For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – November 20, 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: Bank of America (BAC), MGIC (MTG), Fannie Mae (FNM), Freddie Mac (FRE) and The Gymboree Corp. (GYMB).

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Here are highlights from Thursday’s Analyst Blog:

Mortgage Delinquencies: Record High

The delinquency rate is going up much faster than foreclosures are being started. With unemployment high and rising, it is hard to see a lot of those delinquencies getting cured. Either the lenders will have to let people live indefinitely in their houses without

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The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported today that mortgage delinquencies hit a record high in the third quarter: "The delinquency rate for mortgage loans on one-to-four-unit residential properties rose to a seasonally adjusted rate of 9.64 percent of all loans outstanding as of the end of the third quarter of 2009, up 40 basis points from the second quarter of 2009, and up 265 basis points from one year ago, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) National Delinquency Survey. The non-seasonally adjusted delinquency rate increased 108 basis points from 8.86 percent in the second quarter of 2009 to 9.94 percent this quarter." (For more, click here.) Unlike the TransUnion report that came out yesterday, the definition of being delinquent is a bit more expansive in this report, covering all mortgages that are at least one payment behind, while the TransUnion report was for mortgages that ...

This morning Trans Union, the big credit bureau, released its quarterly report on mortgage delinquencies, and it was not pretty. Nationwide, 6.25% of all residential mortgages were at least 60 days past due in the third quarter, up from 5.81% in the second quarter and 3.96% a year ago. This was the 11th straight quarter that delinquencies increased. Mortgage delinquencies are the first step in a house eventually going into foreclosure, so look for those to start heading up again. Foreclosures have been held down by trial modifications under the HEMP program, but very few of those have gotten to the stage of being final modifications. And even when mortgages are modified, there is a strong tendency for those people to again find themselves in financial trouble. Clearly people not paying on their mortgages is not good news for the big banks like Bank of America (BAC) ...

Ugly, just plain ugly -- that's the best way to describe the September employment report. The economy dropped 263,000 jobs in the month, and 7.2 million now since the start of the recession back in December of 2007. The total number of unemployed rose to 15.1 million, an increase of 7.6 million since the recession began. That brought the unemployment rate up to 9.8%. Silver linings were few and far between in this report. One of the few good news items was that the number of jobs lost in August was revised to 201,000 from 216,000. However, July was revised down to a loss of 304,000 jobs from 276,000. This is the highest unemployment rate since the middle of 1983. Back in the early 1980’s, demographics (Baby Boomers and women entering the labor force) made the natural rate of unemployment much higher than it is today, so ...

Two of the main banking regulators, the OCC and the OTS, jointly released data on mortgage performance in the second quarter today, and the news was not good. The report covers 34 million individual first mortgages totaling about $6 Trillion. All types of delinquencies were up, but most distressing was the information about serious delinquencies, or mortgages that are more than 60 days past due. They reached 5.3% of all mortgages, up from 4.7% in the first quarter, an increase of 11.5%. Foreclosures-in-process reached 2.9% of all mortgages, up from 2.4% in the first quarter -- a 16.2% increase. It didn’t matter which risk category of loan you looked at, delinquencies were going up everywhere. The percentage of prime mortgages that were delinquent rose 10.5% to 3.0%, and are up 13.0% from a year ago. Alt-A delinquencies rose 11.1% from the first quarter to hit 10.3%, and ...

Based on a ranking analysis released on Wednesday by Virginia-based research firm SNL Financial, Bank of America Corporation (BAC) still remains the highest ranked banking institution in U.S. by second-quarter total assets. The analysis was based on the filings of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). According to the filing, as of June 30, 2009, Bank of America has total assets of $2.3 trillion and total deposits of $971 billion.   Earlier this week, Bank of America offered to repay a part of the $45 billion it had received from the U.S. government in relation to its participation in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Also, the repayment offer was aimed to end a loss-sharing deal with the government related to its acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co. The completion of the payments would enable Bank of America to reduce part of government involvement in its affairs....

Citigroup (C) today reported net income for 2Q09 at $4.3 billion, or $0.49 per diluted share. These results included a $6.7 billion after-tax gain associated with the sale of Smith Barney, which closed on June 1, 2009. Excluding the one-time gain, the operating loss for the quarter was about $0.27 per share, which is better than the analysts’ estimates of a loss of $0.37 per share. Like Bank of America (BAC), the range of the analysts’ estimates for Citi was very wide -- from a loss of 3 cents per share to a loss of 76 cents per share -- thus the consensus does not mean much, in our view. Total revenues were $30.0 billion, up $12.4 billion from 2Q08. Unlike some of the other big banks -- Goldman Sachs (GS), JP Morgan (JPM) and Bank of America, which had strong revenues from ...

Goldman Sachs (GS) reported its 2Q09 results this morning. Net income for the quarter at $2.7 billion, or $4.93 per share, (up from $2.05 billion, or $4.58 per share, during 2Q08), was way ahead of consensus estimates of $3.49 per share. The results demonstrate a very strong performance in its trading operations, partly offset by a one-time $426 million charge related to the repayment of $10 billion of TARP money. As credit spreads have continued to narrow, the fixed income, currency and commodities trading segment's revenue more than doubled to $6.8 billion. Equity underwriting revenues also soared, as many banks raised money to shore up their capital levels and repay TARP money during the last quarter. Goldman’s trading revenues have also been helped by the falling off of competition, which has led to increases in its market share. It has also been able to increase ...

If you live in the United States, there is a good chance the crisis in California is going to affect you. And if you own municipal bonds — either directly or indirectly through other investments — what’s happening in California could have a major impact on your finances.For years, state government budgets have been expanding as the economy grew and the rising housing market swelled property tax coffers. But the severe recession that has brought rising unemployment and a collapse in property values has drastically cut revenues from income, property, sales and corporate taxes.

And state governments are feeling the pinch. According to the National Conference of State Legislators, there are only three states (Arkansas, Wyoming, and North Dakota) that do not face budget shortfalls for fiscal years 2009 or 2010. In other words, 47 states are currently projected to run short on cash in the near future.

And California – the

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One of the most important aspects of this recession is the length of time people are out of work once they get their pink slips. The average length of time someone who is out of a job has been looking is now up to 24.5 weeks -- a dramatic increase from the 22.5 weeks last month and 17.6 weeks a year ago.This simply blows away the previous record (other than last month) of 21.2 weeks, which was touched in July of 1983. Of course, there is a skewed distribution of unemployed duration since there is no limit on the upside, but you can't be unemployed for less than 0 weeks. The median length of unemployment has also been rising, though, now up to 17.9 weeks from 14.9 weeks in May and 10.1 weeks a year ago. It is also at a record with the worst levels prior ...