12:40pm (EST)
Futures were soaring last night before we hit the rack and were showing a strong open on Wall Street this morning. Much of the fluff was on early word Greece would be able to put together a coalition government so they could hold a new elections. However, as their day wore on, the country’s political leaders failed to find agreement which put pressure on the U.S. markets as futures were flat ahead of the bell. Imagine that.
Here at home, the Empire State Manufacturing Index came in at 17.1 for May, up from 6.6 in April while Business Inventories increased 0.3%.
Tomorrow is a busy day for economic news with Housing Starts, Building Permits, Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization all being released an hour before the open. They will take a back seat to the FOMC minutes which are due out at 2pm.
Earnings for Wednesday include:
Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF, $45.86, down $0.05), Deere (DE, $77.47, up $0.14), Jack in the Box (JACK, $22.59, up $0.25), Limited Brands (LTD, $48.71, up $0.71), NetEase (NTES, $56.89, up $0.63), Red Robin Gourmet Burgers (RRGB, $35.25, up $0.38), Staples (SPLS, $14.93, down $0.16) and Target (TGT, $55.36, up $0.44)
Parting Shot: We haven’t commented on JPMorgan Chase (JPM, $37.18, up $1.39) too much because we don’t think the $2 billion and counting the company lost will be a huge hit to earnings this year. Sure, the loss stings and tarnished one of the better CEO names in the business but the press and Congress is making this a far bigger deal than need be.
President Obama said on The View that this is “exactly why Wall Street reform is so important” and that Washington might have had to step in if this was a smaller bank.
Give us a break. That is the problem with our country. Let companies take risk and if they fail, they go bankrupt if they can’t cover the losses. JPMorgan had a portfolio of about $400 billion in bonds that they wanted to hedge and they went into the credit default swap market to do so. This would have allowed the company to profit if the bonds went the other way but the market figured this out.
Had JPMorgan’s bets paid off and they made $2 billion, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. The problem was the market saw what JPMorgan was doing and everyone bet against them. Had they taken smaller positions and gone unnoticed in their swap dealings, this would be a totally different story.
BTW, JPMorgan is expected to make $18 billion this year – the highest profit ever earned by an American bank. The dividend is safe and the company will make money this quarter.
Our question is this, who is going to “step in” and stop our government from spending? We are approaching $16 trillion in debt which averages out to $50,000 in debt per U.S. citizen. Check it out:
http://USdebtclock.org
That’s all we have for today. As we head to press, the Dow is up double-nickels (55 points) to 12,750 while the S&P is higher by 5 points to 1,344. The Nasdaq is showing a 25 point pop and is at 2,927.
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