Morning headline: “Banks promise they won’t use bailout money for pay” It is striking to me the amount of things wrong with this headline. Firstly, a promise? This sounds like the type of agreement girls make to not date there best friends boyfriend, the type of promise four year old’s make to not throw sand at each other on the playground. And this is the type of contract we are holding our national banking system to. I trust a bank promise about as far as I can throw it. Which I can’t. Secondly, the monumental bailout Congress spent weeks deliberating is now being used to pay stock dividends, pay raises and bonuses. This makes sense America, this is justice. Let Democracy ring throughout Wall Street! A program who’s entire purpose, function and aim was to mend our economy, something I would imagine was written down in contracts, in Congress, in the Treasury, has been taken and used for an entirely different purpose than it was ever intended. But at least the banks have “promised” this is untrue, that they don’t need government money to support such expenses. I believe them, don’t you?
After three straight days of consecutive losses, Wall Street is down again today. Wow, for a second there the Dow finally got below 8000 (!!!) but we’re back up again barely. The jobless claim update this morning has been rather frightening, yet another testament to the no longer deniable fact that our economy is indeed in a contraction. Investors seem fickle. You have the guys who see bargains, the guys who are cautious, and the guys who are just plain scared. Sentiment for the major indices has been up and down and up again this past week. Right now PredictWallStreet shows bearish sentiment for the DJIA, NASDAQ and SP500. The SP500 and NASDAQ have hit new lows not seen since 2003.
Should we talk about something a little less negative? I actually have some stuff that is pretty positive and upward speaking. I wish I had a basket of puppies to give you, but its actually better-PredictWallStreet published 15 forecasts this morning and only one has a down forecast. A little green to brighten your morning.
Starbucks (SBUX) was forecasted earlier this week to close down. And they did. Now they are forecasted to close up. While sentiment remains bearish, analysts are split in whether they think the company will see a rebound or is weakening continually. While I don’t necessarily see Starbucks coffee as a priority expense, there is no doubt Starbucks has a cult following no matter how the economy is doing. They plan to cut more stores and restructuring will hopefully prove well for the company in the upcoming weeks.
Yahoo! (YHOO) has been forecasted to close up today. Poll results right now on PredictWallStreet are split perfectly 50/50. Sentiment has been bearish for the past week but recently saw a small upward turn. If you’ve been keeping track, the story goes: Yahoo! was open to a deal with Microsoft, Microsoft said they weren’t interested in a deal with Yahoo!, and Google walked away from a deal with Yahoo!. Yahoo! is pretty much that kid who gets picked last for the dodgeball team at recess. They just can’t catch a break. Irregardless, I think its pretty obvious Yahoo! needs some sort of partnership/deal right now to help them out before they reach single digits. I remain pretty bearish, contrary to the forecast. Maybe they’re just having a good day, but I’m not sure about sustainability.
And lastly, General Electric (GE) is forecasted to close up. I’m curious to see about this one. Recent reports have stated GE hit a 12 year low but its seems people are seeing a bargain rather than a huge loss. In the long run, GE will most likely recover so maybe it is a good time to buy or hold on to these stocks. Just my opinion. Albeit, headlines of the 12-year lows are sure to shake any seasoned investors confidence. There are almost 300 predictions on GE this morning and about 70% have predicted up. Between the forecast and the amount of up predictions, I’m gonna have to predict up as well today.
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