Stock Preacher

Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s trading operations helped the dominant Wall Street firm quadruple its earnings, but investment banking results were not as exciting and its shares sold off a bit on the report. Goldman’s compensation packages have drawn some scrutiny, but stayed on to hand out more than US$20B in Y 2009 bonuses, the equivalent to more than US$630,000 per employee and is likely beat a record set for compensation in 2007. The report noted that Goldman’s investment banking and asset management revenues were lower. The bank fell to No. 2, behind Morgan Stanley, in M&A adviser rankings for deals announced globally through Q-3 according to Thomson Reuters. Goldie also dropped a spot to No. 7 in global capital markets. Fixed income, currency and commodities (FICC) trading nearly quadrupled, helping propel overall revenue to a forecast beating US$12.37B. However, the US$5.99B in FICC revenue, driven by credit products and mortgages, lagged Q-2 and fell short of some analysts’ high expectations. Read more

Popularity: unranked [?]

The data is announcing that the institutional side lined money, i.e. Pension managers and Mutual Fund houses have been among the biggest buyers of the DJIA in recent weeks, confirming the growing belief the recession is over. Between July 14 and July 21, when the DJIA gained almost 600 pts to close at 8915, net buying by pension managers and mutual fund managers, the so-called “long-term” or “big” money managers, totaled US$1.9B, according to Thomson Reuters, who analyzed settlement records of the Dow components.The following week, when the DJIA approached 9000, Pensions and Mutual Funds were net sellers but only at US$578M, while hedge funds were net buyers of US$19M in Dow stocks but not after selling US$166M the previous week, the settlement records showed. “There is some momentum lost among pensions and mutual fund investors, but the move is still generally positive,” Shacket said on Tuesday. “These buyers are saying that this market is going to go higher, and not lower any time soon.” The move by these institutional investors into Dow stocks corroborates with economic data and earnings that have been better than expected.

Popularity: 2% [?]