Wall Street

Who’ll Save Lehman?

September 13, 2008

That was the headline I found over at CBS Marketwatch.  As usual, the news media is whipping (anyone who will read) into a frenzy about Lehman Brothers.  More news may be forthcoming about Lehman — between the time I finish writing this and the time you read this. I have no idea what’s going to [...]

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You read your monthly statements… don’t you?

August 30, 2008

Pretty sad story reported recently…but sad, as in pathetic. Guy Wyser-Pratte, who is known on Wall Street as a shareholder activist and runs a $500 million hedge fund, recently reported that the private banking operation of J.P. Morgan Chase had “somehow” allowed many small electronic transfers out of his personal account, over a period of [...]

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Auction Rate Preferred: the bail-out

August 9, 2008

In one of my most recent posts I discussed the “ready to explode” product issued by brokerage firms called “auction rate preferred securities.” Well, that didn’t take long. In this past week UBS (the parent company of PaineWebber), announced they are spending $19 billion (yes, billion with a B) to buy back auction rate preferred [...]

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Is This a Recession?

July 31, 2008

Sometimes, trying to get your arms around a gigantic number (for example, the area of earth covered by land) just takes time. So it’s no surprise (to me) this week the Commerce Department announced “oh by the way, remember three quarters ago… the fourth quarter of last year? Well, we didn’t know it at the [...]

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Federal Reserve closing the spigot

July 31, 2008

“Mr. Valentine has set the price!” Or, in this case Mr. Bernanke sets the price. This week the Federal Reserve announced that the “open spigot” of money available to investment banks will be closing January 30, 2009. This is six months away. What this means is that the access to cash will be closing. What [...]

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Auction Rate Preferred Securities: a failure to disclose

July 31, 2008

You may not have heard of the term “auction rate preferred securities.” Yet. If you have not, you probably will soon. Essentially, these are longer-term investments but they have an unusual feature: an interest rate that resets – usually every 7, 14, 28 or 45 days. The “trick” to making this work is having multiple [...]

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Jim Cramer: Doom Itself

July 26, 2008

The line heard in every economic recession, and every single stock market pullback is: this time it’s different. Which is usually one of the single best indicators to tell you that the market is putting a bottom in place, and we can only expect the market to move up from here. And best of all, [...]

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Oil: price predicted in 1998

July 20, 2008

We don’t make predictions at Mullooly Asset Management. And we rarely hold anyone else’s predictions as credible. So keep that in mind with this post. With oil recently trading over $140 a barrel, there is an article from the New York Times — that I think has been circulated all over the Internet — but [...]

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Lehman: Going Private?

July 17, 2008

In the coming months and years, you will hear more publicly traded companies than ever before discussing the idea of GOING PRIVATE.  Even with the mortgage mess, there is STILL access to capital. Management often gets fed up trying to build long term businesses and gain market share on a long term basis, while struggling [...]

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Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac: Got $75 Billion?

July 13, 2008

Let’s talk about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. How could these two companies be “OK” a week ago — and now this week they seem on the brink of disaster? If you’ve heard of these two companies, but you’re not really sure who they are and what they do, just understand — these two companies [...]

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