Market Currents

• Today - Thursday, December 17, 2009

• 10:14 AM Goldman Sachs' (GS) newest critic: Jimmy Hoffa. The Teamsters chief says Goldman is actively soliciting trades for clients to help them benefit from a collapse of YRC Worldwide (YRCW), America's biggest trucker. 3 Comments
• 09:12 AM Meredith Whitney drops her profit estimates for Morgan Stanley (MS) and Goldman Sachs (GS), maintains netural rating. Sees Q4 EPS at Goldman of $6, vs. previous $6.38, and 2010 EPS at Morgan to $2.60 from $2.63. MS and GS both -1.6% premarket. Comment!

• Tuesday, December 15, 2009

• 11:03 AM Barclays cuts its outlook for Morgan Stanley (MS -0.7%), to EPS of $0.40 from $0.90, trimming revenue guidance for core trading and investment banking. Barclays left its view on Goldman Sachs (GS -1.4%) intact at EPS of $4.80, saying lower compensation expense would make up for lower trading revenue. Comment!
• 08:26 AM A retirement fund and Goldman Sachs (GS) stakeholder sues the bank for "blindly" rewarding executives "for corporate performance that has absolutely nothing to do with the skill of the company's employees." The lawsuit seeks to recover "billions in compensation" that Goldman has paid or plans to pay employees. 3 Comments

• Monday, December 14, 2009

• 16:35 PM Wall Street bonuses aren't dead, says David Pauly, but giant cash payments probably are - killed by Goldman Sachs' (GS) plan to pay in restricted stock instead. Meanwhile, Ryan Chittum thinks Goldman's move has been overplayed by the press: The 30 execs involved are still going to make bank. 1 Comment
• 11:21 AM Wall Street's most accurate forecasters - this year, anyway - are calling for an 11% rally in the S&P 500 next year. JPMorgan Chase's Thomas Lee expects the index to go to 1300, and Goldman Sachs' (GS) David Kostin expects 1,250, on low rates and profit growth of more than 26%. 5 Comments

• Saturday, December 12, 2009

• 07:30 AM The Wall Street Journal analyzes Goldman Sachs' (GS) dealings with [[AIG]] and finds the bank played a bigger part in fueling AIG's bad mortgage bets than it let on - even in the deals involving other banks. 4 Comments

• Friday, December 11, 2009

• 14:10 PM Goldman Sachs (GS) threw critics a bone by canceling cash bonuses for top execs, but Justin Fox yawns: It's not that we should be concerned that Goldman pays out half its revenue in giant bonuses, it's the profits - built largely due to government intervention - that people should yell about. 3 Comments

• Thursday, December 10, 2009

• 12:16 PM Goldman Sachs (GS) responds to shareholder pressure by changing executive bonuses to "shares at risk" that can't be sold for five years, instead of cash. 11 Comments

• Sunday, December 6, 2009

• 11:25 AM "None of them would have survived," Tim Geithner tells Bloomberg, disputing a claim by Goldman (GS) president Gary Cohn that the firm had enough cash to weather the storm. 4 Comments

• Friday, December 4, 2009

• 15:40 PM "None of them would have survived a situation in which we had let that fire try to burn itself out,” says Treasury Secretary Geithner about Goldman Sachs' (GS) claims that it didn't really need government help. Geithner calls last fall's events "a classic bank run" and criticizes record bonuses, saying pay needs to be restrained even at banks that have repaid aid. 3 Comments
• 08:17 AM Goldman Sachs (GS) is reportedly weighing plans to hike the equity portion of its pay packages, awarding all annual bonuses to senior executives, including CEO Lloyd Blankfein, in company stock. The firm has been meeting with major investors to explain why it deserves the record pay-packages it's awarding itself after accepting TARP funds. 4 Comments

• Thursday, December 3, 2009

• 15:53 PM Bloomberg announces its top economic forecasters, and the winner is ... Goldman's (GS) Jan Hatzius, with a mere 82.9% accuracy score. 2 Comments
• 12:17 PM CME Group (CME +0.7%) announces all top OTC dealers sign on to its credit default swap clearing initiative, including: Barclays (BCS), Citi (C), Goldman (GS), JPMorgan (JPM), Deutsche Bank (DB), Morgan Stanley (MS), UBS (UBS) and Credit Suisse (CS). A pre-launch program will begin clearing CDS by Dec. 15. Comment!
• 10:50 AM Sources say CME Group (CME +0.8%) is near a breakthrough deal with some of the world's biggest banks to clear credit default swaps. The CME has held talks with the world's main OTC dealers - Barclays (BCS), Citi (C), Goldman (GS), JPMorgan (JPM), Deutsche Bank (DB), Morgan Stanley (MS), UBS (UBS) and Credit Suisse (CS) - though it remains unclear how many of them are ready to ink the proposed deal. Comment!
• 07:35 AM In a document called Goldman Sachs Compensation Practices (.pdf), Goldman (GS) notes it has "substantially outperformed peers from a shareholder value creation perspective," adding that it has "still been able to pay out more on average per employee" while generating "the highest average EPS growth rate." 2 Comments