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7/24/2008
Merrill Lynch & Co. strategist Mark Matthews has a checklist for investors in India and China. If the price of oil goes below $120 a barrel (from about $126 yesterday), if China's annual inflation rate slows to 5 percent (from 7.1 percent last month), and if the U.S. banking crisis comes to an end, then the sagging fortunes of equity markets in the two Asian countries may reverse in relation to their better-performing "BRIC'' cousins: Brazil and Russia. At the beginning of this year, Indian and Chinese stock markets, taken together, were almost three times as large as the combined value of shares traded in Brazil and Russia. Since then, the gap has almost halved. Brazil's Bovespa Index, the world's 10th-best-performing, has risen more than 5 percent in U.S. dollar terms this year, while Russia's Micex Index has declined 11 percent. (Source: Bloomberg)
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7/24/2008
After watching bank shares drop by almost a third this year, most European investors probably consider the idea of buying insurance stocks a sick joke. Banks' balance-sheets may be difficult to understand but insurers can be mind-bogglingly complex. Insurers also have a track record of fouling up when the economic environment worsens. In the downturn in 2002 they got things badly wrong. The big European life insurers owned far too many equities. When stockmarkets fell, their capital positions were whacked, forcing many to issue new shares. “Once bitten, twice shy” is the market's motto today. The share prices of Europe's insurers have dropped by almost a quarter this year and trade on the lowest multiple of earnings of any sector, battered banks included. Is that fair? Insurance companies are certainly not immune to economic slowdown. People buy fewer equity-linked savings products in difficult times, for example. But concerns about what lurked on insurers' balance-sheets have probably been overdone. (Source: The Economist)
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7/24/2008
Financial reports for many banks in the second quarter have looked remarkably consistent: sliding profits, mounting loan losses and soaring stocks. Large-cap banks such as Bank of America (BAC: Charts, News, Offers), JPMorgan Chase (JPM: Charts, News, Offers), Wells Fargo (WFC: Charts, News, Offers), even Citigroup (C: Charts, News, Offers) managed to beat the meager profit expectations of Wall Street analysts, despite smaller profits and a continued deterioration in credit trends. Approximately 56% of the 39 financial companies in the S&P 500 that have posted results so far have beat earnings estimates, according to Thomson Reuters. Since the beginning of last week, the Keefe Bruyette & Woods Bank Index, which tracks the top 100 banks, is up 35%. Even some banks that posted larger-than-expected losses, such as Wachovia (WB: Charts, News, Offers), saw shares rise after it pointed out that a further public capital raise is so far unnecessary. (Source: TheStreet)
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July 24, 2000:
AT&T Wireless announces its plan to acquire a wireless communications business unit from SBC Communications for $530 million.
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