For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – August 6, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Freddie Mac (FRE), J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM), Barclays Capital, Inc. (BCS), Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc. (DB) and International Business Machines (IBM).

Get the most recent insight from Zacks Equity Research with the free Profit from the Pros newsletter: http://at.zacks.com/?id=5513

Here are highlights from Wednesday’s Analyst Blog:

Freddie Mac Issues 3-yr Notes

Freddie Mac (FRE) announced its plans to issue a new series of 3-year Reference Notes that will be due September 21, 2012. The issue will be priced today and will settle tomorrow at a benchmark size.

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Freddie Mac (FRE) announced its plans to issue a new series of 3-year Reference Notes that will be due September 21, 2012. The issue will be priced today and will settle tomorrow at a benchmark size. The company refrained from disclosing the size of the issue.

J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM), Barclays Capital, Inc. (BCS) and Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc. (DB) have been appointed as dealers and managers to the sale. The company also plans to apply to list the security on the Euro MTF market of the Luxembourg Stock Exchange.

Freddie Mac has been among the hardest hit financial firms by the housing slump, credit crisis and ongoing recession. We do foresee the current expansion of the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) to bring down losses from foreclosures in the upcoming quarters.

However, we expect the government conservatorship to continue for a long time and thus see no value

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Currencies rally…  More on the BRIC’s…  New Zealand’s GDP contracts..  Bernanke gets grilled! And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Good day… And a Happy Friday to one and all! The end of what seemed to be a very long week… The last weekend in June, can you believe that? Next week, we’ll be getting ready for the 4th of July celebrations! WOW!

Well… What a volatile week it has been in the currencies! Up, down, all around, and settling back to levels that we saw before the Fed’s FOMC meeting earlier this week. Suddenly, investors are looking for yield again… Looks like they are “Desperately Seeking (not Susan) Yield! And why not? The Fed, and the Bank of Canada (BOC) have come out and said that there will be no interest rate hikes until we’ve turned quite a few pages on the 2010 calendar.

So, with investors clamoring for yield, the dollar gets taken to the woodshed… As I

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The U.S. trade deficit narrowed for a record sixth consecutive month in January to the lowest level in six years as imports and exports both slumped on weak domestic demand, government data showed on Friday.

Weak American demand for everything from oil to automobiles led to shrinking imports, which fell faster than exports, reducing the gap by 9.7% to $36 billion, compared to the $38 billion Wall Street expected, the Commerce Department said Friday in Washington.

“The narrowing reflects the ongoing economic downturn. U.S. consumers are pulling back and that’s resulting in fewer imports while exports are falling,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pa., told Reuters. “It reflects how bad economic conditions are everywhere.”

For the first time since 1982, total world trade is expected to decline this year as businesses and consumers cut back on spending in response to relentlessly poor economic

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What’s Keeping Obama up at Night?

by Don Miller Contributing Writer, Money Morning

Editors Note: Inevitably the fanfare and excitement about our new administration will die down, and they will have to get down to work. President-elect Obama may have a laundry list of urgent jobs, but fixing the economy is priority one. The market’s problems are about to become his problems. Money Morning gives us a taste of the economic data that’s been keeping the president-elect and Wall Street up at night – and what we should be paying attention to as well.

Stock Market Gyrates as Reports Show Economy Deep in Recession

The stock market struggled to recover from a tumultuous 2008 yesterday (Tuesday) while digesting a trio of downbeat economic reports from the manufacturing, housing and service sectors.

The reports included separate data on factory orders and pending home sales for November, as well as the Institute of

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The stock market struggled to recover from a tumultuous 2008 yesterday (Tuesday) while digesting a trio of downbeat economic reports from the manufacturing, housing and service sectors.

The reports included separate data on factory orders and pending home sales for November, as well as the Institute of Supply Management report on the non-manufacturing index for December - giving investors fresh insight into the depth of the current recession.

Despite the overall negative tone of the reports, some analysts maintain the worst may be over.

“While the economic headlines remain grim, stocks are holding higher in quiet trading because a lot of the bad news was already discounted when the stock market crashed in 2008,” Frederic Ruffy, options strategist, at WhatsTrading.com told MarketWatch.

Factory Orders Fall Biggest Since 1992

Data from the manufacturing sector confirmed that the recession accelerated in November. Orders placed

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Per the Financial Times today: Ecuador’s bonds fell sharply after the decision to default on $3.86bn of foreign debt on Friday, with its main benchmark bond yield jumping more than 100 basis points since Friday to trade at about 60 per cent. The decision of Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s radical leftist president, could return to haunt the country and others in the region as investors subsequently demand higher yields to buy their bonds. Although Ecuador attracts only investors willing to take big risks in exchange for high yields, even the most risk-hungry funds may think twice now. The country’s credit default swap prices, a form of insurance against debt defaults, are trading at more than 4,000 basis points, one of the highest sovereign prices in the world. The failure to pay a $30.6 million interest payment on its 2012 global bonds, despite the fact ...

The U.S. trade deficit grew in October as both the volume of oil exports and our trade deficit with China surged to a record highs. A widening deficit means the United States will not be able to rely on trade to help pull the economy out of what may be the longest recession in the post-World War II era.

The U.S. trade deficit grew to $57.2 billion in October, a 1.1% increase from $56.5 billion in September. Imports fell 1.3% to $208.9 billion, but exports fell even further, dropping 2.2% to $151.7 billion - the lowest level since January.

On reason for the reason for the larger deficit was more lopsided trade with China. The trade gap with China increased to a record $28 billion, up from $27.8 billion in September. China last year supplanted Canada as the largest source U.S. imports. Since joining the World Trade Organization in 2001, China has

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Highland Capital FundHighland Capital | Hedge Fund NotesThe following piece on Highland Capital Fund is being published as part of our Hedge Fund Tracker Tool, our daily effort to track hedge funds in the industry.Resource #1: Highland Capital shuts down Crusader Fund: Here is a news piece from Bloomberg on this announcement with a picture of one of the co-founders, James Dondero to the left:Highland Capital Management LP will close its flagship Highland Crusader Fund and another hedge fund after losses on high-yield, high-risk loans and other types of debt, according to a person with knowledge of the decision.Highland, whose total assets under management has shrunk to about $35 billion from $40 billion in March, will wind down the Crusader fund and the Highland Credit Strategies ...

There's a lot of commentary -- more comprehensive and up to date than I can provide -- on the crisis and the attempts to resolve the logjam in the financial markets.[0], [1] But I stilll have a couple of thoughts about the causes, and the implications, of the process that has resulted in so much turmoil this week.

First, what is the source of the crisis? Is it as is asserted here in this statement from John McCain today?

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There are certainly plenty of places to point fingers, and it may be hard to pinpoint the original event that set it all in motion. But let me give you an educated guess. The financial crisis we're living through today started with the corruption and manipulation of our home mortgage system. At the center of the problem were the lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats who succeeded in persuading Congress and the

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