Companies beat Wall Street earnings estimates at a record pace so far this quarter
So far, so good on the earnings front this quarter. Third quarter earnings reports have beaten estimates at 79% of the 104 of the 500 companies in the Standard & Poor’s index that have reported so far. Positive surprises in the second quarter helped fuel a rally...The sky isn't falling and the dollar isn't going to zero. Yes, the dollar is in a slow and long-term decline but don't buy what the panic mongers are selling
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross laid out the five stages of grief in her 1969 book On Death and Dying. There’s denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. The financial markets when confronting a strong trend work through their own five stages. Not of grief....Why this isn't the start of another 10-year bull market
Absolutely brilliant table on Briefing.com this morning explaining why the rally off the March 9, 2009 low is a great short-term bull market but why longer-term the bear remains in control. The jargon for those who care is that this is a cyclical bull inside a secular...Go figure: Demand for U.S. Treasuries soars
They pay almost nothing. They’re denominated in a currency that is losing value every day. And yet investors keep loading up on U.S. Treasuries. Overseas buyers increased their holdings for a fourth consecutive month in August, to an all-time high of $3.45...Congress writes strong new regulations for banks–and then exempts everybody but my grandma
Maybe it’s a seasonal thing. We carve pumpkins at Halloween. We carve turkeys at Thanksgiving. So why shouldn’t Congress carve out its own legislation in mid-October. You may not be familiar with the term “carve out.” I wasn’t until this...Google's earnings are good news–let me count the ways
Google’s (GOOG) good earnings news is an indicator of something, but just what? On October 15, after the market close, Google reported earnings of $5.89 a share, 47 cents a share above the consensus estimate of $5.42. Revenue, after traffic acquisition costs,...Everybody knows China is manipulating its currency but nobody expected the U.S. to say so. And it didn't
Surprise, surprise. The U.S. Treasury Department criticized China for a“lack of flexibility” on currency exchange rates but didn’t dare come out and say that the country is keeping the renminbi artificially cheap. You don’t get to say that, I guess, if you...GDP can't buy you happiness–so should economists start tracking GNH?
Would we all be happier if economists measured happiness? I spent a lot of time thinking about that on a camping trip this weekend. (Hey, it was really cold and I had trouble sleeping.) My friend Pamela had set my thoughts down this track by saying “You know, I don’t...Will IBM earnings be good enough to fuel the rally?
IBM (IBM) got almost everything right in its October 15 earnings announcement. And still the shares dropped almost 4% in after-hours trading. Sales fell 6.9% from the third quarter of 2008 to $23.6 billion. But that still beat Wall Street projections for sales of...Citigroup puts lipstick on a pig in third quarter earnings report
Ah, bank accounting. I can’t think of any industry where the rules give a company more absolutely legal leeway to turn a terrible quarter into a good one. Exhibit 1: Citigroup’s (C) October 15 third quarter earnings report. The company reported a $101...China pumps up the bubble-making machinery again
So much for restraint. Back in August it looked like the Chinese government, concerned about rising prices for stocks and real estate, had decided to slow down bank lending. Forget it. In September it was back to the races. New bank lending climbed to $76 billion in...No big bad news is the biggest good news in JPMorgan Chase earnings
On the morning of October 14 JPMorgan Chase (JPM) reported third quarter earnings of 82 cents a share, way above the 50 cents a share expected by Wall Street analysts. A nice surprise that. The company also told investors that it had added another $2 billion to its...Cisco Systems makes another acquisition
Today’s buyStarent Networks (STAR). Price $2.9 billion in cash. What does Starent do? It makes gear that lets wireless carriers deliver multimedia broadband to 3G and 4G smartphones. In this case multimedia means video. That’s the big prize since Cisco...Intel's earnings should be enough to keep the technology rally rolling
After the market close on October 13, Intel (INTC) reported earnings that beat Wall Street estimates and–this is what’s really important this quarter if the rally is to keep going–raised its guidance for fourth quarter revenue to a top of the range...Behind China's buying spree in oil: fears of a falling dollar
What do you do if you’re sitting on reserves of $2 trillion and you’re afraid that a sinking U.S. dollar will erode the value of that pile of cash? If you’re China, you buy things. Small things, naturally. $40 billion for oil drilling rights in...Losers and 5 winners from health care "reform"–and why we'll be fighting over who pays for a decade
We know what the health care reform legislation due today for a vote in the Senate Finance Committee will cost: $829 billion over ten years. We know that it will extend coverage to 94% of all Americans, up from 83% now. And, thanks to the blessings of the...Tech stocks to lead earnings season again?
It’s early yet in earnings season, but I were a gambling man, I’d give the technology sector odds on leading the stock market again this quarter. Wall Street is beating the bushes for earnings growth right now. If earnings don’t go up in the next...1491 will let you see the New World that we're just starting to discover
Happy Europeans discover the New World even though none of the people who lived there then knew that they needed finding Day. I don’t mean to disparage Columbus. As a history such as Hugh Thomas’ Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire from Columbus to Magellan...Buy Verizon (VZ)
Why? That’s always the first question to ask when you see a common stock like Verizon (VZ) trading with a dividend yield of 6.52%. That’s so much higher than the yield on the Standard & Poor’s 500 (2.3% as of the end of the September) that any reasonable investor...My dividend stock portfolio: income and less risk too
Today I’m re-launching my Dividend Stocks for Income Investors portfolio. By the end of this post, you’ll know why I think a dividend income stock portfolio is something all income investors need to consider as part of their total income portfolio how the portfolio I...Bad day at the bond auction drives interest rates higher; a sign of things to come?
What if they gave a Treasury bond auction and nobody came? “Nobody” is highly unlikely but lower demand isn’t. That’s what happened at Thursday’s auction for $12 billion in 30-year Treasury bonds. With demand lighter than expected yields...Will bad commercial real estate loans set off Banking Crisis II?
It’s going to be an interesting earnings season for bank stocks. The U.S. Federal Reserve has recently been out banging the pots about a new banking crisis, one in the $3.4 trillion market for commercial real-estate debt, that in size, at least, ranks up there with...How much is that house? At least 10% below the asking price
When sales of existing homes fell in August–for the first time since March–home sellers jumped into action, slashing the asking price on their properties. The average discount from asking price to sale price was 10% as of October 1, according to Trulia, a...Consumer borrowing continued to plunge in August
At 3 p.m. on October 7 the Federal Reserve reported that, as expected, consumer credit fell for the seventh consecutive month in August.. The drop of $12 billion was even worse than the consensus prediction going into the report of a $10 billion drop. If you’re...Listen to the sound of one-pizza baking: The new frugality is still picking up speed
Call it the pizza indicator. And it says that as of the end of the third quarter, at least, consumers were continuing to cut back on spending. That’s not good news if you’re hoping that the economic recovery will get here soon. Here’s what the...Expect the dollar to keep falling–traders are betting on it
It’s a trade that will stay on until Asia’s exporting economies cave in. Currency traders are betting that the dollar will keep falling–on the huge U.S. debt, on U.S. economic recovery that’s lagging Asian economies, and, not least, on their...Wall Street's numbers on earnings and revenue for 2010 don't add up
Good number crunching in the “Ahead of the Tape” column in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal by Mark Gongloff. Conclusion: It’s hard to see how U.S. companies are going to deliver the earnings growth Wall Street now projects for 2010. Here are...Jubak's Picks up 8.4% Q3 and 16.7% YTD
The Jubak’s Picks, my 12-18 month portfolio, returned 8.4% in the third quarter of 2009. Is that good or bad? It certainly badly lagged the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index, which returned 15.6% in the third quarter. It’s pretty easy to explain most of the lag in...The Australian dollar sets off a global rally
Who’d a thunk it? The Austalian central bank raises interest rates by 0.25 percentage points and the result is a global rally in everything from gold to commodities to stocks. Australia’s economy–2008 GDP $1 trillion–isn’t big enough to...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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