Posted on May - 19 - 2010
Market Wrap-Up
Stocks dropped hard Thursday as euro-zone worries were compounded by a looming vote on financial reform and news that the number of workers filing new claims for unemployment benefits surged unexpectedly last week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 376 points to close at 10068. The S&P 500 dropped 43 points to 1072 and stood down more than 10% from its apex this year, the common mark of a market correction. The Nasdaq gave up 94 points to end the day at 2204.
Financial sector stocks, including Goldman Sachs Group (GS), Citibank (C) and Bank of America (BAC) slid in afternoon trading after the Senate voted to stop debate on its version of the financial reform bill, bringing the measure closer to a vote.
European markets were down again at the close, spurring selling in the U.S.
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Posted on May - 19 - 2010
Is this a joke? There’s a broad effort, lead by Shelby, to block a discussion and vote on the Merkley-Levin amendment. Even with a 60 vote requirement and some Democratic senators missing (with “one hand tied behind our backs” as Merkley said on the floor), it is still being blocked. David Dayen has the best roundup of the financial massacre from last night. If you get a chance, watch video of Merkley and Levin fighting for their amendment last night. They were on fire.
Between the last minute changes, the way the bill has morphed into an endless stream of studies to be ignored at a later date, the dropping of any of the strong progressive resolution mechanisms in the House and the blocking of votes and discussion on Dorgan, Merkley-Levin and Cantwell’s amendments, this has really been a massacre of what was originally a fairly decent bill. Both Re
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Posted on May - 18 - 2010
Chubb Corp. (CB) reported its first-quarter 2010 results on April 22nd after the close of the market. Operating earnings for the reported quarter were substantially ahead the Zacks Consensus Estimate, benefiting from higher underwriting income, partially offset by high catastrophe loss.
Investors were clearly encouraged by the results, sending shares up 2.8% a day after the earnings release.
Below we will cover the recent earnings announcement, subsequent analyst estimate revisions and the Zacks Ratings for both the short term and the long term outlook for the stock.
Earnings Report Review
Beating the estimates considerably is a definite positive for Chubb’s stock price, and this inspires optimism for the future.
A quick glance at the top line reveals that net premiums written increased 1% year over year to $2.8 billion. E
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Posted on May - 18 - 2010
Most of you have seen a similar version of this chart (click to enlarge) with a mountain of commercial real estate problems for banks:
But the fact is that for closed banks the percentage of CRE loans non accruing is much lower than C&D (click to enlarge)
So it looks like CRE issues have been much exaggerated compared to C&D’s. P
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Posted on May - 18 - 2010
It was another chaotic day on Wall St yesterday as stocks tumbled once again as concerns around the debt crisis in Europe continued to worsen.
The big news of the day was when Germany rocked the markets by announcing a ban on naked shorti selling of CDS swaps:
BERLIN, May 18 (Reuters) – Germany plans to ban naked short-selling on stocks and euro government bonds, German all-news network N-TV reported on Tuesday.
German coalition sources told Reuters earlier that Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble plans to ban short-selling from midnight.
Economy Minister Rainer Bruederele told Reuters that it was possible the short-selling ban would be quickly enacted.
No other details were immediately available.
Quick Take:
Germany basically just pulled the rug out from underneath the banks with this shocker.
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