This is the Third Quarter 2008 edition of our ongoing hedge fund portfolio tracking series. Before reading this update, make sure you check out the preface to the series we're doing on Hedge Fund 13F filings here.
Bank of American Corp. (BAC), which is getting $15 billion from the U.S. government as part of the Treasury Department’s $250 billion “recapitalization” effort, is doubling its stake in state-owned China Construction Bank Corp., and will hold a 20% stake worth $24 billion in China’s second-largest lender when that deal is finalized.
PNC Financial Services Group Inc. (PNC), which will get $7.7 billion from Treasury’s Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), is using that cash...
Jamie Dimon is a beast... he was spurned from top leadership at Citigroup (C) years ago and then went to JPMorgan (JPM) and look who's talking now. For a nice $31B writeoff and $2B he now owns the largest S&L in America and has branches all over the West where JPMorgan Chase was lacking.
Now my question is, what happens if management changes at either Bank of America / Countrywide / Merrill Lynch (BAC) or JPMorgan / Bear Stearns / Washingtong Mutual (JPM) and someone takes them in...
Housing is still the root cause of the financial troubles on Wall Street. Today's report on New Housing Starts and Building Permits was ugly again, although it is this weakness that could be the seed of an eventual stabilization of the housing market.
Yesterday the SEC announced its intent to enforce Regulation SHO which became effective on September 7, 2004. The rule was enacted to "establish uniform locate and delivery requirements in order to address problems associated with failures to deliver, including potentially abusive “naked” short selling (i.e., selling short without having borrowed the securities to make delivery)".
There are many arguments against short sellers, but in fairness they do facilitate liquidity and bring discipline to the markets by punishing the securities of poorly managed companies. Some do not like to admit it for fear of killing the goose that...
I am continually surprised that people are willing to hold, at any price, the common stock of regional Option-ARM mortgage disasters Downey Financial (DSL), BankUnited Financial Corporation (BKUNA), and FirstFed Financial (FED). They are dead banks walking. The big investment banks, money center banks, insurance companies, and even the GSEs have been drastically writing down the value of their toxic mortgage portfolios. Some might argue they have not written them down enough, but clearly management is...
Downey: Growth in Non-Performing Assets Slows. “Option-ARM specialist Downey Financial Corp. (DSL) monthly report: Growth in non-performing assets slowed dramatically during July, to just over 3% compared to June. And July’s growth in NPAs was the slowest rate this year, by far; the previous low-growth month was May’s 5.26%... Non-performing assets dropped as a percentage of total assets for the first time in well over a year; but Downey officials noted this was an artifact of total assets increasing more so than any decrease...
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