Archive for April, 2009

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Weekly Recap & Outlook – 4/30/09

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Tower Private Advisors

Capital Markets Recap . . . abbreviated

April 30, 2009

Below

  • Bulletproof stock markets
  • More stabilization in the economy

A Honey-Do list beckons, so this week’s recap will be early and abbreviated.  I’ll provide some color on the markets early next week.  Suffice it to say that the it seems impervious to data that, only a few short weeks ago, would have sent the Dow down by 1,000 points.  Consider the slew of bad news that has confronted the market:

  • Swine flu — wait, make that H1N1 flu — gotta protect pork producers
  • Chrysler files for bankruptcy
  • Earnings are less than spectacular
  • Banks are reported to need more capital

And yet it marches on.  We’re running out of catalysts, and the last Weekly Recap dispatch used the concept of running on fumes.  With nowhere to go from there, let’s now say that the Emperor is looking scantily clad. (more…)

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Very cool

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

You’ve gotta check out this link: http://gecon.yale.edu/world_big.html.  It’s from the Yale Economics department and it shows a rotating globe with vertical columns representing the relative economic output of each region/city/country.  Very cool.  I think it’s a bandwidth hog, however, and could make your system run like you spilled molasses on it.

Here’s a teaser look . . .

econ-map

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Earnings Season Update – 2008 Comparison

Friday, April 24th, 2009

To date 177 of 499 companies have released Q1 2009 earnings.  On average, earnings have fallen by 32.6% from the same period in 2008.  That figure, however, masks the fact that 49 (28%) of 177 companies have reported positive earnings growth.  It seems the analysts have had an especially difficult time in estimating earnings this time around.  Of the 177 companies, only two met the analyst consensus, while 118 (66.7%) exceeded expectations.  In Wall Street parlance, beating estimates is referred to as a positive earnings surprise; doing worse than the estimate is a negative earnings surprise.  The 2/3 ratio is pretty common during earnings season. (more…)

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Andrew Cuomo’s B of A/Merrill Lynch letter

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Here’s a delicious story that hit the news feeds today.  It’s a letter (link below) from Andrew Cuomo that details the pressure that the government applied to Bank of America as it sought to extricate itself from its acquisition of Merrill Lynch. (more…)

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Weekly Recap & Outlook – 4/17/09

Friday, April 17th, 2009

 Tower Private Advisors

Capital Markets Recap

April 17, 2009

Below

  • Earnings season starts off nicely
  • Jamie Dimon
  • Stabilizing economics

This week, the Dow 30 rose by 80.68 points, or 1.00%, to 8,164.06. The S & P 500 (SPX) rose by 16.60 points, or 1.94%, to close at 873.16. The NASDAQ Composite rose by 25.37 points, or 1.54%, to 1,677.91. The S & P Mid-cap index rose by 15.97 points, or 2.98%, to close at 552.40. The Russell 2000 small-cap index rose by 14.12 points, or 1.21%, to close at 1,177.72. Finally, the Morgan Stanley EAFE(Europe Australasia & Far East) index rose by 8.70 points, or 1.41%, to close at 625.40.  Today was option expiration, and that often produces some whacky action.  Today was eerily quiet, and it makes us think that next week could be quite interesting. (more…)

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