The market was reminded of the economy’s ongoing problems when the Conference Board, a business-backed research group, said its Consumer Confidence Index plunged to 64.5 in March from a revised 76.4 in February. The reading — a five-year low — was far below the 73.0 expected by analysts surveyed by Thomson/IFR.

Investors also weighed a report on the housing sector showed a further pullback in home prices. The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index shows U.S. home prices declined 11.4 percent in January from a year earlier.

Tight credit markets, rising prices and declining housing prices have consumers worrying about a recession. And, the stock market is in turn worrying that consumers will cut back their spending and further weaken the economy.

XM slid 11 cents to $13.69; while Sirius fell 4 cents to $3.11.

Yahoo Inc. rose 89 cents, or 3.2 percent, to $28.41 after on speculation Microsoft Inc. will raise its takeover price for the Internet company beyond $31 per share. Microsoft fell 4 cents to $29.14.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 1.87, or 0.27 percent, to 703.15.

Advancing issues barely outnumbered advancers on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to 714.3 million shares.

Investors overseas remained upbeat following the U.S. rallies Monday and last week. Japan’s Nikkei stock average finished up 2.12 percent. Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 0.91 percent, Germany’s DAX index rose 3.24 percent, and France’s CAC-40 rose 3.49 percent.

[Original: ap.google.com]

Along with its global peers, indicating a strong comeback trail, the domestic benchmark market index gained 928.09 points, the second biggest single day point gain for Sensex. Surprisingly, realty sector led the rally with a gain of 9.48 per cent followed by the much-sought after banking stocks (Bankex), 8.10 per cent.The broader markets also followed suit. The BSE mid cap shot up by 6.36 per cent at 6174.49, BSE small cap gained 4.81 per cent at 7284.64 and BSE 500 jumped up by 6.18 per cent at 6221.98. The Bombay Stock Exchange 30-Share Sensitive Index (Sensex) breached the 16000-mark again to end at 16217.49 a gain of 6.07 per cent. The 50-Share Nifty gained 267.65 points or 5.81 per cent at 4877.50.

However, when the U.S. markets opened for Tuesday, except Nasdaq all other indices, were in the negative territory. All the BSE sector indices closed positive. Realty, bank and IT (7.73 per cent) stocks were among the top gainers of the day. Power stocks gained 6.45 per cent, metal gained 6.41 per cent, oil and gas gained 5.94 per cent, auto gained 4.03 per cent and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) gained 2.14 per cent.

[source: hindu.com]

In Pepperell, which faces unprecedented fiscal difficulties this spring, Town Administrator Robert Hanson said the drop in new housing is a bad sign in the immediate short term, because it means the town cannot raise its levy capacity by much for fiscal 2009, starting in July.

On the other hand, unrestrained residential growth would also be a negative for the town.

“I suppose, if you want to address the effect of growth on services, the lack of new growth is a good thing,” said Hanson. “If you want to address the flexibility in terms of the town’s finances, then it’s a bad thing.”

Regardless of the vantage point, one thing is clear: The town is in uncharted waters, financially speaking.

Pepperell has never faced a Proposition 2 1/2 override vote, a measure Hanson said is becoming increasingly likely this year as officials assemble the annual budget.

Los Angles, CA – Investors who know how and where to look for a pre-foreclosure home have the advantage of offering an affordable purchase price no matter how low it is.
The auction method of marketing was chosen by the seller to liquidate all the property in inventory. In today’s environment, auctions have the best chance of producing the highest price with the best contract terms, given that buyers and sellers are in position to take advantage of the market. As always, it is important to be cautious and to acquire training from a real estate pre-foreclosure specialist such as Jeff Kaller to at the very least learn to invest with integrity.
At the pre-foreclosure stage, the owner is about to lose the ownership of the property and the lender will soon take possession of the property and sell it at market price. The owner can repay the loan until the day when the house is being foreclosed. The lender usually tries to offer the home owner many possibilities to avoid foreclosure. As a last resort, most people try to sell their home to any buyer just to avoid foreclosure.
In some cases, the owner is willing to drop the normal price to 50%. The advantage of buying a pre foreclosure home over a foreclosure home is that there is very little to no competition. Pre foreclosures can be profitable. With proper training, just about anyone can start searching for this type of real estate and make a profit. The only difference between pre- foreclosure houses and normal houses is the price and pre-foreclosures are a huge investment opportunity for real estate business men. Commercial and residential properties ranging from new homes to proposed multi-family apartments and tracts with industrial zoning and approved environmental permitting in place have taken center stage on exclusive online auction event.

[Original: emailwire.com]

John D’Agostino (born November 3, 1982) is an American professional poker player from Seymour, Connecticut.

He placed 5th in the second season World Poker Tour (WPT) PokerStars Caribbean Poker Adventure event, winning $99,450.

At the 2004 United States Poker Championship, he had a huge chip lead heading into the final table. However, a bad beat against Hoyt Corkins led to D’Agostino’s pocket 10s losing to quad 7s, leaving John with just one chip before he was eliminated in 6th place.

John has made a very smooth transition to the life of professional poker player at a rather young age, and though he has yet to claim a championship title, he consistently places in prestigious tournaments and makes quite the comfortable living in the cash game arena – live and online. With a great deal of motivation, he is aiming for a high-profile win soon, which will come as no surprise to anyone who has followed his career thus far.

It doesn’t make a whole lot of intuitive sense, on its face. The investment
banks are up to their eyeballs in structured products and quantitative strategies,
while the big global universal banks are heavily diversified among different
products and countries. Yet it’s the latter which are making
headlines today: both Citigroup and UBS are writing down $3 billion or so
on their fixed-income portfolios.

Heads don’t seem to be rolling at Supertanker Citi yet. At UBS, by
contrast, Huw Jenkins is out as head of the investment bank, along with 1,500
of his colleagues.

UBS is much smaller than Citi, of course, and therefore less able to suffer
a $3 billion writedown. And it’s not as though the likes of Merrill Lynch, Bear
Stearns, and Lehman Brothers have managed to get through this credit crisis
exactly unscathed. The fact is that banks are in the lending business, that
loans are their assets, and that when a whopping great subset of the credit
markets plunges in value, those assets are going to fall. It’s the nature of
the beast, and it’s a very good idea to come clean now.

But that said, the likes of Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley are losing money
because they made a bet and the bet didn’t pay off. UBS and Citigroup, by contrast,
are losing money because they’re too big to be able to manage their risk nimbly
and even profit from credit-market volatility in the way that Goldman Sachs
has done. Investment banks like Salomon Brothers, Dillon Read and SG Warburg
might have great reputations, but ultimately their rudders are simply too small
to be able to steer something the size of Citigroup or UBS out of trouble. Indeed,
it looks very much as though the investment bank if anything was responsible
for steering the good ship UBS into trouble. Maybe they should stick
to Brazilian equities. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday’s surprisingly bad news out of Citibank (C) and then UBS (UBS) sent us
back to the research archives looking for information about the
quality of Banks earnings.

As we noted last week, much of the Brokers’ gains were fictitious.

It turned out that a decrease in the value of the B/D’s own debt
was offset with a phantom accounting entry. These are presented in the
earnings as if they are actual gains, not accounting phantasms.

But don’t think its just the big Brokers. The Banks are now getting in on the scam act:

“Now some banks may be set to similarly benefit from their own misfortune. Financial titans such as Citigroup Inc., Bank of America
Corp., and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which will report third-quarter
results next month, all opted earlier this year to start applying
market values to some of their own liabilities, according to the
research service the Analyst’s Accounting Observer.

This means they, too, might see a boost to profit from
declines in the value of their debts during the summer credit crunch.
“It might not be unusual at all to be seeing gains on debt issued
hitting earnings in the third quarter,” the Analyst’s Accounting
Observer said.

Officials at Citigroup, J.P. Morgan and Bank of America declined to comment.

The brokers
and banks are doing nothing wrong or improper in booking such gains.
The accounting rules as they stand allow the practice. But some
investors are crying foul, saying the rules shouldn’t have been changed
to allow for such gains . . .”

So much for gains in earnings quality . . .

Source:

The Gold at Crunch’s End

How Banks May Benefit From Their Debt Values; ‘The Gains Were Real’

DAVID REILLY

WSJ, September 28, 2007; Page C1

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119093341775741818.html Read the rest of this entry »

The rally that began in the U.S. Monday continued in Asia Tuesday, with some indices reaching record levels. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index (+3.9%) outpaced the rest of the indices and finished at a record close. Korea’s Kospi Composite (+2.6%), helped by enthusiasm over a summit between North and South Korea, finished with a record high as well. Australia (+1.33%) and Singapore’s Straits Times (+1.0%) both ended with strong sessions. Recently, stocks in Asia have had astounding surges as more investors want exposure to the high-growth markets. However, Lee Jae-Hoon at Mirae Asset Securities in Korea said, “The market rose a bit too fast in such a short time.” To sustain the current pace, he said big players in Asia will have to “announce better-than-expected third-quarter earnings,” and if this fails to happen, he believed “the market will face strong downward pressure.”

Sources: WSJ

Commentary: iShares Asia Region ETFs Keep Climbing No International ETFs Currently Oversold

ETFs: EPP, EEM, EWY

Related: Single Country Asia ETFs

Seeking Alpha’s news briefs are combined into a pre-market summary called Wall Street Breakfast. Get Wall Street Breakfast by email — it’s free and takes only seconds to sign up. Read the rest of this entry »

TD Bank Financial Group has agreed to acquire Commerce Bancorp in a 75% stock and 25% cash deal valued at US$8.5 billion. Commerce shareholders stand to receive 0.4142 shares of TD Bank common stock and $10.50 in cash, for each share of Commerce. This values Commerce at $42.37/share based on TD’s Monday closing price, representing up to a 7% premium over Commerce’s Monday close. The deal is expected to close in April or May of 2008, subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals. TD Bank said it plans to take a one-time US$490M pre-tax restructuring charge. TD sees the transaction as $0.28 dilutive in fiscal 2008 and $0.22 dilutive in fiscal 2009 on a GAAP basis, or -$0.10 and flat on an adjusted basis, respectively. In a press release, TD Bank said the combined entity will have 2,000 branches in N. America and about one-quarter of a trillion dollars in deposits, “making it the first bank with critical mass in both the Canadian and US markets.” Commerce Bancorp shares were last down 0.9% to $39.40 in pre-market trading, after climbing 2.5% to $39.74 on Monday. NYSE-listed shares of TD Bank were last off 5.4% to $72.75 in the pre-market, after gaining 0.3% to $76.94.

Sources: Press release, Bloomberg, MarketWatch, Reuters

Commentary: TD Bank Is RBC Capital’s “Top Pick” Canadian Banks Still Increasing Dividends TD: No U.S. Subprime Exposure Means Great News for Canadian Banking

Stocks/ETFs to watch: TD, CBH

Earnings call transcript: Toronto Dominion Bank F3Q07

Related: TD Acquires Commerce Bancorp Presentation [pdf]

Seeking Alpha’s news briefs are combined into a pre-market summary called Wall Street Breakfast. Get Wall Street Breakfast by email — it’s free and takes only seconds to sign up. Read the rest of this entry »

Following up on last week’s hard-to-believe Bear Stearns/Buffett story, I happened across an interesting blog the other day: News Visuals.

Their methodology uses the engine from intellectspace.com to look at the inter-relationships between the various executives and Boards of Directors between firms.

Its really quite a fascinating application.

Really interesting stuff. These guys go straight to the blogroll . . .
Originaly from Source