Credit Suisse has a note out urging caution on Citigroup shares due to regulatory hurdles.  Their logic bears noting as it can be useful for other U.S.-based banks.
On Monday the CS analysts met with Citi management, who were somewhat cautious. The CS note indicates that regulatory changes in the U.S. are likely to mandate higher [...]

There are a lot of threads to tie together in today’s reporting of news in the auto sector.
General Motors has reported a third-quarter loss of $1.15 billion. But all indications are that car sales continue to outpace expectations in the United States.  Meanwhile, there are conflicting stories that GM both plans to pay back [...]

In a recent post, “How is Citi going to deal with $38 billion in deferred tax assets?,” I pointed to a Reuters article which called into question Citigroup’s ability to earn enough money to prevent its having to take a charge for an incredibly large deferred tax asset. That post generated a response from a [...]

Citigroup has been losing tens of billions of dollars over the past two years as the financial crisis has unfolded. If one considers the government capital that Citi has not paid back, the bank is clearly the weakest of the four largest legacy banking behemoths in the United States. Earnings results this year demonstrate that [...]

The positive earnings announcement by Wells Fargo on Wednesday was marred by a sell recommendation from Dick Bove and a lot of chatter about credit writedowns and mortgage servicing rights (MSRs). I wanted to add a few words about the report, MSRs, and bank stocks more generally.
First of all, this has been a very good [...]

Meredith Whitney downgraded Goldman Sachs from ‘buy’ to ‘neutral’ today.  Previously, Goldman had been her only buy recommended stock, all of the others rated neutral or ‘sell.’  Why did she do it?
FT Alphaville has the answer:
We are downgrading shares of Goldman Sachs to Neutral from Buy after over a 34% run in price since their [...]

I think it should be abundantly clear that I am bearish on financials given my sell equities call two weeks ago.  After all, it was the banking sector which I was most bullish on in April – August. They are also the stocks that have run up the most as well.  But now is the [...]

Fannie Mae has the luxury of marking its accounts more accurately because they have no fear of being nationalized or going bust since they already have hit the wall.  So, when we read the latest quarterly results from Fannie Mae, we are not just seeing a glimpse of Fannie’s reckless financing, but of the American [...]

Earnings season is upon us and the Swedish banks have begun reporting earnings. Their results have seen huge writedowns that demonstrate large and continued exposure to souring loans in the Baltics.
Handelsbanken and Nordea reported today. Despite the writedowns, you do get the sense that things are going better than expected as the banks beat [...]

Every country has a problem child or two in the financial services sector. America has Citigroup and Bank of America. Britain has RBS and HBOS/Lloyds.  And Germany has Hypo Real Estate. 
I have been chronicling problems at the real estate lender on this blog for some time now and last posted on HRE in April [...]