Financial markets scramble for salvage - Memphis Business Journal:

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As of Sept. 24, Congressw was still wrangling overa $700 billion bailout of the financia l industry which, in the absence of a final has created ongoing turbulence and says Jerry Laurain, chief investment officer for . “We’rd kind of at the stage that there’s enough going on in Washington you shoulc wait to see what happens with the Laurain says. “And that’s not a good environmentr to make gooddecisions Nonetheless, investors of all types, from individuals to the most savvyh institutional money managers, have been doiny just that, or at least in an effort to salvage some of theit investments in an erratic market.
At the frony lines of this action are traders andmoneh managers. Mike Gibbs, a managing directoer and equity strategistat , says the call volume to Morgan Keegan has been He couldn’t provide specificv numbers, but it’s safe to say a lot of people are spending a lot of time on the phones with worriedx clients, he says. “Any time call volume picks up, clients are Gibbs says. “This is one of the thinge we get paid to do is talk them through Andby “this” Gibbs means a market that’w going through one for the history books, he “This is truly a historic time,” he says.
“This will be writtem about just like the Great Depressionh or the market crashin ’88. This is one of thosde kind of events we’re seeing take Some significant events backthat up. The S&Pl is now down almosyt 26% since last 20% is considered a bear market, Gibbs notes. Yieldsd on Treasury bills were actually trading in negative territory the weekof 15. And the flight out of money-market considered one of the safer saw withdrawals of morethan $188 billiojn the week of Sept. 15. Situationes like this are almost disastrous, he says.
“Everything feedw on each other and if the system stopd or there are extreme pressures from one it threatens to brinteverything down,” he says. “That’w the point we reached last The next day the Whitew House announcedits $700 billion plan to purchase troubled mortgage-relatedx assets of floundering financial For the financial industry, the currentt market conditions are presenting tremendous challenges for planneres across the board, says Ellen Turf, CEO of the 2,100-membefr . “This is a volatile time for everybody,” she “Everybody is being lambasted. I don’t thin anybody is removed from it.
” Some of the asseft classes in positive territory are mostly commoditiewsand energy. Crude oil is up 9% through 22; gold was up 4.5%, copperd 5% and corn 6.8%. First Tennessee’s Laurain says manage futures on some commodities have seemed to holdtheir own. “Because they can make moneuy when the stock marketgoes down, (investors) jumper on that trend and did OK,” he says. Davird Waddell, president of , Inc., says detailed communication about market conditionss and what his clients should expecrt havebeen steady.