Here’s All the Top Mega-Financial Stock Stories of the Week

Here’s your Cheat Sheet to this week’s top financial industry business headlines:

Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE:GS): Current price $150.53

Knowledgeable sources on Monday said that Goldman Sachs intends another series of job cuts as soon as this week, with its equities-trading division targeted for more cuts than fixed-income trading. The sources related that equities will probably experience more than 5 percent of the eliminations, with fixed-income having a lower number than that. This is the time of year that the Wall Street banks typically shuffle off their weakest 5 percent of employees throughout the entire firms, but as the trading business continues to see weak volumes and earnings, the losses might be  deeper in some businesses.

David Loeb, a Goldman Sachs salesman who has been under investigation for possibly passing confidential information about tech firms to hedge funds, has exited the bank, according to a spokesperson on Monday. Loeb has never been charged with any wrongdoing, but his name appeared among a small group of Goldman bankers who were under scrutiny inked with an insider trading probe by the FBI.

An internal Goldman Sachs memo said that Dorothee Blessing, co-head of investment banking for Germany and wife of Commerzbank’s Chief Executive Martin Blessing, is retiring from the American bank. Blessing joined Goldman as a financial analyst in 1992 and during the next 20 years, worked her way up to partner and then co-head of investment banking for Germany and Austria. The memo was viewed by Reuters on Wednesday.

Goldman has lowered its risk-taking for a third consecutive year, while potential losses from trading positions are falling to their lowest level in seven years, representing a more prudent stance towards markets. The firm’s average daily value at risk in 2012 was $86 million, which was down by 24 percent from 2011, according to a Friday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This measure indicates how much cash Goldman estimates it could lose on an average day, within a 95 percent confidence range.

Are these stocks a buy or sell? Let us help you decide. Check out our Stock Picker Newsletter now.