Marathon Monday is perhaps the best day of the year to enjoy Boston sports. Today features a fun-filled day that starts with the running of the marathon, continues with a Red Sox game, and is capped off by a Celtics playoff home game — what’s better than that!. I didn’t get a chance to watch the marathon today, but I did see some running. The running I saw was that of stock market investors running to the sidelines on the back of renewed fear surrounding financial stocks. As a result the Dow dropped 290 points and financial stocks were absolutely crushed. Below are the highlights from the day’s action:

• Bank of America reported solid profits but indicated that loan problems were persisting and even getting worse.
• There was increased scrutiny on Citigroup’s surprise quarterly profit, which seemed to come more from shrewd accounting than a sharp rebound in its core businesses. Goldman Sachs noted that Citigroup’s credit losses were growing at a “rapid rate” and put a price target on the stock at $1.50.
• Last night, the Turner Radio Network published what it claimed was a “leak” of the Treasury stress tests. They didn’t actually publish a document, just a summary and in short they said the stress tests showed the entire banking system was stunningly insolvent.
• The NY Times published an article stating that to in order to provide continued assistance to banks without having to petition Congress for more TARP funds, the U.S. may convert the preferred shares they own in banks as a result of TARP to common stock, similar to what they have done with Citigroup.
• The Financial Times was out saying that the U.S. was going to place additional conditions on those banks who plan to repay TARP funds. As a result, the market is likely to punish “bad” banks who have not repayed TARP and reward “good” banks that do.

Uncategorized bofa, citigroup, stock market

I came across an interesting article in the New York Post about how Citigroup and Bank of America have been aggressively purchasing AAA mortgage-backed securities in the secondary market. Surely, its a bit bizarre that those banks that hold the largest amount of these securities and have taken the largest writedowns are back playing in the same market that hurt them so badly in the past.

“One Wall Street trader told The Post that what’s been most puzzling about the purchases is how aggressive both banks have been in their buying, sometimes paying higher prices than competing bidders are willing to pay.

Recently, securities rated AAA have changed hands for roughly 30 cents on the dollar, and most of the buyers have been hedge funds acting opportunistically on a bet that prices will rise over time. However, sources said Citi and BofA have trumped those bids.”

Both BoA and Citigroup were the recipients of $45 billion in TARP funds meant to to help prop up the economy and jumpstart the housing market.

Despite receiving the TARP funds, both BoA and Citigroup are positioned to take large writedowns if the market for AAA MBS deteriorates further.

“One source said that the banks’ purchases have helped to keep prices of these troubled securities higher than they would be otherwise”

Since trading is very light in these markets, it would be very easy to purchase up to $1 billion in assets at slightly inflated prices to prevent writedowns on the remaining $20 billion or so that they are likely to still have on their balance sheet.

I’m sure this won’t be the last time we hear about this…….

Uncategorized bofa, citigroup, mbs, toxic assets