but the point is that no one knows. It’s impossible to separate the market’s true worth and the emotional impact, and fear is now a thousand times stronger than any other force that normally drives trading. We may see some stability when the bailout plan is actually drawn up and put into place. Come on Paulson.
Crude oil fell $6.07 to close the day at $87.81. I wonder if my landlord factored in falling oil prices when he yelled at me today for asking when he’ll turn on the heat. Thanks for the cold and the cold, Peter. If I end up in the hospital with the pneumonia, don’t expect next month’s check.
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 28, 2008
· Filed under business, economy, investing, money, politics, stock market · Tagged $250 billion, $700 billion, ABK, ambac, bailout plan, Banco Santander, bankruptcy, Ben Bernanke, Citigroup, CNNMoney, credit crunch, economy, Henry Paulson, Moody's, Nikkei, S&P, SEC, STD, Wachovia, wall street, WB, Wells Fargo
Early this morning, Congress finally agreed on the wording of the bailout. CNNMoney.com reported the following provisions attached to the way the money is spent:
*The $700 billion would be disbursed in stages, with $250 billion made available immediately for the Treasury’s use. (After the initial $250 million, an additional $100 million can be released by the President. If after that more money is needed, Congress can re-vote on release of the remaining $350 million.)
*Curbs will be placed on the compensation of executives at companies that sell mortgage assets to Treasury. Among them, companies that participate will not be allowed to offer golden parachutes to executives; they will not be able to deduct the salary they pay to executives above $500,000.
*An oversight board will be created. The board will include the Federal Reserve chairman, the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, the Federal Home Finance Agency director and the Housing and Urban Development secretary.
*Allow for the Treasury to receive the option to take ownership stakes in participating companies under certain circumstances.
*Treasury may establish an insurance program – with risk-based premiums paid by the industry – to guarantee companies’ troubled assets, including mortgage-backed securities, purchased before March 18, 2008.
Congress wanted to get the bill together before the opening of the Asian markets tonight. The Nikkei 225 opened $10 lower than Friday’s close, but then began a slightly hesitant ascent. How the bill’s finalization will affect our market’s opening tomorrow, or if anymore bankruptcies or downgrades will occur, is still up in the air. My guess is that there will be a sigh of relief across all sectors tomorrow but any real change will only happen after the bill is signed, sealed and the money is delivered.
Will Ambac (ABK) avoid a Moody’s downgrade before the relief comes through, and when the relief comes through, will it help ABK? Message boarders seem to think the price of ABK will skyrocket tomorrow, and the very late-day increase in ABK’s share price on Friday may have hinted belief that a weekend deal would in fact help ABK come Monday. But the “Moody Monster” is still lurking in the woods. Analysts are blaming a lot of the financial crisis on these ratings agencies for rating companies way higher than they deserved, therefore needing to make drastic corrective downgrades. On March 20, 2001, Frank Raiter, Standard & Poor’s former top mortgage official, said he was asked by S&P to rate a real estate investment he had never even reviewed. He told Bloomberg that he was told to “just guess” because the S&P was in competition with other ratings companies (possibly Moody’s?) for fees on a $484 million deal. It’s good that ratings are being revealed as little more than smoke and mirrors, but people still take ratings seriously, and a Moody’s downgrade of Ambac would devastate the company and its stock price.
And will the news of consensus on Capitol Hill save Wachovia (WB) from going bust before another bank picks up its fractions? Or will we remember Wachovia as the last big victim of the “credit crunch”? We’ll have to wait to see…
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.
August 7, 2008
· Filed under money, stock market · Tagged AIG, Centerline Holding, CHC, Citigroup, dow closed at, Dow falls, money, oil, oil closed at, stock market, trading, wall street
Crash! Bam! Boom! Down goes the Dow (and everything else except oil)! Today reminded me of a typical day we would have seen a couple months ago, and would have been a great day to increase positions, but I’m all out of funds- both unsettled and settled. Tomorrow’s pay day, and it may take a day for the funds to come into Etrade from Citizens. Fingers crossed it doesn’t! Tomorrow should be another great buy day. There were tornado warnings for New England all over the news today, which was a nice distraction for people (like me) flabbergasted by Wall Street!
This morning I bought into CHC and increased my position in PMI later on. Before the bell, CHC came out with positive earnings and PMI not so much, but in the long run I still think PMI is a decent investment. At one point today, CHC hit 50%+above opening, then settled back to 25% up. PMI fell more than 20%.
Mbia (MBI) comes out with earnings before the opening bell tomorrow, and RDN reports after the bell on Monday. SCA reports before the bell Tuesday. The Yahoo finance earnings calendar is a great resource to find earnings dates.
I have a lot of analyzing to do tonight to figure out the best next moves. I’ll wait until earnings next week to get more RDN and SCA, but as for picking up more shares of stocks that have already reported on their second quarter, I’m going to have to give it some serious thought. ABK, C, CHC, MBI, NCC, RF, and TMA are all possibilities, although there was a story about Citigroup (C) having to buy back some junk they sold to people, so maybe staying away from C right now is a good idea. Other tickers that may be good next moved are: KFS, CORS, MF, AMFI, CBON, SSBX, but I wouldn’t yet recognize these banks’ names, let alone their stories. I’ll have to look into them all tonight. One of my stock friends said his next move will be CBON, so that may be the best move of the lot.
The Dow freefell 224 points today to $11,431, which may have been due to the bear market benchmark oil passed yesterday. People like to buy when things go bear, and oil did in fact close up $1.44 to just above $120 a barrel today. Bloomberg reported that today’s stock pullback was
led by American International Group’s (AIG) reported losses. A friend of mine has a big stake in AIG; I feel bad for him. I closed down enough today to just about wipe out this week’s profits, but I’m not sweating yet: this was bound to happen. Tomorrow will be interesting and a great day to buy.
