Lavonne Kuykendall reports: As banks step forward to help customers whose savings are trapped in illiquid debt securities, bond insurers that provided payment guarantees on the bonds could see some upside. Depending on how banks manage the buyouts, “you could see some upside and some temporary and maybe permanent relief,” that could benefit insurers as well as the banks, said Timoth...
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Mutual fund dramatically raises its stakes in MBIA and Ambac in the third quarter.
Bond insurer MBIA Inc. surges, buoyed by the latest round of auction-rate securities settlements, as double-digit gains chalked up by its counterparts lift the broader sector higher.
The firm ups its stake in MBIA and Ambac in the third quarter, sending shares soaring.
This post is an update to previous Google (GOOG) posts I’ve made. Price has recovered from the big earnings move down and looks like it could move back up to the 1:1 descending Gann angle. Chart courtesy of Stockcharts.com Recent volume does not look encouraging to support a longer term move up.
Equity indices were up but on low volume. The big buyers (or sellers) appear to be waiting until August options to expire. I guess they have them where they want them. Everything is below the Monday high. Tomorrow should be interesting… or not. How’s that for analysis…? The Semiconductor Holders (SMH) has been up for 9 straight days but volume has not been great. The breadth o...
PMI Group shares jumped 40% Thursday after it reached a deal to sell its Australian operations, as the mortgage insurer tries to steady itself amid slumping house prices and surging defaults on home loans in the U.S. See full story.
Americans drove 12.2 billion miles less in June than they did in the same month a year ago. That is a drop of almost 5%. The fall-off in activity is likely to help gas prices move down, but it is also sure to undermine any recovery in the retail, auto, fast food, or hospitality industries.The fresh argument is that driving less will bring gas prices back toward $3. But, oil is rising again, get...
Filed under: Forecasts, Bad news, Industry, Citigroup Inc. (C), Merrill Lynch (MER)Citigroup (NYSE: C) has come close to saying it will not cut its dividend under any circumstances. Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) has not cut its dividend in almost four decades. But there are signs cuts will come. According to Bloomberg, options traders think a Merrill dividend reduction is coming. "The market is pri...
Filed under: Forecasts, Economic data, Housing, RecessionAlan Greenspan loves talking to the press, perhaps more than he liked being the Federal Reserve chief. He recently did a long essay for the FT, and made similar comments about the financial system and housing to The Wall Street Journal. In his chat with the Journal, the old man said "Home prices in the U.S. are likely to start to stabiliz...