If you're going to be in the Bay Area the week of February 24 to March 3, be sure to check out the EntrepreneurshipWeek festivities at my old alma mater, Stanford University.This great series of events, which are *FREE*, will include a keynote on cleantech by Tom Friedman, presentations by...
Gary Gordon submits: It's hard to believe it, but the Dow was actually above 13000 one month ago. Today, it is having trouble closing near its lows in March. That's a pretty bad sign. The S&P 500 is still several percentage points above the closing lows...
The news: Retail sales reports for March were hideous across the board, with retailers blaming poor weather, gas prices and an extra-early Easter (meaning one closed Sunday in March, instead of April). The big winner: Buckle, with same-store sales up 20.9 percent in March. The teen apparel...
This is a case study that shows that a tenant may not have to pay full rent for the month it went into bankruptcy, even though it continues to use the leased property. A case involved bankrupt tenants under numerous unexpired non-residential leases in which the annual rent was payable...
Mike Steinhardt submits: Here’s a snippet from KeyCorp’s most recent 10-Q filed on May 6, 2008 for the period ending March 31, 2008. Capital adequacy. Capital adequacy is an important indicator of financial stability and performance. Key’s ratio of total shareholders’ equity to total assets was 8.47% at...
Cam Hui submits: The S&P 500 has been on a downward trajectory since mid-May and the index is now probing the lows reached in March. However, sentiment readings are much too sanguine, indicating that further lows are ahead for US equities in the near term. First of...
Hickey and Walters Bespoke submit: Below we highlight historical default risk for JPMorgan JPM, Lehman LEH, Morgan Stanley MS, Merrill MER, Goldman GS and Citigroup C as measured by their 5-year credit default swap prices. After peaking in March during the Bear Stearns BSC blowup, default risk for...
Phil Davis submits: Yet another Thursday rally! The last time we had a down day on a Thursday was March 27th, an awful week where the market fell 300 points to 12,200. What caused the decline on March 27th? It was a collapse of the financials brought on by some...
Phil Davis submits: Yet another Thursday rally! The last time we had a down day on a Thursday was March 27th, an awful week where the market fell 300 points to 12,200. What caused the decline on March 27th? It was a collapse of the financials brought on by some...
The EPSRC Network on Rethinking Project Management will be active over a two-year period from March 2004. The first meeting of the network participants was held in Manchester at the end of March. The agenda of that meeting covered the shaping and planning of the network programme, and initial endeavours...
Hickey and Walters Bespoke submit: Below we highlight some of the widely followed indicators to see how markets are weathering the credit crisis. The first chart below highlights an index that measures credit default risk for a number of investment grade corporate bonds in the US. As shown,...
Brett Steenbarger submits: The Dow has been moving to bear market lows and the number of NYSE common stocks making fresh 52-week lows has taken out its March peak, but so far investors seem to be seeing this as more credit-related sin than tragedy. I've mentioned in the past...
This article analyzes the trends in milk production until June 2004. It reports that wholesale prices of cheese and butter in mid-June were down almost 20 percent from their April peaks. The April peaks likely represented an over-reaction to the large February-March declines in milk production and the sharp March-April...
Markos Kaminis (Wall St. Greek) submits: Over the past few weeks, Wall Street Greek has been warning that as the market digests the new reality that inflation is a serious threat, it would likely retest the March 10 market lows. Ironically, on the same day the Federal Reserve released...
In this paper, methods and data have been for use in validating simulated earnings histories. The ability to simulate realistic earnings histories is critical for any dynamic microsimulation model that seeks to analyze the implications of reforms in pension or social security policy. This paper describes earnings history validation data...
The Dow Jones Industrial Average has until recently been closely following the roadmap for 2008 posted on 24th March 2008 as part of the Global Stock markets outlook, i.e. both the rally to early May to 13,136 and the subsequent downtrend to 11,700 by the end of June were virtually...
From the point of view of private-sector employers, it's been a disastrous year for benefit costs. For the year ended March 2003, benefit expenses leaped 6.1 percent, greater than the 4.8 percent jump for the year ending March 2002, according to figures just released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor...
This article provides historic data through 2002 on the number and percentage of nonelderly Americans with and without health insurance. It discusses trends in coverage for the 1987-2002 periods and highlights characteristics that typically indicate whether an individual is insured. Based on EBRI estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau's March...
For retirement plan distributions after March 27, 2005, new automatic rollover rules apply to amounts that could have been involuntarily cashed out under prior law. As a result, most plan sponsors need to quickly change the processing of retirement plan distributions so that checks will not be mailed after March...
