daffy

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

I am very curious about the mark-to-market modification. What does "significant judgment" mean? Is that a new legalese term? It seems to make sense to me to modify the rules such that maturity dates of 10 years or greater would not be subject, but how does that equate to significant judgment?

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

axelrod,

let us just hope that we see a continued rally so this spring when when cap and trade comes into the spotlight, they won't be able to push a stimulus 2 (as an actual rebate)at the same time to give an illusion that the bottom 95% will get a rebate from the Cap and Trade program. That is surely how they will drum support and leave the two completely separate. I totally agree with you, but we have to ever cognizant of the reality of our government. Cards are so far up the sleeves it is like they have a full deck hidden, and claiming just one deck being played with.

Also, be very wary of what is coming out of Copenhagen this week at the Climate Conference. Cap and Trade may work on a very small scale, but I get the feeling this global in scope. There is a lot of hand waving going on, and whenever I ask on of these "Climate experts" to show a viable forward and reverse model that doesn't explode, the can't. My education was in geophysics, and these experts claim that they need geophysicists to work on the problem, but very few geophysicists agree with them as far as I can tell.

Just watch it very carefully, and expect extremely underhanded tricks. This is apolitical movement and it has nothing to do with anything but selling a product that has no value.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

I am curious as to who believes Lewis and Pandit?

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

James,

since when did you believe it would be anything but?

Seriously, the political and financial elite could care less about you. It is just becoming more obvious.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

you all want to take down the banks? Stop paying your credit cards.

Number of U.S. Homes With Negative Equity Is Stunning

vbierschwale~

I would hope that you would add:

Barney Frank and Chris Dodd for endorsing high loan to value and other practises in Fannie and freddie therefore giving the market par to shoot for. Who was the major purchaser of Country Wide loans? Hmmm.

I wonder

Home loans for all ~ ~ ~

keep the practise going!

Under The Radar News - Monday

Reagan,

There are many more where the following comes from:

and you can quote me.

I hope pray and prey that iTechnology becomes byeTechnology.

Apple should be embarrassed, but I figure that they will be following their current "plan" to re-invent everything and sell it to the idiots of the world.

Under The Radar News - Wednesday

Leave it to aapl to reinvent the already invented. A good reason to sell.

You mean that light at the end of the tunnel is really FIVE freight trains?

"supercomputing ability to anyone who can afford a PC", well, on a dead cat bounce, that doesn't seem to likely now does it?

Glasgow is probably on the galapogos entertaining a spirtiual transendence.

9% for PFE & GSK, 10.5% for WAG. Nice. Real nice. Next thing we will see is SWY increase proft margin by 15% to cover increased handling costs for increased wholesale food prices.

Stocks: Risky, But Tempting

There is something that scares me worse than a 10,683 DJIA. That is statements like the following:

If you buy stocks when they're going down, they might be cheap, but they're almost certainly going to get cheaper before they rebound (if they rebound).

If they rebound?

What stocks are you looking at?

Are you telling me that MSFT is going to go down, maybe to 23 and stay there forever? Maybe they might go away altogether. Maybe MSFT will just fold, and everyone who falls under the 267.2B market cap will die.

Come on Felix. Get a grip.

Everybody seems to be focused on the short term gain that they have lost sight of a simple truth. Short-term gain tax-rates jump from 15% to 28% on plays lasting less than a year. Of course that is a simplification, and just a side note. But seriously. I am curious as to how many people are out there, at age 48, are fretting the 10-15% continued downturn that might occur over the next 4-6 months in their IRA. In their IRA. Should I say it again?

I think you made another huge mistake in your article to bring CFC into this picture. Not only is the CFC deal RISKY, it may be downright stupid. CFC is going to drag down BAC with it, and the only spread there is, is the difference between BAC*(0.1822) - CFC which puts the spread at $1.78 on a CFC current price of $4.78. CFC is valued, according to my understanding of the deal, at 6.57 when I did these numbers. You have to be careful there. $7.16 is not the price right now. So, 1.78/4.78 = 37.6% gain on something that might not happen, and if it does might get revamped, and then it will only happen in 3Q 08 . . . maybe. That is why there is such a spread. I am suprised it is not more for the risk.

OK, now that there is clarification on the CFC-BAC deal, I will have to give you credit to your statement which I take as bordering on lunacy. CFC might go away. But MSFT? GRMN? RTP? BAC?

I think you need to reel yourself back in, and maybe try and take the "Death to all Mankind" out of your fear-mongering.

And just to clarify, I am not short term bullish on the market, but over the next two years, you could say that I am moderately bullish.

I think you need to lighten up Felix.

I wish my name was Oscar.


I just would really like to know when all this "sky is falling rhetoic is going to stop". Of course the sea is choppy. Do you really think we don't know that? Who are you talking to? I am still buying in, and will continue to. I could care less what my stocks are going to do in the next month or two, or 5. What goes up, might come down, and what goes down, will usually go up. Look at the DJIA over the last 20 years and you will have no choice but to agree that USUALLY trumps MIGHT every time in the previous statement.

That is for all you math people out there USUALLY > MIGHT. Notice there isn't even an equals sign udner that symbol. Unless of course you are talking about CFC.

Bad example Felix.

Financials and Retail: Not as Dire as They Seem

I love it:

"give yourself some time for stupid to be finished"

Financials and Retail: Not as Dire as They Seem

Don't agree with retail at all. I have a lot of discretionary income and I have to say, it is going into the market right now, not to BBY, or JWN, or a new car, et cterea. The spending of my discretionary income has gone almost to zero. If that is the case with someone who has discretionary income, what say about those who don't?

Financials? whoa . . . I made a few bucks on the cfc-bac deal. Might make a few more if CFC gets down to four and BAC stays put. Doubt it though, it will have to look pretty darned good. Although, a 3/4 point reduction might just get one a good short term gain on the deal. Timing there. Now might be the time to get into that one, or next week. Other than that, well, I am staying away from financials. Too risky. The only financial I am playing with right now is ETFC (and some might say I am crazy for doing that).

The hypothesis about 02-03 prices is interesting. If you take the 80 month EMA, and find that the stock price is under that AND is under the 2002 share price, you might have a stock that is worth investigating (in financials and retail). BAC falls short by about 5$ on the share price. I would say that is too risky right now. If the price went to $29, yeah, I would buy. This summer isn't going to be very nice to financial stocks, but there will be a few winners, and they will bethe agressive ones.

Opinions and conjecture.

embarassing disclosure: 1% of my portfolio is CFC @ $16.80. OUCH.

Financials Offer Patient Bulls Many Opportunities

Earnings will be fine once the major losses are done being written off, which is presumably already priced into the stock at this point, no?

With all of the doomsdaying nellies out there, I would say that it is more than factored in.

Prospector -

I am new to the market (investing wise). I could not see a better time to buy into financials. I still see no better time over the next three months. Although I am breaking even on everything right now (which says a lot since I started buying in early November), I see that in the next 8 - 16 months I am going to be very happy I put my money where I thought it should go. I have only fallen once when I chose not to buy ETFC at 2.08. I have had C on a watch for awhile and I will continue to watch. Unfortunately, I still think C has a huge write down coming, or a couple. I am going to wait until the next beating (or two), then buy.

One thing to remember is that we have an election year and the fear mongering in the media is going to be many fold. The economy, in the eyes of the media, is going to be the worst in decades for the time until at least late November, then the party that wins will decide how quickly the market will turn around. If the naysayers win, well, it might be May of 2009 before we see beauty in our current investments. If the yeahsayers win, well, probably beginning right away and a banner Christmas (compared to this last one) will be had, sending confidence through the market. Either way, does it matter? Doubling your money (or even quadrupling it) is no losing game in a few months over a one year investment.

Agreed . . . putting all disposable money into the market when I get it. Oooops, there goes the retail sector.

Cheers