| Are the Days of Riding Buffett's Coattails Ending? Maybe Not Larry MacDonald submits: Now that Burlington Northern (BNI) is up 30% on a takeover by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), some people have sent in congratulations for recommending the stock in a May 4, 2009 blog post. Thank you very much but I didn’t see the takeover coming; I was thinking it could take two or three years for Mr. Market to bid it up that high. Complete Story » seekingalpha.com |
Taxing Banks for Automaker Mistakes Kid Dynamite submits: Today's story is "Obama to Unveil Proposal on Bank Taxes" from the WSJ, regarding taxes/fees the Administration will assess to the big financial firms.If approved by Congress, the new tax -- which the White House calls a "financial crisis responsibility fee" -- would force about 50 banks, insurance companies and large broker-dealers to collectively pay the federal government roughly $90 billion over 10 years. Of the 50, about 35 would be U.S. companies and 10 to 15 would be U.S. subsidiaries of foreign financial firms.A senior administration official said the largest 10 institutions would pay about 60% of the tax's total cost."Complete Story » seekingalpha.com |
Airlines: Load Factors Provide a New Angle Andrew Horowitz submits: If you take a look at the load factors for airlines, it can provide a glimpse into a few things. First, it can be viewed as the capacity utilization for the airline and it can also be looked at as the margin potential. It shows the amount of efficiency with respect to the total amount of seats available.March was a good month as both more people were flying and load factors were up significantly.Complete Story » seekingalpha.com |
Bullish Case for FedEx's 'Weak' Earnings The Business Insider submits: This morning we noted how FedEx's (FDX) earnings outlook came in below analyst expectations, and for awhile this seemed to be clipping the market. Yet, maybe the effect on the stock wasn't even greater because there was less there than met the eye ... Mike O'Rourke, of BTIG, explains what really happened. Basically, FedEx is ramping up costs again, after kamikaze cost cutting during the recession.Complete Story » seekingalpha.com |
Rail Traffic Maintains Year High Levels Todd Sullivan submits: Total North American rail traffic was unchanged last week at 692k. It makes the 3rd consecutive week the total has surpassed 690K, a level not seen since 2008 and brings the 4 week moving average to a level not seen since 2008. This rail traffic does not jive with the “dramatically slowing US economy” theme we seem to be hearing lately. Again, I am not saying we see a return to 3%-4% GDP. What I am saying is these indicators would seem to suggest a GDP level > the 1.6% we saw in Q2 and certainly pushes any risk of a double dip into mid-late 2011 as Sept retail sales #’s would seem to eliminate a Q4 2010 retraction as there is still adequate consumer demand to support growth.Complete Story » seekingalpha.com |