citigroup stock 

The search for Creative Commons has developed an interesting concept for you to focus on. Citigroupis in the press these days because its stock price has failed to keeppace with that of its competitors, including Bank of America, WellsFargo and JP Morgan Chase. The chairman of Wells Fargo, Richard Kovacevich is acknowledged as the best CEO in the banking sector, but doesn? T receive the press, because nobody can pronounce his name. Citigroupis up about 17% below the current CEO while cross-town rival JP MorganChase has gained more than 40%, and Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) hasmore than doubled. Goldman Sachs is up over 150% reliable. Is Anybody Listening? You bet I am.

ChuckPrince, who took over Citigroup after the departure of the fabulouslysuccessful Sandy Weill, is now getting excoriated by the financialpress because Citigroup? S stock price that has seriously delayed his rivals above. When? Downwards again, they kick dirt on you, as the saying goes. The press is out of his way to skip around the launch of Todd Thomson who ran Citigroup? S wealth management division. Apparentlythe biggest beneficiary of the wealth management division was Mr.Thomson himself, who has made extensive use of the bank? S fleet of private jets, when wasn? T Tooling around town in his Lamborghini. Car for a very conservative banker, eh?

Statements were made that Thompson committed 5 million U.S. dollars of Citigroup? S money for a new TV with CNBC? S Maria Bartiromo, and Hollywood A-List actor Robert Redford. If that doesn? Tbeat all, had a fireplace installed in his office at Citigroup to keepwarm while to understand the new projects to spend the bank? S money. Heflew to China with a group of executives from Citigroup, and then leftto find their way home, while he returned with a companionconfidential. I think that those corporate jets get cramped with a couple more persons on board.

What a guy, what a team of management, what does all this say about Citigroup? S inability to keep pace with its competitors financially after Sandy Weill? S start, and Chuck Prince? S ascent to the helm of the ship? It says a lot here? S why.

Back in 1930? D, the federal government under FDR decided to separate the banking sector investment. It 'called the Glass-Steagall Act brokerage firms and banks have had to make a decision. It could be a bank, or it could be a brokerage firm. Could not be both. Companies like JP Morgan and company decided to remain a bank. Partners investment JP Morgan came out and formed Morgan Stanley, so you can stay in business capital formation.

Only a society of law has been allowed to remain in both functions. E 'was Brown Brothers Harriman. FDR specifically decided to do a favor for his supporter Averill Harriman, who controlled the family bank. For your information, President Bush? S ancestral grandfather was a prominent banker at Brown Brothers. He ran the show, his name was Prescott Bush. Over the next six years showed that separates the banking and the functions of the investments were a good idea. Something else became apparent.

Ofmind required for the execution of a bank was radically different fromthat of the managerial skills necessary to manage a successful businessbrokerage. Inmy 35 years of involvement with Wall Street, I've only seen asuccessful integration of a commercial bank with a company on WallStreet. Only Sandy Weill was able to pull it out, and did so by combining Citibank with Salomon Brothers and Smith Barney. Weill also managed to get Bill Clinton to get the Glass-Steagall Act repealed so that Weill would realize his personal vision.

Noone else in history had been able to do so, and no one else hassuccessfully combined a bank with a function of brokerage firms, none. Not with Prudential Bache. The Bank of America failed when it bought Charles Schwab and Company. Schwab and the Company not years later, when it acquired U.S. Trust. Probably the best managed company in America was General Electric under Jack Welch. GE and Welch failed when he took Kidder Peabody. GE moved away a couple of years later, with billions of losses.

It seems that banks and brokerage firms just don? Mix t. Brokerage firms and other commercial entities such as General Electric, don? Mix t o. The nature of risk is different for a bank than a brokerage firm. Sandy Weill himself sold Shearson Lehman Brothers to American Express last year. The merger does not have a time, and Weill considered the great defeat of his career. It takes a certain type of manager to assess and manage a brokerage firm? S compared to the risk of a bank. This concept keeps coming home to haunt companies that try their hands at both.

Citigroup is a victim of this mentality?

We believe that they are. Webelieve that the historic inability of a bank's management team to runa brokerage firm raised its head once again in the results we areseeing at Citigroup. Chuck Prince, the handpicked successor to Sandy Weill at Weill? S is a lawyer by training flights. The same goes for the new CEO of Home Depot. We believe that the experiences that legally trained minds endure, is wholly inappropriate for the world of the superstar CEO? S is now the norm among the Fortune 500.

Citigroup in the past 15 years has had major Middle East financial interests involved as shareholders. These interests are now asserting themselves. They contend that the bank charges cut. It? S very simple. MONEY wants to make money. Chuck Prince in turn has encouraged the former deputy Robert Druskin as chief operating officer. They are actually Druskin how? Zar expenses?.

In our opinion, the actions taken to date will not be enough to reverse the delay that Citigroup is suffering. Citigroup suffers from the inability to mold different historical worldwide operations together. They do not generate higher returns. Investment management, corporate lending and wealth management just don? Jell t, and not è? T since 1930? S. Managing overtime? S and visionaries like Sandy Weill come once in a generation, and Citigroup doesn? T look like? S will be blessed twice. Stay tune for fireworks before this stock becomes a buy.

Buying Stocks Option:

the stock market shows the truth of the matter is that once an IPO has ended, there are a number of factors that influence the price of buying stock and in order to understand stock price factors, you need to understand some of the variables behind them. So How Much Does It Cost When You Are Buying Stock?

buying-stocks

To Buy stocks will help to establish stock prices. A stock that was struggling to day might be tomorrow’s hot stock. If you pay $500 for Google stock, may want to buy a lot of it but you would buy the Brooklyn Bridge from a man on the street before you would pay $500 for MEW Industries stock. Remember, buying stock, regularly or stocks online is a perception game.

Buying stock is a matter of identifying the factors involved that can affect the price. Don’t worry about the puzzled looks you get for Is Stock Options Trading Risky?

Are Stock Options Risky :

Most people believe that option players are extreme risk takers. The waiting period to see if you’re a big winner is a little longer than a horse race, but not much. In a month on two, if the stock does not go way up, you lose your entire investment bet. If the stock stays flat, most option buyers lose their entire bet as well. No wonder people think option trading is risky.

Buying stock options is extremely risky. Buying stock options may indeed be the risky kind of investment that scares most prudent investors. If we examined this one small part of stock market investing, we could understandably conclude that stock options investing involved high risk. Selling stock options is even more risky. Selling stock options, when viewed as a single transaction, is even worse! No wonder people believe that stock options trading is risky.

I stocks stay flat, you lose money (management fees and inflation reduce the value of your holdings). If stocks go down in value, you lose money. If the underlying stock goes down, you may still make a profit. Only if the stock goes down a great deal in a very short time will you lose money.

It seems that the mutual fund investment is a whole lot riskier than the stock options investment (not to mention that it yields a profit of only 1/10th what the stock option portfolio might gain). Why then does stock option investing get such a bad rap on the risk issue? The truth is that a properly-executed stock options strategy is considerably less risky than the purchase of stock or a mutual fund.

The fact that stock options investing takes work discourages most people from even considering an investment in stock options.

Fund Managers Do OK

By Neil Handley

Notwithstanding super funds reporting their biggest losses in almost two decades, fund managers received record fees.

Over $65 billion was wiped of super balances, yet fund managers were still paid about $15 billion.

The biggest losers were workers with their super in higher risk investment options such as Australian and international shares. At the same time, the biggest winners this year look set to be the managers of those share funds. They typically charge higher fees than other managers, which is fair considering their greater expertise (black joke).

Most people, however, have their superannuation in a balanced fund, which lost an average 6.5 per cent this year. At the same time these fund managers skimmed off anything from 1 to almost 3 per cent for doing the job.

The pros are expected to beat the market most of the time. Most of the time, they don’t.

One of the fund industry’s not-so-funny little problems is that most stock-fund managers can’t beat important benchmarks like the All Ordinaries Index. That index represents the average. Yet, only some 20 per cent of managers have beaten the Index over the last 15 years.

That means the vast majority of you, through fees levied against your funds, have been paying professionals for the privilege of earning subpar returns. If fund managers just threw darts at a stock list, you’d expect more of them to match the benchmark.

This is no small matter. Over time, poor performing funds take a huge bite out of what you might have reasonably expected.

The sad fact is that fund investors have the deck stacked against them when it comes to beating the averages. Here’s why:

1. Outgoings:

Fund managers never met a fee they didn’t like. They include, but are not limited to, management fees, custodial fees, auditing fees, directors’ fees and professional-services fees, marketing fees and sales commissions. Such “loads” aren’t reflected in official performance data but are a cost that cuts into your results.

2. Turnover:

In the typical stock fund, 4 out of 5 stocks held at the start of the year are gone by the end of the year. The trading costs subtract an additional figure from a fund’s gains.

In stating this I am reminded of an article in the Australian Financial Review dated October 2000 titled “Strategies and confessions of the market’s professional investors.” The article profiled one of BT Funds Management’s managers called a “senior international economic strategist” who had also been a senior economist with the Reserve Bank of Australia, was a University medallist with a first class honors degree in Economics and a Master of Science degree from the London School of Economics.

This manager was asked “it must be hard to consistently get the calls right? Are you often wrong?” The manager answered “even the cleverest analyst would be happy to correctly anticipate opportunities 65% to 70% of the time. The key to great strategy is the ability to recognize the 30% to 35% of calls which are not working —etc.” Are you sure you want to back that performance?

3. Cash:

The typical fund keeps 7 to 10 per cent of its assets in cash to finance redemptions. That part of the portfolio is a drag on performance when the stock market is hot.

Over long periods it’s inevitable that managed funds will trail the benchmarks by approximately 2 percentage points a year, reflecting their costs. The fee gorging that comes with actively managed funds is a lot to overcome.

And here is one of the two major reasons I prefer property to shares – the volatility.

Property won’t double overnight as shares can, but it won’t halve overnight either!

Sun Tzu said it best in “The Art of War” some 2,000 years before the birth of Christ “The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy”

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