Browse by Tags
-
Posted
Oct 06 2009, 01:48 PM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This article is written by Minyanville's Megan Barnett This week has seen yet another round in the battle between Goldman Sachs (GS) and the Rest of the World. See also, Goldman Sachs Lightning Bolt Sparks Rally. On Monday, Goldman Sachs analysts Richard Ramsden and Brian Foran upgraded their outlook for big banks from neutral to attractive. The news sent shares of JPMorgan (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), and Wells Fargo (WFC) sharply higher. And yes, even Goldman Sachs shareholders benefited from the news, as its shares jumped nearly 4%.
The upgrade baffled many banking analysts and it came against a backdrop of negative opinions. And these aren't just slightly bearish views -- they're downright scary outlooks that suggest some of the worst still lies ahead for banks and the rest of the economy. Here's a sampling:
Meredith Whitney, the analyst who made her name as a banking bear at the start of the credit crisis, penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal last week in which she predicted that small businesses will become the next victims of the crisis since their access to credit is being denied by banks and other lenders. She believes “we are only in the early stages of the second half of this credit cycle."
George Soros reiterated his gloom for a roomful of global financial policy wonks in Istanbul yesterday, saying that the US economic recovery will be extremely slow thanks to the “basically bankrupt” banking system at its core.
Read More...
-
Posted
Sep 30 2009, 07:36 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 This article is written by Minyanville's Justin Rohrlich
The financial crisis that began in August 2007 had relatively little to do with traditional bank lending…Its prime cause was the rise and fall of "securitized lending," which allowed banks to originate loans but then repackage and sell them out.
-- Niall Ferguson, The Ascent Of Money
The dust is still settling from the great market crash of 2008-09, and we still don’t know exactly who or what to blame. It might have been securitization, but it probably wasn’t David Bowie. For more on securities, see Banks Realize Securities Are Like a Box of Chocolates.
Securitization is the process of taking a group of assets and transforming them into a tradable security. By aggregating them into one large pool, investor risk is, in concept at least, distributed more evenly. Asset-backed securities resemble bonds in that they pay a fixed amount of interest over a specific time period. Bing: The history of Bowie bonds
These securities can be backed by mortgages, credit card debt, car loans, or anything else that will (theoretically) generate future cash flow. Like song royalties, for instance.
Read More...
-
Posted
Sep 15 2009, 02:20 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 It doesn't pay to party in someone else's foreclosed mansion. Wells Fargo (WFC) says it has fired Cheronda Guyton for breaking company rules against personal use of bank property, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Guyton, if you'll remember, was in hot water for reportedly moving into a $12 million Malibu mansion after its owners turned it over to the bank in a foreclosure. The house was empty and Guyton, in her job as senior vice president overseeing commercial foreclosures, likely had easy access to the property. (You can see pictures of the home here). Neighbors say that Guyton and her family moved in, throwing big beachfront parties and even getting a homeowner parking pass from community guards. The neighbors were happy to share their findings with the Times, and when the news spread far and wide, Wells Fargo found itself in a mighty uncomfortable position.
Read More...
-
Posted
Sep 11 2009, 10:34 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Another day, another story of a banking executive making a boneheaded move. And this one seems too unbelievable to be true. A Wells Fargo honcho in charge of foreclosures decided to make herself right at home in a $12 million Malibu beach house, moving in and throwing big parties soon after it had been surrendered to her bank, the Los Angeles Times reports after talking to neighbors. What could make this story even more outrageous? How about a dash of Bernard Madoff? The former owners of the home were victims of Madoff's Ponzi scheme. They lost a fortune in the fraud, their real estate agent told the Times. Bing: Bank executives gone bad
The owners turned the house over to Wells Fargo last May, but the bank refused to show the house to potential buyers, the agent said. And then, neighbors say, the foreclosure boss moved in.
Read More...
-
Posted
Sep 01 2009, 01:25 PM
by
Anthony Mirhaydari
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
In a dramatic shift, investors are shying away from the riskiest assets and the most speculative stocks. The huge rise in the likes of AIG (AIG) and Citigroup (C) had the trappings of a short-covering bull rally on its last legs. Now, the financial sector appears to losing the market leadership role that powered the broad market higher.
After regrouping and counting casualties, the bears are on the counterattack. AIG is down 24.3% over the last two days while Citigroup has lost 10.1%. Government controlled mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are down 19.1% and 17.9% respectively.
The catalyst appears to be a downgrade of AIG by a Sanford C. Bernstein analyst and downgrades of Fannie and Freddie by FBR Capital Markets analysts. But the signs of an impending turnaround have been building for weeks.
Read More...
-
Posted
Aug 27 2009, 07:44 AM
by
John Reese
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Berkshire Hathaway recently filed its latest holdings statement with the SEC, and one major position Warren Buffett is keeping steady is consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble (PG). Berkshire owned close to 100 million shares of P&G at the end of the second quarter, according to the filing, making it one of Buffett's biggest positions. In fact, the only companies that Berkshire (BRK.B) has greater stock stakes in, dollar-wise, are well-known Buffett favorites Coca-Cola (KO), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNI).
P&G certainly has some of the qualities Buffett has typically looked for in his investments. For example, both the company and many of its products, including Pampers, Tide, Crest, and Bounty, have strong, recognizable brand names that give P&G an advantage over some peers.
Read More...
-
Posted
Aug 25 2009, 08:32 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This article is written by Minyanville's Justin Rohrlich
Hey buddy, can you spare a wheel of Parmigiano-Reggiano?
Italy is in the throes of its fourth recession since 2002, with the country’s economy expected to contract 5.3% this year. And, for many producers, cheese seems to be the only way out.
Credito Emiliano, an Italian bank in the Emilia-Romagna region, has been accepting parmesan cheese as collateral since the early 1950s -- and is now considering treating prosciutto, olive oil and balsamic vinegar the same way, according to Steve Jenkins, one of America’s foremost cheese experts.
Bing: Italy recession
The bank does not store the cheese on site -- this is the purview of a unit called Magazzini Generali delle Tagliate, which holds 440,000 wheels worth a little less than $190 million.
“This mechanism is our life blood,” Giuseppe Montanari, a parmesan producer, told Bloomberg News. “It’s a great way to finance our expenses at convenient rates, and the bank doesn’t risk much because they can always sell the cheese.”
Read More...
-
Posted
Aug 04 2009, 03:50 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 The stock price of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) hit $100,000 yesterday, up from a 52-week low of $70,000, but still well off its period high of $147,000.
Berkshire’s chief Warren Buffett has made a number of shrewd moves over the last year that have paid the company handsomely. The most visible of these is probably an investment in Goldman Sachs (GS), which included warrants for shares of the bank at $115 a share. Those warrants are now in the money at a level that would make them worth $2 billion at today’s stock price.
Buffett bought shares in Bank of America (BAC) and Wells Fargo (WFC) when many Wall Street analysts believed that the financial firms could not stay in business. Berkshire’s interest in BAC is up in value by more than 400% and its WFC holdings have gained more than 200%.
Read More...
-
Posted
Jul 28 2009, 07:34 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Analysts have hoped that the rate at which Americans become unemployed will slow in the second half of 2009. There has been some evidence that the period in which the economy would lose 600,000 or more jobs a month is over. That may not be the case.
The press has observed that layoffs are one of the main reasons behind improved earnings in the second quarter. Sales at many companies are not up, but expenses are down, in many cases considerably. But, second quarter results may not only be the result of jobs cuts; they may be the cause for more, which will mean that the period in which the economy faces rapidly rising unemployment is not over.
Verizon (VZ) announced that it will cut 8,000 jobs. Its results for the last reporting period were below par. The recession is one reason for that. Another is that customers are canceling their landline phones and using cellular phones or VoIP instead. The poor economy and new technology are overwhelming Verizon’s old way of doing business. The same thing has happened to AT&T (T).
Read More...
-
Posted
Jul 21 2009, 07:05 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Sunwest Bank, a community bank in Orange County, Calif., looked very much like an outlier from 2005 to 2007.
Orange County was the epicenter of subprime mortgage lending -- half of the biggest 20 subprime lenders in the U.S. were located there -- and Ground Zero for mortgage brokers hawking no-money-down adjustable-rate mortgages. All the extremes of the housing bubble could be found in Orange County.
Unlike its peers, Sunwest Bank neatly sidestepped the trouble. It never touched subprime lending. It warned of the dangers ahead. And it deliberately left other speculative lending, like commercial real estate, to those banks that were addicted to it, like kids on a sugar high. Few banks were wholly untouched by the carnage; even the biggest players, like Citigroup (C), Wells Fargo (WFC), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), and Bank of America (BAC), hardly escaped unscathed.
Read More...
More Posts Next page »
|
