Outlook for the week of 5-4-09

By Ryan Wheeler

Will this Rally Hold Ground? I say “No”

When I look at the equity market and attempt to predict short-term movements, I look at a few different factors. I start by looking at the expected news flow in the coming week. The relative strength of the news (its ability to move the market) will usually give me a decent idea about whether the following week is primed for volatility. Next, I look at the past few weeks’ news, the strength of that information and how the market reacted to it. This tells me the mood of investors and how they are generally assessing the information. The last thing I look at is the bond market; specifically intermediate term Treasuries. I generally believe that monitoring relative movements of the bond market compared to equity indices can tell you a lot about what direction money is flowing (bonds to stocks or stocks to bonds).

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This week’s Newsletter only includes the Outlook portion. The Recap will be back next week.

Outlook

By Ryan Wheeler

I would be curious to get into the minds of some of the CEOs of top banks at this point. Needless to say, they have had a whirlwind of issues and struggles to deal with over the last 18 months, but there are still so many possibilities of what can happen. We are fully immersed in earning season right now, and banks are still the main focus. Along with earnings, we are hearing inklings of news about a stress-test progress report. While bank earnings have shown some signs of strength in certain business units, any negative reports from regulators about capital adequacy could rock the financial sector again. We are also getting mixed news about lending activity among banks who received tax-payer money through TARP. According to an article in today’s WSJ, bank lending in February dropped at a higher rate than the 2.2% month/month decline reported by the Fed on Wednesday. The Journal uses a different method of calculation that shows a 4.7% drop. For my purposes, those two numbers are ambiguous because we don’t know what the situation would have been like without the program (better or worse). The fact is that, at the current rates, mortgage refinancing is picking up, treasury rates are unattractive, and riskier-asset yields are begging for investors to play. People are slowly feeling out some of the “lower quality” bond issues for extremely rewarding yields. As that happens, Treasury rates will start to drop and the see-saw will start to balance out. Now I know what a lot of you are thinking… “It is not that easy” and “There are so many other things that need to happen first”. I agree. We are not in a position where this stuff is just going to fix itself. We have a long road of regulation fights, debt runoffs, liquidity program reductions (hopefully), and consolidation. All I am saying is that the laws of supply and demand along with market efficiency theories will play out over the next year.

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The Recap

 By Steve Romasko

 The S&P 500 ended the holiday shortened week up 1.7%, led by financials. Trade was volatile despite only four sessions that had a relatively small amount of news and economic reports. The upside move came despite Alcoa (AA) kicking off first quarter earnings reporting season on a weaker-than expected note.

 On Tuesday evening, Alcoa reported a loss of $0.59 per share, $0.02 worse than the First Call consensus that called for a loss of $0.57. Alcoa said the sharp drop in revenue resulted from the impact of the economic downturn on the company’s end markets — automotive, transportation, building and construction and aerospace. Despite the miss, the results were better than many had feared, and as a result Alcoa finished the week with an 4.0% gain.

 There were some upside earnings results, however. Wells Fargo (WFC) preannounced record first quarter earnings of approximately $3 billion and earnings of $0.55 per share, topping the consensus estimate of $0.23. Wells Fargo expects revenues of $20.0 billion, versus the consensus of $18.98 billion.

 The news gave a healthy boost to financials, which ended up 15.9% on the week and provided a measure of confidence going into the coming week when JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS) and Citigroup (C) report their quarterly results. On a related note, life insurers also helped lift financials, gaining 15.9%, after it was reported that the Treasury will soon announce it will extend the TALF program to aid some life insurers.

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Recap of Last Week

9a.m., it’s a Sunday and you’re woken by the piercing sun shining through your apartment window. What happened? Where did everyone go? Ugh. You’re dehydrated and your head is POUNDING uncontrollably as you reach for the Ibuprofen. This is going to be a nasty hangover. And what is that awful smell? Is that? No. It can’t be. . .But it’s too late, you know all too well what it is—the stench is that hot heaping pile of toxic assets still sitting on your balance sheet. You could take the trash out but who’s going to pick it up? Everyone in the neighborhood is facing the same hangover and your Uncle is only able to stop by the really decrepit houses—but look on the bright side, if a nephew can help his Uncle by taking on a little more trash from the neighboring houses, then he’ll get some money pitched his way to manage the deteriorating pile and the pain that comes with it.

 Such is the situation on Wall Street for the past several months, and the second week in the New Year was no different as financials fell 16%, dragging the broad market down with it, -3.7%, as investors mulled over a wave of capital raises and weakening credit quality. Trouble mounted early in the week as Citigroup announced plans to sell a significant stake in its brokerage house, Smith Barney, to Morgan Stanley. They then went on to announce another bold initiative during the Q408 conference call by unveiling plans to split the company into two units. Investors took this as a sign of forced selling to stay alive and by the time the carnage came to an end, their stock had fallen 59% amid an $8.3 billion Q4 loss.

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Recap of Last Week’s Market

By Steve Romasko

In the face of a short trading week with light volume, continuing trends advanced and investor response remained indifferent—in other words, investors conceded little ground to the relatively poor economic news as the results no longer carry the ‘shock value’ of the past.

Throughout the week, oil prices continued their slide on the front-month contract, settling at 37.71, the Fed announced new emergency plans and a wave of reports displayed a continually weakening economy. Particularly, (1) initial jobless number spike to a high of 586,000, (2) durable goods orders fell 1% in the month of November , (3) November existing home sales plummeted 8.6% from October, (4) new home sales hit a 17-year low of only 407,000 units and (5) personal income and spending dropped 0.2% and 0.6%. Read the rest of this entry »

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Recap of Last Week

By Steve Romasko

All eyes were on the Federal Reserve this week as they met on Monday and Tuesday to discuss further policy action in order to stem the economic crisis. From the meeting, the FOMC cut the target rate from 1.00% to a first-ever ‘range’ of 0.00-0.25%—effectively eliminating a major policy tool. However, the Fed made it clear that aggressive action will stay the course, and they will do everything possible to stimulate the credit market and the economy— perhaps by buying long-term treasury securities.

Bond traders reacted to this news by piling into long-term Treasuries—notably, the yield on the 10-yr note fell 49bps to 2.08%, while the 30-yr bill returned 2.52%, down 52basis points from the week prior. The seemingly relentless resolve of Bernanke & Co. to stimulate the economy on an infinite basis sent shorts heading for the exits and caused markets to rally 5.1% on Tuesday. However, the market gave back roughly 3.5% of Tuesday’s gains on Wednesday and Thursday, as economic reports were poor and investors returned to the notion that there’s no short-term panacea to fix the economy overnight.

Regarding economics—Industrial production declined 0.6% in November, housing starts declined 18.9% (the largest since March 1984), building permits hit a low and initial jobless claims – while  better than  consensus – are at a 26-year high.

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