Overall the street has cut their estimates for Citigroups Q1 2012 earnings from 76 cents to 67 cents. JP Morgan beat due to more housing fees, I am not as bullish on Citigroup ‘s model and their ability to outperform and get investors interested in buying the stock here.
Revenue one year ago was $24.67 billion a year ago. The analysts expect $18.57 billion (down 24.7% YoY) For the entire 2012, revenue is expected at $79.75 billion.
UBS is modelling $2.5-3.0 billion savings in expenses over the year which they view as possibly too conservative. Only a 5-6% reduction YoY
They are modelling $3 Billion in buybacks this year
After a big miss last quarter Q4 2011, they lowered their estimates for the year from 3.90 to 3.80 EPS 2012.
The stock has already rallied along with ome of the better positioned banks such as JP MOrgan (JPM). Then sold off the past couple weeks in anticipation of decent earnings with little chance of serious upside.
As always, look for commentray on the global economic situation and especially the hotter emerging markets Citi services, more information on their buy back plans, and data on how much they have cut expenses and plan to cut in the future.
I think the banks are going to sell off slightly after the move they have made in Q1 2012. If you have a position consider selling puts as a strategy. Use a strike where you are comfortable owning the stock.
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UPDATE: Here are the #’s–>Citigroup, Inc. $C Reports Mixed Q1 Results: 95c, vs. cons. $1, sales $19.41B, vs. cons. $19.4B
 Citigroup missed but maybe good commentary will bring her up along with a sharp sell off last week Not good missed on nearly everything, stay tuned to hear more from the conference call. Attached you will find the investors initial reaction..If you were fast you could hedge or add on lows or sell on highs..If your not quick well better luck next time and hopefully you have a good position. ;]
Total Revenue in line, Consumer strong and Capital Markets , especially fixed income trading very strong just like JPM Q1 2012 results were.
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”A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.” -Mark Twain
In 1971, some 41 years ago Nixon took us off the gold standard. This is when Ron Paul decided to get into politics because he knew it was a bad policy. Will he be proven right as the Federal Reserve and other Central Banks scramble to save the economy by injecting trillions of dollars, debasing the currency, losing the trust of the paper?
Watch Europe, they will lead the way. Surprisingly, (if your not into finance) a lot of the Euro-zone countries are in even worse financial shape than the US. CDS (credit default swap) insurance on Spanish 5 year bonds are at 500 bps-costing 5% to insure the bonds against default. John Paulson famously made $15 billion in 2008 by using CDS on subprime debt. This insures the bondholder against default and total wipe out in investment. Greece bondholders already took over a 70% haircut. As the temperature warms into the summer, will the over 23% unemployed grow tired and revolt in Spain? Historically most revolts/uprisings take place in the summer. Can they ECB, IMF, World Bank, FED, etc continue to organize bailouts? Yes. (In fact today the Treasury said it made $ off of the bailouts-what a joke. They are posturing already to bail out Europe at the cost of the taxpayer.)
From: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2012/04/20120413_EUEOD4.png
Eventually they have to cut bait and flee when the people turn against them. Hard defaults are coming. The ECB’s balance sheet is leveraged 36 to 1 currently. Anyone know of a problem with leverage? Think 2008 leverage in US banks, think speculators and margin in 1929 in U.S. Think about Long Term Capital Management in 1998.
There is a HUGE MONEY BOMB planned for Sunday April 15th for the only man with a plan to make REAL cuts ($1 trillion 1st year), end the abominable private Federal Reserve(whose policies have extracted wealth from the US and created bubbles-not avoided or stabilized-the original intent), and most importantly restore America to the Constitution. Please consider standing with me and vote with some of your hard earned money in Sundays Money Bomb. It is the only path that I see to avoid going the way of Greece, Portugal, Italy, Spain…higher unemployment, less sovereignty, more economic problems.
https://secure.ronpaul2012.com/ Sunday I predict we will set a new record or be very close to the 6 million record Ron Paul already holds for one day fundraising. We the People!
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A lot of the investing public is aware that gold and its ugly step sister Silver are in huge Bull markets. After 11 years of gains and an ever weakening currecy in the US Dollar, why not own gold?
There are several problems to keep in mind:1the currency game is all relative, other central banks keep pushing out easy money and relatively there is little change. Obviously the dollar is still the reserve currency of the world even after the abuse it has been put under since… 1913 (Significantly more so recently). So while the dollar will drop in value because of monetary policy, other currencies can and will follow suit and print. Also the US is great at achieving their goal at any cost so expect more currency wars in the future. 2 Precious metals like Gold and Silver are great hedges to fiat currency, debt, social unrest etc that’s agreed. But who controls the gold and silver market? London fixes the price twice daily (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_fixing) and in some ironic fashion it was controlled by the Rothschild family until 2004 (http://www.mega.nu/ampp/rothschild2.html not really ironic). Is the price fixing fair? You guessed it… NO: http://themarketsniper.com/precious-metals-bullion/gold-buy-afternoon-fix-sell-am-fix-in-rigged-game .
OK but who REALLY controls the metal markets? JP Morgan and HSBC control the market. A silver trader went to the CFTC to out the market manipulation and was essentially blown off: http://www.gata.org/node/8466 They have been sued and same thing: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/jpm-hsbc-sued-conspiracy-keep-silver-price-low-reaping-billions-illegal-profits It is public knowledge through the Commitment of traders reports that these two firms are Massively short the market and at the touch of a keyboard can sell it off substantially (the day Ron Paul was on the floor of Congress with a silver coin talking about a gold standard they sold the F8ck out of it. I should know I lost a shitload- just look at the selling from $1790/ounce)
The good news is that the laws of economics are even stronger than manipulation so over the long term, yes own gold and silver. One of the best ways to do this is through gold futures. The Micro gold contract is a contract for 10 ounces roughly $17k(http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/e-micro-gold-futures.html). You control 10 ounces of gold but you only have to post a little over $1k cash as margin (may vary depending on broker +/-). If you have a longer term strategy as I recommend than purchase the futures out a bit in time or even next year. But most traders trade current month so beware of liquidity. FYI technically gold is in a good place right now but I am very cautious. Do I think gold and silver will be up a year from now? Yeah. But do I think the market can sell off very quickly due to the aforementioned problems. Why do you think Soros is so confident that gold is in a bubble? My take would be he already knows the end result. Has he been wrong in the shorter term? Yessir (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMaxn9s583k) Also, I don’t want to be overly pessimistic, there is upside risk as well, as more and more people/investors lose faith in the fiat ponzi. There is more negativity coming out of Europe this year, the current positivity will wane to pessimism I just don’t know when. Caveat emptor. Good Luck. “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”
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What are your objectives of trading? It might sound simple: make money. But just as important as making money is not losing money. Also, the utmost important goal should be to learn from your trades.
How can I learn from my trades?
Just as in elementary school you should grade yourself with an objective test. One solution is to use a price channel or range and analyze how well you did. Did you sell on the lows of the day when you were getting scared?
For instance, If I sell $BAC from $6.36 to $6.05(betting against the stock), I made 5.12%.
How about factoring a time in and annualized the gains to show relative performance? Those short term trades really add up if you think of them on an annualized basis. Too often new traders are looking for the “BIG TRADE” when they don’t understand that they just made a great trade! One in the hand is worth more than two in the bushel. Given you cannot count on 5% returns trading stocks short term. But that return is over 60% annualized! That will keep you from getting greedy and not taking gains.
For individual trades you can use the above method. But for quarterly or longer periods you want to calculate absolute return. If you hold your assets in dollars then most likely you have lost money due to inflation and your purchasing power has been diminished. Again, its part of the game when the Federal Reserve runs the world and debases your currency on a continual basis. Keep this in mind: Absolute Returns.
To better iillustrate this, the best stock market performance in the World has been Zimbabwe. That’s right in Africa. Zimbabwe’s central bank has introduced a Z$10bn banknote, worth $20 to give some perspective. However the underlying currency has been subject to massive hyperinflation. End Lesson: Use Real Returns to determine real wealth changes.
I will talk about keeping a Trading Spreadsheet and how I judge my trades coming up!
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ZeroHedge’s http://www.zerohedge.com/news/todays-black-gold-swan-presenting-reason-why-cmes-crude-market-was-halted-over-one-hour showed that likely the quantitative techniques caused the downtime in oil futures market.
This was a good reminder to have a back up plan. Can you imagine the panic if you had millions on the line? I doubt they were too worried because they had a backup plan. The obvious solution was to route orders to the ETF which tracks the oil futures, USO. However, they could have also taken advantage of the airlines which are directly correlated to the price of oil. Expecting oil to go up? Then short airline stocks or an index of airlines such as XAL
What happens when an exchange is down? Do you have other routing options or trading vehicles read?
As ZeroHedge points out, volume spiked on the ETF which tracks the oil futures. When CME went down they had to manage their positions using other vehicles. Flash crashes, computer problems, internet problems, brokerage issues…The list of things that could possibly go wrong are countless. We take for granted the up time of the internet and the stability of the system.
The moral of the story? Have a backup plan when disaster strikes plan your escape route and manage risk and exposure.
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Goog is unlikely to surprise to either the downside or upside significantly this quarter. Google will announce earnings after the close on 1/19/12. The momentum and outperformance in Droid and associated mobile businesses are likely to be offset by higher costs associated with defending patents against Apple. Most notably with the purchase of Motorola Mobility in August
The relevant question for Google’s stock price is, “Are the larger advertisers already addicted to the internet marketing likely to pull money back this quarter?” The answer is very doubtful. I expect Goog to pop after a slight beat on EPS.
Look for more talk about how amazing the Google Plus launch has been. However, it seems to me that the users for Google Plus are the employees in Silicon Valley. Facebook is still the champion in the short term. Look for Google to keep innovating and forcing Facebook to be on the defensive retaining its addicted users.
Sorry to simplify things but overall Google has run up all the way to 700 and now settled down to $630 per share.
Implied Volatility is high and expecting a significant move either way. My take is that they will beat EPS and the stock will adjust higher into $650+ range
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- Research in Motion (RIMM) TO OBAMA: Thanks for the endorsement!
- Thanks Obama
 The ultimate brand ambassador Since the President took office and refused to give his beloved Blackberry up, the stock and company has tumbled.
I guess the $25-50 million the NYTimes thought the endorsement was worth will show up under the companys “Goodwill” column!
This is what the every US company needs to help the floundering economy! An endorsement from President Obama!
RIMM’s share price has plunged nearly 90% since 08 and Obama’s support for the product.
Support your favorite team even at 4:20! Pittsburch themed colors will dazzle your friends. Plus it has to be good luck
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 Greenspan knows more than he let you believe The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use
the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit. They have created
paper reserves in the form of government bonds which – through a complex series of
steps – the banks accept in place of tangible assets and treat as if they were an actual
deposit, i.e., the equivalent of what was formerly a deposit of gold. The holder of a
government bond or of a bank deposit created by paper reserves believes that he has a
valid claim on a real asset.But the fact is that there are now more claims outstanding
than real assets.The law of supply and demand is not to be conned.As the supply of
money (of claims) increases relative to the supply of tangible assets in the economy,
prices must eventually rise. Thus the earnings saved by the productive members of the
society lose value in terms of goods.When the economy’s books are finally balanced,
one finds that this loss in value represents the goods purchased by the government for
welfare or other purposes with the money proceeds of the government bonds financed
by bank credit expansion.
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case gold.If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government‐created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods.The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold.Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the “hidden” confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights.
‐Alan Greenspan, Gold and Economic Freedom, 1966
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While the banks have gotten flogged the past year as the US government continues to play a game of “hide the debt,” its good to know some people are prospering. An artist in LA created a series of paintings depicting the banks in flames. He wants 25,000 for one and over $3,000 for another of BofA.
Although the banks are clearly in trouble and increasingly desperate will they implode? Will the situation escalate until there is a run on US banks? With a government with an unlimited check book (Thanks Federal Reserve) this is unlikely to happen. Nobody wants to do w
 An artists depiction inspired by the public's disgust hat needs to be done and let asset prices drop dramatically. It’s too scary. Tea Party or not Americans who still have money in the market will not be able to choose correctly and let some bans fail.
The banking giants such as BAC have been trading at a discount to Book Value. The Occupy Movement just increased public hate for these institutions. However, there are a couple events on the horizon to look forward to if you are bullish on the market. We are heading into Retail Season, I mean Holiday season, could be positive. As it gets colder it will be much more difficult to Occupy anything other than heated indoors in some parts of the nation. Also, the 2012 candidates for the Republican party are preaching about turning around our economy. They are creating the same sense of false hope that Obama championed.
If you believe that whoever gets the Republican nomination will be our next President than this should calm your pulse and make you sleep a bit easier. That is, if you are naive enough to think that there really is much of a difference between the parties nowadays. Remember Obama ran on a anti War agenda and increased militarism.
How much longer can we play hide the debt? How can the Federal Reserve Open Market OPerations really do and when will we get back to free markets?
Never unless there is change. Although I am very bearish the system can continue to prop itself up and the lipstick on the pig can stay indefinitely, as long as the Rest of the World goes with it.
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Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The scientific law guides us to think about the effects of decisions. Thankfully Obama has set another timeline for getting the troops out of Iraq. We all see the hedline cross
TEST PRICE Quantity Color ORDER
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