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Non-Tech : Banks--- Betting on the recovery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (746)	4/6/2010 11:32:58 AM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1428

One of mine.......from Yahoo finance: Regional bank shares are up 2.4%, collectively. Regions Financial (RF 8.70, +0.51) has been a primary leader within the group, thanks partly to news that estimates for the firm were recently raised by analysts at Credit Suisse. Within the financial sector, shares of RF currently sport the largest percentage gain and are among the most actively traded names by volume. As regional banks ascend the financial sector has found itself with a 0.5% gain. That gain has put the S&P 500 Financial Index at its best level since November 5, 2008, or a new 17-month high. DJ30 -17.39 NASDAQ -3.14 SP500 -0.82 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1163/650 mln/1320 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1384/262 mln/1427

To: Road Walker who wrote (746)	4/6/2010 10:18:25 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1428

Is California Real Estate Turning a Corner? One of the noteworthy characteristics of California’s housing market is that it fell early and it fell hard — crowning the state as a leading indicator of the crash that was to come. Given last week’s housing news, could California now be leading the nation out of its real estate woes? According to the latest S&P/Case-Shiller home price index, home prices in the Golden State showed strong gains. Los Angeles prices rose 1.8% (on a seasonally adjusted basis) in January, while San Diego’s prices inched up 0.9% and San Francisco’s, 0.6%. The index of 20 metropolitan areas rose 0.3% from December. Those figures come on top of data from MDA DataQuick, which last month reported that statewide home sales for February were up nearly 1% from January, although they were down 3.8% from February 2009. And the median price paid for a home ($249,000) increased 11.2% from the year prior, according to DataQuick. While California home prices are still far below the peak levels of 2006, some economists think California is on its way out of the woods. “Now we’re seeing the interior [of the state] has stabilized – because prices have fallen by 50% to 60% already,” says Stuart Gabriel, director of UCLA’s Ziman Center for Real Estate. The combination of cuts in price, reductions in mortgage rates and all sorts of state and federal programs to incentivize buying activity have brought stability. “Prices are increasing only modestly, but for all intents and purposes, they’ve stopped falling,” Gabriel says. Anecdotally, too, real estate agents are seeing increased activity in their local areas. Jim Chapin, a realtor with Legacy Real Estate & Associates in the San Francisco Bay area, who covers the southern Alameda and Contra Costa counties, says he’s seeing an upward trend in the market, and even an increase in the average sale price of homes. Also improved is the time it takes to get a home sold. At the end of December, the average number of days on the market was 92; now it’s down to 60, he says. “We’re encouraged by what we’re seeing here,” Chapin says. David Kerr, a ZipRealty agent in the Oakland, Calif., area, says he’s seen a shift from last year as well. “In my case, I’m already two-thirds above of where I was this time last year in terms of number of clients in contract,” Kerr says. Indeed, the first-time home buyer tax credit – soon to expire – has been one major driver of the activity. Another has been short sales. Banks are finally speeding up the process of these transactions. “I just submitted a short-sale offer with a buyer, and it was approved in less than a month,” Kerr says; last year the same sale could have taken six months to close. And despite the state’s financial woes, the governor is trying to prolong whatever nascent recovery might be happening with $200 million worth of renewed state tax credits for home buyers. Worth up to $10,000, spread evenly over three years, the credit is available to anyone who buys a newly built home or to first-time home buyers who purchase a newly built or existing home. (Buyers must close between May 1 and either Dec. 31 or whenever the money set aside for the program runs out, whichever comes first.) The tax credits might draw out a few more buyers, but what’s really going to drive price increases here – as well as in the rest of the country – is economic fundamentals. That means jobs, people’s income and population growth, says Gary Painter, a professor and director of research at the University of Southern California’s Lusk Center for Real Estate. As of February, California’s unemployment rate was 12.5%, while the national rate for March remained at 9.7%. “You’re definitely seeing not a lot of days on the market and not a lot of inventory – so that’s encouraging,” says Painter. “But it’s going to take a while before there’s enough job growth and income growth that will stabilize and increase housing demand.” Read more: Is California Real Estate Turning a Corner? at SmartMoney.com smartmoney.com

To: Road Walker who wrote (746)	4/7/2010 4:58:31 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1428

Citigroup Shares Defy Latest Round of Scrutiny By Laurie Kulikowski 04/07/10 - 01:55 PM EDT NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Citigroup(C) shares were largely unfazed Wednesday as the bank found itself in the crosshairs over the financial crisis once again. Over the next three days, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is expected to hear testimony from several former Citigroup executives including ex-CEO and Chairman Chuck Prince, and Robert Rubin, a former senior advisor and Chairman of the board's Executive Committee, among others, as part of its latest public hearing "Subprime Lending and Securitization and Government-Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs)." The FCIC was formed to do a post-mortem on the causes of the meltdown. Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan appeared solo in Wednesday's first session, while Richard Bowen, a former senior vice president with CitiMortgage, and Susan Millls, managing director of mortgage finance at Citi Markets and Banking, are slated to participate in the second session as part of a four-person slate discussing the origination and subordination of subprime loans. A third session on Wednesday will include four former Citigroup executives, including David Bushnell, its ex-Chief Risk Officer, and and Tom Maheras, the former co-CEO of Citi Markets & Banking, answering Citi-specific questions related to subprime and risk management. The biggest day for Citigroup, however, is likely to be tomorrow's first session when Prince and Rubin will appear to be grilled about the actions of the company's senior management. During Wednesday's testimony, Richard Bowen, Citigroup's former chief underwriter for CitiMortgage, told the FCIC panel that he had warned management and Rubin of the company's mortgage risk beginning in 2006, according to the Associated Press. Bowen apparently discovered that in the middle of 2006 more than 60% of the mortgages being bought and sold by the subprime-focused unit were defective, according to the AP. The revelation did little to slow the stock as it was up a dime, or 2.2%, to $4.39 in afternoon action, a seeming indication that Wall Street remains focused on where the company is going, rather than where it's been. Volume was brisk with 391 million shares already changing hands. The issue's trailing three-month daily average churn is 497 million. Washington's latest witch hunt promises to be a spectacular showing of Congressional leaders and other so-called special investigators posing questions they should have asked long before the crisis hit, editor-in-chief Glenn Hall suggests in his latest opinion piece. Several other industry executives are set to testify on Friday in front of the Commission including Fannie Mae's (FNM) former CEO Daniel Mudd along with two ex-directors of the Office of the Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. Citigroup became the poster child for the financial crisis after writedowns on soured subprime securities, bad mortgages and delinquent credit card loans forced the company to receive two bailouts from the government totaling $45 billion. The Treasury Department still owns 7.7 billion shares, or roughly 27%, of Citigroup. Citigroup has since been working to downsize its once lauded financial supermarket business model by shedding unnecessary assets and focusing continuing businesses more efficiently. Who Owns Citigroup? Prince Al-Waleed Eddie Lampert John Paulson Things have brightened up for Citigroup of late, however, with its most recent success being a strong IPO for its Primerica(PRI) unit last week. The shares are up more than $1 since the beginning of the year, almost 30%, with the majority of that move coming in March as the company began to show some palpable progress in its turnaround efforts, and the Treasury prepares to exit its massive stake. The company is scheduled to report its first-quarter results on April 19, and hold its annual shareholder meeting the next day. The average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters is for a slight loss, breaking even on per share basis, with revenue of $20.8 billion. thestreet.com