Saturday, July 26, 2014

Slow Saturday Special: Stock Sweep

"Global tensions don’t dent enthusiasm for stocks" by Steve Rothwell | Associated Press   July 26, 2014

A war breaks out between Israel and Hamas. An airliner is shot out of the sky in Ukraine. A Portuguese bank’s finances look shaky.

And the US stock market’s response? After dipping briefly on the bad news, it climbs higher.

The market’s resilience this year, which has pushed it to a series of records and extended its five-year bull run, is driven by investors’ optimism over the growth of the US economy and record corporate earnings.

Related(?)Microsoft to cut up to 18,000 jobs

That helped the market overcome its latest dip, on July 17th, when a passenger jet was shot down in eastern Ukraine and Israel invaded the Gaza Strip, raising investor worries that conflicts around the world could escalate and destabilize financial markets.

As they have all year, investors responded by using it as an opportunity to buy stocks. In fact, they have ‘‘bought on the dip’’ consistently for three years, keeping the market’s slips from becoming slides. Stock pullbacks since 2011 have been rare and relatively small, and none have become severe enough to qualify as a correction, Wall Street parlance for a fall of 10 percent or more from a peak.

The lack of a correction for such a long period is unusual.

The bubble has not yet burst.

Many investors say that the uninterrupted rally is justified by the outlook for stocks. Central banks worldwide have policies in place aimed at stimulating economic growth, and US corporate profits continue to rise, even in the first quarter, when the economy contracted....

‘‘The fundamental underpinnings of this bull market remain very much intact,’’ says Katie Nixon, chief investment officer for wealth management at Northern Trust.

Meaning the wealth inequality is going to keep growing.

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That is what happens when the Fed prints and then $howers money on you.

"Investors got some bad news about the American shopper, driving down stocks and sending the Dow to a loss for the week. Two major US companies — Amazon and credit card processor Visa — both said the second half of the year was looking more troubled than originally expected.... 

It's a sober outlook after I was told this thing is ready to take off!

May’s data was revised slightly lower, but April’s reading was revised much higher. That has helped the economy return to growth after a sharp contraction in the first three months of the year.... 

Oh, those lies are encouraging

Total hiring actually slipped in May, but US companies posted the most jobs in 7 years in May....

Time to get rid of the $hit stockpile.

With the market trading near all-time highs, investors will be focused this week on a large number of corporate earnings, including quarterly reports from General Electric, Google, Bank of America, and Johnson & Johnson. Stocks shook off its summer doldrums, touched a record high, and finished strong Monday, driven by a round of news on corporate deals and strong earnings from Citigroup."

Also seeMass. gets $55m from Citigroup

Despite the huge settlement, Citigroup reported Monday that it made $181 million in net income in the second quarter of this year. Excluding the costs of the settlement, Citigroup made $3.9 billion during that period. Citigroup is the latest bank to settle with the Justice Department about mortgage-backed securities.

Quite a Gap, huh? 

Related: The Rent-Backed Securities Swindle

What is the use of Yellen about it?

Goldman Sachs said second-quarter profit amounted to $2 billion

Bank of America reported profit of $2.3 billion

Morgan Stanley posted profit of $1.3 billion

JPMorgan Chase reported second-quarter profit of $6 billion

And stocks went down?

I really don't know what to say anymore, readers, so I will just head home:

"Rising prices, falling rates give boost to jumbo loans" by Deirdre Fernandes | Globe Staff   July 26, 2014

The number of jumbo loans used for home purchases has skyrocketed in Massachusetts, as buyers take out bigger mortgages to pay for increasingly expensive homes.

Lenders, from local banks to mortgage giants, say that at least 30 percent of their loans are now jumbos, compared with about 10 percent in recent years, fueled by a market where home prices in some communities have now surged past prerecession highs.

******************

Bankers and mortgage specialists also cite the improved economy and easing of credit. Interest rates for jumbo loans, traditionally higher than for conventional loans, are much more attractive....

Jumbo loans are generally geared to wealthy buyers, but in Greater Boston, where the median price for a single-family home recently hit a record $532,000, even middle-class families have to rely on them. Since the government-owned mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac don’t back them, jumbo loans come with tougher conditions. In most cases, they not only require borrowers to have higher credit scores, but also to come up with 20 percent down and set aside six months of mortgage payments in a reserve account.

Nate Wolfson, 37, and his wife recently bought a home in Lexington, where the community’s highly regarded school system and proximity to Boston have helped push the median home price to $870,000. Wolfson, a digital marketing executive, thought they found a bargain when they settled on a Cape-style home for about $650,000.

A jumbo loan might suggest a “big, fancy house,” said Wolfson said, but in this heated real estate market even the purchase of a relatively modest home can put a buyer in the jumbo territory. They borrowed about $500,000.

“It’s anachronistic, considering the housing prices,” he said.

Cambridge leads the way in regional housing boom

Prior to the financial crisis, jumbo loans were more commonly used in Massachusetts than elsewhere in the country, because of the high cost of real estate. But banks everywhere pulled back on jumbo lending after home values collapsed and concerns grew that borrowers wouldn’t be able to pay back the bank.

That is not the way it works, and the MYTH PROMOTION by the ma$$ media is di$gusting!!

The rebound in jumbo loans is largely driven by the same force that is helping to push prices higher: wealthy buyers, who recovered more quickly from the recession than middle-income families, said Amy Tierce, a Needham-based regional vice president for Wintrust Mortgage Corp. of Chicago.

As if there has been a recovery for the middle. It's been 6 years of Grand Depression for us.

These big loan amounts have become so common in the Boston area that Tierce left her longtime job at another mortgage broker in June to join Wintrust, which specializes in jumbo loans....

The trend shows no signs of abating, analysts and lenders said, but the surge in jumbo loans is also a sign of a widening income gap that is leaving families with moderate incomes behind, said Barry Bluestone, the director of the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy.

Don't we all live to serve and slave for them? Isn't that why we are here?

In Boston, rising prices are putting homes out of reach of many middle-class families, meaning that only those with incomes high enough to buy increasingly expensive homes or low enough to qualify for government housing subsidies will be able to live in the city.

“It’s the rich and the poor,” he said, “and nothing in between.”

And for the mo$t part my flag$hip paper from Bo$ton thinks that is all good. 

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Written for and of them, so what am I complaining about?

RelatedLuxury home sales soar in state

Mass. condos in high demand

Up to $2 million per?

The Boston Globe is No Longer Home 

Just not for me anymore, sorry.

Homes are Part of a Healthy Part of the Economy

It's why ours is $o $ick.