Wall Street rallied today in a dazzling return of investor confidence only a day after US financials were slaughtered. The Dow Jones gained 279.01 point (3.51%), the S&P 500 35.02 points (4.35%), and the Nasdaq was up 66.21 points. (4.60%). Marketwatch makes and interesting point with Jeffrey Kleintop, chief market strategist, LPL Financial, as saying: [...]
The announcement by RBS yesterday that it expected to write down £28 billion was extraordinary. Fears that the bank may be fully nationalised drove the share price down 67%. However, the announcement was extraordinary not simply because it would represent the biggest single loss in UK corporate history – but also because of the timing. [...]
Alistair Darling’s Pre-Budget report was received among a flurry of interest and excitement, but anyone expecting tax cuts to help the UK’s small businesses and entrepreneurs will be left sorely disappointed. A cut in VAT from 17.5% to 15% was announced, ostensibly to help consumers – and yet consumers would be hit with rises on [...]
UK banks such as RBS, HBOS, Barclays and Lloyds have had it bad – share prices have plunged wiping billions from their company values, and commercial markets have frozen up leaving them in need of government help to remain afloat. During the drama of the financial crisis, everyone seems to have forgotten about the ongoing [...]
Hell – the DJI has already fallen through 9,000 tonight, only 4 days after crashing through 10,000 points – and the fall is continuing through the last half hour of normal trading. Currently the DJI is just above 8,900 points, a loss of over 3.8% on the day. That’s a consecutive loss of 18% over [...]
As yesterday morning’s speaker on BBC Radio 4′s “Thought for the Day” urged a bleary-eyed nation to consider in its prayers the plight of bankers, whose lives may be torn apart by the credit crisis, and bear in mind their efforts in support of charity, a new day of financial turmoil was about to break. [...]
We’ve seen Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley collapse, the Cheshire and Derbyshire Building Societies rescued, and even Halifax Bank of Scotland required a bail-out from Lloyds TSB. Turmoil in the world’s markets mean that credit around the globe has literally frozen up, and banks face the very real possibility of a systemic meltdown of [...]
A crisis might be a time for action rather than questions but with the scale of the problems facing the UK banking sector escalating, one particular question regularly bubbles to the surface. Is Grupo Santander any more likely to emerge from the credit crisis in sound shape than some of its failing European rivals? Santander [...]
Stock markets face a further crash over October, as a combination of bad economic data, credit derivative write downs, and the threat of further bank failures, plague financial markets already freezing up. The finance sector is bracing itself for further nasty shocks over the new few weeks, as a slew of worsening economic factors come [...]
The nationalisation of Bradford & Bingley is the most blatant case of legalised bank robbery this country has ever seen, with almost a million shareholders likely to lose a fortune. The whole point of having shareholders in a democracy is that they own the company and can decide its fate between them, including sacking the [...]
Wachovia Corporation (WB) When Harvard economist, Professor Kenneth Rogoff – formerly head of the IMF – predicted at the end of August that at least one major US bank would collapse along with hundreds of smaller banks, trader speculation fell on three names: – Lehman Brothers – Washington Mutual – Wachovia Corporation Since his warning [...]
Shares in US financials have begun a powerful rally, which has seen shares in many US banks leap by double percentile figures. The rally began just before 6pm GMT and 1pm New York time. Companies previously hit hard by investor fears on their mortgage assets are seeing the strongest rebound, with mortgage insurers and US [...]
Within the past 24 hours, two of the world’s biggest investment banks have been destroyed – Lehman Brothers filed bankruptcy, while Merrill Lynch was rescued by Bank of America. The Fed extended emergency lines of credit; Wall St banks set up a $70 billion liqiudity fund. And global insurance super giant AIG suddenly threatened to [...]
I took out a self-certified mortgage with GMAC two years ago, because as a company director traditional lenders tend to get very confused when your income is not a straight salaried income-taxed income. Like many company directors, I instead take an income in the form of dividends. On the low interest rates everyone enjoyed at [...]
The BBC publishes a report: Savings returns ‘beating’ shares which makes the outlandish claim: Savers putting their money in funds investing in UK stocks and shares would have made more money since 2000 by putting it in savings accounts instead. To make such a claim requires extreme generalisation and a complete ignorance of investments. It’s [...]
Final salary pension funds return to the red, with pension trustees looking for more money to shore up the losses. What no one seems willing to talk about, though, is the mismanagement of final salary pension funds – and how the managers of these funds have been actively seeking to generate losses against their own [...]
If there’s one thing US analysts seem to enjoy at the moment, it’s downgrading US financials. It’s no surprise that the very companies most actively shorting financials should then release doom and gloom analyses, undermining these further. And in an almost tit-for-tat battle, analysts at different banks have been downgrading each other continually over the [...]
“The Credit Crunch is Over” is a bold statement to make, and more experienced people foolishly made the same prediction much earlier in the year. However, as we near the first anniversary of the Credit Crunch slamming into the financial markets, here are the observations and predictions from Finance Markets: 1. The Credit Crisis is [...]
With the collapse of Indymac, the FDIC was forced to allocate anywhere between $4-8 billion in assets to take over the company. Who are the FDIC? The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is an independent agency created by the Congress that maintains the stability and public confidence in the nation’s financial system by insuring deposits, [...]
The market in “sell and rent back” has boomed incredibly over the past couple of years. Originally there were just a handful of established companies in this market – but the tail-end of the property boom has brought in a massive influx of property speculators who have entered this market as an alternative to buy-to-let. [...]
Gender directive could slash men’s annuity payouts
The EU Gender Directive, which came into force today, could see men losing up to £10,000 from their annuity payouts, according to research by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Under the new rules insurers are no longer allowed to take gender into account when setting annuity rates and premiums on insurance products. Men previously enjoyed higher annuity rates than [...]
Home rental costs down in November
The cost of renting a house in England and Wales fell by 0.4 per cent in November, its first dip since March, according to a survey by LSL Property Services. Average rent was £741m during the month, returning to the level seen in September. However, it was 3.4 per higher than in November last year. [...]
Lloyds TSB halts sale of packaged accounts in branches
Lloyds TSB will stop selling packaged account in its branches from 1 January 2013, until its sales procedures are brought into line with those operated by sister bank The Halifax. Lloyds TSB is one of the main providers of packaged accounts in Britain, with around one in three of its customers choosing to pay fees [...]
Housing market recovery to continue next year
Recent improvements in the housing market should continue into next year, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) Gross lending is estimated to have increased to £12.9 billion in November, helped by the Funding for Lending scheme which provides banks and building societies with lower-cost funding, which they are then supposed to pass on [...]
Newcastle Building Society exits interest-only mortgages
Newcastle Building Society has stopped offering interest-only mortgages to new borrowers, following the lead of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Nationwide, Co-operative bank and Coventry Building Society. The decision will not affect existing Newcastle customers and applications for interest-only mortgages received before 14 December will still be processed. Prior to the credit crunch, interest-only mortgages [...]
Less than half of Brits considered creditworthy
Fifty-seven per cent of UK adults are at risk of having an application for credit turned down by a mainstream lender according to a new report. The ‘Mind the Credit Gap‘ report commissioned by aqua credit cards suggests that even people with a good credit rating and earning more than £50,000 could have a credit [...]
Monthly incomes £22 lower in 2012
The average monthly income of UK households fell by £22 in real terms compared with last year, according to a survey carried out for the Bank of England (BoE) by NMG Consulting. People on lower incomes have seen their income eroded more than higher earners and households still have high levels of debt the BoE [...]
Savers dig deep to fund Christmas
New research from the Halifax suggests that savers are funding their Christmas spending with money set aside for other purposes. Thirty-seven per cent of 2,138 savers surveyed by the bank at the end of November had withdrawn savings in the last three months. The average amount withdrawn was £1,186, more than double the average savings [...]
Financial data at risk from unsafe passwords
According to a survey by the Payments Council the problem of having to remember a different password for several accounts means that many internet users are compromising the security of their financial data. Internet users have 22 password-protected accounts on average and many use the same log-in details for more than one account, even though [...]
Wonga launches Paylater loans on retailer website
Payday loan company Wonga has launched a new Paylater service on furniture firm Cotswold Company’s website. The service, which allows customers to “buy now, pay later” will be introduced on other retailers’ sites in the near future. Although the Paylater branding is similar to Wonga’s, the Wonga name only appears in the small print. A [...]
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