Category Archives: stocks

This is what napalm in the morning smells like, this is the sound of a primal scream: Dow down 38 points, or 0.35%; S&P 500 down 13 points, or 1.1%; Bank of America up $1.16 a share, or 3.4%. If … Continue reading →

Here’s a chart of how the Dow and the S&P have performed over the course of September to date. I chose the time frame because it was basically the period in which AIG, a Dow component, imploded. The point of … Continue reading →

Whee! Isn’t this fun? Stocks are "skyrocketing" today, after "soaring" yesterday — the Dow’s up 700 points from where it closed on Wednesday. Let’s not tell anybody that at its current level of 11,316 it’s actually lower than where it … Continue reading →

I have a nasty feeling that Christopher Cox watches Jim Cramer. Today, Cramer started waxing conspiratorial about the dastardly types who would be so unpatriotic as to sell investment-bank stocks: "It could be financial terrorism. What a great way to … Continue reading →

I have no idea whether or not the government is going to set up the bailout fund to end all bailout funds — a new RTC which would essentially become one big "bad bank", precluding the need for entities like … Continue reading →

It doesn’t actually particularly matter which this stock this is. The point is that when the intraday range of stock values is larger than the difference between a stock’s 52-week low and its 52-week high, you know that trying to … Continue reading →

Where to turn in days like these? Paul Wilmott had a great idea and cracked open his copy of Hamlet: And let me speak to the yet unknowing world How these things came about. So shall you hear Of carnal, … Continue reading →

Yesterday I said that in order to turn this market around, we’d need to see either (a) a deal to buy Lehman Brothers, or (b) a convincing recapitalization of AIG. The latter seems as far away as ever, but the … Continue reading →

When the Dow falls 500 points in a day, you know that’s going to lead the news everywhere both tonight and tomorrow morning. So, being a natural contrarian, my first reaction was to put today’s action in the "not nearly … Continue reading →

And you thought your company’s tech support was bad. Just check out the London Stock Exchange’s incident communication website for this morning: At 9:15 London time, connectivity was "suspended" and no orders could be entered or deleted. Fifty minutes later, … Continue reading →

Seeking Alpha (twice), Colin Barr, Stacy-Marie Ishmael, and many others have blamed today’s price action in Fannie and Freddie — they’re down about 20% apiece, albeit from a very low level — on an article which appeared over the weekend … Continue reading →

Baruch thinks that sell-side analysts deliberately game the earnings-expectations system: Analysts with buy ratings on a stock will have lower earnings numbers going into quarters than their peers, so they don’t inadvertently raise the average of published sell side expectations, … Continue reading →