LEH Forum Topics
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- Bust, Bail, Repeat: The U.S. Enters into an Ever-Worsening Cycle [view article]
- 25 Ways to Tell a Banking System Is Unsound [view article]
- Financials Are Having a Dead Cat Bounce [view article]
- Financial-Dip Buyers Forget To Ask What's Next [view article]
- The Facts Behind the Coming Congressional Mortgage Bailout Bill [view article]
- A Letter to Warren Buffett [view article]
- Financials Future Still Uncertain [view article]
- How High Leverage Has Brought Down the Whole Banking Industry [view article]
- Lehman Brothers, R.I.P [view article]
- SEC Shorting Restrictions: Are Some Banks Being Set Up? [view article]
- Mother of All Short Squeezes? [view article]
- The SEC's 'Sacred Cow' List: Where Are WaMu and Wachovia? [view article]
loading ...Recent LEH Articles
- UBS Analyst: Asset Sale Could Benefit Lehman Brothers
- Bust, Bail, Repeat: The U.S. Enters into an Ever-Worsening Cycle
- Bank Bailouts or Bull?
- 25 Ways to Tell a Banking System Is Unsound
- Financials Are Having a Dead Cat Bounce
- Financials Future Still Uncertain
- Financial-Dip Buyers Forget To Ask What's Next
- Crazy Dividends
- A 'Buy the Loser' Rally
- Looking for Action? Most Volatile Stocks
- Full List of Articles »
How High Leverage Has Brought Down the Whole Banking Industry [view article]
Thank you all for providing your wonderful comments here. I really appreciate your thoughts and your time.Amm, book value and market cap are two different things. Market cap usually is higher than book value but not in LEH’s case here. I also used the same approach as used by the WSJ article that the potential future writeoff could wipe out both book value AND the market cap.
Helplessobserver, I also agree that S&P will fall below $1,100 which is only my intermediate target. See my previous article of seekingalpha.com/artic..., my ultimate target is actually $800, as indicated in my article.
Thanks to Bob Gary and stockguy456, those are good links, especially the video on Fed which I watched before and now watched again. It is a cartel of the banks, by the banks and for the banks.
Charlie, you can read my previous article of seekingalpha.com/artic..., which has a brief discussion on the CDS risk exposure to JP Morgan. This is also the 2nd most popular article I have written next to my 10 predictions for 2008. By the way, what is the link to the Bloomberg article you were referring to?
Pescayolas, this is a long report, let me read through it, especially the derivative portion. Thanks for the link.
Kinabalu and Charlie, what I meant was for those CDOs with AAA rating, which the recovery rate is around 50%. It is more conservative that way. I am aware that anything below AAA rating is pretty much all wiped out. But at the same time, LEH may have written some of them off already. Reply
rsoft.com
Short Sales: SEC Turns Back the Clock to 1931 [view article]
THE SEC CLEARLY AIDED THE 2007-2008 "BEAR RAID"With the financial stocks up sharply for a fourth day in a row since the SEC banned naked short sales in leading financial stocks, one has to wonder how much of the size of the decline owed to hedge fund naked shorting of these stocks and why, if the SEC is at all concerned about excessive market volatility owing to bear raids, it does not ban naked short sales in all securities and enforce this
rule with real penalties. The answer is, of course, the SEC is the client of Wall Street insiders, not the investing public. I might not have said that, but for way at the end of June 2007 the SEC cleared the way for a bear market by suddenly, capriciously, illegally allowing short sales on down-ticks. The SEC has not
begun a single action against anyone for driving a stock down by naked short-selling. We should watch the SEC. They want financials to rally now. There are two earlier cases, in 1931 and 1932, where the NYSE briefly banned short sales. The market rallied then, too, until the ban was lifted.
See seekingalpha.com/artic...
I have to mention the SEC's hypocrisy and Chairman Cox's misleading statements on CNBC, where he denied naked short selling was illegal. Cramer hit COX pretty hard. Wall Street is not a level playing field. And the SEC is not even pretending now. That suggests that they are rather desperately trying to bring a
recovery. This is as rank as Bush's connections to Enron's Ken Lay.
He denied being friends with this convicted swindler. But the truth was Lay provided Bush with more than a million dollars. Bush would likely not have become President without Lay's lavish support.
... They are supposed to police insider trading. Who police's the SEC? It is clear from
... the high volume of trading in finance stocks before the announcement, that they let
... favored insiders know in advance.
... ( See - www.tigersoftware.com/... )
... Given their heavy weighting in the DJI - BAC, C and JPM, I would think
... the DJI will move higher and reach the point of breakdown, 11700. A 50%
... retracement would take the DJI up to 12000. It is back to its declining
... 21-day ma. and the resistance of the hypothetical low of January. The market
... was very oversold. A two week rally off a July low is typical even in a bear market.
... That the DJI is moving up appreciably more than the SP-500 or NASDAQ
... makes the rally suspect.
...
... V-Bottoms Are Not Common
... Despite the 450 point rally, we have no major Peerless Buy. So, the odds favor the
... rally being short-lived and a re-test of 11,000, unless you are accept the Bear Raid
... hypothesis offered above, which then would suggest that the DJI has along way to
... rally, now that insiders have accumulated so much stock at the bottom. Looking
... back to 1965, there are few "V" bottoms and still fewer boittoma without major
... Peerless Buys. Three quarters of the time, bottoms require at least another test.
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Revised Upside Targets for Fannie and Lehman [view article]
Agree with borisb, we have another newsletter peddler in disguise.And if you don't subscribe to his monthly service by 8/1, rates will go up 50%. Yeah right! -I'll check back on 8/2 and will report if you don't raise rates as you said. Reply
Short Sales: SEC Turns Back the Clock to 1931 [view article]
MRTAXX i agree with most of what you said except one thing ,the SEC knows how to do their job ,which is to help the financials out of their mess at the expenses of all of us. I invite you to read Richard Wending s message that is so accurate,thanks by the way Richard for something that becomes clearer about the SEC s intentions. But is this really a surprise to the small investors and also to the taxpayers. ReplyA Letter to Warren Buffett [view article]
Patience is a virtueJ
On Jul 18 11:54 AM warrenliverm ore wrote:
> warren will get paid to wait. Reply
The Facts Behind the Coming Congressional Mortgage Bailout Bill [view article]
the 2 gse are just to big to let competion in the mortgage business work. thus, make 12 units of them and deprive them of the state help, so they are not privileged banks compared to all others.i dont think interest rates would rise - maybe in the beginning, but then competion will work its way through the system and interests should decline. Reply
Lepoff, M.D.
Barron's Goes Bullish on Banks, Again [view article]
Valueinvestor123 said it well. Especially in the reference to Cramer. ReplyThe Facts Behind the Coming Congressional Mortgage Bailout Bill [view article]
Let's get real on the "bailout" bill. FNMA/FHLMC are not the crooks here. Their leadership put in place by Bill Clinton (Franklin Raines and Company) took $57 million in bonus after they "cooked the books". How are those guys not in jail.The concept of the GSE's is brilliant and led to a wonderful mortgage secondary market of quality loans. FHA, VA and normal FNMA/FHLMC loans are not the problem today. The low to moderate income legislation forced agencies to make bad loans to those people...hence, that is their small portfolio of bad loans. The only real problem is the GSE's were raped by the management.
I wonder if Franklin Raines and James Johnston made large contributions to the Clintons as "repayment"?... That would be a good research project. Reply
Mother of All Short Squeezes? [view article]
excellent writing! been saying its only a matter of time before the berlin boys find the bigboy stocks far more liquid and profitable on naked shorting. and with the reg sho factor, it shows the fed/sec only cares when it impacts their stock options lmao. we are gonna get to witness a market without shorts waiting for bull exhaustion to wipe out down the road. next the berlin boys will just move to other sectors,,,,,our fed/sec can not control 'the global markets',,, oil has proven that.Reply
Short Sales: SEC Turns Back the Clock to 1931 [view article]
The SEC ought to be abolished for this preferential treatment of wallstreet. They are banning naked short sales ON wallstreet's banks and brokers - but they are allowing any naked short BY them on any stock they desire to continue. Go figure. ReplyMother of All Short Squeezes? [view article]
Not that I am a big fan of his, but didn't the CEO of Overstock.com complain about this ad nauseum and all he got was ridiculed, maybe he was right? ReplyMother of All Short Squeezes? [view article]
Its obvious the banking crisis is way overdone...stocks like Banner Bank in Seattle for example has had less problems and is profitable and the stock took a great hit for no reason...by the way the dividend is over 8 percent and probably will remain so...take that in your pipe and smoke it.. ReplyMother of All Short Squeezes? [view article]
The Fed along with the Government did everything they could to engender capitulation last week. As far as the the whole short-selling debacle goes, where do you draw the line. I was reading this piece over the weekend wondering what happens next?www.greenfaucet.com/th... Reply
Mother of All Short Squeezes? [view article]
i think the actual "ban" is just for one week, with the option to extend for 30 calender days. ReplyMother of All Short Squeezes? [view article]
Yes , why does the unlawful naked short selling being allowed openly by SEC ?Even at emergency , SEC offers policing to only 19 investment banks for 30 days .
How about the regional banks where they have already been hurt by naked short sellings .
The naked short sellers can short sell unlimited quantity of shares of any bank by not having to borrow the same .
Such short sellers then have the " privilege " to command an unlimited supply of shares .
Such short sellers are naturally invincible since they have been well fed financially in expense of the economy of USA .
Yet , SEC would only police for 19 investment banks .
Why does the lawmakers tolerate such notorious violation of the law ?
Further , banks are often required to shore up their balance sheet forcing them to sell newly issued stocks at depleted pricing .
An article indicated that the same short sellers who depleted the banks' pricing would buy the newly issued stocks for covering their position .
Magic ! short selling " nothing " at a high price and buying back the tremendous quantity of new issues at a dirt cheap price .
A small group of short sellers make huge profit on the misery of a very large number of innocent people .
Is this vicious cycle of selling phantom stocks at high prices while covering the position with cheap new issues , really happening under the eyes of lawmakers ?
Just in case , Banks should have a grace time to shore up their balance sheet until the naked short selling is limited .
Reply