Wall St. braces for more losses

[Sapiens]

http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/16/mark...ion=2008011607

Wall St. braces for more losses
JP Morgan earnings disappoint; Intel gives cautious outlook, fanning recession fears; futures sharply lower.
January 16 2008: 7:30 AM EST
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- U.S. stocks looked set to slide at Wednesday's start after disappointing results from JP Morgan further fanned fears that the U.S. economy would fall into a recession.

JP Morgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) reported fourth-quarter earnings that fell short of Wall Street's estimates due to a $1.3 billion write-down on subprime assets. The company's net income fell to $3 billion for the quarter.

The results come after Citigroup reported a $9.8 billion loss in the quarter and ahead of results from Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) due out later this morning.

Intel (INTC, Fortune 500), the world's largest chipmaker, also fueled investor skepticism when it reported quarterly sales that missed Wall Street's estimates late Tuesday. Even more worrisome for investors was the weak outlook the company gave, which raised concerns that Intel faces a slowdown in demand as the economy weakens.

At 7:11 a.m. ET, Nasdaq and S&P futures were sharply lower, suggesting no rebound from the previous session's massive selloff.

On the economic front, the government is due to release its Consumer Price Index, a key measure of inflation, at 8:30 a.m. ET. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com project a gain of 0.2 percent for December.

The latest data for industrial production and capacity utilization is also due out. The Federal Reserve is also slated to release its Beige Book of economic conditions.

Oil prices took a dive, with the price of light crude for February delivery dropping to $90.90 a barrel in electronic trading ahead of the government's weekly report on fuel inventories.

Stocks tumbled Tuesday after financial giant Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) reported a record $9.8 billion loss and the government's reading on retail sales came in much weaker than expected.

News that Citi and Merrill Lynch (MER, Fortune 500) had lined up about $21 billion in fresh capital wasn't enough to soothe investors, who focused on the $18 billion write-down Citi took on mortgage-related investments and worried about weak credit conditions ahead.

In global trade, Asian markets got hammered, and European stocks tumbled in morning trading.

[metalman]

Re: Wall St. braces for more losses

http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/16/mark...ion=2008011607

hey, jim. looks like you shoulda called this the "what if itulip made a perfectly timed 'time to go short' call and i didn't have the balls to take any action on it?" thread. damn.

so half the members polled in your thread did take action. how are you'all doing?

[Sapiens]

Wells Fargo Profit Declines as Overdue Loans Increase

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...U3A&refer=home

Wells Fargo Profit Declines as Overdue Loans Increase (Update1)

By David Mildenberg

Jan. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Wells Fargo & Co., the biggest bank on the U.S. West Coast, said fourth-quarter profit fell 38 percent as more borrowers missed payments on home loans.

Net income declined to $1.36 billion, or 41 cents a share, from $2.18 billion, or 64 cents, a year earlier, the San Francisco-based company said today in a statement. Analysts were estimating Wells Fargo earned 40 cents, according to a survey by Bloomberg.

Wells Fargo suffered its first profit decline since 2001 after the bank made it easier for some borrowers to receive home equity loans. The result was higher defaults amid a housing slump that Chief Executive Officer John Stumpf said in November was the worst since the Great Depression.

``We expect the environment to remain challenging in 2008, particularly in the consumer sector,'' Stumpf said in the statement.

The company dropped $1.72 yesterday, or 6.1 percent, to $26.49 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading after analyst Paul Miller of Friedman Billings Ramsey & Co. downgraded the stock to ``underperform.'' The bank's shares fell 27 percent in the past year, compared with the 31 percent decline in the 24-member KBW Bank Stock Index.

To contact the reporter on this story: David Mildenberg in Charlotte at dmildenberg@bloomberg.net

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: Wall St. braces for more losses

hey, jim. looks like you shoulda called this the "what if itulip made a perfectly timed 'time to go short' call and i didn't have the balls to take any action on it?" thread. damn.

so half the members polled in your thread did take action. how are you'all doing?

That would have been an apt title also. I guess people around here are either lazy or wusses not to even vote on such a benign poll.

I think I am correct in EJ's call came before 8 consecutive down days on the Nasdaq, or it came on the morning of the first of those eight days. I read by Mike Burk that eight consecutive down days on Nasdaq occurs about once a year. So it turned out for whatever moved EJ to write his call at the moment he did, it was an excellent moment.

I've mentioned somewhere Burk make a call of a possible top back in early October based on technical happenings, and what he said did not fail, though he explained how it might fail when he made the call.

You can look in the top investors forum and see how I am doing.