Muzie

Citi's Share Price Problem

"the share price was so low that absent a major announcement it would almost certainly continue to decline all the way to zero."

Felix, you write good articles most of the time.

This statement you just made implies you believes that the stock price going too low implies it will cause the company to go bankrupt. Call me old-fashioned, I thought it was always the other way around.

Am I missing something in your reasoning here? It's one thing to say a low stock price indicates uncertainty about a company's prospects, it another entirely to see a low stock price actually becomes the cause for those low prospects.

Citigroup: The End Draws Near

Isn'tit amazing how these "Stock X is dead" articles only get written AFTER a stock goes down 50%.

It's ridiculous how these writers operator:
a) look at stock market
b) jot down list of biggest gainers and losers
c) cross-reference with archives to see if you can find old bits of informations to throw around
d) write doomsday article

Good job, smartass. But you're going to have to do better than say "It's dead and I don't know quite exactly why in details it's dying right now but the stock is down 50% so there you go".

Ugly

"I'd wager you really don't have any hard data to know you're going to know you're job but you're preparing for it. "

Gah. Let me rephase that.

I'd wager you really don't have any hard data to know you're going to get fired from you're job but you're preparing for it

Ugly

"I work for a multi-national company. My company has not reduced head count yet but soon will and I might be one of these heads. Hopefully the new adminstration in D.C. will find a way to restore confidence. If it happens later than sooner, so be it. "

Re-read your comments and yuo will know why the stock market falls endlessly.

I'd wager you really don't have any hard data to know you're going to know you're job but you're preparing for it. Everybody's doing the same thing.

Perception becomes reality, and what was a small snowball becomes an avalanche only through mass hysteria.

Banks Scramble to Refinance Their Long-Term Debt

RonB:

I'm quite amused by your implication that all the bears have a conflict of interest because they might be short the stocks while, on the other hand, you point us to Well's Fargo's transcript's as a reliable, totally objective source of information.

WFC's transcripts is very opaque about where the revenues came from, and WFC has refused to give out information about such basic things as delinquency rate on loans. If WFC was so confident, it would boast loud and clear all the details of its books instead of keeping them opaque still.

Bears such as Michael here don't have to be bears - Michael can perfectly well change his mind and decide to buy bank stocks tomorrow if he feels like it.

Wells Fargo CANNOT become a Wells Fargo bear, obviously. It is Wells Fargo's job to paint the facts in the best light possible, as it is the essence of their livelihood.

Reality is in the eye of the beholder.

Why Merrill's CDO Sale Doesn't Mean Big Writeoffs Elsewhere

To the OP: This is the first actual transaction of this stuff in a long time at an actual price. It would be unreasonable to dismiss the event as unimportant as it does have serious implications.

Why Merrill's CDO Sale Doesn't Mean Big Writeoffs Elsewhere

tlc: Price is whatever a seller will pay and MER needed the cash bad. In this case it would appear 22 cents on the dollar is the best deal they could find.

Black Swans, Real Estate and Financial Stocks

vamc: Frankly I'd take Considine's flawed models over your vague wand waving any day of the week.

I don't think Considine ever implied he tried to "predict all the things". Black swans will make any investment method fail whether they are based on fundamentals, technicals, psychology or whatnot.

Yes, to one with a hammer everything looks like a nail, aka. the data fit problem.

The flipside is to one with no (or inadequate) knowledge everything looks like randomness....

Black Swans, Real Estate and Financial Stocks

dmnieren: I think Mr. Considine 1:40 odds are for any single one-year period... so of course over multiple years you will eventually hit a significant percentage. Besides you can't just compare a predicted one-year return with the cherry-picked arbitrary timeframes you've chosen, you're comparing apples and oranges.

Mr. Considine: I'm sorry if my knowledge of statistics is relatively shallow - I'm assuming some kind of Monte Carlo simulation is at the heart of these predictions. Wouldn't it be possible to give a probability curve on the accuracy of the predictor itself, thus at least giving an estimate of how wide the black swan event window is?