“Hey Wall Street, why so serious?”
Dow 12,695 (-.98%) S&P 1,338 (-1.11%)
After enduring the worst market week since December 2011, welcome back. If you were looking for smiles and rainbows, then today was not your day and Wall Street was not your place. Not only was it literally raining outside the New York Stock Exchange, but the Dow fell 125 points to its lowest level since January on worries of Greece dropping the euro. The most notable development from Thursday’s infamous JP Morgan debacle was the departure of Chief Investment Officer Ina Drew, head of the unit responsible for the $2 billion trading loss – concerns over how this will affect other banks made financials stocks like Bank of America (BAC) and Citi (C) the day’s biggest losers.
Greece fails again to officially unify government after last week’s elections
Political deadlock in Greece entered its second straight week after today’s talks between Greek President Karolos Papoulias and leaders of the three main parties ended without a resolution. The primary conflict is over whether the country should continue using austerity measures that cut public funding in order chop down their Parthenon-sized debt. Politicians have until Thursday to agree on a policy and form a government or new elections will have to be called – and without a government, economists estimate that the debt-crushed country will run out of money by June and have to drop out of the euro currency. This would have an unknown impact on markets and be awkward.
Yahoo CEO resigns amid “biographical error” scandal, tells board he has cancer
Blaming sickness for an error at work has been taken to a whole new level. The error was by Scott Thompson, CEO of Yahoo (YHOO), lying on his company profile that he earned a degree from Stonehill College in Computer Science (he was actually an accounting major) and the sickness was thyroid cancer. Mr. Thompson resigned today amid his resume-deception scandal, citing “personal reasons,” as he simultaneously disclosed that he had a deadly disease. Investors were just pleased that he was replaced by someone who actually knows about computers and needn’t fudge his resume. Separate, but similar, Best Buy (BBY) stock dropped 1.5% after its founder, Richard Schulze, stepped down as Chairman of the Board. An internal probe revealed that his hand-picked successor as CEO, Brian Dunn (who quit last month), had an inappropriate relationship with a female employee and Schulze was in the know.
Tomorrow:
- France, Germany, Greece, Italy and the Netherlands report first quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) results for the Eurozone.
- Tuesday’s heavy serving of US economic data: “Retail Sales,” “Consumer Prices” and “New York Federal Reserve State Survey” all for April.
- JP Morgan’s (JPM) annual shareholder meeting – the stock has fallen since the trading loss story broke, so how will CEO Jamie Dimon continue Operation: Damage Control at this venue?
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