Bear Stearns Companies Inc. (BSC)
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- Nine Months Later: Some Annual Predictions from the Financial Press [view article]
- What Happened to the Fed's $1.816 Trillion Lifeline? [view article]
- 3 Things America Needs to Do to Get the Economy Back on Track [view article]
- The Coming Crash of 2008: A Result of Overleveraging [view article]
- Financial Landscape: Writedowns, Losses and Capital Raised [view article]
- Putting the Perception and Reality of the Financial Crisis Into Perspective [view article]
- Lloyds Buys HBOS: Good Deal or Bad? [view article]
- Bear Stearns’ Bailout by the Fed, JPM: A Century Old Conspiracy [view article]
- Where's the Bottom? Still Anybody's Guess [view article]
- Lessons From the Banking Meltdown [view article]
- Investment Bank Crisis: The Greatest Show on Earth [view article]
- Should I-Banks Trade Publicly? [view article]
loading ...Recent BSC Articles
- What Happened to the Fed's $1.816 Trillion Lifeline?
- 3 Things America Needs to Do to Get the Economy Back on Track
- Putting the Perception and Reality of the Financial Crisis Into Perspective
- Where's the Bottom? Still Anybody's Guess
- Lloyds Buys HBOS: Good Deal or Bad?
- Should I-Banks Trade Publicly?
- Nine Months Later: Some Annual Predictions from the Financial Press
- Will Lehman's Bankruptcy End the Moral Hazard?
- Buyouts and Shakeups: How the Financial World Is Changing
- Financial Landscape: Writedowns, Losses and Capital Raised
- Full List of Articles »
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Financial Landscape: Writedowns, Losses and Capital Raised [view article]
Anybody think the RBS preferreds are a good opportunity ? Would love some insite . ReplyNine Months Later: Some Annual Predictions from the Financial Press [view article]
I like what you have to say, and am in full agreement. My thought on investing in SPY and QQQQ is to dollar cost average into these two ETF's. Over the years I feel I will make a better than average return. ReplyNine Months Later: Some Annual Predictions from the Financial Press [view article]
Great article and an always valid point to check performance against the market. Everyone seems to think they are winning until they bother to check the score. ReplyShould I-Banks Trade Publicly? [view article]
Ralph Nader predicted all this nonsense in the US but no one took him seriously:www.thenation.com/blog...
More recently, Ralph issued a warning letter to congress for which he was mocked. Then, it turns out Ralph was right again.
votenader.org/blog/200.../
The Nader campaign has been trying to get Ralph put on the air in economic discussions as a consumer advocate and expert. His worth as an expert guest is shown by his correct predictions on the catastrophe we are dealing with. But STILL he is denied media coverage despite his proven wisdom.
The national media is not fulfilling its duty to the public and is in fact doing the public a disservice by blockading experts who can show some real insight to our problems.
Something is seriously wrong when a man with a history of consumer advocacy and a record of wisdom on financial issues is blocked from the public discourse. Reply
llo
Are Commercial Banks the New Kings of Finance? [view article]
STD has been what its name implies-S&P was clueless. ReplyFinancial Landscape: Writedowns, Losses and Capital Raised [view article]
It's also interesting that RBS and Barclays have riased substantially more new capital than the amount of assets they have written down. Does this mean they were just greatly under-capitalized before, or that there's a lot more write-offs on the way. Replysurvival
Lessons From the Banking Meltdown [view article]
My survival strategy.....A good wife (who can cook and tend the garden) Gold coin, silver rounds, stacks of cash, reliable and SKILLED friends, 1-year of dry storage food, a garden in the back yard, a job in the healthcare sector, and GUNS/AMMO galore (plus training in their effective use)....White-collar, unskilled, greedy Wall-Street sissies can pick through my garbage cans for their next meal.....that is all that they deserve after they have WRECKED AMERICA. Reply
Nine Months Later: Some Annual Predictions from the Financial Press [view article]
Avoid Financial Disasters with SmartStopsIn less than a year six widely held financial stocks have cost Buy and Hold investors more than $840 billion dollars. (Yes, that’s “billions” with a “B”).
$840 billion in losses is a number that might even get Warren Buffet’s attention. Think of all the retirement funds and college tuition money that got needlessly flushed down the drain in these few months. It’s a sad scenario but the saddest part is that the investors who lost all these billions could have avoided this disaster by simply using a “SmartStop” trailing exit.
Let’s look at the individual stocks and see what might have happened if some prudent stops were set rather than relying on a “buy and hold”. (You will notice that I did not refer to “buy and hold” as a strategy. It doesn’t qualify to be a strategy – its actually the absence of any intelligent exit strategy.)
Fannie Mae (FNM): The Sept/Oct 2007 high was $68.60 and FNM dropped to a recent low of $6.68. This 97% decline cost investors a total of $66 billion dollars. A SmartStop exit was triggered on Oct. 17, 2007 that would have limited the loss from the peak to less than 10%.
Freddie Mac (FRE): The Sept/Oct 2007 high was $65.88 and in less than 12 months FRE dropped all the way down to a pitiful 36 cents. When Freddie took that leap off the cliff it cost “buy and hold” investors $42 billion dollars. However a SmartStop exit was triggered on Oct. 16, 2007 at a price of $58.05 that might have preserved enough equity to get the grandkids through college.
Lehman Brothers (LEH): The Sept/Oct 2007 high was $66.98 and now they have filed for bankruptcy and the shares recently closed at a value of 21 cents. This painful disaster cost LEH shareholders $46 billion from the referenced high. Where was the SmartStop exit on LEH? It was triggered on Oct. 19th at $57.47 a share. Those funds could have been reinvested and earning money toward a comfortable retirement. Where is all that money now?
American International Group (AIG): The Sept/Oct 2007 high was $70.13 and now the stock is trying to stabilize somewhere below $5 after hitting $3.50. For the unfortunate shareholders who still own AIG that’s a whopping loss of $179 billion (give or take a few dollars). How smart was the SmartStops exit? It was triggered on Oct. 15, 2007 at $66.41 and there have been 28 more SmartStops sell signals since then.
Washington Mutual (WM): The Sept/Oct 2007 high was $39.25 and the SmartStop exit was at $34.30 on Oct. 15th. WM hit a recent low of $1.75; not even enough to buy a Starbucks latte. In less than a year WM shareholders lost more than $63 billion. Maybe if they hold long enough WM will eventually recover. (Although it will require a gain of more than 2000% to make back that 95% loss.)
Bear Stearns (BSC): It’s hard to believe that the Sept/Oct 2007 high for this ancient and respected brokerage firm with over 3 billion shares outstanding was $133.20 a share. Now they are gone and even with the government assisted bailout their unfortunate shareholders have lost more than $440 billion in equity. This one can never recover. That’s $440 billion of hard earned savings that’s now gone forever. (In case you are wondering, the SmartStops exit was at $110.11 on October 24, 2007. There were 17 more SmartStops exit signals prior to the takeover.)
I wonder if the Bear Stearns account executives told their clients that the best way to invest was to buy and hold?
Reply
Big Banks: Too Big To Fail, Too Big To Bail [view article]
We ought to creat a class of banks that are" too big to fail" and watch them much more closely like limiting their ability to leverage their accets more than 10 to 1. There are also big companies like GM and GE that need to be treated to constant daily checking by the government . Thgis would limit the total growth because some companies would like to have their credit sheets below the radar . ReplyNine Months Later: Some Annual Predictions from the Financial Press [view article]
yep - i'm getting spanked - having only invested @ august 1, i've still managed to catch up w/ the rest of the market's hideous downturn by being overly optimistic (and overweight) concerning financials. ReplyWill Lehman's Bankruptcy End the Moral Hazard? [view article]
Fewer morals, more hazards. ReplyBuyouts and Shakeups: How the Financial World Is Changing [view article]
The role of the GSEs made them incredibly vulnerable. Although they have been saved, it's unlikely that they will resume their role as freely as before, meaning that commercial banks will take up more of the "burden" of mortgage lending. Without mortgage guarantees, money will be tighter and loans will have higher standards and bigger down payments. Securitization will be reduced. The clear beneficiaries of this will be commercial banks, who have large deposit bases to use as a source of loans (in the absence of securitization).Homes will be harder to finance, but worthy borrowers will still be able to get a home loan. Savings rates will go up as people save for down payments, home prices will stabilize to modest appreciation, dampening the rampant speculation that made them so unafforadable in the first place. HELOCs will be reduced as equity climbs more slowly. Things will return, for a time at least, so a slower, more stable pace.
Securities will replace homes as the investment vehicle of choice, and the stock market will go up.
It's not a new world, we're just going to rearrange things a bit. Reply
Buyouts and Shakeups: How the Financial World Is Changing [view article]
You are right. Capital world is reshaping itself. To those who whine that taxpayers money should not be used for bailouts, I say. come on guys, WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE". Throw away the cloak of 1800's capitalism. You are still trembling in the memories of 1929. Downing of AIG would have been a tsunami the world over. Nobody has yet jumped out of wall streets windows. If AIG is to go under, it will, no matter what but in an orderly way. taxpayers money is going nowhere. It will comback to taxpayers. ReplyMoody's, Fitch, S&P, SEC Are All Useless [view article]
Dleverage, are you sure that his broad brush call was as abusive? Or are you loaded to the gills with long positions and got caught out?I do believe that if the only one's who got it right were the naked shorts because the rest of us were caught up in our own portfolios to see the bigger picture then what? Reply
Moody's, Fitch, S&P, SEC Are All Useless [view article]
Were you dialed into this past weekend's meetings from your Wisconsin gardin? Barclay's will pick up a significant number of the LEH employees and pay several billion to do so. Your broad brush slams of the agencies and the SEC are as abusive as naked short selling. Reply