Of all the unfortunate circumstances to emerge from the housing bubble and bust, one of the most underappreciated is the development of a market-timing mindset when it comes to the decision about when to buy a home. I mention this now because this morning’s New York Times has a story about using price-to-rent ratios to [...]
–Trading profits continue to surge at the investment banks. Morgan Stanley‘s earnings more than doubled expectations as revenue from its currency and trading opperations more than doubled from a year ago. The question is how much of that was from better marks. The company’s value at risk was down from the 4Q, so the good [...]
Up on my office wall just beyond my computer screen I have a 100- year chart of the stock market. It’s none too elegant, having been cobbled together from a long-term chart of the Dow that Value Line offers for free on its website, some decades from other data sources and crude penciling in by [...]
There’s a growing consensus among economists that the global economic recovery is looking better and better. Those fears of a “double-dip” recession, in which the world takes a second tumble into a downturn, are fading. Barclays Capital recently upgraded its 2010 GDP growth forecast for the U.S. to 3.8% from 3.5%, and had this to [...]
Good news in the WSJ this morning: mortgage delinquencies are on the decline. According to LPS Applied Analytics, the number of loans that were at least 30 days past due or in foreclosure declined by 8.6% in March. That’s the second month in a row we’ve seen a drop. The president of LPS, which does [...]
–Could Citigroup really be on the mend? After years of disappointing results, Citigroup looks like it had a genuinly good first three months of this year. Analysts were expecting the bank to basically break even, instead the company earned $4.4 billion. Sure, nearly a billion that came from positive marks, but there’s still plenty of [...]
The Securities & Exchange Commission on Friday sued investment bank Goldman Sachs for defrauding investors. It could severely damage Goldman’s reputation and a settlement, if it happens, could be very expensive. The sheer spectacle of the U.S. Government charging Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs with civil fraud has been enough to rattle the financial markets [...]
A few weeks ago, I did a blog post questioning whether the mega-profitable, much-hated investment bank Goldman Sachs really methodically set about putting together mortgage-backed securities that would fail. I pointed to a Michael Lewis endorsed college thesis that seemed to suggest Goldman’s mortgage CDOs had actually done better than the rest. I then asked [...]
–It’s Springtime for financials. Bank of America continues the good news for banks. Profits bloomed to a tune of $3.2 billion in the first quarter. That handily beat analysts expectations. Goldman and the rest report next week. –The so-called Volcker Rule has been gaining some traction recently. It’s in the Senate bill and has gained [...]
Whenever the BRICs have a powwow, as they did during their second summit this week in Brasilia, I can’t help thinking about the future of the global economy. After all, the BRICs – that’s Goldman Sachs-speak for the four great emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China – in many ways represent that future. [...]
