After the one-day-wonder of the start of Q2 … markets in the meantime lost all of its gains and waits for the earnings picture to form …
First we had the Alcoa and AMD shocks, but as the financials still draw money … UBS, WaMU, Wachovia, Lehman … and some companies even surprise … not much […]

Joseph Brandon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of General Re Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has decided to resign effective today. Franklin “Tad” Montross, President of General Re Corporation, will replace Mr. Brandon as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of General Re Corporation.
It is a Buffett Company …
NO REASON GIVEN … […]

After the negative surprise of GE … especially after they mentioned that they got hit within the last 2 weeks of March … due to the Bear Stearns turmoil …
We start to understand, why the financials start to move on to clean up their act … at least a bit.
And it seems to be AWFUL!!!
Citibank […]

GE … the once great GE … in TROUBLE
Only 2 weeks ago they reiterated their guidance …
Now they “found out” …
“After the Bear Stearns event, we experienced an extraordinary disruption in our ability to complete asset sales and incurred marks of impairments, and this was something that we clearly didn’t see until the end […]

We are still stuck … Market can’t rise, doesn’t want to fall …
BoE lowered rates and ECB kept them unchanged … as expected
WalMart guided higher … as Americans buy on the cheap as they face problems.
Dupont guided higher … on exchange rates.
Intel got upgraded …
At least something.
But as problems persist, highlighted by especially Goldman Sachs […]

If you want to see a real bear market structure …
Today we had a perfect example in the US market:
Ahead of the open … NEWS … at first sight positive, but a non-event … today we had the Citibank “news” and the Mortgage applications.
WHY? To start selling from a higher level …
After that … SELLING […]

Citibank is close to announce the sale of around 12bln$ of debt.
This is seen as positive and bullish … hmmmm
My take:
1. This is buy-out related debt, NOT mortgage related … so they sell “better” debt
2. They lock in a loss … and free as it is leveraged debt only a small amount of their balance […]

After only one week into Q2, markets look tired …
First earnings, which came in, really couldn’t excite traders or investors.
European equities getting sold on UK figures and a “NO CUT” rate outlook for main Europe.
US equities already under pressure as buying runs out … and that even before having tested the decisive 1395/1400 S&P level.
Market […]