John Thain to Take Over at Merrill: I'm Ready to Buy

Well, it turns out Joe Capone was wrong after prediction to me months ago that John Thain would run Citigroup (C) after Prince was fired. But he's not that wrong, because after watching Thain's interview on CNBC I'm sure he was offered the job and chose Merrill (MER) instead.

Knowing that Thain worked in Mortgage Backed Securities at Goldman and the fact that he got to see the books of Merril before he took the job are two factors that made me buy Merrill Lynch (MER - $57.88 close) in the aftermarket today at $58.15. I don't think Thain would have taken the CEO job at Merrill if he didn't figure out that the mortgage positions there are manageable.

Merrill Lynch is trading cheap, so I'm getting one of the best private wealth management franchises in the world at a bargain.

Besides, now that I've trimmed my broker exposure a bit I'm putting it back up with Merrill. Now I feel like I own them all. Might Merrill go down before it goes up? Perhaps. It the absense of further bad news, I'm likely to be a buyer if it does.

Disclosure, confessions and rants: I own MER, BSC, MS, GS, LEH.

I have several friends in management positions at Merrill Lynch. I also have an enemy or two, (you know who you are and hopefully John Thain will figure you out too.)