Karl Menzer's (karlmenzer) Blog

Friday, August 08, 2008 With Fannie Mae announcing that their second quarter earnings were three times less than what analysts expected and their CEO stating that they are expecting it to get worse, it would seem logical that the bond and stock market would follow past trends and would both tank....

Friday, August 01, 2008 Unemployment jumped to 5.7% beating estimates, but June employment payrolls 17,000 less than expected. Who makes these estimates!?!?!?!  So far, the economy has lost a total of 463,000 jobs this year. Alan Greenspan, famous for being pulled out of the mothballs and dusted ...

Thursday, July 31, 2008 I have a real problem accepting the price of gas when once again Exxon reported record profits... they did miss what analyst expected though. Off my soapbox. The second quarter GDP rose 1.9%, nearly doubling last quarter, but less than the 2% analysts were hoping for. Soun...

Wednesday, July 30, 2008 Let's start with the bad news and work our way to good.  Mortgage applications dropped 14.1% to levels not seen since 2000, with purchase applications down 7.8%. This is understandable in our ever tightening loan market. With rates up and concerns on inflation being the b...

Tuesday, July 29, 2008 When bad news goes good... bonds took a slight nosedive today after investment bank Merrill Lynch said late Monday it would take a $5.7 billion write-down and sell off $30 billion in mortgage backed securities (MBS) this quarter.... At 1/5th their face value. They are doing...

Monday, July 28, 2008 Today is a sure float day... for now.  With a number of economic reports due out this week, today's happy bond day is due to the sad stock day. Thankfully oil is in a holding pattern even though there was a small bombing issue on one of the pipelines.  What is really giving ...

Lock. Lock. Lock. Did I mention that you should have your clients lock today?  With Oil below $127, gold down more than $17 today and stocks only on a modest gain, it would sound like a great day for the bond market.  Unless of course more bad media came out today on the 2 big Mac's today. Which ...

Monday, July 21, 2008 Someone find a pulse on the bond. After last weeks tumble, the bond is laying flat today hoping for some better news. With banks posting better than expected losses (that right a good loss), and Junes Leading Economic Indicators dropping only .1%, investors are having a hard...

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 The one thing you can count on when you take time off is that whatever can go wrong will.  Earnings reports have been coming out this week, and as expected the losses were major.  The interesting part is that they were not as major as expected. Today was no exception. Cit...

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 yea, it's been a lock day. Most of the market news making the DOW shooting up was based not on companies reporting record profit, but rather loosing less than expected. I am a big fan of finding the silver lining in mushroom cloud that has been the market lately, and it s...