ShareThe 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 [...]

ShareMeredith 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 [...]

ShareI 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 [...]

ShareFannie 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 [...]

ShareEarnings 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 [...]

ShareEvery 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 [...]

ShareWhile Citi and BofA are getting taken to the woodshed for double secret probation, JPMorgan Chase is showing record revenue of $25.6 billion and a large profit of $2.7 billion.  As profit is up 36% from a year earlier and 27% from just last quarter, you can see that JPM is now firing on all [...]

ShareI got a tip from a friend Andrew about a sale of assets by Wells Fargo (WFC) which raises a number of interesting questions.  He sent me the following 14 July article from the Milwaukee Business Journal.
Wells Fargo sold $600 million in mostly non-performing subprime loans to Irvine, Calif.-based Arch Bay Capital, National Mortgage News [...]

ShareThis comes via Bloomberg:
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s second- quarter profit exceeded analysts’ estimates as record trading and stock underwriting led the company to its highest quarterly profit.
Net income in the three months ended June 26 was $3.44 billion, or $4.93 a share, the New York-based bank said today in a statement. That surpassed the [...]

ShareJust when I was wondering where Meredith Whitney had gone, she’s back.  But she has a whole new tone to her.  In this interview on CNBC, she says she is expecting a monster number from Goldman (GS) tomorrow morning, in 2010 and in 2011. She is well above the street on Goldman. She even uses [...]