Mortgage-related troubles continue to haunt regional banks. The melt down of the housing market has created a self-reinforcing spiral where lower prices lead to more defaults and unsold inventory, which in turn causes prices to slide further and depress demand because investors shy away from such devaluing assets.

One year into the Aug 2007 subprime crisis, and the financial sector is still reeling from the after-effects. Billions of dollars were injected into the money markets and interest rates slashed but the deleveraging journey remains arduous.

For the second consecutive week, new stock buybacks were fairly plentiful in number but modest in size. It is bearish that sharply lower stock prices have not triggered a higher volume of buyback announcements.