Archive for July 29th, 2008Many readers are letting us know about the indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens on seven counts of making false statements on his financial disclosure forms. We discussed the raid on the senator’s home a while back. Everyone’s favorite technologically challenged senator is the longest-serving Republican in the history of the upper house. An Alaskan paper gives deep background on the probe that has ensnared Stevens and a number of other Alaska political figures. Read more of this story at Slashdot. An anonymous reader writes “I have always been thin but all the sitting in front of the PC is taking its toll now that I’m getting older. I’ve begun to get a tiny heavier around the waist. I don’t eat a lot but the weight seems to stay on these days. Most of the time I don’t have the luxury of just getting out of the house/office. And being an introvert, I’m not enamored of the idea of exercising in full view of *shudder* people. I regularly do press-ups (60 per night) and sit-ups (30 per night) and some fetching and carrying, but that is all and these days it isn’t enough. I need a solid and effective routine that will tone all my muscle groups efficiently. Do any Slashdotters have a regular workout routine that can be performed in the privacy of the home to stave off those pounds?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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2008
 
Pelosi Statement on Sending Housing Bill to White Home - ForbesPosted by: admin in Today NewsPelosi Statement on Sending Housing Bill to White Home - Forbes Obama discusses housing crisis with Treasury chief - Forbes Sen. Dodd States Government Can Start Enacting Housing Bill As Soon As - RTT News Subscribe to Inside Housing - InsideHousing Investors eye employment data - MSNBC HUD: Homeless population declining Foreclosure problems for renters - Boston Globe Homeownership: a nation obsessed - St. Petersburg Times S&P Case-Shiller: Home Prices Drop by Record 15.8% in May - HispanicBusiness.com Hong Kong Housing Market Might Slow as Apartment Sales Decline - Bloomberg Filed under: Forecasts, Industry, Economic data, Housing When it comes to the banking industry, the good news just keeps coming. The head of the FDIC says that only about 13% of the banks on its watch list of troubled institutions actually fail. Except for the banks that go out of business, how could it get any superior? “We work with the primary regulator to give them extra care and attention, to nurse them back to health or to sell them off to another institution,” stated FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, according to Reuters. The comments side-step the issue that the credit crisis is getting worse. The IMF recently stated that it couldn’t see a bottom for the housing market and that financial companies would end up with $1 trillion in write-offs before the troubles pass. Bill Gross, the head of massive bond house Pimco, has essentially said the same thing. The comment from the FDIC chief may be accurate based on a snapshot of the market this day. It fails to acknowledge that the current watch list is only the tip of the iceberg. Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com. I Don’t Believe in Imaginary Property writes “Whether they’re mad at the Republicans for creating the mess, the Democrats for caving in, or both, many are still pissed off over the grant of retroactive immunity for spying on American citizens for no reason. And now some of them are trying to do something about it — they’re buying an advertisement on cable TV. While it’s not entirely clear what good, if any, this will do given that it’s too late, at least it’s cheap to participate — they’re looking for $6 donations. The ideas is that, if more grass-roots groups do this kind of thing, their ‘representatives’ won’t be able to afford to blow them off as easily.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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2008
Worst 10-year performers: Bad real-estate bets punish Huntington BancsharesPosted by: in HousingFiled under: Major movement, Bad news, S and P 500, Housing
Is it just me, or were Ohio-based regional banks a particular target of the market’s wrath during our focus decade? KeyCorp (NYSE: KEY) of Cleveland and Fifth Third Bancorp (NASDAQ: FITB) of Cincinnati have already made cameos on our list of losers — and I’m not going to give it away, but there’s at least one more Buckeye Say banker further down the line-up. And, of course, how could we forget Columbus-based Huntington Bancshares (NASDAQ: HBAN)? What went wrong? At number 14 on our list of SPX laggards, HBAN shed 77% of its value from June 30, 1998 through June 30, 2008. At the end of June 1998, the shares were perched just narrowly atop $25 — a region that would later switch roles to provide impenetrable resistance from July 2004 through the end of 2006. Now, in the wake of a precipitous price plunge, HBAN is wallowing some 72% below this formerly critical level. Unlike some other regional banks, HBAN started to feel the pain of subprime-gone-wrong as soon as July 2007. At the time, the bank warned that its second-quarter earnings would fall 11 cents short of analysts’ expectations. CEO Thomas Hoaglin admitted, “These results were below our expectations and resulted primarily from difficult and deteriorating residential real estate markets.” This admission paved the way for an all-out plunge; from its July 2007 peak to its July 2008 low, the stock shed 81%. What next? HBAN stepped into the earnings spotlight on July 17, and reported second-quarter net income of $101.4 million, or 25 cents per share, which exceeded analysts’ estimates by 2 pennies per share. However, the company’s own outlook is still cautious. Huntington dropped its earnings estimates for 2008 from $1.45 - $1.50 per share to $1.25 - $1.35 per share, and attributed the downward revision to an assumed higher provision for loan and lease losses. In comments accompanying the earnings release and slashed guidance, Hoaglin said his main objective was “to reassure our shareholders that while credit quality remains under pressure given the continued economic weakness in our markets, our full-year 2008 net charge-off outlook has remained fairly consistent.” Traders were highly skeptical of HBAN ahead of the second-quarter report — in the 10 days prior to the announcement, investors purchased 21 times more puts than calls on the stock, according to the International Securities Exchange. The unwinding of this skepticism could account for HBAN’s single-day spike of about 40%. However, for a stock trading below $10, this gain translated to just a few points. It seems that the market might have properly adjusted its expectations for HBAN, but even the bank itself admits that it’s not absolutely out of the woods just yet. Elizabeth Harrow is an analyst and financial writer in the research department at Schaeffer’s Investment Research. She is featured in the weekly video series Option Basics on SchaeffersResearch.com.
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2008
July ‘herd mentality’ may result in worst hedge fund month in 5 yearsPosted by: in HousingFiled under: International markets, Forecasts, Indices, Oil, Housing It looks like the economic slowdown that has chopped (or eliminated) returns in many asset classes is set to hit another sector, and a rarefied one at that: the hedge fund sector. Hedge funds might post their worst monthly performance result in five years in July, after trade calculations on financial stocks and crude oil backfired, according to data provided by Hedge Fund Research Inc., Bloomberg News reported Monday. Hedge Fund Research Inc.’s Global Hedge Fund Index was down 3.16% in July as of July 24 — on pace to record its largest monthly decline since 2003. The index is also down 4.16% for the year. The ideal laid plans of mice and men, …and hedge fund managers Economist David H. Wang told BloggingStocks Monday the to-date July swoon in HFI’s hedge fund index dispels at least one, and perhaps two, myths regarding the hedge fund sector. The first concerns the notion of absolute return — or the theory that argues that a complex mathematical formula, computation, or other derivative can be constructed so as to ‘guarantee’ a return on investment in any market condition. “For a while there were practitioners who argued that a formula could guarantee a return. Not too many people are supporting that view now,” Wang said. “There has never been a formula that could guarantee a return in every climate. The financial world has too many variables, and there are too many irrational and unpredictable events that can ruin a model.” The second concerns the so-called increasing diversity of hedge fund strategies that would mitigate hedge fund sector losses. Lately, the sector is looking considerably less diverse, Wang stated. Paul Meander, co-managing director of Corazon Capital Management, which invests in hedge funds, told Bloomberg News Monday, “You have to believe that everyone had the same trade on” concerning a decline in financial stocks and homebuilders and a rise in oil prices. Wang stated both trades have backfired in July, with oil dropping more than 10% and selected financial stocks and homebuilders recovering somewhat. “That hedge fund mosaic is looking a lot like a herd, which would repeat a historical pattern on Wall Street, with investment managers concentrating tactics on a hot sector or asset class,” Wang said. Does the above mean Wang is no longer a hedge fund fan? No. “Hedge funds remain acceptable asset instruments for selected, accredited investors. When deployed appropriately, they have the ability to enhance an accredited investor’s portfolio,” Wang stated. “But at no time should anyone think they [hedge funds] can ‘guarantee’ a return or are ‘guaranteed’ to perform better than other asset classes. These are myths. No one knows with 100% certainty what asset class will perform best, or even if any will perform well at all.” Sector Analysis: On to economist Wang’s prudent advice, we’ll add the tip that unless you have at least $1 million, preferably more than $2 million, in liquid assets (wealth that does not include the value of your home), the argument here’s that hedge funds are not for you. Iddo Genuth writes “Alaskan state officials have recently announced their intention to begin funding the exploration and surveying of Alaska’s largest volcanoes in hopes of utilizing these as a source of geothermal energy. They state this volcano could provide enough energy to power thousands of households, and according to some estimates, Alaska’s volcanoes and hot springs could supply up to 25% of the state’s energy needs.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. javierzinho writes “For many years I have been using LaTeX to compose scientific documents, but truly I’m getting tired of its complexity. You have to install new packages for new features, compatibility issues are everywhere, you need to know commands for everything, table composition is torture, image insertion is an odyssey if you don’t have the ‘right’ format, and you need to be a LaTeX Jedi master to create a new document class. I’m looking for a document processor (not a word processor) that’s a viable replacement for LaTeX, possessing all of its advantages — consistency between text and math text, automated cross references, direct PDF creation, etc. — but that is not stuck in the 1980s with the compiler metaphor and weird font technology. An application with visual interface and so on. I’ve tried Scientific Word and Lyx but both are front-ends for LaTeX. Publicon only produces PDF files by exporting to LaTeX and subsequently using pdflatex. Add-ons for MS-Word are a joke, and webEq is intended for web publishing, not for PDF production. Does anybody know of a decent, scientific-structured document processor that’s a modern application?” Read more of this story at Slashdot. TaeKwonDood writes “Carl Wieman is the 2001 Nobel Prize winner in Physics but what he cares most about is fixing science education. The real issue is, can someone who went through 20 years of science education as a student, lived his life in academia since then and even got a Nobel prize get a fair shake from bureaucrats who like education the way it is — flawed and therefore always needing more money?” Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
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