Business Week. Sell in May?

Tuesday:
Economic Consumer Confidence (61), New Home Sales (520K)
Earnings Vodafone (VOD), Donaldson (DCI), Shanda (SNDA)

Wednesday:
Economic Weekly Crude, Durable Orders (-.7%)
Earnings American Eagle (AEO), CBRL (CBRL), Chico’s (CHS), Daktronics (DAKT), Polo (RL), Dollar Tree (DLTR), Dress Barn (DBRN), Coldwater Creek (CWTR), Men’s Wearhouse (MW), TiVo (TIVO)

Thursday:
Economic Weekly Claims (370K), GDP & Chain Deflator (.9%, 2.6%)
Earnings Costco (COST), Big Lots (BIG), Heinz (HNZ), Joy Global (JOYG), Sears (SHLD), China Finance (JRJC), Dell (DELL), Marvell (MRVL), J Crew (JCG), OmniVision (OVTI)

Friday:
Economic Inc & Spend (.2%, .2%), PCE Core (.1%), Chicago PMI (49), Michigan (60)

Earnings Tiffany (TIF), Lions Gate (LGF)

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Following insider trading - SEC Form 4.

Recently I was browsing internet to find reliable free and not delayed source for insider trading activities. There are couple of sites providing real time information for monthly paid subscription. You can see this also at official SEC site after insiders post Sec Form 4. But this is not really friendly format.

I found FinViz which gives you everything for free. You can see buy sell transaction with share price, value and position of insiders. What I am still missing is searching per ticker.

Site provides also technical and fundamental screener. Moreover it has very nice maps grouped by industry. You can see performance of major companies or ETF in industry. Or basic fundamental data like P/E ratio, P/B, PEG, EPS or dividend yield.


I'd underline this is not paid review as StockWeb never publishes paid reviews. This is recommendation for the site which I found as a very useful source of information. As usual I put link to sidebar section "Stock screeners".

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Steve Ballmer under eggs attack.

This is first time I post video on my blog. Clip shows CEO of Microsoft (MSFT) being egged during his speech in Hungary. Hungarian protester accused Microsoft from stealing taxpayer money.



Steve Ballmer has this Thursday schedule to visit Czech Republic on Thursday. Let's see what we can expect in Prague. Except of speech for University students he is going to meet Ivo Lukacovic, Head of Seznam . cz (biggest Czech online portal). As I already posted couple of weeks ago there are ongoing rumours about acquisition (M&A - Internet companies).

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Business Week. VIX close to October 07 lows.

Monday
Economic: Leading Inds (0.0%)
Earnings: Campbell’s (CPB), Excel Maritime (EXM), Lowe’s (LOW), Perfect World (PWRD), DryShips (DRYS)

Tuesday
Economic: PPI & Core (0.0%, 0.2%)
Earnings: AutoZone (AZO), China Energy (CSUN), Home Depot (HD), Target (TGT), Analog Devices (ADI), Hewlett (HPQ), Intuit (INTU)

Wednesday
Economic: Weekly Crude, FOMC Minutes
Earnings: BJ’s (BJ), Ross (ROST), Solarfun (SOLF), Tsakos (TNP), Bristow (BRS), Gymboree (GYMB), Netease (NTES), Network Apps (NTAP), PETsMART (PETM), Salesforce (CRM)

Thursday
Economic: Weekly Claims (370K)
Earnings: AnnTaylor (ANN), Barnes & Noble (BKS), Children’s Place (PLCE), Dick’s (DKS), Gamestop (GME), Patterson (PDCO), Toro (TTC), Trina Solar (TSL), Aeropostale (ARO), Gap (GPS), Verigy (VRGY), Zumiez (ZUMZ)

Friday
Economic: Existing Home Sales (4.85M)
Earnings: NA

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Earnings for Q1.

Only 6% remains of S&P500 companies to post Q1 earnings. Actually earnings fell by -17,5% against estimated growth +5,7% (data provided by Thomson on 1st Jan 08). Huge "contribution" had financials sector. Compared to Q1 2007 financials posted $142 bln less and finished quarter in loss of $28 bln.

Q1 started badly by General Electric (GE) which didn't provide bright outlook for other earnings. Nevertheless it wasn't so bad quarter. If two sectors (the best - energy; the worst - financials) are taken out earnings actually grew by 2,9%. That's not so far from optimistic January estimates.

Estimation for Q2 2008 are currently set negative -5,4%.

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No recession for Europe.

Today released numbers show good shape for European economies. Germany more than doubled estimations and grew 1.5% in first three months of 2008 (quarter on quarter). Non-seasonally (quarterly basis) GDP grew 1,8%.
Another surprise is coming from France. Quarter on quarter growth by 0,6%. Great Britain up by 0,4%.Smaller European economies, Greece +1,1% and Austria +0,8%. But others shrank slightly. Portugal and Spain registered in the negative, -0,2% respectively -0,3%.

And how about Central European emerging markets. Czech Republic quarter on quarter +0,9% but non-seasonally still nice growth by 5,4%. Slovakia non-seasonally slow down from 14,3% to 8,7%.

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Banking losses in Europe.

Credit market turmoils spread all over. I list major 4 major banking cases occurred in Europe due to subprime meltdown.

The largest Swiss bank UBS (UBS) writedowns almost 33 bln CHF in last 2 quarters. Shareholders approved capital increase by 15 bln CHF. Already second capital hike after 13 bln CHF from two foreign sovereign wealth funds. Shares price YTD down by 33%.

Credit Suisse (CS) faced first quarter losses in last 5 years (1Q 2008 with loss 2,15 bln CHF). For the same quarter in 2007 company made profit 2,7 bln CHF. From the beginning of year shares price fell down by 11% and market capitalization is now 62,6 bln CHF.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) lost 5,9 bln GBP. In addition to subprime losses bank admits another bad investment decisions. Mainly acquisition of ABN Ambro Holding (together with Banco Santander and Fortis). 71 bln EUR for ABN Ambro was too ambitious. Royal Bank of Scotland announced last month a rights issue of 12 bln GBP. Shares price YTD down by 29%.

So far Deutsche Bank (DB) looked very resistant against turmoils. But Q1 showed different picture, losses 2,7 bln EUR. According to CEO Josef Ackermann April already shows signs of stabilization. For Deutsche Bank it was also first quartal loss since 2003. Shares price YTD down by 9%.

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