S&P

These are the Insider Buys that Matter Week Ending 8-14-20

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Earnings season is almost over and with it the blackout period that restricts corporate insiders from buying their own company’s stock.  Animal spirits are lighting up the market as insiders are adding fuel to the fire with the biggest increase in buying since the March lows.  Normally insiders buy their stock when it’s cheap and you see less buying when the market is making new highs.  Not this time!  Barry Diller shook up the online gambling world with his Interactive Corp IAC  disclosure that it had gone over the 10% reporting threshold with its most recent purchase of 9,705,785  shares of MGM at … Read more

Looking ahead September 12th could be pivotal day for two reasons

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One thing we talk about in our Investment Survival Workshops is learning to develop a horizon further out than tomorrow.  I know that sounds obvious but it’s harder to do than you think.  Most people including myself, hesitate for a moment to recall what they did yesterday and most of us wake up and think about what we are going to do that day, not the next day or the following week.  When I moved from Eastern Standard time to Mountain Standard time zone, I dreaded getting up two hours earlier in the predawn to read the papers and analyst … Read more

S&P 500 Target 2013

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I’ll go ahead and put my neck on the chopping block now.  I’ve never had a target before on the S&P 500 or Dow because I never saw much point in the exercise.  Unless you were trading in futures or a passive index investor, what’s the point, right?  I liked to think I am investing in companies and business prospects not broad unknowable market forces.  The last twelve months have been trying though.  It seems that the risk on risk off trade has been the place to be.  Most stock pickers have underperformed the market.  Why is that?  Even notable … Read more

Technical Rally

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My indicators are showing bullish divergence on all of the major future markets.  We could have a very tradable rally here in spite of the ugly headlines.  As is always the case, how much is being priced in is key to the analysis.  The market now is poised to react violently to the upside with a whiff of good news.    

Ancestry.com Beats Up on Analysts Yet Again – DailyFinance

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Ancestry.com is on a tear lately after taking a huge hit over their Q4 numbers.  Analysts responded after the fact with downgrades and price target reductions, but we still see a huge opportunity in the company. From DailyFinance: The 10-second takeawayFor the quarter ended Dec. 31 (Q4), Ancestry.com met expectations on revenues and beat expectations on earnings per share. Compared to the prior-year quarter, revenue grew significantly and GAAP earnings per share expanded significantly. Gross margins shrank, operating margins increased, net margins grew. Revenue detailsAncestry.com reported revenue of $104.2 million. The seven analysts polled by S&P Capital IQ predicted net … Read more

Differentiating Between An Irrational Market Or Strong Bull Market Trend?

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Guest post by: Kirk Differentiating Between An Irrational Market Or Strong Bull Market Trend? These past two weeks have been tough as an options trader. Differentiating between trading an a possibly irrational market or bull market trend is sometimes very difficult to assess. We all know that the stock market can push us to extremes and then, just when we “give up” and “give in” the turn happens. Timing is really everything. Blow-off Top or Pull-Back? Most traders I talk to are in one of two schools of thought right now. Either you think this is the best shorting opportunity for the … Read more

‘s not hard, just follow the Dividend..

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For those of you long AAPL yesterday, the paltry 6% or so gain on the most impressive numbers that we’ve seen to date from the tech giant were a bit depressing.  The fact that every single metric that analysts provided estimates on was completely blown out of the water combined with the $7 drop in share price before the announcement only reinforces the fact that both analysts and the street had no idea how profoundly astounding Apple’s results would be.  So why doesn’t the market seem to reflect similar sentiment?  One word: Dividends.  With over $17 trillion in qualified retirement … Read more

Index Funds, Where Are We Now?

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Index Funds, Where Are We Now?   While following important economic news as it continually streams through headlines, its akin to wrapping your mouth around a fire hose to quench your thirst; however it’s essential to consider how these developments are affecting your investments. Take a look at how a couple of major indexes and index funds have performed since the beginning of the year…   PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Bullish (NYSE:UUP) -1.53% U.S. Equity: SPDRS S&P 500 Index (NYSE:SPY) -1.22% Technology: PowerShares QQQ (Nasdaq:QQQ) 0.94% Europe, Australia-Asia iShares MSCI EAFE Index (NYSE:EFA) -15.77% Energy: United States Oil (NYSE:USO) -1.82% Precious Metals: iShares Comex Gold Trust (NYSE:IAU) +9.57% Fixed Income: iShares Barclays … Read more

S&P rates Subprime Mortgages higher than the USA

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S&P rates Subprime Mortgages higher than the USA MHP Standard & Poor’s gives a higher rating to securities backed by subprime home loans, the same type of investments that led to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, than it has assigned to the US government debt. S&P is poised to provide AAA grades to 59% of Springleaf Mortgage Loan Trust 2011-1, a set of bonds tied to $497-M lent to homeowners with below-average credit scores, and virtually no equity in their properties. New York-based S&P took away the US’s Top rank on August 5, saying Washington politics were … Read more

S&P replaces president with Citibank exec after U.S. downgrade

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(Reuters) – The chief of Standard & Poor’s will step down next month, to be replaced by a senior Citibank executive, in a move announced a few weeks after the credit rating agency downgraded U.S. government debt and sparked a row with Washington. S&P’s parent, McGraw-Hill Companies Inc, said on Tuesday that Deven Sharma, who has served as S&P president since 2007, would step down on September 12, to be succeeded by Citibank chief operating officer Douglas Peterson. “S&P will continue to produce ratings that are comparable, forward looking and transparent,” McGraw-Hill said in a statement, adding that Sharma would … Read more

U.S. investigating S&P over mortgages

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  (Reuters) – The Justice Department is investigating whether Standard & Poor’s improperly rated dozens of mortgage securities in the years before the financial crisis, The New York Times reported on Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter. The investigation began before S&P, a unit of McGraw-Hill, downgraded the long-term U.S. debt from a AAA rating to AA-plus this month, the paper said. In the mortgage investigation, the Justice Department has been asking about instances in which S&P analysts wanted to assign lower ratings to mortgage bonds but may have been overruled by S&P business managers, the Times reported. Justice … Read more

S&P Backs French Triple-A Rating

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PARIS—A senior Standard & Poor’s Corp. analyst Thursday confirmed France’s triple-A rating and stable outlook for the country, dispelling investor fears that the top-notch grade of the euro zone’s second-largest economy may be at risk. “We’re confident in the triple-A rating, stable. We have confirmed it, we confirm it today,” said Carol Sirou, the head of S&P in France, in an interview on French radio. “There are several rumors, but we never comment on them.” France has increasingly appeared to be the weak link among top-rated euro zone countries, with higher deficit and debt-to-gross-domestic-product ratios than the other five triple-A … Read more

Obama has SEC Attack Standard & Poor’s

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Standard & Poor’s, whose unprecedented downgrade of US debt triggered a worldwide sell-off in equities is pushing against a US government proposal that would require credit raters to disclose “significant errors” in how they calculate their ratings. S&P, accused by the Obama administration of making an error in its calculations leading Friday’s downgrade, raised concern about the proposed new corrections policy and other issues in an 84-pg letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, dated August 8. The SEC is weighing sweeping new rules designed to improve the quality of ratings after their poor performance in the financial crisis. The … Read more

S&P, Moody’s Under Investigation

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Italy seized documents of S&P, Moody’s over suspected ‘Anomalous’ fluctuations Italian prosecutors seized documents at the offices of rating agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s in a probe over suspected “anomalous” fluctuations in Italian share prices, a prosecutor said Thursday. via S&P, Moody’s Under Investigation | Live Stock Trading News | Equities, Forex, Gold, Silver and Oil Trading.

El-Erian Says S&P Will Downgrade U.S. If It Holds to Outlook

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Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) — Standard & Poor’s will downgrade the U.S. after it enacted a law to reduce federal debt by $2.4 trillion over a decade if the credit-rating company sticks to what it outlined last month, said Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Mohamed El-Erian. “It’s not clear that this is enough to preclude a downgrade by S&P,” El-Erian, chief executive and co-chief investment officer at the world’s biggest manager of bond funds, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop” with Betty Liu. “We suspect they’re under tremendous pressure not to downgrade, but if they stick to what … Read more

S&’s yell ,”shark!”, and everyone runs into the water instead of out of it

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These days the headlines ‘calamity’, the ‘disaster”, ‘financial Armageddon’, and the”Titanic sinking” are used to describe what will happen if Congress refuses to pass the debt ceiling authorization in a timely manner.   If the U.S. government defaults on its sovereign debt obligations and other payment obligations, there will be an immediate downgrade of our trillions of dollars of debt to something less than AAA.  This will cause enormous upheaval and increased interest costs, thus exacerbating the already enormous burden of debt the country shoulders.  These events could lead to an uncertain chain reaction of cascading financial upheavals around the world; … Read more