status is none of yer' damn business!! :-)
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Uptick rule update:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/SampP-jumps-5-percent-after-rb-14595172.html
U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House financial services committee, said he expects the uptick rule to be restored in about a month. The rule slows the pace of short selling and could help calm volatile markets.
"There's been significant short covering in the financials today as a result of comments from Citi's chairman lending a stronger tone to the financials overall," said Michael James, senior trader at regional investment bank Wedbush Morgan in Los Angeles.
"The uptick rule possibly going back into effect would also be a significant positive for the financials. It would make it harder to short stocks and you'll probably see further short-covering today."
Fin's gonna rally today, just keep the bozos in Washington away fromt he mics.
C should see a nice pop today from Pandits saying they are profitable for Jan & Feb.
Finally some recognition to the greatness of the HAND!!!! Kudos bud.
3 more days before we hear a verdict on Mark to Market. You think they will acutally suspend it?
How to Deal With a 3 A.M. Fear
Can it be that as recently as 2006, financial firms accounted for almost one-third of all the corporate profits in the United States? Or that money was so free-flowing that a single bat mitzvah party could be estimated to cost $10 million?
That era is gone with the wind. Now we face a severe recession, frightening jumps in unemployment, a breathtaking collapse of equity and real estate prices. Now we face a major discontinuity with what has gone before — a real, grinding, 3 a.m. fear, replete with nightmares of bread lines.
Not to belabor the obvious, but much of that fear comes from the crushing downward movement of mortgage-backed bonds and derivative securities linked to them. These losses transformed local housing declines into a global crisis and, along with the breathtaking fall in stock prices, have remained the primary engines of disaster.
Now, some of the decline in the financial markets is occurring for a very good reason: real concern about profits and coupon payments. But some of it is simply a result of the internal workings of the markets, which are pushing securities relentlessly down.
How can we fix the system and prevent these unnecessary losses, which are causing such widespread harm?
Here are three possible solutions:
REIN IN A RULE Immediately end the near-universal applicability of the accounting rule formally known as FAS 157. This is the “mark to market” rule that requires banks and other finance houses to value securities at current market prices, even when they may plan to hold those securities for some time.
The rule was intended to provide greater transparency. But its deficiencies are glaring. It allows short-sellers to basically price mortgage-backed bonds and to make them trade for pennies, even if the bonds are still meeting their payments. This “mark to market” price often does not come even close to the value of future cash flows that can reasonably be expected. The “mark to market” price is just the price at which the last short-seller made his sale.
This accounting rule kills banks and insurers, kills credit generally and makes taxpayers pay off the profits of short-sellers. It’s time to stop this giant gift to those sellers.
REVIVE A RULE End “naked short-selling” and bring back the “uptick” rule. The naked short-seller can sell shares without having borrowed the stock first. This is like tossing great white sharks into the kiddie end of the pool.
And then there’s the mystery of why the Securities and Exchange Commission ever ended the rule that requires an uptick in a share price before a short sale. The elimination of that restriction brings a major downside bias into prices.
Mary L. Schapiro, the new chairwoman of the S.E.C., should bring back the uptick rule. Yesterday wouldn’t be soon enough.
ADD A RULE Don’t allow speculators with no insurable interest to buy credit-default swaps on bonds.
When used properly, these instruments can function as a legitimate kind of insurance. Yes, if you are a real buyer of the bonds of a given company, you should be able to buy insurance. But you shouldn’t if you are just a shark circling prey, bringing blood into the water.
Allowing speculators to buy C.D.S.’s merely to bet against a firm in difficulty just blasts the prices of bonds, kills the balance sheets of banks, insurers and hedge funds, and throws fear into the system.
Unwinding C.D.S. agreements that are already in place would be complicated, but it can be done, as Gretchen Morgenson has written.
THE situation is grave. Why do we allow the continuation of practices that are killing all faith in the future, demolishing lending and battering retirement hopes?
Yes, Wall Street brought much of this upon itself. But we have to save the markets for the rest of us. If that means saving some of the fools and knaves, so be it.
Ben Stein is a lawyer, writer, actor and economist. E-mail: ebiz@nytimes.com.
NYSE Chief Renews Call for Uptick Rule
By Nina Mehta
March 5, 2009
Duncan Niederauer, CEO of NYSE Euronext, would like to see the Securities and Exchange Commission reinstate the uptick rule for short sales, even if it's mainly for the sake of bucking up "investor psychology."
Referring to the trading community, he said, "we've got to come out with a definitive statement" for investors. He noted that last fall exchanges were not able to agree on an approach to limiting rapid declines in stock prices, such as an uptick rule or a circuit breaker for individual stocks. But he also laid responsibility at the SEC's feet, calling on the Commission to decide how it wants to approach this issue. "No more rhetoric, no more maybes--just what are they going to do," he said. Niederauer spoke Tuesday evening at the Museum of American Finance on Wall Street.
The SEC hasn't committed to any new course of action, or indeed any action at all. "The Chairman plans to review the issue, but there's no specific proposal under consideration," an SEC spokesman told Traders Magazine yesterday. Mary Schapiro, the new SEC chief, said in her confirmation hearings in mid-January that she would review the elimination of the uptick rule.
The SEC eliminated all price-related tests for short sales in 2007. The NYSE's former uptick rule, a stricter version of which was first put in place in 1938 after the previous year's market drop of 35 percent, required short sales to occur on a plus tick or at the last-sale price if that was an uptick from the previous price. Nasdaq had a different rule.
Outgoing SEC chairman Christopher Cox wrote in a letter to Congressman Gary Ackerman (Dem.-NY) in late January that during 2008 the SEC never had a majority of Commissioners interested in reinstating the uptick rule or considering a "modernized variant of it." In addition, he said, Nasdaq and BATS "have informed the Commission of their opposition to either the old or a reconfigured uptick rule as a general matter."
Since the SEC's emergency ban on short sales in financial stocks last September, many in the industry have argued that the uptick rule or a price test should be brought back to prevent stocks from being pounded down by short sellers.
Many others, however, have argued that in the current fast-moving market in which prices skip around rapidly, these tests simply rein in liquidity and potentially distort the market. The SEC's Office of Economic Analysis and a handful of academic studies, which analyzed data from a pilot that ran from 2005 until 2007, found that the lack of price tests did not adversely impact market quality.
Niederauer acknowledges this. The SEC and other studies, he said, presented a "good case why we didn't need it anymore." But while "there's no economic benefit we got from having an uptick rule," he continued, "I'm not sure there was any economic disbenefit. If the question is, 'Would people think it's a fairer game if we had an uptick rule?' the answer is 'Yes.'"
Steve Wunsch, a market structure expert and former executive at ISE Stock Exchange, agrees that the uptick is worth another look. "An uptick rule may help stabilize the market and throw a little bit of extra process at those CDS [credit default swap] buyers and rumormongers trying to drive a firm's stock price to zero," he said. In Wunsch's view, short sellers appear to have had the upper hand in recent months. "Restoring the uptick might redress the imbalance," he said. "Even if the main benefit were only public relations, that's still not a reason to dismiss it."
However, many say the uptick wouldn't function as an effective brake in a fast-paced electronic market. The operational issues around reintroducing the uptick rule or some version of it could also be onerous.
Dan Mathisson, head of the Advanced Execution Services group at Credit Suisse, doesn't think reinstating the uptick rule makes much sense. "With 40 markets, how would you stitch it all together?" he said. "It would be almost as complicated as Regulation NMS, and implementing it would be ugly." He added that if the SEC does consider a rule change around short-selling, he hopes it would go through the normal rule-making process, with a public comment period.
Morning folks. Anything interesting going on?
We gonna go to 5000 before these stupid phukers actually do anything.
Good lord! WTF is up with that one?
You want to know what's wrong with Washington?
Capitol Hill goes gaga over Brad Pitt
WASHINGTON – First of all, no, Brad Pitt is not short. Yes, he's handsome enough to stand out in any crowd. And, sorry, Angie wasn't with him.
From the moment he stepped into the Capitol on Thursday, sunglassed and goateed, Pitt's star power transformed congressional business-as-usual in a way any lawmaker or new president might envy.
Pitt's superpowers are such that he and President Barack Obama pulled off an improbably secret meeting on the same topic earlier in the day, White House spokesman Thomas F. Vietor confirmed.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was not immune to his charms. Praising Pitt for his work to rebuild New Orleans' hurricane-ravaged 9th Ward, she even allowed that meeting him affords her "bragging rights to my children and my grandchildren — a real treat for me as well."
And during a closed meeting earlier, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confided to Pitt that he was envious that his lieutenant, Majority Whip Dick Durbin, got to meet soccer star Mia Hamm a day earlier, according to one person who was present and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Well, Pitt replied, he'll bring along co-parent Angelina Jolie next time to help Reid make Durbin jealous, this person said.
Later, a Durbin aide sniffed: "Durbin's already met Angelina Jolie."
These officials demanded anonymity because the meeting was private and they did not want to be caught gossiping about a movie star.
The Power of Pitt drained entire congressional offices of their female employees and quite a few male aides as well, all of whom could be picked out by the way they suddenly appeared in the Senate's doorways and halls, nonchalantly cupping cell phones and cameras at their sides and hanging around waiting news crews.
Finally, around 1:30 p.m., Pitt, four aides and assorted security guards climbed out of a darkened SUV at the Capitol's north gate and strolled across the sun-dappled plaza.
As he approached the building, all nonchalance inside disappeared. Was he coming in the carriage entrance? No! He was coming through the North Door.
And so he did, entering through the famous Brumidi corridor, whose ornate and historic paintings he probably couldn't see through his sunglasses. Reporters, photographers and giggling staffers shuffled after him, up a flight of stairs and around a corner toward Reid's office. As Pitt entered the parlor, he took off his shades. An aide closed the door behind him.
Inside with Reid, Pitt made an earnest case for nationalizing his "Make It Right" campaign, in partnership with Congress, according to a second knowledgeable aide who spoke on condition that he not be named because the meeting was private.
Afterward, this official said, Reid and Pitt posed for pictures, the senator cracking, "How will people tell us apart?"
Outside the door, grinning Capitol Police officers put up ropes to keep the hordes out of the path Pitt was expected to take toward his next meeting, with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., in a building across the street.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the Judiciary Committee chairman who has appeared as himself in several "Batman" movies and even had a speaking line in "The Dark Knight," stumbled across the crowd gathered outside Reid's door.
Told who was inside, Leahy issued a giddy, "Gosh!" and kept walking.
In the end, Pitt and his entourage slipped out a side door and took an elevator to the basement subway.
Is any of what those fools are pushing appropriate at this time? Answer...a resounding HELL NO!!
Agreed.
Makes you wonder why they don't bring it bakc doesn't it. F'ing crooks.
Keep an eye on the 12th, M to M may get suspended.
Who the phuck knows?
Shorts are grinding everything into the ground, they are moving from one stock to the next crushing the bid.
SFI is one of those rainy days stocks, may add some here at the 1 level.
HA! So that's why Obama is talking to those graduates in Ohio.
It's truly sad the state the MSM is now. I am pretty damn sure the American peolpe know the economy is F'ed up right now. I mean shit, we could use some pick me up news every once in a while as well.
Got a few I am doing that with but DAMN!! Tired of all the doom and gloom.
I tell ya, it seems like it's a concerted effort to actually destroy the free market system.
Why can't people just STFU?
Worst is yet to come for job market
Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com senior writer
Friday March 6, 2009, 9:39 am EST
Buzz up! Print It's no secret that the job market is bad.
The government reported Friday that the unemployment rate rose to a 25-year high of 8.1% in February, as employers cut 651,000 jobs from payrolls.
Still, as bad as those numbers are, some have argued that this jobs downturn is not as bad as the early 1980s. The unemployment rate peaked at 10.8% in late 1982.
But several experts say it would be a mistake to come to that conclusion. They argue that unemployment rate only hints at why this jobs downturn is worse than any since the Great Depression.
Steep decline
Over the last six months, 3.3 million jobs have been lost. That's the largest six-month job loss since the end of World War II.
Even adjusting for the large growth in the nation's job base in recent decades, this is still the biggest six-month job loss since March 1975.
Economists say the steepness of this decline will make it tougher for the job market to improve any time soon. The increasing job losses create a downward spiral in which businesses, faced with lower demand because people can't afford to buy their products, lay off even more people.
"The dramatic hemorrhaging of jobs means we're in this for the long-haul," said Heidi Shierholz, economist with Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank supported by foundations and labor unions.
Another reason why this downturn is more painful is because the layoffs have come from companies in virtually all parts of the economy.
"There's no place to hide in terms of job losses," said Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of Economic Cycle Research Institute. "And when measuring the impact of job losses, it's very important how pervasive the losses are. That's what makes this the worst since the Great Depression."
Achuthan points to something called the diffusion index of employment change, which showed that three out of four business sectors cut jobs in February. Job losses were even slightly more widespread in December and January, meaning that 83% of industries have lost workers over the last three months.
According to Achuthan, this was the first time in the past 30 years that there have been job losses in more than two-thirds of the sectors of the economy. When the recession started in December 2007, about 58% of industries were still adding jobs.
Long-term pain
February marked the 14th straight month of job losses, the third-longest streak since 1939.
This long period of job losses is swelling unemployment rolls to record levels and causing long-term unemployment to rise sharply.
In February, 3.4% of the nation's workers had been out of work for 15 or more weeks, with nearly 2% of that total being out of work at least six months. Several states' unemployment funds have run out money as a result.
And most economists think the job market woes are far from over. Many economists are projecting job losses through the end of the year.
But even when the job losses end, the unemployment rate is likely to continue rising. That's because the modest hiring that will follow the downturn won't be enough to make up for population growth and unemployed Americans who had become discouraged starting to look for jobs again.
With that in mind, Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said he thinks the unemployment rate will hit a peak of above 10% sometime in 2010.
Underemployed, or discouraged
Finally, economists caution that the unemployment rate only captures a portion of Americans unable to find full-time jobs. It doesn't count people working at part-time jobs but cannot find a full-time job, for example.
And the average number of hours worked per week is now at a record low, according to Labor Department readings.
The unemployment rate also doesn't count many people who tell the Labor Department they want to work but haven't looked for work recently.
The government has a so-called underemployment reading which counts people working part-time jobs for economic reasons rather than by choice, as well as some who have become discouraged from looking for work.
That measure hit 14.8% in February - the highest reading since the Labor Department started calculating it back in 1994.
But there are other discouraged job seekers who are not looking because they don't think they can find work, have decided to return to school, or for other personal reasons. Counting all of those people in the underemployment rate takes it to 16.7% in February.
Comparable figures aren't available from the Labor Department for the pre-1994 period, but there are full-year government estimates for those outside the labor force who wanted to work in earlier years.
Using those figures, the underemployment rate reached a high of 21.5% in November 1982. While that's higher than this February, it's probably not fair to compare the current reading to the worst result of that downturn since most believe this jobs crisis is far from over.
"No one is going to tell you we're at the trough," said Baker.
LOL, we can ony hope.
OK, did one of those idiots get near a mic?
What's luck got to do with that?
GNW for a quickie.
Would be a welcomed change, that's for sure.
No kidding. Please keep Geitner and Obama AWAY from the teleprompters. LOL.
Good luck with that lawsuit buddy.
LOL, you've got to be kidding.
GM Sidney. How goes it.
House Panel Sets Hearing on Mark-to-Market Accounting
A House Financial Services subcomittee has scheduled a March 12 hearing on mark-to-market accounting rules -- a dry-sounding topic that likely would have a massive impact on the struggling big banks and the wider economy if it were altered.
Simply put, mark-to-market accounting rules, enforced by the SEC and the government's designated accounting oversight group, require a company to value -- or "mark" -- assets on its books based on the price they would bring if they were sold today.
In theory, mark-to-market provides good information for potential investors and prevents businesses from assigning any value they choose -- likely a higher one -- to things they own.
But mark-to-market can cripple businesses when no market for an asset exists, like now.
Big banks are struggling to survive -- shares of Citigroup, once the world's largest bank, closed at $1.02 today -- because their balance sheets are poisoned with assets for which no market exists. Chiefly, the mortgage-backed securities based on lousy mortgages. No one wants to buy them right now, so that means no market exists.
Some day, there will be a market for those securities. But until there is, banks have to account for them at fire-sale prices, and that's what's making the banks sick.
Many in financial services sector have argued for a relaxation, or temporary suspension, of mark-to-market as a way to help out the sick banks.
In theory, if banks no longer had to account for these valueless assets on their books, their balance sheets would suddenly improve and -- this is the important part -- private capital would start to flow back into the banks. Right now, an estimated $9 trillion to $10 trillion of private capital is sitting on the sidelines because it doesn't want to invest in sick companies.
Again, in theory, if mark-to-market were temporarily lifted, the big banks could get well almost overnight. (Another way to achieve this goal is the creation of a "bad bank" that would take all the toxic assets off the books of private banks and put them in one federally run bank, possibly called The Worst Bank In the World.)
The downside? If mark-to-market is lifted for good, or is made too lax, companies could create balance sheets that are pure fiction, giving potential investors zero insight into the health of companies.
So this is why, next Thursday at 10 a.m., Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Penn.), will convene a hearing of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Enterprises to talk about mark-to-market.
"Illiquid markets have resulted in great difficulty in valuing sizable assets," Kanjorski said in a statement. "Some have therefore complained about fair value accounting and sought to eliminate it. While companies need stability, investors still need accurate information. We therefore cannot allow for fantasy accounting that wishes away bad assets by merely concealing them.”
-- Frank Ahrens
LMAO - Lawsuit for what?
I hope too. ust waiting and watching right now. Still have some in SFI, FITB and ZLC for the long haul but sidelining it right now.
Waiting for an update here still.
Gonna be another ugly day today in the markets it seems.
Unemployment Soars to 8.1%, Highest Since 1983- AP
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Jobless-rate-bolts-to-81-apf-14564130.html;_ylt=AnwqjVnSg14PbeOttcnlaUa7YWsA
FDIC's Bair warns on bank deposit insurance fund
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090304/ap_on_bi_ge/fdic_bank_fund_warning
That was one BEA...utitful ride right there.
Agreed, and as of right now it does not seem we are getting better just bigger.
It's a valid point. Do you want bigger government?