Credit Suisse is upgrading span style="font-weight: bold;"XL Capital (NYSE:XL)/span to Outperform from Neutral while raising target to $18 (prev. $13).br /div style="text-align: justify;"br /Analyst notes they are upgrading XL for 2 reasons:br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"- 1. Improving fixed income markets should lead to/spanspan style="font-weight: bold;" a strengthening capital position./span CSFB believes it is unlikely that the company will raise capital even if fixed income markets deteriorate significantly.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"- 2. Firm believes that XL's Franchise is stabilizing with lower top line declines going forward and underwriters continuing to maintain pricing discipline./span In their view, a stronger capital position and stabilization in the franchise could lead to the removal of the negative ratings outlook by rating agencies in 6-12 months which should lead to an improvement in valuation from distressed levels as investors focus more on book value growth rather than the company's survival. As fixed income markets ...

By Dan Ferris, editor, Extreme Value/ Two recent headlines in the Wall Street Journal have confirmed my worst fears are coming true... much faster than I thought they would: On Tuesday, the Journal ran a story called "Life Insurers Are Finding Their Fates Tied to Stocks." It confirmed what I told my subscribers in the latest issue of Extreme Value. Stock market losses might hit more than your equity portfolio... Many life insurance companies sell variable annuities and other guaranteed return products. These products guarantee the investor will receive either a minimum return... or the gain in the S and P 500... whichever one is larger. With the big stock indexes way down, losses have already piled up. The hedging that supports guaranteed investment products is too dense to get into here... But as the Journal pointed out on Tuesday, big life insurers like Lincoln National and Hartford have already suffered ratings downgrades due ...