Posted on 10/15/2009 1:27:02 PM PDT by combat_boots
Citibank and Goldman reported this morning and both put up what looked at first blush to be better-than-expected numbers.
But both sold off in the premarket. Why?
The bulls were expecting not just beats, but stunning blowouts.
But what we are not hearing from the banking industry is "we have enough loss reserves allocated and will not have to allocate more as loss rates are and will continue to come down."
That's the problem at the end of the day - where is the end of the line? Asset quality continues to deteriorate pretty significantly and this deterioration is driven by unemployment and over-leveraged consumers and businesses - trading revenues are great but in a fractional system loan losses always sink you because of the multiplier effect.
Harley Davidson (HOG) reported a miss on slightly-higher revenue. The key here is that once again sales (units) declined although they said that the rate of decline "moderated". So how does revenue go up? Driving prices higher? Not sure at first blush, but the firm is also talking about divesting or winding up Buell and Augusta. Neither of those actions are going to be revenue positive going forward. The money quote on operating results is here:
Worldwide retail sales of new Harley-Davidson® motorcycles declined 21.3 percent in the third quarter compared to last year's third quarter, an improvement from the 30.1 percent decline in this year's second quarter.
(Excerpt) Read more at market-ticker.denninger.net ...
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