National City’s “Buyout”
Today, National City announced its long-awaited plan to attract new equity capital, in order to shore up its balance sheet, which had been racked by large loan writeoffs. Investors are putting $7 billion into National City in the form of new shares, at a price of $5 per share. These investors are being led by […]
Continue readingMerck Shareholders Feeling Heart Problems
We awoke this morning hoping to learn that Merck and a panel of cardiologists had played an early April fools’ joke on us over the weekend, but alas, no such announcement yet. As it stands today, Vytorin and Zetia are still for sale, and, as far as we can tell, still lower LDL cholesterol values […]
Continue readingGloom has been a Global Phenomenon
Investors have seen their fair share of doom and gloom in U.S. stocks during the first quarter of 2008 as our financial crisis continues to unfold. In addition, the dollar continues its downward slide against major currencies around the world. However, against common wisdom, foreign stocks have actually crashed much harder than U.S. stocks so […]
Continue readingBank Stocks: How Much Pain is Enough?
The question of the day for investors is when will bank stocks stop falling? Notice we said “when,” not “if.” Banks generally have a fundamental earnings base: they have a base of deposits, on which they must pay interest, and a base of loans and securities, on which they collect interest. The market works such […]
Continue readingHow are you feeling about stocks these days?
To those of you who weren’t aware that the market has dropped 6% in the last month, we salute you! More than likely, you are doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing: not worrying. The Monarchians aren’t worrying either. It’s not that we don’t care about losing money, but we feel safer about our […]
Continue readingThe American Borat
As some of you may know, I just returned from Kazakhstan, where we adopted our new daughter. Her name is Magdalena (Maggie for short), she is 10 months old, and is one awesome girl. We had a very blessed (and very long—6 weeks) trip—not in the sense that life was easy or comfortable, but it […]
Continue reading