New SEC anti-fraud team

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Apr 29, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Good morning folks! Today brings good news from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Recall that I have been calling for regulators to become more proactive in their regulation of financial institutions and markets. I have specifically said that it is important that they have transparency into the market as a whole. I have also called for Congress to better fund the regulators, too. And...
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Consumer confidence is rising

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Apr 28, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Hello everyone, Yesterday you may have seen the report that consumer confidence is finally rising. The Conference Board (the source of the data) said that in April consumer confidence rose to 39.2 from a revised March figure of 26.9, that is a rise of 12.3 points or an increase of 45.7%. While a figure of 39.2 is still considered a depressed figure, the marked increase in one month is truly...
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One of my favorite contrarian indicators

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Apr 24, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Happy, happy Friday to each of you! In today’s post I wanted to alert all of us to one of my favorite contrarian indicators. Oh, but before I get ahead of myself, I should describe what a contrarian indicator is. In short, a contrarian indicator is a real world event, whose interpretation, suggests that we should do the opposite of what the event might suggest. On the way up the financial...
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Don’t be alarmed by big profit falls

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Apr 22, 2009 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 2 comments Happy Wednesday folks, Today’s post is a little bit of a primer on operating leverage. Huh? What does that mean? You may see all of the profit reports flowing in this earnings season and be wondering things like: “How can a company stay in operation if their profits have fallen 97%?” Am I right? Well the answer is that “operating leverage” makes numbers look scary,...
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Computer traders suffer – thankfully

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Apr 20, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Several times on the blog I have sent up investors who rely upon past performance as their primary guide for investing. The reason is that investing is an activity whose benefits unfold in the future, not the past. So relying upon past data exclusively is spurious. The analogy is to someone who forecasts today’s weather based on what happened to the weather yesterday. That method of...
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Numbers from Bank of America

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Apr 20, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Good morning – I hope that everyone had a good weekend. Bank of America (ticker symbol: BAC) reported its results this morning and they were very good. Profits nearly tripled, largely due to their acquisition of Merrill-Lynch last year. Additionally, revenues more than doubled, again because of Merrill. However, most of the focus is on two aspects of the Company’s earnings report: on...
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Early results look good

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Apr 17, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Happy Friday everyone, Two economic bellwethers have reported their earnings: Citigroup (ticker: C) and General Electric (ticker: GE). Both firms have reported earnings better than expected. In fact, Citigroup is profitable for the first time in 18 months. This is good news. GE, a large conglomerate, has a finance arm called GE Capital that has been a source of investor ire for the past year and...
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