Posted on 03/17/2008 6:41:36 AM PDT by Lazamataz
To everyone who called me or emailed me over the weekend saying, "How could this happen? How could Bear Stearns go from $57 to $2 in two days?" I would offer the comment of one astute trader, who said, "When you are levered 30 times and have no access to finance it doesn't take a huge move on $400 billion in assets and $260 billion of debt to wipe out the equity."
Two questions dominate the Street this morning:
1) What will Bear Stearns' shareholders--specifically Bear employees--do? The $2 per share deal is subject to shareholder approval, and Bear employees--many of whom have significant parts of their life savings in Bear stock--are certainly stunned enough to create at least a minor protest over the price. Sandler O'Neill noted that "we do not believe it is incomprehensible that this deal may have bought Bear Stearns additional time to assess its situation which may lead shareholders to reject the offer."
2) What will happen to the other major brokers and banks, and what will the reaction of the credit markets be? With a book value at nearly $80 per share for Bear, the $2 price makes it tough on other brokers. A flight to firms with the strongest balance sheets seems obvious. Analysts were out this morning with various comments on who does have the strongest balance Goldman Sachs , for example, opined that Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan had the strongest balance sheet. Street seems to be treating it that way: Lehman down 28 percent pre-open, Merrill down 16 percent, Goldman and Morgan Stanley down down 8 percent, JP Morgan up.
Meredith Whitney, who has become an ax in this space through her coverage at Oppenheimer, put out a note this morning titled, "BSC Fire Sale to Cause Valuation Adjustment for All Financials: Banks at Risk," in which she argues that financial stocks have further downside of as much as 50% based upon 1990/1991 multiples of tangible book values. She says most banks are trading well above their price to book lows of the 1990-1991 cycle.
So, what will finally end all this turmoil? The Street is screaming that the government should directly or indirectly begin buying mortgage backed securities, and, to a lesser extent that a wider bailout program needs to be devised to stem home price depreciation.
HA!!
Stunned Bear Stearns investors eye legal claims
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Angry Bear Stearns Co Inc shareholders have wasted no time in calling their lawyers to pursue potential legal recourse over the company’s $2-a-share fire sale to JPMorgan Chase & Co.
“I can’t divulge privileged conversations, but shareholders don’t contact me when they are happy with the way things are going with their investments,” said Ira Press, a lawyer at class-action firm Kirby McInerney, which has spoken with dismayed Bear investors about the matter.
“This is a stock that has gone from 50 to 2 literally overnight, and I also know of people who had assumed that the worst had passed when it closed at 30,” he said.
....Shareholders might sue Bear and its executives and officers for securities fraud, contending they failed to disclose the company’s true financial health, lawyers say.....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080317/us_nm/bearstearns_lawsuits_dc
Money management is/should be the same no matter what you are doing....Las Vegas, household spending, stocks, bonds, muni's, futures..etc.
FWIW-
Thanks for the link....
some good stuff in that article although not very well written and certainly an attempt to gloss over the lack of responsibility for these people.
What is the substance of his post?
What gives me sour stomach is the fact that there are $750 Trillion in "derivatives" out there, some of which aren't understood by their creators, much less by the traders or admittedly by the Secretary of the Treasury or his crew.
By my math, if just 1% of these unwind abruptly due to margin calls or the like, it would cause a $7.5 Trillion train wreak, the consequences of which no one can estimate...but they would be bad, very bad.
Spell it out for me.
Sounds like Bush's ownership society to me - remember when it was a matter of Republican pride that home ownership was at historic highs?
Here, I'll help you
Expanding Homeownership. The President believes that homeownership is the cornerstone of America's vibrant communities and benefits individual families by building stability and long-term financial security. In June 2002, President Bush issued America's Homeownership Challenge to the real estate and mortgage finance industries to encourage them to join the effort to close the gap that exists between the homeownership rates of minorities and non-minorities. The President also announced the goal of increasing the number of minority homeowners by at least 5.5 million families before the end of the decade. Under his leadership, the overall U.S. homeownership rate in the second quarter of 2004 was at an all time high of 69.2 percent. Minority homeownership set a new record of 51 percent in the second quarter, up 0.2 percentage point from the first quarter and up 2.1 percentage points from a year ago. President Bush's initiative to dismantle the barriers to homeownership includes...
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/08/20040809-9.html
The substance of his post was already addressed by himself, and me. You didn’t. Also, I’ve already asked you to make a thread ALL ABOUT DERIVATIVES. When are you going to do that?
The market is spelling “it” out for you, as have a great many others foflol. But you already have your 30 pieces of silver.
Carry on.
Bear Stearns Stock Fell Dramatically Over the Weekend Stock Sold for $ 2 Billion Profit at on February 14th
Insiders unloaded 27,316,339 Shares for about $ 70 + per share on February 14, 2008. For a profit of about $ 2 Billion ! ! ! ! What did they know and when did they know it ?
Morons! Did you follow the link? Try again.
14-Feb-08 27,316,339 BSC Statement of Ownership
Nobody sold 27,316,339 shares. LOL!
You can pretend that a $10 bet on yesterdays game put $1 billion at risk, because the performance of your bet was derived from the performance of $1 billion in underlying assets, but you really know it's only a $10 bet.
But keep showing your ignorance. It's funny!
You have your 30 pieces of silver already! Argument over!
As do you. Most everyone on FR already knows this about both of you. Who are your handlers? They should demand a refund.
Did you read that on a real website? Or on www.dingbat.com ?
You can keep lying about the “soundness of the US economy” like Bear Stearns did about their own “soundness,” but that doesn’t make it anything other than a lie or propaganda.
When are you going to make, and post, a thread ALL ABOUT DERIVATIVES?
When are you going to make a thread ALL ABOUT DERIVATIVES?
Otherwise, I find it amusing to watch....LOL
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