Quicken Loans Capital Markets Update for January 4, 2010

We are opening up with a fairly busy economic calendar this year, with some of the key releases being today’s ISM Manufacturing Index, Tuesday’s November Pending Home Sales release, and Friday’s December employment number. The ISM Index finished off on a high note today at 55.9, which is significantly higher than November’s 53.6. Readings above 50 indicate economic expansion.

The ISM Manufacturing Index is based on surveys of 300 purchasing managers nationwide, to represent 20 different industries of the manufacturing sector. This is

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I’ve always been impressed with the amount of financial info that Nicholas Financial (NICK) provides about its portfolio in its quarterly statements. I wish more companies were this forthcoming. I’ve assembled a portfolio summary on this spreadsheet of how they’ve done over the last several quarters.

By looking at this spreadsheet you can see why I’m such a big fan of the stock. The pre-tax bottom line is column N. However, the most important line to watch is column K, the provision for credit losses. That zoomed up during the credit crisis and it took out a huge chunk of NICK’s earnings.

The pre-tax yield before adjusting for credit losses has been remarkably consistent for the past 12 quarters, usually around 12.5%. The credi

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A leading mortgage broker Australian Finance Group, who says it helped secure finance for as much as 10 per cent of the Australian mortgage market, says that Westpac’s decision to raise its interest rate by 45 basis points or 20 basis points in excess of the official rise in interest rates, resulted in rivals picking up market share at its expense. <

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Several times in 2009, I came across this thoroughly interesting infographic, originally from VisualEconomics.com:

You can click on the image to see a larger version of it over at Visual Economics.

The picture depicts how the average American family spends their income based on Department of Labor data.

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What can you do when you don’t have health insurance and you can’t pay your medical bills that have been sent to a collections agency?

Well, that’s the question recently fielded by Bankrate.com’s Justin Harelik.

The reader’s mother has been dealing with bills for her open-heart surgery that were sent to collection in 1996! She worked with the collectors to lower the monthly payments to something she could afford on her social security payments, but now the agency is expecting her to pay the full $20,000 outstanding balance. This seems incredibly unfair, since she’s paying them in good faith and they are cashing the checks, but apparently it is perfectly legal for them to do.

Here are the 4 options laid out by Mr. Harelik:

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ANGRA DOS REIS, Brazil – A rain-loosened slab of hillside collapsed on three houses and an upscale waterfront lodge after New Year celebrations at an island resort near Rio de Janeiro, killing at least 17 people, Brazilian authorities said.

About 120 rescuers scrambled through mud and around toppled trees and large rocks to search for other survivors of the mudslide that also injured at least 10 people early Friday. Police helicopters and navy vessels were helping in the rescue efforts.

“People had never seen so much rain in this region,” Rio de Janeiro’s vice governor, Luiz Fernando Pezao, told Globo TV, and he indicated he feared the death toll could rise. “

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