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“We still believe that hedge funds have the ability to significantly short the market,” said Bartels, head of technical and market analysis in New York. “It’s a bearish signal, absolutely.” The adjusted short interest ratio, a measure of potential buying pressure, is 1.5 for the Standard & Poor’s 1500 Composite, down from 2.4 at the [...]
Individual municipal-bond investors aren’t fleeing the market after Standard & Poor’s lowered the credit rating of thousands of bonds. The ratio of buy orders to sell orders, a measure of investor demand, was 2.5 for municipal-bond trades on the BondDesk Group LLC platform yesterday, meaning there were more buyers than sellers, said Chris Shayne, senior [...]
U.S. stocks surged, reversing most of yesterday’s plunge, and Treasuries sank as an unexpected drop in jobless claims and higher-than-estimated earnings tempered concern the economy is slowing as Europe’s debt crisis widens. The Swiss franc slid on plans to temporarily peg the currency to the euro. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index jumped 4.6 percent [...]
Intensifying concern over Europe’s sovereign debt crisis and the potential spillover for the U.S. economy are creating “panic” in the junk-bond market, according to Pioneer Investment Management Inc.’s Andrew Feltus. Investors withdrew an unprecedented $2.1 billion from junk mutual funds globally on Aug. 9, research firm EPFR Global said. Relative yields on high-yield bonds, rated [...]
Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the U.S. credit rating may have triggered the latest stock market drop, but it was not the cause. A huge write-down of equity values was probably inevitable. (Just an aside: Given S&P’s cluelessness in the Lehman debacle and its inability to discern dross from gold in the pools of mortgage-backed [...]
Two of Securities America Inc.’s top advisers, including the head of its largest financial adviser group, walked out the door this week to join rival LPL Financial LLC. Donald Patrick, president of Integrated Financial Group of Atlanta, joined LPL yesterday. His group has about 50 brokers and annually produces about $10 million in fees and commissions, according to [...]
A team of regulators charged with preventing another financial crisis is fending off criticism it’s moving too slowly to identify the firms whose failure could pose a threat to the economy. The year-old Financial Stability Oversight Council planned to start designating systemically important non-bank financial companies, such as insurers, as early as the middle of [...]
Neuberger Berman Group LLC, the money manager that was part of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., was ordered by an industry regulator to pay about $4 million to three clients who bought structured notes backed by the failed investment bank. A Financial Industry Regulatory Authority panel ruled July 15 that Neuberger Berman is responsible for the [...]
Investors are continuing to flee American Funds’ offerings. Three funds from the group, a favorite of advisers, made the top five in most outflows for the first half of the year, according to Morningstar Inc. The $156.8 billion Growth Fund of America (AGTHX) led the way with $12.47 billion in net outflows during the first [...]
Charles Schwab Corp., the largest independent brokerage by client assets, reported second-quarter profit that matched the average analyst estimate as revenue from interest earned offset a decline in trading. Net income rose 16 percent to $238 million, or 20 cents a share, from $205 million, or 17 cents, a year earlier, the San Francisco-based [...]