johnhaskell

Don't Believe the Lies: Ride the Bank Stocks Bull

anyone who disagrees with Chopin is a "liar." How much more proof do you need?!

WaMu: Intensification of Stealth Buying

Aus banks have many of the same problems as US banks (house price appreciation in Aus 2002- present makes California look like it was standing still). But Aus and NZ banks have no deposit insurance! So their depositors may also be "sleeping like babies."

Certainly the investors in their bankrupt brokerages (who woke up to find that the broker had gone bankrupt, taking their retirement money with them) are.

Financials To Resume Meltdown Momentarily

it's worth pointing out that it has never been acceptable for non-market makers to sell naked short. It wasn't acceptable before mid July and it still won't be tomorrow and next week. The SEC said they were going to pay more attention to shorts and check more frequently to see if shares were in fact borrowed. This was the financial equivalent of "rounding up the usual suspects" when the markets are falling and you have to do something.

Mr Schwarz has himself rounded up the "usual suspects" by telling us that this one month "ban" is ending (anyone with a calendar could have told you that), repeating information well known on the street (#2,3) and speculating (#4).

The only information that matters in finance is information that surprises the market. None of these four points qualifies.

WaMu: Intensification of Stealth Buying

This stock is down 90% over the past 12 months and it's not because anyone has been seduced by short sellers, Al Qaeda or whomever else. It has fallen because people who were long the stock sold in response to increasingly bad operating results that came about due to the gross errors of WM management.

As for spotting Toscafund's purchase, you didn't need "painstaking analysis" but rather access to Yahoo Finance. Well, OK, maybe you consider that is the same thing.

BTW I hear the smart money is pouring into WCI- with Icahn as Chairman of the Board and Steve Cohen also buying how can you lose? Oh and here's another one- I hear Leon Black really likes "Linens 'n' Things."

Whenever you get ready to analyze WM's balance sheet and explain to us how they will get through the crunch without raising any more capital (which they can't because of the TPG deal) I'll be glad to read it. (However repeating mgmt's assertions to that effect do not count.)

The Fed Is Banking on Hedge Funds, But Merrill Lynch Can't

Of the stocks listed above the worst performing is easily BKUNA. And who is the specialist for BKUNA? That's right, it's NASDAQ and doesn't have a specialist. I'm sure the NYSE listed names above would like to be down 95% over the past 12 months like BKUNA. Darn specialists!

What's even more interesting than the stock performance of C, NCC, WM, BKUNA etc is the frenzied excuse making and conspiracy theorizing that so much of the investment community indulges in rather than acknowledge that they backed incompetent management.