by Dino

The weekend of September 13-14 brought some of the most dramatic news of this credit crisis: Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch had been sold to Bank of America, and AIG needed a rescue by the Federal Reserve. Yet in the following two weeks the S&P 500 stock index was down just 3%. [...]

by Dino

(The SEC short selling ban expires at midnight today)

by Dino

On July 17, angry Pakistani investors stoned the Karachi Stock Exchange, smashed windows and cursed regulators after the benchmark index fell for a 15th straight day, the worst losing streak in 18 years. US and UK regulators must have been thinking of these spiteful reactions when they decided to take the matter of falling share [...]

by Markus

Minus 500 points in the DJI. S&P 500, the broader market index, lost even more (in %) than the Dow. Asia was sliding. Roubini and others might open a bottle of champagne.  Prost. Paulson said last night that he “never once considered it would be appropriate to put tax payers money at risk” to bail [...]

by James

The bloodbath continues. In volatile trading, developed markets held up well last week. The S&P 500 gained 0.75%, while oil slipped 4.75% and has now broken the $100/bbl mark. The dollar also closed relatively flat, down 0.50% against the euro. Again though, the news was made over the weekend, and is only beginning to come [...]

by Dino

People at the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve were working at the weekend and on Sunday, before the opening of the Asian markets, announced a bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Let’s be clear about this: it was a bailout, motivated by the threat of systemic risk, in many ways similar to the [...]

by Markus

In the last years, globalisation led to a situation in industrialized economies, that earned income decreased as a proportion of aggregated income. A trend which made life not too smooth for consumers. But the correction seen seems to be just the beginning of a blank consumer that cannot continue the culitvated lifestyle. The idea of [...]

by James

Despite a volatile week, the S&P ended last week basically flat. Inflation and Lehman Brothers were the main stories. Lehman Brothers shocked the market with a $2.8bln write-down. This led to several days of punishment, only quelled on Friday, when it became known that BlackRock had bought equity at $28/shr and with the likely closure [...]