Sebastian

March S&P/Case-Shiller Figures

I agree with Jon.
Could you perhaps do a price index for the cities that starts with 100 in 1992? Would be great.

Best Regards, Sebastian

3 Signs of a Bottom for Sovereign Bancorp

Greeting my good Freund ;-),

Nice article in times when clubbing of US-regional banks is so en vogue.
I really can't understand the doom and gloom about small banks while investors start to talk about a bottom in the big money-centers.
The regionals are in many cases better capitalized and hold a less dangerous loan portfolio than their bigger brethren. Plus there are still small banks out there, which are actually in the banking-business (borrow at 3, lend at 6, play golf at 3) rather than playing around with derivatives 'n stuff.

I just wanted to tell you (in amazon.com-lingo) that hence you are interested in Sovereign Bancorp., you might also like Mercantile Bank of Michigan (MBWM). They operating in an economically depressed region but have a rather low exposure to residential loans. MBWM still is "well capitalized" according to the equity to risk weighted assets-ratios and has acceptable levels of unperforming loans as well as 30 day+ - delinquencies. The bank is trading below half book value and experienced considerable insider buys from many of the companys' officers and directors.

Warren Buffett Likes Germany, and So Do We

Hi Martin,
Beeing a German investor I would recommend you to take a closer look at Commerzbank - like Deutsche Bank it's one of the DAX30 enterprises. Commerzbank is a big player in German residential and commercial loans with low exposure to US-subprime issues. The current valuation is even more conservative then Deutsche's. It's selling at a 5% discount on book and yields a nice dividend of nearly 5%. In my oppinion Commerzabnk could easily earn a 15% return on equity in more stable global banking environment.