July 2008

Some interesting moves by a number of banks, namely Wachovia (WB), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Bank of America (BAC) that has some major investors and market watchers now wondering whether these stocks look oversold, at which point if they are, that would signal the start of the bottom in the financials. This is the time smart investors have been searching for, the pinpoint of light at the end of ... read more

The New York Times (NYT) fell as low as $12.38 this morning after its second quarter earnings missed estimates. Profits plunged 82% to $21 mn versus the $118 mn posted in the same period a year ago, a period that was helped along by the one-time sale of an asset. The share plunge is the lowest since July 1995. An historic come-down for the newspaper of record, given that in 2003, the stock ... read more

Yahoo!'s recent quarterly profit fell 18%, as the besieged Internet giant posted revenue growth at the low end of its expectations. But Wall Street has given the stock a pass so far in trading. As usual, Wall Street doesn't do its homework. Yahoo! has a massive profit pothole in its results. Yahoo!'s profit would have dropped more than 40% without gigantic non-cash, paper gains it gets to ... read more

Don't get out the hats and horns on Bank of America's results just yet. Though it looks like BofA's reported earnings of 72 cents a share on revenue of $20.6 bn beat analysts estimates of 53 cents a share on sales of $18.4 bn, the results do not include the colossal losses at Countrywide. BofA (BAC) won shareholder approval to acquire Countrywide for $2.5 bn on July 1, so the losses from ... read more

Both of the inflation numbers, the core and headline numbers, were higher than expected and beyond the Federal Reserve’s comfort zone. I’ve been warning readers since January that the Fed opening the money hydrants to save the financials would cause inflation to gush through the markets. Now the core CPI is the number the Fed wants you to focus on, even though it’s a fake number as it ... read more