As companies report their first quarter earnings, the school is sending home the first quarter report cards. Andy has got a "C", and is anxious about how his dad is going to react.

Turns out his dad works for Wall Street. Investors on Wall Street have been cheering about the corporate earnings for the past few weeks, not because the earnings were so good, but because the expectations were so low. Stocks rose, because all the bad earnings and economic data were seen as "not so bad" or "bet...
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4/27/2009

The U.S. stock market gave up some ground concerning the more virulent condition of the swine flu. It was reported that the swine flu's death count in Mexico grew to about 150 people from 100 and that cases in the U.S. doubled to about 40.

The Dow Jones industrial index fell 51.29, or 0.6 percent, to 8,025.00. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 8.72, or 1 percent, to 857.51. The Nasdaq composite index fell 14.88, or 0.9 percent, to 1,679.41. The Russell 2000 index of smaller comp...
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The recent rally in the stock market has been led by the very same financial sector that dragged down the market. Thanks to the modified mark-to-market accounting rules, several banks have seen much improved balance sheets and reported better than expected earnings for the first quarter of 2009.

What's the magic about "the modified market accounting rules"? Here is the excerpt from Barron's:

Dick Bove, the dean of bank analysts, now with Rochdale Securities, explains how mark-to-market ac...

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4/22/2009

Investors on Wall Street have observed a strong rebound starting in early March after the year-long bear market. The stock market has dismissed dismal economic data and ignored the fact that most Americans are still losing their jobs and struggling to make ends meet. Granted, the market has its own right to do so in anticipating an improved U.S. economy in the second half of the year. Although left out of the Wall Street party this time, we from the remote Main Street pray that th...

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3/3/2009

S&P 500 index dropped to the lowest level below 7000 since October 28, 1996. Although the drop on Tuesday was moderate, the Dow Jones industry average tumbled 300 points a day earlier that sent both the Dow and the S&P 500 index to their lowest level in more than a decade. Monday's slump in the stock market was primarily triggered by the bigger than expected loss of $62 billion for the fourth quarter announced by AIG -- the biggest in U.S. corporate history. The U.S. government injec...

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You may have heard enough of bad news and don't even want to look at the stock indexes again. The Dow Jones Industry Index lost 33.8% in 2008 alone. The two other years in which the Dow did worse than that were 1907, when the index lost 37.7%, and 1931, when the Dow lost 52.7%. OK, I'll stop right here. But, wait. Let me show you one more stock index chart...
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