Multi-line Insurance

Last week, we reported that Doug Kass of Seabreeze Partners was shorting American International Group (NYSE: AIG) at the $41 level. Today, Doug Kass is pressing his AIG short to extract more dollars from a stock that is trading at an inflated value. Doug Kass is a noted short seller, but his...

The psychology of financial markets is primal. Nothing will attract the attention of buyers like a rising stock price, just as the inverse is true, in that a falling stock price will bring on even more sellers. More basic yet is the fact that nobody has money to buy in a down market, yet in a...

A very quiet week on the news front ahead of us, so I thought I'd post some of the strongest charts in terms of sustained upward movement that does not include a recent huge gap up on "news event" (some of these have small gaps. I excluded gold / silver stocks which of course enjoyed material...

Year 3, Week 5 Major Position Changes To see historic weekly fund changes click here OR the label at the bottom of this entry entitled 'fund positions'. Cash: 72.5% (v 65.8% last week)22 long bias: 14.1% (v 12.2% last week)9 short bias: 13.5% (v 22.0% last week) *includes long term puts 31...

Central Pacific Financial Corp. (NYSE: CPF) announced that it has commenced an equity issuance plan pursuant to which it may, from time to time, offer and sell up to $15 million of its common stock. Sales of the shares of common stock, if any, will be made by means of ordinary brokers' transactions...

Doug Kass of Seabreeze Partners just said he got a borrow and is now shorting American International Group (NYSE: AIG) at the $41 level. Doug Kass is a noted short seller, but his timing over the past few months has been nothing short of extraordinary. So if investors wants to make money, they...

American International Group (AIG) is poised to drop around 6% this morning, after plummeting about 14% yesterday and 34% since last Friday. The run up from around $15/share in the beginning of August has largely been speculative, with no news. A downgrade and price target of $10/share from...

Many days we sit here wondering how we escaped the Matrix. Life is so much easier being spoon fed inside the Matrix where butterflies and unicorns reign. Unfortunately, after our escape we live in the dirty, cold world outside of mothership Kool Aid. We spend these days wondering if indeed we...

I am going to cover the majority of the Riverbed Technology (RVBD) short in the $18.70s, giving us a 8%ish gain. I know 8% in 3 weeks seems very stodgy when I should be buying AIG or Fannie Mae and making 8% in under 3 minutes, but I'm old school and if one can annualize 8% a month you can still...

"Hark! Who Goes There!" "A Reversal to the Downside" "You are not welcome here. Larry - more power!" Today was the first time I can remember (showing how rare it is) when the market did its normal "reverse negative premarket action with a flurry of buying in the first 30-90 minutes"... and fell...

AMER INTL GROUP NEW (NYSE: AIG) is downgraded to Underperform from Market Perform. Bernstein cites that the current price does not reflect the possibility that the common equity is worth zero. Target $10.

Sugar is putting on a quite prideful display in 2009; granted it is no AIG (AIG) in terms of doubling every week in value but for a commodity that actually is not government supported it is doing quite well. Wait a second... sugar is also subsidized in the U.S..... is there anything the government...

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, L.P. (NYSE: KMP) announced that it has signed agreement to acquire the natural gas treating business from Crosstex Energy, L.P. (NASDAQ:XTEX) and Crosstex Energy, Inc. (NASDAQ:XTXI) for approximately $266 million, including working capital, subject to certain closing...

I will post a chart in this entry a little later in the day since stockcharts.com doesn't update Shanghai data promptly but China fell another 6.7% overnight. I had been targeting a gap in the chart in the mid 2600s (last day of May 2009), and with a close at 2667 they have arrived. The entire...

Year 3, Week 4 Major Position Changes To see historic weekly fund changes click here OR the label at the bottom of this entry entitled 'fund positions'. Cash: 65.8% (vs 58.6% last week)22 long bias: 12.2% (vs 17.4% last week)10 short bias: 22.0% (vs 24.0% last week) *includes long term puts 32...