Pre Market Report for August 12th 2008

August 12, 2008 by Chuck · Leave a Comment

Russian President has announced a halt to offensive operations in Georgia. However reports still come in of new bombings and/or attacks in the region. This remains a tense situation.

Last night Lisa posted a chart in here nightly commentary of the Retail Sector (RTH) and how it had met up with a trend line resistance. Based on new information this morning…

ICSC/UBS WEEKLY CHAIN STORE SALES W/E AUG 9TH: -1.1% W/W; +2.6% Y/Y
-Note this is the largest 1-week drop in the series since week ending January 29th

… it would not be unexpected to see the retail sector begin to pull back. Watch the RTH and the XLY for declines in the coming days.

This morning the financial sector came under some pressure with some downgrades and earnings among the big Wall Street firms.

UBS - REPORTS Q2 NET LOSS CHF358M V CHF281M LOSS EXPECTED; NAMES JOHN CRYAN NEW CFO, SHUFFLES BOARD; TO SEPARATE INVESTMENT BANK FROM PRIVATE BANK

- Said its investment bank from private bank will be separated, backing away from its integrated model, but it didn’t mention any planned asset sales
- Q2 net new money outflows in wealth management operations CHF17.3B
- Q2 business banking Switzerland added net outflows of CHF2B
- Q2 Global Asset Management outflows CHF24.5B
- Results hurt by realized and unrealized losses of $5.1B (write down)
- Reports a provision of $900M on securities settlement
- The firm does not see any improvement in financial market trends
- BIS Tier 1 Capital ratio 11.6% at June 30 v 6.9% on March 30
- BIS Total Capital Ratio 15.7% at June 30 v 10.7% on March 30
- Sally Bott, Rainer-Marc Frey, Bruno Gehrig and William G. Parrett proposed as candidates for election to the Board of Directors of UBS AG at the EGM of 2 October 2008.