AGU Fundamental Research Investment Analysis, Agrium Inc.

This is a big week for earnings in the financial sector, and it all starts off with Goldman on Tuesday morning. While, expectations are high, we have never been one to bet against Goldman Sachs.

Wells Fargo preannounced some very impressive results for the first quarter. Surpringly, the biggest strength was from their mortgage business that saw a record number of mortgage applications in March.

A sad day for Citi as there stock has dropped below the one dollar.

Financials were the story of the day on Friday, with Bank of America leading the way gaining 26 percent. However, there is so much going on politically right now that Monday will likely be another volatile day with the direction of the swing resting on the speech by Tim Geithner about the next phase in the bank rescue.

Interestingly, the NASDAQ OMX Group has created a new index to track the performance of companies that have received more than $1 billion in bailout money. This is an interesting idea on many fronts and it was only a matter of time before someone decided to track the massive intervention into the financial markets.

A sweeping downgrade of financials by credit rating agency S&P was one of the major stories of the day. Or on second thought, what does this tell us that we did not already know, and so far the market has not even noticed.

Wells Fargo issued better than expected earnings and hiked their dividend. They are taking some heat from certain anlaysts over raising their dividend because in this economy where capital is held onto tightly, couldn’t they have put there money to work in a more effective manner than in the form of giving back to shareholders. Perhaps in restoring confidence in themselves WFC will have a greater impact on the financials than were they to invest te money elsewhere.

Regional bank, National City Corporation ( NCC) appears to be in discussions to either sell all or a portion of itself and the most likely suitor is NCC’s cross-town (Cleveland) rival KeyCorp. ( KEY). Other potential buyers include larger banks Wells Fargo, JP Morgan/Chase or PNC. NCC has been in a tailspin […]

Financial stocks, for the most part, are getting a really nice bounce today. Some of the biggest banks have enjoyed a considerable rise today including Bank of America, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, and JP Morgan Chase. It appears that the market is beginning to come to terms with the economic slowdown and is […]

There were a couple of very interesting pieces of news from the this morning that I believe are important. One, a study by the WSJ, has shown that banks thus far are lending less than before they received the TARP funding. The second comes from a newsletter from John Mauldin that warns of the possibility of more TARP programs headed our way.