Common sense seems to dictate that rising mortgage rates will hurt the housing market by depressing the demand for purchase-money mortgages. But here's the thing: The data suggests that the exact opposite may be occurring.
At the end of last week, the nation's two largest mortgage originators, Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC ) and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM ) , released earnings for the second quarter. Insofar as headline numbers go, both banks had stellar quarters, netting $5.5 billion and $6.5 billion, respectively -- Citigroup (NYSE: C ) , which reported today, had a similar experience.
But if you dig a bit further, and into their mortgage operations specifically, the story is more nuanced. As expected, the volume of refinance mortgages fell markedly relative to the first quarter. Wells Fargo's dropped by 17% and JPMorgan's by 6%.
Unexpectedly, however, both banks reported dramatic sequential upticks in purchase-money mortgage originations. Volume at Wells Fargo was 46% higher than the first quarter, and JPMorgan reported an improvement of 44%.
Best Medical Stocks For 2015: Rose Rock Midstream LP (RRMS)
Rose Rock Midstream, L.P., incorporated on August 5, 2011, owns, operates, develops and acquires a diversified portfolio of midstream energy assets. The Company is engaged in the business of crude oil gathering, transportation, storage, distribution and marketing in Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Texas. It serves areas that are through its exposure to the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and Montana, the Denver-Julesburg Basin (DJ Basin) and the Niobrara Shale in the Rocky Mountain region, and the Granite Wash and the Mississippi Lime Play in the Mid-Continent region. The Company�� operations are conducted through, and the Company�� operating assets are owned by, its wholly-owned subsidiary, Rose Rock Midstream Operating, LLC, and its subsidiaries.
Cushing Storage
The Company owns and operates 28 crude oil storage tanks in Cushing with an aggregate storage capacity of approximately 7.0 million barrels and an additional 600,000 barrels of storage. The Company�� storage terminal has a combined capacity to deliver 480,000 barrels of crude oil per day, and has inbound connections with the White Cliffs Pipeline from Platteville, Colorado, the Great Salt Plains Pipeline, the Cimarron Pipeline from Boyer, Kansas, its Kansas and Oklahoma gathering system and two-way interconnections with all of the other storage terminals in Cushing.
Kansas and Oklahoma System
The Company owns and operates an approximately 640-mile crude oil gathering and transportation pipeline system and over 660,000 barrels of associated storage in Kansas and northern Oklahoma. This system gathers crude oil from throughout the region and delivers it to third-party pipelines and refineries and its Cushing terminal. During the years ended December 31, 2012, the Company�� transported an average of approximately 52,000 and 36,000 barrels per day, respectively, from multiple receipt points. The system has pipeline diameters ranging from 4 to 12 inches and! has 25 pump stations. This system also includes 18 truck unloading stations.
Bakken Shale Operations
The Company owns and operates a crude oil gathering, storage, transportation and marketing business in the Bakken Shale area in western North Dakota and eastern Montana. Using its fleet of trucks and two truck unloading facilities, the Company purchase crude oil at the wellhead, transport it through its trucks and third-party pipelines, including the Enbridge North Dakota System, and market it to customers. The Company owns tanks in Trenton and Stanley, North Dakota, with an aggregate storage capacity of 61,800 barrels that connect into the Enbridge North Dakota System. During the year ended December 31, 2012, the Company handled and marketed an average of approximately 7,100 barrels per day.
Platteville Facility
The Company owns and operates a modern, sixteen-lane crude oil truck unloading facility in Platteville, Colorado, which connects to the origination point of the White Cliffs Pipeline. Much of the crude oil production from the DJ Basin and the nearby Niobrara Shale must initially be transported by truck due to a shortage of gathering capacity. Throughput at the facility averaged 43,500 and 32,400 barrels per day for the years ended December 31, 2012. The facility includes 230,000 barrels of crude oil storage capacity. The Platteville facility also allows customer pipeline gathering systems to connect to the origination point of the White Cliffs Pipeline.
The Company competes with Enbridge Energy Partners, L.P., Magellan Midstream Partners, L.P., Plains All American Pipeline, L.P., Blueknight Energy Partners, L.P., Enterprise Products Partners L.P, MV Purchasing, LLC, Plains All American Pipeline, L.P., National Cooperative Refinery Association, Plains All American Pipeline, L.P. and Eighty Eight Oil LLC.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Robert Rapier]
Rose Rock Midstream (NYSE: RRMS) isn’t a name we have discussed much here. RRMS is an MLP that owns oil-gathering, storage and transportation assets in Colorado, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Texas. The MLP was formed by midstream energy giant SemGroup (NYSE: SEMG), which acts as the general partner. RRMS had its IPO in December 2011 with an initial EV of $1.2 billion and a minimum yield of 4.7 percent.
Top Rising Companies To Invest In Right Now: Ashmore Group PLC (ASHM)
Ashmore Group plc (Ashmore) is engaged in providing investment management services. The Company is a fund manager across six core investment themes, such as external debt, local currency, corporate debt, blended debt, equities, multi-strategy, alternatives and overlay/liquidity. External debt is a diversified portfolio of emerging market debt assets. Local currency takes advantage of the expanding local currency and local currency denominated debt market. Corporate debt focuses on the developing corporate debt asset class. Blended debt mandates specifically combine external, local currency and corporate debt measured against tailor-made blended indices. Multi-strategy is a dynamic asset allocation across other investment themes. Equities Focuses on liquidity and top down macro country selection in publicly traded. Overlay/liquidity helps to separate and centralize the currency risk of an underlying emerging market asset class. Advisors' Opinion:- [By Inyoung Hwang]
Ashmore Group Plc (ASHM) jumped 5.3 percent to 382.2 pence. The U.K. fund manager that invests in emerging markets reported full-year pretax profit and revenue that exceeded estimates. The London-based company also raised its dividend.
Top Rising Companies To Invest In Right Now: Rubicon Technology Inc.(RBCN)
Rubicon Technology, Inc. develops, manufactures, and sells monocrystalline sapphire and other crystalline products for light-emitting diodes (LED), radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs), blue laser diodes, optoelectronics, and other optical applications. The company fabricates its products from the boules and sells them in various categories, including core, as-cut, as-ground, and polished forms in two, three, four, six, and eight inch diameter wafers. It manufactures sapphire substrates and optical windows, including two inch to four inch sapphire cores and wafers for use in LEDs and blue laser diodes for solid state lighting and electronic applications; six-inch polished sapphire wafers that are used in the LED applications and in silicon-on-sapphire RFICs; and eight inch wafers for research and development efforts, as well as sells sapphire products used for windows and lenses in military, aerospace, sensor, and other applications. The company also offers opticall y-polished windows and ground window blanks of sapphire and various fluoride compounds, such as calcium, barium, and magnesium fluoride. Rubicon Technology, Inc. sells its products primarily to wafer polishing companies and semiconductor device manufacturers in Asia, North America, and Europe. The company was incorporated in 2001 and is headquartered in Bensenville, Illinois.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Jon C. Ogg]
Rubicon Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: RBCN) was downgraded to Underperform from Perform at Oppenheimer.
Universal Display Corp. (NASDAQ: OLED) was downgraded to Sell from Hold at Canaccord Genuity.
- [By Jake L'Ecuyer]
Leading and Lagging Sectors
Technology stocks gained Tuesday, with Ku6 Media Co (NASDAQ: KUTV) leading advancers. Among leading tech stocks, gains came from Rubicon Technology (NASDAQ: RBCN), Bitauto Holdings (NYSE: BITA) and Sify Technologies (NASDAQ: SIFY). - [By Jake L'Ecuyer]
Leading and Lagging Sectors
Technology stocks gained Tuesday, with Ku6 Media Co (NASDAQ: KUTV) leading advancers. Among leading tech stocks, gains came from Rubicon Technology (NASDAQ: RBCN), Bitauto Holdings (NYSE: BITA) and Sify Technologies (NASDAQ: SIFY). Utilities shares dropped by 0.11 percent in the US market today.
Top Rising Companies To Invest In Right Now: Tesoro Petroleum Corporation(TSO)
Tesoro Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, engages in refining and marketing petroleum products in the United States. It operates in two segments, Refining and Retail. The Refining segment refines crude oil and other feed stocks into transportation fuels, such as gasoline, gasoline blendstocks, jet fuel, and diesel fuel, as well as other products, including heavy fuel oils, liquefied petroleum gas, petroleum coke, and asphalt. This segment also sells refined products in the wholesale market primarily through independent unbranded distributors; and in the bulk market primarily to independent unbranded distributors, other refining and marketing companies, utilities, railroads, airlines and marine, and industrial end-users. It owns and operates 7 refineries with a combined crude oil capacity of 665 thousand barrels per day. The Retail segment sells gasoline, diesel fuel, and convenience store items through company-operated retail stations, and third-party branded dea lers and distributors in the western United States. As of December 31, 2011, this segment had 1,175 branded retail stations under the Tesoro, Shell, and USA Gasoline brands. The company was formerly known as Tesoro Petroleum Corporation and changed its name to Tesoro Corporation in November 2004. Tesoro Corporation was founded in 1939 and is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Robert Rapier]
RRMS didn’t see the same kind of price surge in 2013 as ACMP, so offers a more generous annualized yield of 5.2 percent. RRMS also has a lower total debt/equity (mrq), at 22 percent versus ACMP’s 71 percent. For Q3 2013, RRMS reported $15.4 million in adjusted EBITDA, a year-over-year increase of 65 percent. In comparison, adjusted EBITDA for the 2013 third quarter totaled $227 million for ACMP, an increase of 90 percent year-over-year.
Tesoro Logistics (NYSE: TLLP) was spun off by the refiner Tesoro (NYSE: TSO) in 2011 to operate pipelines leading to and from its plants. TLLP’s assets consist of a crude oil gathering system in the Williston Basin area of North Dakota and Montana, 17 refined product and storage terminals, three dedicated storage facilities, four California marine terminals, a rail unloading facility, and a petroleum coke handling facility.
Distributions have grown steadily since the IPO, from $1.35 per unit (annualized) in Q2 2011 to the current annualized level of $2.18/unit. At a current unit price of $53.49, TLLP is well off its 52-week high of $71.92. Distributions have increased each quarter since the IPO, and units currently have a yield of 4.2 percent. But investors should be wary given that TLLP is highly leveraged. Its total debt/equity (mrq) is nearly 400 percent, much higher than most competitors.Of the three MLPs — ACMP, RRMS and TLLP — RRMS looks best at the moment with the least downside risk. It is by far the least-leveraged, didn’t have a huge run-up in 2013 that depressed its yield, and it has managed to steadily grow revenues and distributions since its IPO.
- [By Aimee Duffy]
Hawaii only has two operating oil refineries. Tesoro (NYSE: TSO ) plans to close the one it owns, Chevron (NYSE: CVX ) owns the other, and the cost of shipping crude oil out there is the main reason that gas is so expensive. California is ranked second largely because it has the highest taxes on gas in the country. The combined local, state, and federal taxes tack on just shy of $0.69 per gallon, according to the American Petroleum Institute.
Top Rising Companies To Invest In Right Now: Market Vectors Brazil Small-Cap ETF (BRF)
Market Vectors Brazil Small-Cap ETF (the Fund) seeks to replicate as closely as possible the price and yield performance of the Market Vectors Brazil Small-Cap Index (the Index). The Index is a rules-based, modified market capitalization-weighted, float-adjusted index consisting of publicly traded small-capitalization companies that are domiciled and primarily listed on an exchange in Brazil, or that generate at least 50% of their revenues in Brazil. The Index is the exclusive property of 4asset-management GmbH, which has contracted with Standard & Poor��, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. to maintain and calculate the Index. The Fund is passively managed and may not hold each Index component in the same weighting as the Index. The Fund�� investment advisor is Van Eck Associates Corporation. Advisors' Opinion:- [By Jon C. Ogg]
Market Vectors Brazil Small-Cap ETF (NYSEArca: BRF) has performed closely with the larger ETF group, with a drop of almost 4% so far in 2014. By its name, you can assume it tracks small-cap stocks. It aims to track the Market Vectors Brazil Small-Cap Index. At $28.51, its 52-week trading range is $27.99 to $44.17.
- [By Hilary Kramer]
Brasil Foods SA (BRF) is South America�� largest food processing company, involved in everything from meat and dairy products to pasta, frozen vegetables and soybean-related products. The company has been around since 1939, and Forbes ranked it 39th on its list of the world�� most innovative companies. It brings in about $13 billion in sales each year, and analysts are estimating that earnings will grow from 94 cents per share in 2012 to $1.94 for all of 2013, with additional growth to $2.78 in 2014.
Top Rising Companies To Invest In Right Now: MFS Multimarket Income Trust (MMT)
MFS Multimarket Income Trust (the Trust) is a closed-end fund and maintains a portfolio that includes investments in investment-grade and high-yield corporate bonds, United States Government securities, and international investment-grade and emerging markets debt securities. The Trust's investment objective is to seek high-current income, but may also consider capital appreciation. During the fiscal year ended October 31, 2007, shares of the Trust provided a total return of 5.19%, at net asset value, underperforming the Multimarket Income Trust Blended Index, the EMBI Global, Government/Mortgage and United States High-Yield indices.
The Trust is managed by Massachusetts Financial Services Company (MFS). MFS normally invests at least 80% of the fund's net assets in fixed income securities. MFS may also invest the fund's assets in equity securities. MFS may invest up to 100% of the fund's assets in lower quality debt instruments, including those that are in default. MFS may invest the fund's assets in United States and foreign securities, including emerging market securities.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Aaron Levitt]
Perhaps more importantly for income seekers, due to the use of leverage, many CEFs pay above-average dividends — to the tune of 5 to 8%. Here are some of the best bargains in CEFs today.
MFS Multimarket Income Trust (MMT)Discount to NAV: 11.96%
Distribution Yield: 6.76%
Top Rising Companies To Invest In Right Now: Market Vectors Russia ETF (RSX)
Market Vectors-Russia ETF (the Fund) seeks to replicate as closely as possible the price and yield performance of the DAXglobal Russia+ Index (the Russia+ Index). The Russia+ Index includes a basket of securities of 30 of the most heavily traded Russian companies that have listings on global exchanges, either through an American depository receipt (ADR), a global depository receipt (GDR) or local Russian shares. The Russia+ Index, which was launched in March 2007, is a modified market capitalization-weighted index designed to track the movements of certain depository receipts (DRs) and stocks of publicly traded companies that are domiciled in Russia, and traded in Russia and on global exchanges. The Russia+ Index consists of companies with market capitalization greater than $150 million that have a daily average traded volume of at least $1 million over the past six months. The Russia+ Index includes energy companies, such as Lukoil, OAO Gazprom and Surgutneftgaz; utility company, Unified Energy Systems; steel manufacturing firms, such as Mechel OAO and Evraz Group SA; mining firm, JSC MMC Norilsk Nickel; communications firms, such as Mobile TeleSystems OJSC and Vimpel-Communications, and Sberbank.
The Fund will normally invest at least 80% of its total assets in stocks and depositary receipts (DRs) of publicly traded companies that are domiciled in Russia. Publicly traded companies that are domiciled in Russia means companies organized in, or for which the principal trading market is in Russia; companies that, alone or on a consolidated basis, have 50% or more of their assets invested in Russia, or companies that alone or on a consolidated basis derive 50% or more of their revenues primarily from either goods produced, sales made or services performed in Russia. The Fund, utilizing a passive or indexing investment approach, attempts to approximate the investment performance of the Russia+ Index by investing in a portfolio of securities that generally replicate the Russia+ Index. The Fund! will hold all of the securities that comprise the Russia+ Index in proportion to their weightings in the Russia+ Index. The Fund will normally invest at least 95% of its total assets in securities that comprise the Russia+ Index. The Russia+ Index is calculated and maintained by the Deutsche Borse (the Index Provider).
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Jeff Reeves]
This pick is even riskier than China, so your best bet is the diversified Market Vector Russia ETF (RSX).
But if you want to roll the dice on a risky but high-reward play, consider telecom giant Yandex (YNDX). This company is actually based in the Netherlands, but operates the leading Russian web portal, with search and email services. It�� essentially the Google (GOOG) of Russia.
- [By Halia Pavliva]
The Market Vectors Russia ETF (RSX), the biggest U.S.-traded exchange-traded fund that holds Russian shares, dropped 0.4 percent to $29.56, paring its October gain to 4.9 percent. The RTS Volatility Index, which measures expected swings in the index futures, added 4 percent to 23.48 in U.S. hours.
- [By Charles Sizemore]
But what exactly are you buying when you buy Russian stocks? Let�� take a look under the hood at the ETFs that track the Russian market: the Market Vectors Russia ETF (RSX), the iShares MSCI Russia Capped Index (ERUS) and the SPDR S&P Russia (RBL).
- [By Steven Russolillo]
The Market Vectors Russia ETF Trust(RSX) (ticker symbol RSX) dropped 9% to $22.25, on more than three times its average daily trading volume, according to FactSet.
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