BloggingStocks has a new home! Daily Finance.

Click here to visit the new home of BloggingStocks!

Hot on DailyFinance:

See More Stories
Feed

Is the bank bailout plan getting out of hand?

Posted Feb 10th 2009 12:20PM by Connie Madon (RSS feed)
Filed under: Industry, Money and Finance Today, Financial Crisis

This whole bank bailout mess is getting ridiculous. The newest wrinkle is that insurance companies are getting approval to acquire banks so that they can get a chunk of the TARP bank bailout money. Why we are bailing out insurance companies is a mystery.

Nevertheless, banking regulators last month approved applications from Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. (NYSE: HIG) and Lincoln National Corp Ind. (NYSE: LNC) to become savings and loan holding companies so they can get a bite of the TARP money. In addition, about a dozen insurers have applied for capital injection.

Insurance companies have been seeking federal funds to boost their coffers after large investment losses.

Continue reading Is the bank bailout plan getting out of hand?

Print this

Are Cramer's stock picks five percentage points worse than the market?

Posted Feb 7th 2009 11:08AM by Peter Cohan (RSS feed)
Filed under: Magazines, Market Matters, Money and Finance Today, Personal Finance

CNBC's Jim Cramer has an audience of 600,000 for his Mad Money. But Barron's has gone to great lengths to investigate how his stock picks have performed and it has concluded that they lag the market averages by about five percentage points. Specifically, Barron's concluded that from May to December of 2008, the S&P 500 lost about 30% and "heeding Cramer's Buys and Sells would have added another five percentage points to that loss."

Cramer's Sells do better than his Buys. Specifically, his Sells outperformed the market on the downside by five percentage points while his Buys lost up to 10 percentage points more than the market. One finance professor estimated using options-market activity that betting against Cramer's Buy recommendations can yield 25% in a month.

Continue reading Are Cramer's stock picks five percentage points worse than the market?

Print this

President to name new panel of economic advisors

Posted Feb 6th 2009 3:30PM by Lita Epstein (RSS feed)
Filed under: Money and Finance Today, Politics, Financial Crisis

President Obama wants to get advice from outside the regular Washington circles, so he'll be announcing today a new team of outside economic advisers headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

Dubbed the White House Economic Recovery Advisory Board, the group will include GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt, Caterpillar Chairman Jim Owens, Former SEC Chairman William Donaldson, TIAA-CREF President Roger Ferguson, Yale University Chief Investment Officer David Swenson, President of Oracle Corp. Charles Phillips, Harvard University Professor Martin Feldstein and University of California, Berkeley Professor Laura Tyson.

Labor will also be represented by Richard Trumpka of the AFL-CIO and Anna Burger of the Service Employees International Union. Others members include Mark Gallogly, founder and managing partner of Centerbridge Partners, Penny Pritzker, chairman of Pritzker Realty Group, John Doerr of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, and Monica Loranzo, publisher and CEO of La Opinion.

The board will meet for two years and be modeled after the foreign intelligence board created by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In setting up this board the White House said, "The board will bring a diverse set of perspectives and voices from different parts of the country and different sectors of the economy to bear in the formulation and evaluation of economic policy."

Continue reading President to name new panel of economic advisors

Print this

Goldman Sachs wants to give back TARP money, but can it?

Posted Feb 6th 2009 10:25AM by Lita Epstein (RSS feed)
Filed under: Money and Finance Today, Goldman Sachs Group (GS), Amer Intl Group (AIG), Wells Fargo (WFC), Financial Crisis

Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) doesn't like to be told what it can or cannot do by the President of the United States, so it now wants out of the TARP program. David Viniar, Goldman's chief financial officer told attendees at a Credit Suisse conference on Wednesday that he would like to pay back the government. However, the big question is: Can Goldman raise the funds to pay back the $10 billion in capital the company took from the government last fall?

The money looked very good to financial companies. Goldman and the other banks saw it as a cheap way to raise capital and steady the ship. There's a huge catch, though. In order to pay back those funds, the company must raise new equity capital to buy out the government's stake in the bank.

Continue reading Goldman Sachs wants to give back TARP money, but can it?

Print this

Factory orders fall for a fifth straight month

Posted Feb 5th 2009 4:30PM by Michael Fowlkes (RSS feed)
Filed under: International Markets, Forecasts, Bad News, Products and Services, Industry, Employees, Money and Finance Today, Economic Data, Recession, Financial Crisis

Factory orders fell in December for a record fifth month in a row. With December's numbers now in the books, it is official that last year was the worst year for manufacturers since 2002.

Going into today's announcement, everyone agreed that factory orders had probably dropped in December, but analysts were not expecting the decline to be as steep as the actual figures revealed. Analysts had estimated that we would see a 3% dip in factory orders for the month, but the actual numbers indicate a deeper 3.9% reduction during December.

Continue reading Factory orders fall for a fifth straight month

Print this

Bank of England cut its key rate to 1%

Posted Feb 5th 2009 10:00AM by Connie Madon (RSS feed)
Filed under: International Markets, Money and Finance Today, Financial Crisis

The Bank of England cut its key rate by half a percentage point to 1%. However, even with the move, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) said that there was still disruption in money markets and the rate cuts have not yet had their full impact.

The MPC cited the sharp drop in output in the fourth quarter of last year and a similar drop early this year.

Nationwide, the UK's largest building society announced that it reduced its base mortgage rate to 3% from 3.5%.The MPC pointed to the global nature of the current slowdown and stated that the supply of credit to households and businesses remained constrained.

Continue reading Bank of England cut its key rate to 1%

Print this

The Markopolos testimony on Madoff and the SEC

Posted Feb 4th 2009 2:14PM by Douglas S. Roberts (RSS feed)
Filed under: SEC Filings, Scandals, Money and Finance Today, Politics, Headline News

Harry Markopolos, the securities industry executive who almost a decade ago tried to alert the Securities and Exchange Commission about the Ponzi scheme allegedly perpetrated by Bernard Madoff, testified before Congress today. Mr. Markopolos testified how his evidence was repeatedly rejected by senior SEC officials who neither seemed to understand nor to care about the case that he presented. And other parts of his testimony were better than any spy thriller in the movies today.

Continue reading The Markopolos testimony on Madoff and the SEC

Print this

10 biggest gaffes of financial crisis, most improved commutes & put your pet on an austerity plan - Today in Money 2/4

Posted Feb 4th 2009 9:06AM by Allan Halprin (RSS feed)
Filed under: Time Warner (TWX), Walt Disney (DIS), Citigroup Inc. (C), Money and Finance Today, Costco Wholesale (COST), Harley-Davidson (HOG), Wells Fargo (WFC)

Continue reading 10 biggest gaffes of financial crisis, most improved commutes & put your pet on an austerity plan - Today in Money 2/4

Print this

Pending home sales rise in December, according to NAR

Posted Feb 3rd 2009 4:30PM by Michael Fowlkes (RSS feed)
Filed under: Major Movement, Earnings Reports, Good news, Market Matters, Money and Finance Today, D.R.Horton (DHI), Economic Data, Housing, Financial Crisis

The troubled housing market got a bit of good news today, as the National Association of Realtors stated that pending home sales rose during the month of December.

According to today's report, pending home sales increased by 6.3% in December, coming off an all-time low that it set in November. The news comes as potential home buyers are starting to show interest in deeply-discounted homes.

Continue reading Pending home sales rise in December, according to NAR

Print this

Perry Capital's first loss in 20 years

Posted Feb 3rd 2009 12:00PM by Tom Taulli (RSS feed)
Filed under: Money and Finance Today

Founded in 1988, Perry Capital has posted a stunning investment track record. But, in 2008, there was no place to hide, as all asset classes broke down. And, as a result, Perry Capital posted its first annual loss in 20 years (down 27%).

Well, the NY Times was able to snag the firm's shareholder letter. And, it's pretty good reading.

First of all, Perry Capital actually made some good bets. For example, the fund went short on subprime securities.

Continue reading Perry Capital's first loss in 20 years

Print this

Merk Hard Currency (MERKX): Diversify out of dollars

Posted Feb 2nd 2009 1:42PM by Steven Halpern (RSS feed)
Filed under: International Markets, Newsletters, Mutual Funds, Money and Finance Today, Federal Reserve, Recession, Financial Crisis

"The Congressional Budget Office upped its 2009 fiscal year deficit forecast to $1.2 trillion; add in the stimulus plan, and the deficit could be above $2 trillion," says Tony Sagami.

The editor of The Asia Stock Alert says, "As a result, we believe that the U.S. dollar is in big, big trouble. To protect your portfolio -- or even profit from the falling dollar -- buy Merk Hard Currency Fund (MERKX)."

The advisor explains, "For a long time, we have depended on the confidence and generosity of foreigners, especially the Chinese and Saudi Arabians, to fund our deficit spending lifestyle. Those days, however, are coming to a close.

"With the Federal Reserve Bank cutting its short-term interest rate target to range from 0% to 0.25%, I doubt you'll see overseas investors lining up to buy our next-to-nothing yielding bonds. The U.S. is, unfortunately, a country in trouble and headed for a painful currency devaluation. Inflation is lurking around the corner.

Continue reading Merk Hard Currency (MERKX): Diversify out of dollars

Print this

« Previous Page | Next Page »

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular

Symbol Lookup
IndexesChangePrice
DJIA+75.2312,707.23
NASDAQ+19.052,912.81
S&P 500+10.591,341.25

Last updated: May 16, 2012: 10:37 AM

Hot Stocks

General Electric

19.105+0.705(+3.83)

Alcoa

8.815+0.105(+1.21)

Apple Inc

554.06+0.89(+0.16)

Google Inc 'A'

627.92+16.81(+2.75)

Bank of America

7.415+0.115(+1.58)

Wal-Mart Stores

59.61+0.26(+0.44)

Exxon Mobil Corp

82.74+0.95(+1.16)

Ford

10.39+0.24(+2.36)

Citigroup

28.18+0.39(+1.40)

IBM

200.10+1.06(+0.53)

Yahoo

15.47+0.07(+0.45)

Starbucks

53.54+0.20(+0.38)

Microsoft

30.09-0.12(-0.40)

Home Depot

49.24+0.57(+1.17)

DailyFinance Headlines

AOL Business News

BioHealth Investor Headlines

Sponsored Links

My Portfolios

Track your stocks here!

Find out why more people track their portfolios on AOL Money & Finance then anywhere else.

  • My Portfolio
  • Create a New Portfolio

BloggingStocks Partners

More from AOL Money & Finance

Page Loaded in 1337179072831 ms.