Edison International's (EIX) adjusted EPS of $1.09 in the third quarter of fiscal 2009 pushed past the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.05 by 4 cents. However, adjusted EPS for the quarter fell short of the year-ago $1.46 EPS.

On a GAAP basis, the company reported quarterly EPS of $1.23, compared to $1.33 in the year-ago quarter. The discrepancy between GAAP and adjusted EPS were due to non-cash accounting benefit from the final regulatory approval to transfer its Mountainview power plant to utility rate base.

Edison's revenue fell 14.7% year-over-year to $3.7 billion from $4.3 billion. The downside was more prominent in electric utility revenue (83.7% of total revenues), which decreased 11.6% year-over-year. Competitive power generation revenues fell 27.2% to $592 million. Financial services and other revenues were only $7 million in the reported quarter from $14 million in the year-ago quarter.

Southern California Edison's (SCE) GAAP EPS in the reported quarter

...

I’m always interested in how Government ties in with the markets. It’s been a bit of a hobby of mine, along with WWII battles, over the past 2-3 years and there’s no bigger tie then Goldman and the Government then recently…and BOY is it bigger then we know! In my recent late night surfing I came across Greg Roy. Greg recently released a special report with the same title of this blog post, Goldman Sachs’ Next Slaughter of the Stock Market Lambs, and being the digger I am, I read the full report and cold called him. I asked if I could repost a part of the report for my Trader’s Blog members. After some convincing he said ok.

This guy knows what he is talking about… Here is an exclusive excerpt from his newly released report Goldman Sachs’ Next Slaughter of the Stock Market Lambs.

===================================================================

Goldman Sachs

...

Today, we are featuring top-performing “Corporate High Yield" mutual funds, which primarily seek high current income through investment in lower-rated corporate bonds.

Investors can find such funds by checking out the entire list of the Zacks #1 Rank Corporate High Yield Funds list.

3 Excellent Picks

Rydex/SGI High Yield A (SIHAX) was incepted in August 1996. It seeks high current income with capital appreciation as a secondary objective.

The fund invests at least 80% of its assets in a broad range of high-yield, high risk debt securities rated in medium or lower rating categories. The debt securities in which the fund invests are primarily domestic securities. However, it may also invest in dollar denominated foreign securities.

The fund pays dividends monthly. Capital gains are distributed at least annually. As of June 2009, its portfolio turnover was 29%.

David G. Toussaint has been lead manager of the fund since April 2000. Toussaint is a Chartered

...

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – November 3, 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: CIT Group Inc. (CIT), Dean Foods (DF), Frontier Communications (FTR), Verizon Communications (VZ) and Time Warner Cable (TWC).

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 Monday’s AnalystBlog:

CIT Group Files Chapter 11

CIT Group Inc. (CIT) has filed for Chapter 11 protection on Sunday. The company struggled for months to avoid collapse since the recession elicited billions of dollars in loan losses, and the financial crisis made it incapable of funding itself from

...

Exchange-traded notes are like the forgotten stepchildren of the ETF industry: unloved and overlooked. Investors (particularly taxable investors) are missing out.

According to the National Stock Exchange, U.S. ETNs had $6.9 billion in assets at the end of September. ETFs were literally 100 times more prevalent, with $697 billion in assets. That included $62 billion just in long commodity ETFs.

That’s just crazy. And it highlights investors’ irrational fear of the ETN product structure.

I remember when ETNs first came to market in 2006: Investors couldn’t get enough of them. Barclays Capital launched the iPath Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index ETN (NYSEArca: DJP) and it quickly gathered assets.

The reason was simple: ETNs offered two huge advantages over commodity ETFs.

First, they promised perfect tracking. If you bought an ETN, you would receive the full return of the benchmark, minus the fund’s expenses. Period. That’s handy, since commodity ETFs have been more prone to tracking error

...

This is Part 2 of a guest contribution by David Kotok* and Bob Eisenbeis** of Cumberland Advisors. (Click here for Part 1.)

Note to Readers:  This is the second of our two-part commentary on the Fed’s exit strategy and the role the Fed has played in complicating its own operating strategies and ability to conduct monetary policy.

In their Wall St. Journal op-ed entitled “The BLOB That Ate Monetary Policy” (September 27, 2009), the Dallas Fed’s Fisher and Rosenblum use the movie metaphor of the BLOB to describe the “too big to fail” banks.  They argue that these BLOBs stood in the way of the Fed’s monetary policy’s low interest rates and thereby “gummed up” the “monetary policy channel,” which would otherwise be able to stimulate economic activity.

The op-ed doesn’t name names.  But we will.  If you examine the list of the Fed’s primary

...

By Morris A. Davis

Today, we're fortunate to have Morris A. Davis, Assistant Professor of Real Estate and Urban Land Economics at University of Wisconsin School of Business, as a guest contributor.

Research by economists inside the Federal Reserve system have shown that two events typically lead homeowners to default on their mortgage (see here). First, the value of the house must be less than the value of the mortgage ("under water"). This is necessary but not sufficient (see here). Second, homeowners must experience a significant disruption and loss of income. The available data suggest there might be a big increase in foreclosures in the immediate future. Zillow estimates that 22 percent of the 50 million homeowners with mortgages are currently under water; unemployment rates are high and are expected to remain high for the next two years.

Why

...

The market has definitely improved much since March, 09, but has it improved for the right reasons? Should investors still be bearish? In this article, I explore the biggest justifications held out by the “bears”.

“What’s with the insiders?”

Insiders are those people who have access to non-public information about a company – ie. Employees, senior management, executives. In recent months, insider selling has FAR outweighed insider buying by many multiples. With figures courtesy of TrimTabs (which tracks insider transactions), during August, insiders averaged $210 million worth of shares bought, while they sold $6.3 billion worth. That’s a whopping 30x sell-to-buy ratio! In the last week of August alone, there were $8 million worth of insider buys corresponding to $520 million of insider sales. That means a ratio of nearly 62x! If insiders are selling, and they know more than the market, then what does that show?

“Where is the volume?”

One of the …

The dollar remains well bid…G-7 to hand currencies off to G-20? Car Sales collapse…Auditing the Lehman cash movements…And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Good day… And a Happy Friday to one and all! Yesterday, I welcomed you to October. I had been prepared to tell you about a famous radio station here in St. Louis, that has long called October… Rocktober… But forgot, as usual! But anyway… It’s the first Fantastico Friday of Rocktober!

Today is a Jobs Jamboree Friday too! And… I’m not getting a good feeling about today’s labor report at the Jobs Jamboree. The forecast is for jobs losses to fall from -216,000 to -175,000, but the unemployment rate to tick up to 9.8% from 9.7%… I got the feeling, baby, baby, I got the feeling… Oops, a little James Brown on Fantastico Friday never hurts! But what I was saying was I’m getting the feeling that there are risks

...

Not much happened yesterday. The Dow fell 47 points. The newspapers attributed the reversal to surprisingly low consumer confidence numbers. Apparently, consumers aren’t so sure this crisis is over. As we reported yesterday, they’re saving money… maybe even at an 8% rate.

Oil didn’t move yesterday. Neither did gold.

The Wall Street Journal reported that markets were reacting to “mixed data”.

That is to say, some reports were encouraging. Others were not. It was as if one weather forecaster called for a blizzard. The other for sunny skies and warm temperatures. Investors didn’t know how to dress.

Among the dark clouds was an item on the falloff in tax revenues. States are having a hard time balancing their books, because their tax receipts are declining. The WSJ reports that they are running 17% below last year.

Since states cannot print money, they’re forced to make cutbacks – typically reducing hours worked per employee as

...