Lauren Silva
"July was an expectedly quiet month for the market, especially around the Fourth of July holiday," said Knight Chairman and CEO Thomas M. Joyce. "While market activity may have been boosted somewhat by quarterly corporate earnings reports, we believe the same geopolitical, economic and market concerns from June continued to trouble investors."
Meanwhile, at Bear Stearns, trading revenue is "likely to weaken," says Merrill's Moszkowski. In particular, he says trading volume in mortgage-backed should be down about 10% from last quarter. Trading in mortgage-related products is a staple business for Bear Stearns. Bear Stearns' third quarter ends in September. "While some of this was apparent a couple of weeks ago when we published our mid-quarter update, we are now close enough to the end of the quarter that, in the interests of realism, it appears that we need to assume that volumes will not improve enough in August to allow the prior forecast to hold," he said in a report on Monday. The weak performance at the broker prompted Moskowski to lower his third quarter estimates to $2.81 a share, down from $3.01 a share. Analysts, on average, are expecting Bear Stearns to $3.03 a share, according to Thomson Financial.
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