Citigroup’s Good Bad News!

This week brought in a mixed bag of news. It was one of those odd weeks where sometimes a loss brings a rise in the stock market because it wasn’t as bad as everyone expected, and bad news often tempered itself even as it was released. This was a mixed bag week, and not a clear week of good economic news, but nor was it a terrible week, either. There were a few major news events. Citigroup released their reports, which showed that they lost money, but it was their smallest loss since 2007, and in fact they had operated at a profit prior to paying out dividends to preferred stockholders. Because this showed more stability than expected, Citigroup stock actually went up.

General Electric released their first quarter earnings, which saw a fall of 36%. Still, this wasn’t as bad as many economists were predicting, and while that’s not great news, a little bad news is still far better than a lot of it. While more companies are still announcing predicted job cuts, the sheer number of jobs being projected as cut are far lower than they were months ago. Numbers like 10,000 are being replaced by numbers like 2,000. While that is of little comfort to those who are still going to lose their jobs, it does show a strong slowing of the downward trends that have plagued the world wide economy for many months.

The Citigroup reports are boosted even more strongly by the other major banks, many of which are showing surprisingly strong profit reports. On the negative side, housing got a knock as the company General Growth Properties, the 2^nd largest mall owner in the United States, is filing for bankruptcy protection. This company owns more than 200 U.S. malls, and while there is tempered good news (as the assets are considered solid, so there are expected to be many companies lining up to pick up any property that goes on the block).   

There’s a major mixed bag of economic reports from a wide range of countries this week, so without any further wait, here is the week in review.

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