Nowhere to run, nowhere hide, or so it seems in recent weeks.
Last week was no exception, and the havoc continued across the globe yesterday and continued into the trading in northern hemisphere markets.
In the US, with investor spirit crushed by the events of the past month, it’s time for the US third quarter earnings reports to start flowing, with Alcoa tonight the first, then Chevron midweek and then the big one, General Electric on Friday night, our time.
Here we have just one earnings report from the regional lender, the Bank of Queensland, which will be scanned closely for any hint of problems with its Queensland business and property portfolios (mostly residential).
But America will be the big focus.
US quarterly earnings reports are usually major drivers of investing momentum and up to six weeks ago, many analysts were forecasting higher earnings as the US economy started recovering.
If anything there could be up to a year of grim reports on earnings as the recession intensifies in the US, thanks to the impact of the credit freeze.
As Reuters Estimates pointed out a week ago, declining earnings forecasts for financials and commodity stocks like oil has produced a reversal of earlier expectations of earnings growth this quarter to where a fall is now forecast.
Last week’s car sales figures for September are pointing to greater pressures than expected across manufacturing: US car sales were down 27% in September, on September last year and for the first time in around 16 years, less than 1 million cars were sold in the US in a month.
Several major car dealers have suffered: the listed AutoNation and Carmax are cutting back and the earnings reports from others supply and servicing the sector are going to be grim
Retailing will be one depressed sector especially with upwards of 270,000 jobs disappearing in the quarter, including 159,000 in September alone.
The only reason the US unemployment rate remained steady at 6.1% was the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of people of the ranks of those looking for work.
All three major indexes – the Dow, Nasdaq and benchmark S&P 500 – remain down some 20% over the year and the economic picture continues to look grim.
For the week till last Friday, the Dow ended down 7.3%, the S&P 9.4% and Nasdaq tumbled 10.8%, even though some analysts say the tech demand from business is still relatively firm.
Chevron will tell us the dramatic impact the 20%-30% drop in oil prices in the quarter had on earnings, as well as the impact of the dislocations from two tough storms in September in the Gulf of Mexico, with the oil facilities in Texas hit especially hard and product shortages continuing throughout the south.
And GE will confirm the second earnings downgrade of 2008, given a fortnight ago. It’s cutting a share buyback, raised $US12.2 billion last week, including $US3 billion from the supremely opportunistic Warren Buffett.
GE frightened the market back in early April with an earnings slump and downgrade in its first quarter figures.
Now it’s trading on probation with many investors worried about the impact its sagging financial side is having on the industrial businesses which are feeling the pinch from the gathering economic slump.
The Australian market is off 33% and because of our strong commodity base (and high foreign debt) we are being lumped in as an almost emerging market, except our market structure, governance and legal system make us an obvious developed economy state.
Our market fell 4.7% in the week to Friday, a big improvement on what other markets did.
Europe was bad and will get worse thanks to the continuing eruption of financial volcanoes that just won’t die.
Emerging markets (Brazil, Russia, India, China, etc) had an absolutely miserable week, suffering their biggest fall in seven years. last night was even worse, with the largest fall on record.
Banks and commodity (especially energy) companies saw their prices slump as commodities suffered the worst week in 50 years: major indexes fell 10% over the five days and not even gold was exempt with some big falls Thursday and Friday that knocked the stuffing out of the bulls.
Gold prices tumbled more than 6% last week (but rebounded $US36 overnight), oil 12% and the US dollar rose 4.3% as it proved to be the major beneficiary of the credit freeze and turmoil.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 8% last week to be down 33% so far this year. Toyota fell around 14%, BHP Billion 15% and major banks across the region were easier.
Yesterday wasn’t any different, only more of the same gloom.
And while analysts are downgrading earnings, Standard & Poor’s reckons that dividend cuts in the third quarter took $US22.5 billion out of the bank accounts of investors in a major downgrading of earnings payments.
The ratings group said that of the 7,000 or so publicly traded companies that report dividend information to S&P, 138 groups cut dividends during the third quarter of 2008 compared with 21 in the same quarter of 2007.
According to media reports, that’s the worst September for dividends since S&P started keeping such records in 1956.
In a statement issued on Friday senior S&P index analyst Howard Silverblatt said that "During the second quarter, companies were nervous and cautious. The third quarter, however, saw many companies deciding to take action, and that action took $22.5 billion out of the pockets of investors."
Reported dividend increases fell 21% to 346 from 439 reported in the third quarter of 2007.
Financial "issues" accounted for about two-thirds of the dividend cuts and 93% of the dollar damage.
"Also, no longer is it just blue chip companies cutting dividends. Many of the issues are now much smaller, and more regional," he added. &
