Bank's Trouble in Our Yard

As a relatively new investor, I have been annoyed for some time (heck.. more or less for a year?) with the behaviour of the Australian Stock Exchange. Fair enough, it's a global meltdown, it's affecting everybody in the world. But down here, where (almost) everything is booming, we're experiencing stock market downturn even more than the US. Have been trying to understand, and seems like things are slowly revealing themselves.

• NAB warned on Friday it had made an additional provision of $830 million for its exposure to complex credit derivatives, known as collateralised debt obligations, or CDOs.
• ANZ profit warning - said its cash earnings per share for the year to September 30 were expected to fall by 20-25 per cent from the previous year. Bad debt provisions in the second half would likely be around $1.2 billion due to sour loans to commercial property groups and margin lenders, up from $980 million in the first half.
• In the past - involvement (masive exposure) of ANZ banking group with Opes Prime, Tricom.
• More pain to come?