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Enter a stock symbol to view that company's Altman Z-Score if it is a manufacturing company, or its Altman Z"-Score, if it is a non-financial, non-manufacturing company, and to view message board posts for that stock (Scores are available for premium members).
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Below is a list of today's twenty-five most distressed stocks (according to their Altman Z-Score or Z''-Score, respectively) with a share price of $5 or higher. For details on how this ranking list is compiled, please click here.
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SPY - It's still rough out there
I'm not sure if this can be verified by the site operator, but it seems that 2nd quarter earnings have buoyed Altman Z scores for the time being. I haven't seen many attractive new short ideas recently, so for now it's just watch and wait. The hardest part about waiting out a rally is ignoring the incessant chirping of bulltards who belive the premise of that silly bestseller "The Secret" - which is that anything is possible if you just BELIEVE it can happen; i.e., "we have nothing to fear but fear itself". How wrong, wrong, wrong they are.
One interesting economic development is that it seems that employers and employees have been mutually boycotting each other. It's like a nationwide "Lockout". Corporate earnings are up in no small part because businesses have not been hiring ( http://www.nytimes.com... ) and Americans don't want the "crummy, low-paying jobs" that are being offered anyway ( http://www.slate.com/i... ). So, it seems we are all on pause until the last straw settles. Eventually something will give, because the current situation is not sustainable. Perhaps it will be when unemployment benefits run out. The timetable for that will be after Republicans regain control of the House in late 2010 (or so Hesperian projects).
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2Q earnings and the recent stock rally do seem to have elevated Z-Scores recently.
Re the economy and employment, The FT's Lex column noted today that the last time the U.S. economy was this size (back in 2007), unemployment was half as high. So companies (collectively) have been producing about as much with fewer workers (then again, financial company revenues count as "production" too, and it doesn't take a lot of workers to make a vig when you can borrow money from the government at 0% and then lend it back to the government for close to 3%).
I'm sure unemployment insurance (particularly, the 99 week extensions of it) has dissuaded some job seekers from taking 'crappy' jobs. Another effect of the extended unemployment insurance, I think, is that it has delayed some days of reckoning. Yeah, there's some political discontent now, but not enough to divert the powers that be from hair-of-the-dog policies (e.g., continuing to inflate the education bubble, status quo on immigration, trying to re-inflate the housing bubble, etc.).