Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Wall Street is counting its winnings from seven years of easy money.
The results represent a clear victory for Wall Street over Main Street, according to the team of Michael Hartnett, BofA’s chief investment strategist.
Written by David Haggith - The Great Recession Blog
Just about every major banker and finance minister in the world is meeting in Washington, D.C., this week, following two rushed, secretive meetings of the Federal Reserve and another instantaneous and rare meeting between the Fed Chair and the president of the United States. These and other emergency bank meetings around the world cause one to wonder what is going down. Let’s start with a bullet list of the week’s big-bank events:
Submitted by Michael Lebowitz via 720Global.com,
On numerous occasions over the past year we suggested that U.S. equity valuations were expensive. Certainly the recent sharp rebound in share prices in the midst of declining earnings, lower earnings forecasts and slowing domestic and global economic growth has only strengthened our conviction.
In this article we compare equity valuations and the market drivers of 2013 to those today and outline why we think equities may be the so-called “bug in search of a windshield”.
We have closely watched the spring borrowing-base redetermination period for US shale drillers because for many cash burning oil and gas companies it could mean the difference between survival and a quick death in bankruptcy court, as it represents the semi-annual event that determines if they have enough liquidity to sustain operations for the next few quarters or, alternatively, if they have to hand over keys to creditors.
Last week when BofA reported that "everything is being sold" as its smart money clients (institutional, private and hedge funds) dumped stocks for a whopping 10th consecutive week, it said that "BofAML clients were net sellers of US stocks for the tenth consecutive week, in the amount of $3.98bn. Net sales last week were the largest since September, and the fifth-largest in our data history (since 2008). Since early March, all three client groups (institutional clients, private clients and hedge funds) have been sellers of US stocks."