Finance Roundtable

Nymex crude for August delivery fell $2.43 per barrel this week, or 3.51% to $66.73.

Nymex natural gas for August delivery fell 49.0 cents per million BTUs this week, or ...

The dour payrolls report drove down markets sharply. All the S&P 500’s sectors fell, with the energy, consumer-discretionary, and financial sectors posting the sharpest losses, ...

Wall Street is bouncing back thanks to growth in its bread-and-butter businesses such as fixed-income trading. And what does that mean? That lofty pay packages may be set for a comeback as well. As The Wall Street Journal reports:

Based on analysts’ earnings forecasts for 2009, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. ...

The early take on the FDIC’s proposed guidelines for buying failed banks is that they are much stricter than some had expected. In the few hours since they were released Thursday, billionaire Wilbur Ross has already called the guidelines “harsh and discriminatory.”

Here are three likely sticking points for ...

After being dropped from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, yanked from the S&P 500-stock index and delisted from the NYSE after General Motors filed for bankruptcy protections, it’s hard to imagine what other dissing shares of the troubled auto icon could undergo.

Well, yesterday there was another, as the company’s ...

The second quarter brought record revenue to Wall Street.

Equity underwriting surged. High-yield bond issuance jumped. Even the IPO market showed signs of life after months of being on life support. But the mergers-and-acquisitions advisory business? Not so much. And few deal makers are ready to say the cycle has bottomed ...

Imagine an aeronautics engineer designing a state-of-the-art jumbo jet. In order for it to fly, the engineer has to rely on the same aerodynamics equation devised by ...

There’s been some chatter in the market this week about whether a bank may be in trouble. The source of the concern is an anomaly in the federal-funds rate, that’s the rate banks charge each other to borrow money overnight.

Banks, however, have some discretion based on the borrowing bank’s collateral ...

Nikkei Stock Average, down 63.78 points, or 0.64%, to 9876.15.

Shanghai Composite, up 52.10 points, or 1.73%, to 3060.25.

This morning’s jobs news has the Green Shootists seriously concerned. Some economists had forecast that job losses would continue diminishing, but the reverse occurred.

The rising job losses underscore how difficult the economic situation remains and it’s unsurprising that stocks are retreating in the face of that news. Adding to the ...

Enthusiasm for the Public-Private Investment Program ranges somewhere between the thrill someone gets anticipating a trip to the dentist to the anxious waiting for a quarterly report after investing alongside Ron Insana — almost everyone is looking for an alternative.

Today’s Writing on the Wall column tackles the PPIP, ...

Poor Morgan Stanley. While rivals Goldman Sachs Group and J.P. Morgan Chase are expected to report sizable second-quarter profits, analysts believe Morgan Stanley will post another loss, according to this article in today’s New York Times.

President Obama has taken some hits over his low batting average on making good on campaign promises of making government more transparent. Many regulators in his administration also have been criticized for the lack of transparency in their financial rescue plans.

At a time when so many people are beating the drum about the need for companies to file transparent documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission, General Motors (GMGMQ) deserves credit. Granted, the subject of the press release that ...

Whether due to the economy or the impending regulation enacted within the Credit CARD Act of 2009, credit card companies are taking the opportunity to raise interest rates and minimum payments. This is perhaps an unintended consequence of increasing regulation. These changes affect consumers with manageable debt, but ...

Ugh. The June jobs numbers came in pretty ugly. Nonfarm payrolls fell ...