UAL Corporation (UAUA), the parent company of United Airlines, has announced the issue of $810 million notes to pay off existing debt. The $810 million in pass-through securities raised consists of $697 million of Class A certificates with a coupon interest rate of 9.75% expiring in Jan. 2017 and $113 million of Class B certificates with an interest rate of 12.0% expiring in Jan. 2016. A pass-through security is a fixed-income certificate against certain mortgage-backed securities, generally aircraft. Of the total proceeds raised from the offering, $493 million will be used to pay off equipment trust certificates issued from 2000 to 2002, while the remaining of the funds will be used for general corporate purposes. J.P. Morgan (JPM), Morgan Stanley & Co. (MS), Goldman Sachs & Co. (GS) are acting as joint book-running managers for the issue. In addition to the drop-off in ...

We have just launched with a brand new a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/trading_system/trading_system.aspx"Trading System/a builder which will allow you to create your own trading strategies and follow the trade signals generated via email. You will eventually have the opportunity to earn money selling it in the a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/trading_strategies/market_trading_strategies.aspx"Zignals MarketPlace/a. If you would like to read more about our Trading System builder you can do so a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/trading_system/trading_system_help.aspx"here/a. br /br /But first things first; FREE registration with Zignals followed by a prompt to download Microsoft's Silverlight will give access to the trading strategy builder. For this article I am working through the Zignals a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/dashboard/dashboard.aspx"Dashboard/a which gives full access to all of our services (a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/stock_alerts/stock_alerts.aspx"stock alerts/a, a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/stock_charts/stock_charts.aspx"stock charts/a, a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/stock_screener/stock_screener.aspx"stock screener/a and a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/portfolio_manager/portfolio_manager.aspx"portfolio manager/a) within a single application. The key advantage of using this over the individual applications is the seamless switching between applications. br /br /We shall start with a ...

Meryn King, the British counterpart to U.S. Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, had this to say in a speech yesterday: “The United Kingdom faces two fundamental long-run challenges. First, to rebalance the economy, with more resources allocated to business investment and net exports and fewer to consumption. "That is consistent with the need – now widely accepted – to eliminate the large structural fiscal deficit and to raise the national saving rate. It is part of a need for a wider rebalancing of domestic demand in the world economy away from those countries that borrowed and ran current account deficits towards those that lent and ran surpluses." Everything he has to say about the UK is true in spades for the US. The US. is more dependent on consumption than is the UK and perpetually runs trade (current account) deficits. We need for the US to ...

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – October 8, 2009 – Zacks Equity Research highlights Guess? (GES) as the Bull of the Day and Washington Federal (WFSL) the Bear of the Day. In addition, Zacks Equity Research provides analysis on J.P. Morgan (JPM), Citigroup (C) and Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST).

Full analysis of all these stocks is available at http://at.zacks.com/?id=2676

Here is a synopsis of all five stocks:

Bull of the Day:

Guess? (GES) reported better-than-expected results for the first half of 2010, thanks to strong North American sales, operating cost controls and smart inventory management. In addition, the company's strong cost-control efforts helped it maintain a lower operating cost structure, which in turn helped it navigate through the difficult economic conditions.

Management also issued optimistic guidance for the third quarter, although it declined to provide guidance for fiscal year 2010. For

...

The table below from the Federal Reserve of Atlanta is interesting. It looks at all the recessions since 1970, and how long it took for unemployment to peak after the recession technically ended, and how much longer after that that the Fed actually started to tighten up. The short 1980 recession, which was really the first part of a double-dip recession, is excluded. Note that unemployment always peaks after the recession is over. However, in earlier recessions the time lag between the end of the recession and the peak of unemployment was brief. This sort of holds for the 1970 recession as well, since there was a double peak in unemployment (6.1%) in both December of 1970 and in August of 1971. If the first peak were used, the time from the end of the recession to the unemployment peak would have been just one month, and to ...

UAL Corp. (UAL), the parent company of United Airlines, has announced a new public offering of $19 million common stock and $175 million convertible senior notes due 2029. The issue has been made in an attempt to raise cash for operations for the coming winter season when demand for air travel remains subdued. The company is bolstering its liquidity by taking advantage of the sentiment that fundamentals in airline industry have improved. In the public offering, UAL Corp. intends to grant its underwriters an option to acquire an added 2.85 million shares. The company has given the underwriters an option of nearly $26.3 million in additional convertible senior notes. Proceeds from the stock and debt offers would be used for general purposes. J.P. Morgan  (JPM) Morgan Stanley (MS) and Goldman Sachs & Co. (GS) are acting as joint book-running managers of both offerings....

This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• David Rosenberg (Financial Times): Equities carry too much risk, September 23, 2009. The banker J.P. Morgan was fond of saying: “I never buy at lows, I never sell at the highs, I play the middle 60 per cent.” Well, from our lens, we are well past that middle 60 per cent point of this bear market rally.

• Roman Frydman and Michael Goldberg (Financial Times): An economics of magical thinking, September 23, 2009. Confidence seems to be returning to markets almost everywhere, but the debates about what caused the worst crisis since the Great Depression show no sign of letting up. Instead, the spotlight has shifted from bankers, financial engineers and regulators to economists and their theories. This is not a

...

Palm Inc. (PALM) today raised its secondary offering of approximately 16 million shares of common stock (as announced on September 17) to 20 million shares. The company priced the offering at $16.25 per share. Upon the closing of the offering, Palm expects to receive net proceeds of approximately $313.1 million, which will be used for working capital and general corporate purposes. The company may receive $359.9 million in case the over-allotment option is exercised in full. The company also said that the underwriters have an option to purchase up to 3 million additional shares to cover over-allotments. Venture capital firm Elevation Partners, which owns a stake in Palm, plans to buy $35 million of shares in the sale. Goldman Sachs (GS) and J.P. Morgan (JPM) are serving as the joint book runners in the offering, and RBC Capital Markets is serving as co-manager....

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – September 16, 2009 – Zacks Equity Research highlights Joy Global (JOYG) as the Bull of the Day and Zions Bancorporation (ZION) the Bear of the Day. In addition, Zacks Equity Research provides analysis on Fannie (FNM), Freddie (FRE) and J.P. Morgan (JPM).

Full analysis of all these stocks is available at http://at.zacks.com/?id=2676

Here is a synopsis of all five stocks:

Bull of the Day:

We are confident about the long-term fundamentals of the mining industry, which is further supported by a sustainable secular shift in commodity demand in the emerging economies. This will provide Joy Global (JOYG) substantial growth potential once the global economy emerges from the ongoing turmoil.

Joy Global aims at maximizing operating efficiency and useful life of mining equipment through value-added aftermarket services, which gives the company significant edge over its competitors.

...

Yesterday I reviewed key sections of Obama's speech on Wall Street here: Obama On The Street.

In general I liked the speech, but think that the steps he has proposed are, at best, only a good first step. I hope that the proposals are strengthened in Congress, but have zero hope of that happening. More likely they will be watered down significantly. The end result is that we will face another market meltdown in the future; the only question is when.

Regulation of the financial industry is one of those extremely important, yet dry and dull subjects, that the general public will ignore, and the lobbyists will own. The bank lobby is extremely powerful and is going to fight things tooth and nail. Obama got a distinctly cool reception from the financial executives in the audience, with only a single round of applause.

However, one year after the government spent hundreds

...