Empiric Student Property Share Discussion Threads

[briarberry] 29/11/2007 15:58

Corporate profits in the third quarter fell to a $1.409 trillion annual rate from $1.441 trillion in the second quarter. Third quarter profits declined an annualized 8.8 percent, but followed a 25.0 percent annualized jump in the second quarter. Profits are after tax but without inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments. Corporate profits are up 2.0 percent on a year-on-year basis, down from 4.3 percent on a year-on-year basis

[briarberry] 29/11/2007 14:20

retail...


DJ Sears Hldgs Corp 3Q Net $2M Vs Net $196M, -99%

Sears Holdings, the holding company for Sears, and K-Mart stores



GDP figure says boom times, most other figures suggest a really bad recession

[briarberry] 29/11/2007 13:36

initial claims 352K

Q3 GDP revised up to 4.9% Q over Q (unreported inflation)

[briarberry] 28/11/2007 23:09

WFC trying to raise $12 billion (by the sounds of it)...


Wells Fargo sets aside $1.4 billion to cover loan losses, tightens lending standards, and plans to liquidate $11.9 billion portfolio.

Wells Fargo & Co., the second-largest U.S. mortgage lender, said late Tuesday that it will set aside $1.4 billion during the fourth quarter to cover higher losses on home-equity loans caused by deterioration in the real-estate market.

[briarberry] 27/11/2007 19:18

Citi (the largest bank) has to pay 11% to borrow money, for a bank to pay that much, they must be in serious trouble...


Citigroup announced Monday night that it had raised $7.5bn in new capital at a coupon of 11 per cent from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority in an attempt to shore up its overstretched balance sheet.

The high cost of the new funds highlights Citi's determination to meet its commitments to strengthen its balance sheet and carry on investing while maintaining its dividend.

[briarberry] 27/11/2007 15:51

Home prices fell in September in all 20 major cities covered by the Case-Shiller price index, even in cities that had been holding up before the August freeze in mortgage markets, Standard & Poor's reported.

"There is no real positive news in today's data," said Robert Shiller, chief economist at MacroMarkets LLC, and the co-developer of the index.

For the national Case-Shiller home price index, prices fell 1.7% in the third quarter compared with the second quarter, and were down a record 4.5% in the past year. It was the largest quarter-to-quarter price decline in the 20 years covered by the index.

For the first time in this housing cycle prices in all 20 cities dropped from the previous month, with the biggest declines in the bubble cities of Miami, Phoenix, San Diego, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Tampa.

For the 20 cities, prices fell a record 4.9% year-over-year. Meanwhile, prices were down 5.5% year-over-year in the original 10-city index, the largest drop in the 10-city index since 1991.
The last time prices fell so much, it took more than eight years for home prices to return to their peak level.

The Case-Shiller index, which tracks multiple sales of the same homes, is considered by many observers to be the best gauge of national and metropolitan-area real-estate values.

[briarberry] 24/11/2007 16:31

Big Buybacks Begin to Haunt Firms - By Gregory Zuckerman, Karen Richardson and Justin Lahart

Driven by billions of dollars in share buybacks, record-setting buyouts and a wave of mergers, the amount of stock in the market shrank by hundreds of billions of dollars in the past four years.

With the supply of stock down and demand strong, the market rallied. Now, as the economy slows and credit markets buckle, high-profile companies are cutting back on buybacks, and some wish they held on to the cash they gave back to shareholders.

"In an environment like this, stock buybacks take second place," said James Dimon, chief executive of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., in a conference ...

[briarberry] 21/11/2007 20:38

system melting down....


Europe Suspends Mortgage Bond Trading Between Banks

Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) -- European banks agreed to suspend trading in the $2.8 trillion market for mortgage debt known as covered bonds to halt a slump that has closed the region's main source of financing for home lenders.

[briarberry] 20/11/2007 22:06

For those who have been speculating on how the government might bail out participants in the collapsing US subprime mortgage market, an unlikely savior has stepped forward: the Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLB).

Compared to their limelight-hogging cousins - the Federal Reserve, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae - the FHL Banks don't get much press. But from March to September, the amount of loans these banks have made to their 8,125 members has risen some $200 billion to stand at $822 billion, a whopping 32% jump in just six months.[1]

This large increase in government-sponsored lending to financially troubled banks is unfortunate. It threatens to spread the consequences of poor choices made by lenders, regulators, and borrowers to all taxpayers, including those who made every effort to avoid the whole mess to begin with.

[briarberry] 20/11/2007 19:27

Freddie Mac May Seek Capital After Big Loss

Freddie Mac, the No. 2 guarantor of home mortgages in the United States, reported a much bigger-than-expected $2 billion loss for the third quarter and said Tuesday it hired Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers to help it consider "very near-term capital raising alternatives."

Freddie Mac's latest results included a $1.2 billion provision for bad home loans, which the government-sponsored company said reflected "significant deterioration of mortgage credit" during the quarter. That could stoke fears among investors that the mortgage crisis is deepening.

down 30% today

[briarberry] 16/11/2007 19:49

"Liquidity in the money markets right now is very poor," says Lou Crandall, analyst at R.H. Wrightson & Assoc. One of the things driving investor attitudes now is "fear of the unknown," Mr. Crandall says, particularly as it pertains to large lenders, many of whom are contending with losses in mortgages, collateralized debt obligations and other such paper that was never worth what the optimists thought.

The end result of all this was summed up well by Goldman Sachs Jan Hatzius today, in a report where he estimates - due to leverage - that about $200 billion or so in mortgage-related losses on the bank balance sheets could result in a pullback of about $2 trillion in lending.

[briarberry] 15/11/2007 14:42

shops and warehouses should be hiring for Christmas ?

Initial Claims 339K

[briarberry] 14/11/2007 21:48

PPI kept low by falling energy prices ??? LOL...


For the overall PPI, the latest gain was kept soft by declines in energy and light trucks. By special groupings, energy fell 0.8 percent, following a 4.1 percent gain in September. Within energy, gasoline dropped 3.1 percent, residential gas fell 2.4 percent, and home heating oil declined 2.5 percent. Within energy, only residential electric power was up and only by 0.2 percent. The energy weakness was largely due to seasonal factors

(prices went vertically up!)




whatever happened to, honesty is the best policy ?
civilation is built on telling the truth ?

[briarberry] 14/11/2007 15:48

BSC Q4 losses, I thought they said the worst was over? :) :)


Bear Stearns to Take $1.2 Billion Credit Writedown, Post Loss in the Fourth Quarter

NEW YORK (AP) -- Investment bank Bear Stearns Cos. will take a $1.2 billion writedown in the fourth quarter related to weakness in its credit portfolios, Chief Financial Officer Samuel Molinaro Jr. said Wednesday.

Molinaro said the writedown will lead the company to post a loss during its fiscal fourth quarter, which ends Nov. 30.

[briarberry] 10/11/2007 16:22

possible sign of deflation...


Bloomberg News reported Thursday that shares of Sotheby's are plummeting after a busted art auction.

Sothebys Holdings Inc.

[briarberry] 09/11/2007 12:05

The nation's big retail chains reported the weakest October in 12 years, blaming economic clouds that show no signs of lifting before the end of the year.

Consumer confidence plunged in early November to the lowest level since Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast and sent oil prices soaring in 2005.

[briarberry] 08/11/2007 22:44

The asset-backed commercial paper segment charted its biggest weekly fall in two months in the week ended Nov. 7. ABCP fell by $29.5 billion to $845.2 billion outstanding following last week's $9.0 billion decline, Federal Reserve data released on Thursday showed.

[briarberry] 07/11/2007 22:01

Warnings by a top Chinese official that the Beijing intends to switch part of its $1,430bn reserves from dollars to "stronger currencies" appears to have lit the fuse under an explosive mix of record oil prices, rising global inflation, and mounting concerns that the world financial system is coming unglued

[briarberry] 07/11/2007 21:13

$1/2 trillion losses, looks like they might have to own up to it, there's so much of this bad debt around the world that it's becoming too obvious to hide...


Credit and Financial Markets Losses: $100 billion or $200 billion? Or most likely $500 billion?

[briarberry] 05/11/2007 14:37

Citigroup Inc. in a quarterly regulatory filing Monday said its so-called level 3 assets as of Sept. 30 were $134.84 billion