Posts tagged economy
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 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 22, 2008
· Filed under business, economy, investing, money, politics, stock market · Tagged bailout, congress, democrats, economy, Morgan Stanley, oil, oil biggest gain ever, september oil delivery, shorts covering
No deal yet; the $700 billion bailout bill is still in Congress. Democrats are holding it up with requests that the bill include help for homeowners and smaller severance packages for Wall Street big wigs. After last week’s rally, I think they’re letting the market wind down to cheapen the bailout.
Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs changed their statuses from investment banks to bank holding companies. This will have them closer regulated by the Federal Reserve and reap less profit.
The Dow fell 372 points today to close at $11,015. At one point today, oil was up $25, then closed the day up $16.37 to $120.92. This was the biggest one-day gain for oil ever, and even tripped a sort of circuit-breaker halting its trade for five minutes. Analysts believe this may have been a function of shorts covering their options contracts ahead of expiration of the September contract for oil delivery.
September 21, 2008
· Filed under business, economy, investing, money, politics, stock market · Tagged "Paulson's Monster", $11 trillion, $700 billion, ABK, ambac, bankruptcy, banks, Barclays, Berkshire Hathaway, bond insurer, economy, Google, hedge funds, Henry Paulson, investing, Lehman Brothers, MBI, MBIA, Moody's, SEC, Warren Buffett
“Paulson’s Monster”, as it’s being called, has now proposed the need for $700 billion of taxpayer dollars, raising the US debt limit to $11 trillion, to spin off the bad sectors of the financials into its own entity. Paulson claims his plan will “minimize” the cost to the taxpayer in the long run, but who can really be sure? As part of the plan, Paulson said that he was currently in talks with other countries for help. He wouldn’t disclose which countries.
Back in Ratings land, one ABK message boarder claimed that the Feds raided Moody’s on Friday looking for connections between the ratings company and hedge funds. No link was provided, and given that any Joe Schmo can go on a Google Finance board and post whatever he or she pleases, it could very well be completely fabricated. However, a Bloomberg article titled “Berkshire’s Bond Insurer, Moody’s Stake Face Probe”, reports that one such link may in fact come to light:
“Billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. faces a probe by Connecticut’s attorney general for possible conflicts created by owning almost 20 percent of credit ratings company Moody’s Corp. while also running a new municipal bond insurer.
Moody’s gave its top rating last week to Berkshire Hathaway Assurance Corp., created in December as existing bond insurers struggled to maintain their AAA ratings. A favorable rating for Berkshire by New York-based Moody’s, or a lower rating for competitors including MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc., may give Buffett’s company an advantage.”
So maybe there is truth in rumor.
In other news, Barclays is the proud new owner of Lehman Brothers’s investment banking and trading businesses. The $1.75 billion deal approved yesterday is a definite bargain as compared to the one Barclays would have had to strike last week for Lehman’s entire assets before bankruptcy.
September 21, 2008
· Filed under business, economy, investing, money, politics, stock market · Tagged ABK, AIG, ambac, banks, banned, Barclays, Ben Bernanke, Charles Schumer, economy, financials, Henry Paulson, investing, LEH, Lehman Brothers, LEHMQ, MBI, MBIA, Moody's, Moody's Ratings, short selling, stocks
Whoa mama. I was definitely wrong about the profit-taking. The US market rallied harder in the last two days than it has in 38 years- longer than I’ve been alive! Lehman Brothers, now on the OTC board as LEHMQ, gained 313% on rumors that it would sell parts of itself to foreign banks. Barclays is back in the running. In just the last two days of trading, I made up almost all of what I had lost in the last week and a half.
The SEC banned ALL short selling- regular and naked alike- of 799 financials for the next 10 days. The United Kingdom temporarily halted short selling yesterday, and the US did the same. This is a huge step from just banning naked shorting; this is a total ban on betting that stocks will lose value, essentially disqualifying half of the game. Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer, both New York Senators, proposed the ban. Critics say this ban will warp the market, making it seem as if the financial stocks are worth more than they are. But when naked shorting was banned in July, the effect lasted long after the ban was lifted. In fact, it lasted right up until last week when AIG teetered and fell and dragged the entire sector along with it. So in a market that is so emotionally driven, a little banning may do the trick to snap the depression (no pun intended).
Henry Paulson, our Treasury Secretary, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke proposed the idea to spin all bad parts of financial institutions into its own entity- a black hole of badness. This idea reminds me of that story I had to read in high school about the utopian society that was only a utopia because of the little girl who lived in a cage in the basement of someone’s house. Remember that one? I was never big on reading, so titles slip my mind. I just remember the girl in the cage and the annual field trip every schoolkid would take to see the girl in the dirty dark cage dungeon as a reminder of why they lived as perfectly as they did. I wonder if part of the Paulson and Bernanke plan will have the American people visiting the dark entity once a year. Oh wait, now I get it. We will be visiting once a year- at tax time. Seems these two guys kept up on their high school reading.
Meanwhile in Ratings Land, Moody’s threatened to downgrade Ambac (ABK) and MBIA (MBI), which dropped ABK 42% and another 27% in afterhours, and MBI 8% and another 8% in afterhours. The ABK message boards caught fire, and it seems Moody’s may catch some of it by Monday, if not sooner.
Do you know the name of that book yet? Maybe it was a short story.
September 18, 2008
· Filed under business, economy, investing, money, politics, stock market · Tagged AIG, American International Group, bailout, banks, dow, economy, financials, first marblehead, FMB, naked short selling, rally, RDN, uptick rule, WaMu, Washington Mutual, WM
Since it had become a matter of market confidence, or really a lack thereof, confidence was bolstered today with the Fed’s announcement it would pump $180 billion into the world’s banking system and the implementation of the naked short ban. I read the news of the naked short selling ban wrong; I thought the ban went into place yesterday. So when yesterday’s market was a total sinker, I figured it was too late for the ban to do anything and that my experiment would soon go bust. I was very wrong. The ban actually went into effect TODAY, not yesterday, and it had a definite effect:
Centerline Holding (CHC): Up 3% to $1.72
Syncora Holdings (SCA): Up 13% to $2.25
Thornburg Mortgage (TMA): Up 13% to 34 cents
Merrill Lynch (MER): Up 14% to $22.06
Ambac (ABK): Up 15% to $6.67
Citigroup (C): Up 18% to $16.65
MBIA (MBI): Up 19% to $11.64
PMI Group (PMI): Up 22% to $2.57
National City(NCC): Up 24% to $4.40
Regions Financial (RF): Up 34% to $14.60
Radian Group (RDN): Up 35% to $5.00
Washington Mutual (WM): Up 48% to $2.99
First Marblehead (FMD): Up 67% to $4.75
MGIC Investment (MTG): Up 74% to $9.50
To be fair, most of the gains made today were only enough to erase just Wednesday’s huge losses, and the last week and a half of loss before today’s rally is still “on the books”. And, there will likely be a fair amount of profit-taking tomorrow. But who am I to complain? I made [up] $2,600 today, and most of that came in just the last hour of trading.
Even American International Group (AIG) had a double digit percentage gain today: up 31% to close at $2.69. The Dow closed up 410 points to $11,019. Oil gained 72 cents to close at $97.88. Today was Wall Street’s best day in six years.
September 17, 2008
· Filed under business, economy, investing, money, politics, stock market · Tagged AIG, banks, dow, economy, GLD, gold, naked short selling, offshore drilling, oil, oil futures, oil speculation, oil speculators, speculators, StreetTRACKS Gold, wall street, WaMu, Washington Mutual
The entire market was on a downward run the entire day. The impending restrictions on naked short selling did nothing to break the financials’ falls, and the bailout of AIG seemed to deepen the “crisis of confidence” in our economy. The dollar was down and oil and gold were suddenly trading way up.
A friend of mine brought up an interesting point yesterday: now that the banks are failing, the price of oil is also failing. In his email to me, he wrote:
“BTW, have you noticed the rapid decline in crude oil now that the banks have to focus on their books and capital? Could the banks have been speculating the price of crude??? Only the shadow knows. WAMU after hours trading closed at $2.55.”
As if the market heard his words directly, a CNNMoney.com article hit this morning titled “Oil rallies as Wall Street gets a lifeline: Crude futures rebound as the Fed steps in to lend insurer AIG much-needed capital, and ahead of the government’s weekly supply report”
Now that the big banks are being shored up, will oil bounce?
My Calculus 2 class starts tonight. Any free time I’ve had will now be absorbed into homework, studying, and stress. If it was possible to do so, I’d buy a few puts on my weight with a January 2009 expiration date so that I could rake in some money in time to buy myself a nice Valentine’s day gift. Calculus stresses me out. Anyway, it may put a damper on my writing. But I guess I said the same thing for when I went back to work, and that didn’t stick, so maybe I have no idea what I’m talking about.
The Dow almost had another -500 point day: it tumbled 449 to close the day at $10,609. Oil rose $6.01 to close at $97.16. The Associated Press chalked up the rise in oil to “an easing of worries that the insurance giant and other financial firms would liquidate commodities holdings to raise cash”. The dollar lost value because of the AIG bailout, too. Typing in “dollar” into Google News returned articles with titles like: “US dollar falls amid wary credit markets”, “Dollar falls vs. euro, yen despite AIG bailout”, “India’s rupee firms against dollar”, “Bonds soar, dollar sinks”, and Oil rallies as dollar weakens”. Seems my friend was right; the oil speculators are back. Time to get back into oil? God was way up, too. The ETF StreetTRACKS Gold (GLD) climbed 11% today.
The House of Representatives, with a democrat majority, passed a bill last night to lift the 26-year old ban on offshore drilling. But because the bill also added on tax credits for clean energy companies, President Bush’s advisors are asking that he veto the bill in its current form.
The ban on naked short selling will take effect tomorrow. We’ll see what happens.
September 16, 2008
· Filed under business, economy, investing, money, politics, stock market · Tagged $85 billion, AIG, bailout, bankruptcy, banks, Barclays, Christopher Cox, crude oil, economy, Enron, gasoline prices, Goldman Sachs, government bailout, GS, Hank Greenberg, interest rate, investing, Lehman, Lehman Brothers, MER, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, MS, naked short selling, real estate, SEC, uptick rule, WaMu, Washington Mutual, WM, WorldCom
Where to start? All these stories are unfolding all at the same time. Most people alive have never seen such things.
AIG no doubt drove the market today. Lehman was six times as big as Enron and WorldCom, and AIG is 50% bigger than Lehman. Yesterday when it became clear that Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS) were last two independent investment banks left standing, the government asked the two giants to inject capital into AIG to keep it alive. When that didn’t go over so well, the fed went back to the drawing board and came up with a new idea, which was later captured in a Bloomberg article titled “Fed Said to Reverse Stance, Consider AIG Loan Package”. Originally the government said that it would absolutely not help AIG, but throughout the day AIG’s tentacles were measured and realized to stretch much further than previously thought. The news stories about AIG threw the stock all over the place today. As an example of just how turbulent the ride was, at 2:30PM the stock was trading at $2.76. At 3PM, the stock was trading at $5. That’s an 81% increase in 30 minutes. AIG is the world’s largest insurer, and unless it’s shored up, many institutions (including regional banks, as exposed by CNNMoney.com) will likely get knocked out.
Reuters released an odd article today about former chief executive of AIG Hank Greenberg leading a hoard of investors in a bid to take over AIG. I think I’ll let that one rest.
The Federal Reserve, against what everyone predicted, left interests rates alone today. The rate will stay at 2%.
When the market broke in 1937 signaling the Great Depression, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) created the “uptick” rule, which essentially stopped people from betting against failing stocks. “Naked short selling” is what it’s called now, and is when a trader buys a put for an underlying amount of stock he or she would not be able to deliver. The SEC did not eliminate the uptick rule until July 6, 2007.
Our government tried to being back a sort of uptick rule this past July and it did, in fact, help the financials rebound. You can still see the ban reflected in most stock charts, not only the financials, from July 15 until the beginning weeks of August.
Now that banks are acting more like houses made of cards than they are the good old impenetrable banks we all grew up with, the government and some analysts have began buzzing about a possible reinstatement of the uptick rule. Back in August when the ban on naked short selling was lifted off the 19 financials it protected, the plan was to create “within a few months” a sweeping rule would eliminate excessive short selling. Some, like Alan Greenspan, think this is eliminating an important side of the market, but when a bet is sure, much like oil was six months ago, people will take and take advantage of it.
The head of the SEC, Christopher Cox, announced today that the “within a few months” will probably be this week (TheStreet.com) in light of what happened yesterday and the free lunch frenzy it caused among the traders who know how to sell short naked.
I’m not going to lie; In this economy, with oil going down yet gasoline refusing to budge, the price of food through the roof, the cost of electricity forcing me to cram foods into my toaster oven instead of firing up my electric stove, and clothing being so expensive I’m at least 3 seasons behind (if not many more), I’d naked short sell a few of the stocks I own if I knew how to. But just a few, not all day and not to the point I felt sick with guilt. I wonder if anyone feels guilty. Doubt it.
I bought long into Merrill Lynch (MER) today, and added to my positions of Citigroup (C) and Washington Mutual (WM). Washington Mutual is a real gamble, but MER should be one stock I won’t have to worry about.
The Dow crossed from red to green and back again 15 times today and really rallied in the last two hours of trading to close up 141 points to $11,059. My stocks that gained today included C, MBI, MER, MTG, RDN, RF, and WM, but it wasn’t enough to have me end the day in the green, and in fact, I’m now overall up just $2.08. But I’m keeping the faith that regulations will come this week and we’ll look back on this time as another bottom.
When the top stories are no longer about the banks, people are going to start asking questions about the price of gasoline. Crude oil slipped another $4.56 today to close at $91.15, so why is gas still over $3.50 a gallon? I smell “pissed off” coming.
In late-breaking news tonight, Barclays announced it put a bid in to buy Lehman Brothers for $2 billion, and the government decided to loan AIG $85 billion.
Also in tonight’s late-breaking news, an SEC spokesman told Reuters that “The American Bankers Association said many of its members have seen precipitous declines in their stock, high trading volumes and huge spikes in so-called failures to deliver [due to naked short sellers], leading them to conclude that their stock is being manipulated. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission expects to issue new rules against abusive short selling within 24 hours.”
Within 24 hours. This is great news.
September 15, 2008
· Filed under business, economy, investing, money, politics, stock market · Tagged AIG, American International Group, Bank of America, Barclays, black Monday, Dexter, economy, Lehman Brothers, MER, Merrill Lynch
This weekend was one wild ride, and it’s going to be a bloody Monday. Barclays walked away from talks to buy Lehman Brothers today because our government wouldn’t back up the deal, and a bankruptcy filing could come by midnight. Lehman Brothers has $128 billion in long-term debt. Ouch.
Still in the running for the bad bank, although with rapidly-fading interest, are European bank HSBC Holdings (on the New York Stock Exchange as HBC), Bank of America (BAC), and Goldman Sachs (GS). None seems interested in Lehman’s total assets, and for some unknown reason, GS seems interested in just the part of Lehman that holds real estate.
At 10PM I came home to a story out of nowhere, or at least from a place I had no idea existed, that Bank of America would acquire Merrill Lynch (MER) for $44 billion, offering $29 a share for the bank whose stock closed Friday at less than $18 a share. Meanwhile talks stalled on Lehman, an orderly wind down of its assets is seen as the only viable solution, and AIG declared it would go to the Federal lending window to ask for its own $40 billion. “Merrill Lynch gets $40 billion, why can’t I get $40 billion?” Bankers are such babies.
I stayed up passed midnight tonight, even though it’s a school night, just to see what if anything would magically happen to Lehman Brothers, and probably subconsciously to avoid a jar tomorrow morning. Like I said, I have no stake in Lehman, and hopefully BAC’s purchase of MER will cause some stability in the market tomorrow. But somehow I seriously doubt it. By 11PM, Dow futures were down 300 points, pointing to another black Monday. Washington Mutual message boarders were sweating themselves.
I’m sweating a bit too, maybe. Earlier in the summer I set off on an experiment that soon took me over and trapped me into a world that was completely foreign to me three months earlier. I still find it foreign, but more like Brazil after your first cop shakedown than Paris when first stepping under the Eiffel Tower foreign. As a side, I’ve never been to either Brazil or Paris, and as good as my imagination is I know it’s not a fair substitute for the real thing, but I can imagine that looking up through the Eiffel Tower is much more pleasant than being forcefully robbed by the Brazilian police, which is the type of foreign this experiment has turned into. And even though I know all this, and even though I sometimes can’t sleep at night in anticipation of what news will hit the next day, and despite how badly I sometimes want to nap before 4PM, I can’t seem to step away. I’m invested, both literally and figuratively, as well as emotionally and psychologically, and sometimes even physically through a churning stomach, in the largest clusterfuck this country has ever seen. My only solace is the thought that even if I lose it all, at least I can say that I watched it all happen.
But it may not be all bad. Alan Greenspan said that the crisis our financial institutions are facing is a “once in a century event” and is by far the worst he has seen. If he’s right, and he probably is, this is a real bottom where some serious bargains can be found and some serious money can be made- if only some pull through.
By midnight no new news hit about Lehman Brothers, so I finished up another episode of Dexter and went to bed. It seems the death day of a 158 year old bank will in fact come tomorrow.
August 11, 2008
· Filed under money, stock market · Tagged banks, CHC, dollar, dow closed, economy, FRE, freddie mac, investing, legg mason, michael phelps, money, naked short, oil closed, phelps, Radian, RDN, SCA, SSBX, stock market, stocks, Syncora, trading
The Financial Times called this week “crucial” for determining if the six-year downward trend of the dollar will finally end. One Euro now costs $1.4904, down almost 10 cents from about a month ago. If it does break free, economists are expecting a quick economic rebound. Fingers crossed.
Etrade pushed my funds through this morning so I was clear to buy. I picked up more shares of MBI and CHC, and then bought into ACA Capital Holdings (ACAH) before reading the news that hit Friday about the company writing no new business. So about 15 minutes later I sold ACAH at a loss. I also sold off TGIC today at a loss and for the same reason. No new business can never be a good thing, and I should have read up first before buying. Haven’t I learned this lesson already? Yes I have; the reason I sold TGIC the first time was due to a “no new business” declaration. I should have read up on ACAH before jumping in. I’ll never learn!
With the rest of my available funds, I was only able to buy 40 shares of Silver State Bancorp (SSBX), which I should have bought into first, and had written a note to myself to buy into first, but for whatever reason didn’t. It has a relatively low trading volume, but the tiny fraction created by dividing its 52-week high into where it’s currently trading was just too good to pass up. I’ll pick up more SSBX later in the week.
By 1PM I set up a plan for what to buy into next. UCBH Holdings (UCBH), MF Global (MF), AMCORE Financial (AMFI), and Corus Bankshares (CORS) all create tiny fractions when dividing the current price by the 52-week high, and UCBH and MF both reported some sort of second quarter gains. CORS and AMFI had unusual upward movement today, which could be a red flag, and also have much lower trading volumes than UCBH and MF. Because of all this, I decided my next two moves would be into UCHB and MF, as soon as Etrade clears the funds created from selling off TGIC and ACAH.
I’d like to take a second to scream how dope Michael Phelps is. MICHAEL PHELPS, YOU ROCK!! He doesn’t represent every boy whose dad was an ass; he represents what every person can be. Why Channel 7 shows soap operas over the Olympics I’ll never understand. Ok, back to stocks.
Radian Group (RDN) reported a loss of $392.50 million ($4.91 per share) this morning as opposed to a profit of $21.1 million ($0.26 per share) this time last year, causing its share value to drop in the morning, but the news was quickly forgotten RDN closed up 8% on the day. Reporting a profit these days is the anomaly, and even when a financial posts a profit, such as ABK last week, a stock can still fall. There seems to be little rhyme or reason to financial stock prices in this environment, except that the announcement of “no new business” slaughters a stock price. All other news is fair game.
The Dow was completely driven by oil today: when oil fell in the morning, the Dow made gains, and when oil had a change of heart around 2PM, so did the Dow. http://www.advfn.com/p.php is a great site to watch the Dow, Nasdaq, and the S&P 500, and their connection to crude oil prices. The Dow closed the day up 48 points to $11,782. Oil closed the day down 75 cents to
$114.45, the lowest it’s been since May 1, and fell below the benchmark $113 a barrel at one point during today’s trading session.
After the closing bell, Syncora Holdings (SCA) reported a second quarter loss of $492.9 million ($7.67 per share). It should move up or down (who knows?) in the morning. Naked short sellers return tomorrow, and I’m starting to have serious doubts about the fate of Freddie Mac (FRE). By the end of the week if the news that big wig Legg Mason bought millions more shares doesn’t send FRE into the green, I may need to cut it loose. Manny needs mental peace, I need mental peace. Sinkers don’t bring the peace, just the pain!
