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Toll's Orders Plunge, Forecasts Larger Land Writedown
By Brian Louis and Peter Woodifield
Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Toll Brothers Inc. reported a 33 percent plunge in first-quarter orders and said land writedowns will exceed earlier forecasts. The shares fell as much as 5.4 percent.
Orders declined to 1,027 units and homebuilding revenue slid 19 percent to $1.09 billion in the three months ended Jan. 31, Horsham, Pennsylvania-based Toll said today in a preliminary earnings statement.
Toll, the largest U.S. builder of luxury homes, said land writedowns could rise to $160 million after earlier forecasting a charge $60 million. Chief Executive Officer Robert Toll said the company is abandoning parcels ``because some deals don't make sense under current market conditions.''
``It still shows that demand is weak, especially at the high end of the market,'' John Tomlinson, an analyst at Majestic Research in New York, said in an interview.
Orders for Toll, whose houses cost three times the U.S. median, have fallen as its inventory of unsold homes swells. Lennar Corp. and D.R. Horton, the two largest U.S. home builders, have reported profit declines as incentives failed to stem cancellations and sales slumped the most in 15 years.
Shares of Toll fell $1.28, or 3.7 percent, to $33.15 at 10:31 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, after earlier falling to $32.57. A Standard & Poor's measure of 16 homebuilding stocks dropped 3.2 percent.
Kompletter Artikel einsehbar unter
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=amHNVirfLNa8&refer=home
Hawkisher Kommentar von Charles Plosser, Chef der Philadelphia Fed seit August 2006.
The Federal Reserve may need to raise its benchmark interest rate as recent stronger U.S. economic growth increases the risk that inflation won't moderate, Charles Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, said yesterday.
"With growth prospects of the economy improving, there is some risk that we may not see a return to price stability unless monetary conditions are further tightened," Plosser said in a speech to the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. Tightening refers to raising rates.
Plosser's comments on inflation are stronger than last week's statement by the central bank's Federal Open Market Committee, which said inflation was slowing "modestly" as the economy picks up speed. The Fed left its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 5.25 percent for a fifth straight meeting.
That is called the federal funds rate, which is what commercial banks charge one another on overnight loans. In turn, that affects the rates banks charge on loans to individuals and businesses.
Plosser, who took over at the Philadelphia Fed in August, said he was "not convinced that underlying inflation is on a downward trend." He said a recent easing of price pressures may be the temporary result of a decline in oil prices, which may rise again.
The presidents of the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks all serve on the policy-setting Open Market Committee, but they rotate as voting members. Plosser does not have a vote this year.
"Plosser cemented his reputation as one of the more hawkish members of the FOMC," Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., of New York, said of the Philadelphia Fed president's comments yesterday.
The Fed's favorite price gauge, which excludes food and energy, rose 2.2 percent in December from a year earlier. That is above the 1 percent to 2 percent "comfort zone" identified by Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke.
Inflation "remains a primary concern of mine for 2007," Plosser said. "While I think it is possible that the recent moderation of inflation will continue, and I certainly hope that's the case, I believe it is too soon to declare victory."
The economy expanded at a 3.5 percent annual pace in the last quarter, more than economists expected, compared with 2 percent in the third quarter. Plosser predicted growth of about 3 percent this year.
He said that, a month or two ago, he believed that a slower economy combined with a steady federal funds rate "might be sufficient to ensure a decline in core inflation and a return to price stability.
"But as the economy strengthens, that scenario becomes less likely, and the risk that core inflation will not moderate increases," he added.
The Philadelphia Fed was one of two regional Fed banks to request an increase in the discount rate before the Aug. 8 policy meeting, when the FOMC voted, 9-1, to leave the benchmark federal funds rate unchanged. The discount rate was left at 6.25 percent. The discount rate is what the Fed charges on loans to commercial banks.
The Philadelphia Fed board voted Aug. 3, two days after Plosser's arrival, to ask for a quarter-point increase in the discount rate. The other bank to vote for an increase in the discount rate was the Richmond Fed, whose president, Jeffrey Lacker, later opposed the FOMC decision not to change rates.
Interessant finde ich insbesondere die Punkte 2, 3 und 10.
Market Commentary
10 Things I Hate About Wall Street
By Alan Farley - Street.com Contributor
2/8/2007 11:54 AM EST
I'm an outsider looking in when it comes to myriad machinations of Wall Street. While many of my compatriots have spent their entire lives in the financial industry, I've always been a private trader sitting in my home office trying to pay the bills. This remote perspective gives me a more jaded view of the sideshow element of this strange business.
Over the years, my distrust of the information flow coming from Wall Street's financial institutions has become almost pathological. These carefully tossed cow chips advance a mutation of the American dream that feeds on the naiveté of the public investor.
Perhaps all traders are just cynics at heart. But we possess a common, anarchistic streak that understands the predator-prey relationships at work in the markets. Why would the East Hampton crew tell us the truth when they're trying to support their own accounts and upscale lifestyles?
To this end, I've put together my list of the 10 things I hate most about Wall Street.
1. End-of-the-Year Hustle: Guess what changed on Jan. 1? Wall Street doesn't have to worry about performance for another 12 months. This gives them the freedom to screw around with everything until Election Day, when the trend needs to be pushed in the direction that offers the greatest profitability for their accounts.
Forget the Fed, forget the economic cycles, just forget everything. Personal profits rule when it's time to close the annual books.
2. Program Trading: In the 1990s, program trading was something that happened at 3:00 p.m. on really active days. Now the silicon chip has invaded every wiggle on the ticker tape. The dark algorithms driving these monstrous programs apply the overriding impact of massive volume to bully prices round, regardless of technicals or fundamentals.
And private traders get crushed like tiny bugs when they stand in the way.
3. Overnight Hell: It's great to have an electronic futures market that never sleeps. But the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 Globex contracts have turned into complete paint jobs in recent years, as hidden forces do their best to suck in dumb capital when the American markets open for business.
Can you imagine what's going to happen after the NYSE/Euronet merger? Sleep will become a thing of the past for the private trading community.
4. Down and Dirty: I cringe whenever a big stock gets ripped apart and Wall Street comes charging to its defense, telling the bagholding public the decline represents a huge buying opportunity. These folks just want Joe Sixpack to bail out their bad decisions and poor market timing.
In truth, these stocks are going down because these same institutions pounding the tables, telling the public to buy, are dumping them aggressively.
5. The Grasso Generation: The New York Stock Exchange is finally going electronic, after years of fighting the upgrade with nonsense about the superiority of the specialist system. But the new hybrid system is so riddled with self-serving elements that it actually decreases market transparency.
It's amazing but true that public traders are spoon fed less-reliable order-flow data than they got when the Nasdaq exchange was sued for price collusion back in the mid-1990s.
6. Lilly-White League: Why does everything that disseminates from the markets to the public come from white guys in suits? OK, here's a hint: The next time you're in New York City, head over to the corner of Broad and Wall and see who's running the money. Market power has never been an equal opportunity employer.
7. Playing Alpha Dog: It's popular sport for market professionals to tear down technical trading methods and strategies even though their back rooms use price charts just like everyone else. They know the game they're playing, but get away unscathed because the financial media plays lap dog with these hypocrites, instead of junkyard dog.
The sad truth is everyone involved in the markets knows we're all just fleas on the elephant's back.
8. Asleep at the Wheel: There are a thousand systematic abuses on Wall Street, but the SEC is still chasing around daytraders and chat rooms. This governmental body is totally lost trying to manage the complexities of our modern, electronically driven markets.
As a result, they've failed miserably to regulate their top mandates: market transparency and a level playing field for the public.
9. The Bipolar Market: Have you noticed the day-to-day mood swings when one piece of economic data sounds an all-clear while the next one is greeted as a dark vision of financial apocalypse? It's all a convenient way to keep the public off-balance while the backrooms of the big boys use the artificial volatility to book profits.
Apply a follow-through strategy like buying a strong stock at the close and watch the position get cut apart when the rolling train shifts into reverse the next morning.
10. Upgrade/Downgrade Game: Is there an easier way to make fast money on Wall Street than to issue an upgrade when you're trying to dump inventory or a downgrade right after you've sold out or gone short? This is called pump-and-dump when chat rooms do it, but it's totally legal for the public's best friends in lower Manhattan.
Let's face it, folks, the game is rigged [Schwindelei - A.L.], and there's not much we can do about it ... except complain from time to time.
Alan Farley is a professional trader and author of The Master Swing Trader.
Mark Zandis Artikel über
- die Ausfallsrate für Immobilienkredite. Diese hat vom Tief ist 2005 aus in 2006 rapide zugenommen; ein Ansteigen auf 3,5% wird in einem Jahr erwartet:
- die Hypothekenverschuldung der US Amerikaner. Sie beläuft sich auf 8,2 Billionen USD mit einer zweistellige, jährlichen Zuwachsrate. Gewöhnlich liegen die Kreditausfallraten niedriger in Zeiten starken Kreditwachstums - nicht so in 2006.
- das Kreditrisiko, das die grössten US Geschäftsbanken tragen.
Das Immobilienvermögen beläuft sich auf 1,75 Billionen USD und macht fast ein Drittel der Assets aus.
Der vollständige Artikel beinhaltet Charts über die Kreditausfallraten landesweit.
Mounting Mortgage Credit ProblemsBy
Mark Zandi in West ChesterMortgage credit conditions are rapidly eroding. Delinquency rates are as high as they have been since the depths of the 2001 recession, and all indications are that they will rise measurably higher in 2007. This poses a threat to the sanguine
consensus view that the economy will experience only a very modest slowdown this year.The dollar delinquency rate on all mortgage debt outstanding jumped again in the fourth quarter of 2006 to 2.59%. This is based on data from
CreditForecast.com, a joint venture between Moody’s Economy.com and the credit bureau Equifax, derived from a very large random sample of credit files. This is just a couple of basis points below the cyclical peak in the delinquency rate during the fourth quarter of 2001, when the economy was struggling with recession and the immediate fallout from the 9/11 attacks. The default rate is still well below its recessionary high, but is rising quickly.http://www.economy.com/home/article.asp?cid=50450
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| 58 | 19.306 | BP Group | B.Helios | Heute1619 | 08.01.26 11:14 | |
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