monday trading, page-31

SPI touched 4800 then fell today. I was expecting it to gap above after the strength of the US session on Friday. I have 2 theories about our underperformance. One is that markets often rally into public holidays, and so the US was overly optimistic. The other is that because its US holiday today, the market makers have open slather to hunt down stops, until just before US open Tuesday night our time. So we will see over the next day and a half which is the case.

Anyway I saw JP Morgans profit anouncement on Friday and thought it was just kindergarden stuff. Our profits were down in investments, so lets write off a gazillion dollars of 'future losses', because a gazillion dollar profit sounds better than a loss of a few billion. Heres how it actually reads on bloomberg;

JPMorgan Earnings

JPMorgan rose 1 percent to $44.91. The second-biggest U.S. bank by assets cut provisions for future credit-card and real- estate losses by $4.9 billion, helping the bank post a record quarterly profit of $4.83 billion. Net income in investment banking declined 21 percent from a year earlier, to $1.5 billion in the quarter. The bank is ?hopeful? it can raise its dividend and buy back shares, Chief Financial Officer Douglas Braunstein said.

They can get away with this kind of stupidity because the US govt and JP Morgan have a hand in each others pockets.
The original article is here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-14/u-s-stock-futures-fluctuate-before-reports-intel-gains-on-sales-forecast.html