So, I was flipping through some articles in Rolling Stone, when I found a very interesting economic story - yes, in Rolling Stone. The article, "Wall Street's Naked Swindle," takes a look at what happened in the options pits leading up to the death of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. According to the article, an unknown option buyer made "one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen," by shorting Bear Stearns. The unknown trader felt that Bear Stearns would lose "more than half" of its value in nine days or less, a bet that one financial analyst likened to buying 1.7 million lottery tickets.

What is crazy is that this bet paid off, leading to only one conclusion: insider trading (cue dramatic music). When Bear Stearns dropped from roughly $63 to $2 per share on March 17th (just six days later), the person purchasing the options made roughly $270 million. Senator Chris Dodd from the Senate Banking Committee thought that something wasn't on the up and up with this trade, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) promised it would look into the trade. Of course, nothing has happened since.

The Commerce Department released GDP numbers today for the second quarter, and showed that the economy shrank less than expected for the April - June period.

According to today's report, second quarter GDP figures dropped by 0.7%. Before the report, analysts had been expecting to see that GDP actually dropped by 1.1%, providing some fresh evidence that the economy will probably start growing again during the second half of the year.

Today's news boiled down to two issues. First was that five DJIA components reporting earnings this morning, with details on three components. The second issue was Ben Bernanke testifying that inflation was not a huge concern because the economy is likely to stay frail for some time. The markets were mixed to down most of the day until a late day rally saved shares.

Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 8,911.71 +63.56 (0.72%)
S&P 500 954.10 +2.97 (0.31%)
Nasdaq 1,914.13 +4.84 (0.25%)

Top 10 Analyst Upgrades/Downgrades

Bank of America (NYSE: BA) CEO Ken Lewis threatened to use a "material adverse change" (MAC) clause to kill the agreement to buy Merrill Lynch because he wanted to get a lower price, according to the Financial Times. New e-mails reveal how he was then pressured to proceed with the deal.

A House committee on oversight and government reform is investigating whether or not undue pressure was put on Lewis in order to complete the deal to purchase Merrill Lynch. Reportedly, the Federal Reserve would not comply with the committee's request for documentation and e-mails regarding the accusations, but the committee issued a subpoena to the central bank on Tuesday. Lewis is set to testify about the matter today at a congressional hearing.

Fed Chairman Bernanke gave an outline of regulation for banks and financial institutions today, and the weekly jobless claims gave some hope that tomorrow's unemployment might come in under expectations. There is a "sell the news" mentality that is going around ahead of the stress test and there was some tech profit taking after John Chambers was less optimistic. It looks like at least some profit taking is actually possible to see again.

Here are today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 8,376.64 -135.64 (-1.59%)
S&P 500 907.28 -12.25 (-1.33%)
Nasdaq 1,716.24 -42.86 (-2.44%)

Top Analyst Upgrades
Top Analyst Downgrades

An outspoken group of Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) shareholders has been calling for CEO Kenneth Lewis's head lately, with investors none too pleased by the bank's near-disastrous acquisition of Merrill Lynch. However, testimony is hitting Wall Street today that indicates Lewis was simply following government orders by keeping hefty losses at Merrill under wraps.

Lewis testified under oath before New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo in February, asserting "it wasn't up to me" to disclose Merrill's fourth-quarter losses toward the end of 2008.

According to Lewis, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pressured him to stay mum about Merrill Lynch's troublesome balance sheet. The regulators reportedly urged Lewis to proceed with the merger, warning that the deal's failure would "impose a big risk" to the nation's financial system.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says it'd be easy to follow the herd and doubt the staying power of this rally, but that's not his style.

People think I am nuts . . . even more than usual. All they can talk about at the cocktail parties and the lunches and on the Street is how bad things are. They want to hide in gold. They want to hide under the bed. They think that every move is false and every rally must be sold. The negativity is so thick that even my closest friends think that I am being wishful about the turn. Oh, and heaven forbid there would be one positive article in The Wall Street Journal about this market. Just one!

Two weeks have passed since I posted Is the stock market spring loaded? Could it move 3,000 points higher now? and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has climbed about 750 points finishing yesterday at 7660. That is after a day in which it went down 116 points giving up some of Mondays gains.

There is an old adage on Wall Street that simply states, "Don't fight the Fed". It is has been referred to and commented on for years and we are seeing it in action again. We saw it last week when Ben Bernanke the Federal Reserve Chairman was going to speak and some wondered what he might be able to do to help the ailing economy, since the adage, in general, refers to interest rate movement.

Earlier in the session we were looking at lower oil prices, but the mood has changed, and the precious crude is trading higher with the overall market today, picking up nearly 2.5% on the day.

Yesterday, despite rumors to the contrary, OPEC decided to leave its oil output alone, and this had the initial reaction of sending prices lower in early morning trading. With oil prices falling sharply since last summer, many analysts had been expecting to see a production cut from the group, but instead OPEC announced that it would be leaving its output unchanged, and stated that previous cuts were starting to take effect.

If we learned anything from Tuesday's market, it's that it is spring loaded, pun intended. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 379.44 or 5.8%, closing at 6,926.49. The NASDAQ and S&P were up even more. All this on skimpy news from Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) that it may have made a profit in the first two months of the year. That was all it took to get the market to pop!

For it's part, Citigroup jumped even more, ending the day at $1.45, for a $0.40, or 38.10% gain. Sending a memo to employees is not a novel approach to getting some stock buzz when anything more could have ended up being a lawsuit for potentially misleading investors somewhere down the road.

In trying to be all things financial to all people, Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) lost track of what it was, a successful bank. Now, the word success is a term that can only be used in a mocking fashion as corporate leadership allowed the company to be marginalized, with the stock sinking 97% in a two year period (chart below).

The popular television show American Idol, is in its eighth season, but before they even narrow down the list of hopefuls to the 12 finalists Citigroup has already picked out its idol -- that would be Uncle Sam!

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a speech in London today on the current credit crisis. He detailed the nature of the current financial situation and the steps that the Fed has taken to stabilize the situation.

He clearly laid out that the credit markets are not working properly, and the Federal Reserve is now assuming the role of lender of last report to alleviate the problem. This has taken multiple forms thus far:

• Extension of credits to banks
• Extension of credit through commercial paper purchases
• Planned purchases of other short-term assets
• Purchases of high-quality long-term assets
  

He acknowledged that the Fed has not only become the lender of last report but, in fact, the lender of only resort.

In essence, Chairman Bernanke said that he will do anything necessary to repair the credit situation. However, this appears to be something that monetary policy alone cannot accomplish. He acknowledged that confidence is the key to repairing credit and lending.

Jan. 22: Dow 11,971 (down 128 points); trading range, 658 points

The specter of continuing the ugliness seen overnight in the global equity markets and a 95% decline in fourth-quarter (2007) net income at Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) combined to shake up those in charge of U.S. monetary policy.

So, facing the possibility of a 500-point drop in the Dow following the long holiday weekend, the Fed sprang into action early to shore up the markets.

The move was a 75-basis-point pre-market intermeeting cut just eight days before the Fed's regularly scheduled meeting to drop the fed funds rate to 3.5% and the discount rate to 4%. The Fed made this move "in view of a weakening of the economic outlook and increasing downside risks to growth," adding, "appreciable downside risks to growth remain."

The Dow battled all day to recover from an early session drop of 459 points to close down only 128 by the closing bell.

Greg Tucker is the executive editor of OptionsZone.com.

The Federal Reserve just announced a bigger-than-expected rate cut. And with that, it has used up its short-term rate cutting ammunition for the first time in history.

The sad part is that even though the Fed has been cutting rates -- from 5.25% last summer to today -- the economy has not responded.

The specifics of today's rate cut are historic. The Fed lowered its target for the overnight federal funds rate to a range of between 0% and 0.25% -- a record low. Even though it's a historic low, today's announcement was ratifying the market reality -- demand for interbank loans has been so low that the actual Fed funds rate has been at 0.1% in the last several days.

The problem is that even though we are in a financial meltdown caused by too much borrowing, the Fed has decided that the best way to solve the problem is to get people to borrow more. But they don't want to lend the money that the Fed is giving away. Meanwhile, prices dropped in November by 1.7% -- more than ever in recorded history -- due largely to a rapid decline in energy prices.

Enough already -- leave something in the tank for next time!

When the Federal Reserve Board meets on Wednesday they should leave interest rates where they stand. The lack of liquidity in the market place is not coming from high interest rates. It is coming from a de-leveraging of the economy.

The Federal Discount Rate currently is 1.75% and was 2.25% less than a month ago. Alan Greenspan was too quick to lower the rates before and too slow to raise them when he should have. Ben Bernanke was too slow to lower them this time around and I do not want him to be too hasty to lower them further now when he should take a breath.

We're all rooting for you, Ben (what choice do we have?), so deal with the cash sitting on the Treasury's desk now and get back to this interest rate issue next month. Let the European banks lower their rates. That will strengthen the dollar and might help to stabilize oil prices, which have been dropping rapidly. Lower oil prices will put billions of dollars back into consumer hands and the overall economy. Lower oil prices will do more good than lower interest rates.

We need stability! We need predictability! Part of the reason we got into this mess was cheap credit and poor foresight on the part of the government, investors, and lenders.