Tuesday’s Market Recap (06/30/09)
June 30, 2009
The markets had a rough day, with the Dow Jones down 0.97% to close at 8447.00. The NASDAQ and S&P closed at 1835.04 and 919.32 respectively, down 0.49% and 0.85%. Gold and crude oil both headed to lower prices today, with gold settling at $927.40, and oil down $0.91 to settle at $69.89. The 10-year saw prices fall with the yield ending at 3.537%. Read more
A Real Stimulus Plan
June 29, 2009
There’s been a slew of good news lately, including improved consumer sentiment, lower than expected job losses, increasing wages, and a contracting TED spread. The stock market has been up for 12 of the past 14 weeks, and the Dow recently broke even for 2009. Public officials including President Obama and Fed Chairman Bernanke have declared the worst to be over. Read more
Is Cisco Spreading Itself Too Thin?
June 28, 2009
Through the 90’s, Cisco Systems [CSCO: 23.82, -0.1101 (-0.46%)] was known as one of the “4 Horsemen of IT” and was even the largest company by market cap ($500 B) at the peak of the tech bubble in early 2000. The web is the driver of all information worldwide over the past two decades, thus all recent tech trends revolve around the internet: mobilization, cloud computing, virtualization, social networking and much more. Consequently enough, Cisco is the dominant provider of the networking gear that runs the internet. More specifially, Cisco’s bread and butter has been the ethernet switches and overall routers markets with approximately 70% and 50% of the market share, respectively. To sustain revenue growth, companies like CSCO must adapt to tech trends and enter new markets outside of its core business.
Bank of America Dot Gov
June 27, 2009
It is becoming clearer and clearer what it means to have government involved in the affairs of banks and businesses. Where all the initial talk was about the “moral hazard” presented by government bailing out the private sector and how this just means that in the future banks, and other organizations, will just take on more and more risk because they know that if things go bad, the government will be there with a rescue net to save the institution. Read more
Friday’s Market Recap (06/26/09)
June 26, 2009
The markets had mixed results as the NASDAQ was the only major index up, up 0.47% to close at 1838.22. The Dow Jones was down 0.40% to close at 8438.39, while the S&P was down 0.15 to finish at 918.90. In commodities, both oil and gold were down, as Gold settled at $941.00, and oil fell to settle at $69.16 as the demand for oil came into question. The 10-year Treasury saw prices rise as the yield fell to 3.529%. Read more
What If The Fed’s Isn’t Printing Money Like A Drunken Sailor?
June 26, 2009
What if conventional wisdom about the Fed is wrong and it isn’t printing money like a drunken sailor? Well…that would make most of the media coverage of the bond market and the economy wildly off the mark.
As it turns out while media talking heads were ranting about how the Fed was running their printing presses overtime to push up money supply the facts were very different. M1 has actually declined since the middle of December, 2008. During the same six month period M2 has only risen by a little less than 3%. Read more
Thursday’s Market Recap (06/25/09)
June 26, 2009
The markets had a good day as all three major indexes were up over 2%, with the Dow up 2.08% to finish at 8472.40. The NASDAQ and S&P were up 2.08% and 2.14% respectively, closing at 1829.54 and 920.26. The 10-year saw price climb over a dollar as the yield ended at 3.544%. Crude oil saw prices rise, settling at $70.23, with August gold also seeing prices head up as the dollar weakens, settling at $939.50. Read more
Boeing’s Stock Grounded, How to Capitalize
June 26, 2009
The week of June 26th was very bad to Boeing. After continued reassurance from CEO Jim McNerney that the company’s much anticipated (and previously delayed) Dreamliner 787 would be delivered by the 23rd, Boeing once again came up short. To investors, this was simply one slip-up too many… and a company that cannot fulfill promises is a company worth selling. Making matters worse, the next day, the U.S. Department of Defense terminated the land warfare weapons program headed by BA’s Integrated Defense Systems unit worth an estimated $160 billion. Thinking that there was no possible way to add more grief onto shares of Boeing, Qantas Airways canceled orders for 15 Boeing 787 Dreamliners after being “disappointed” by Boeing’s management. Read more
Don’t Worry About The Debt Tsunami Part II
June 25, 2009
Recently I wrote that the forward calendar of to-be-issued government and mortgage related debt isn’t going to swamp the economy.
Since I wrote my article Paul Krugman wrote an article citing research done by Brad Setser that supports my thesis. Setser’s analysis predates my article and is really high quality work. Read more
Renouncing The Debt
June 25, 2009
There are three ways to get out of a debt crisis. First, you can work off the debt, but this takes a long time. An impatient public and an impatient government will not have the stomach the wait that would be necessary for individuals, families, and businesses to get their balance sheets in order so that a recovery can get started. Read more
